after Untitled (Woman Brushing Hair) (1990), by Carrie Mae Weems
the moon rises today, too
gather at the dinner table
to perform a scene, almost like actors
you're old now yet still
you have to work. tired,
you fill your cup and again
it's juice or wine
both so murky
your reflection doesn't show
At home feels
completely defenseless,
the ordinary view a sedative
light me another
you ask Mother
she fusses over your hair every day.
like some kind of routine
she drinks with you
her cup is half full, half empty
frugality born into every action
in her worn eyes.
like a womb
mother and daughter at peace,
homage to simpler days, a haven,
she asks, cigarette in hand,
are you tired too?
DAUGHTER and MOTHER smoke their shadows under the dim light.
Ahja Hawkins Ahja Hawkins is a 18-year-old living in Gretna, Louisiana. She attends the New Orleans Center for Creative Arts as a Senior. She loves reading but has a bit of a book-hoarding problem. Ahja loves to write poems and essays about the Black experience, and hopes her work can resonate with unheard Black voices. She’s the regional winner of Poetry Out Loud, has won a silver key in the Scholastic Art and Writing Awards, received runner-up in the 2024 Patty Friedman Writing Competition, and won third place in the Pinkie Gordon Lane Poetry Contest. She’s been published once in the Fall 2023 issue of Under the Madness Magazine. Ahja is passionate about performance poetry, and dreams of traveling across the world to share her work.
