Roanoke Prime

by Akua Lezli Hope

They called it sacred space 
We didn’t care and settled there
And disappeared without a trace
and disappeared without a trace

A mistranslation to be sure
No god being ruled their enigmatic race
Nothing spiritual shaped inscrutable lore
We needed rare ore found in that place

Despite our oddly colored skin,
their fleshy wings and purple scent
We too, are ensouled, though different
unlike they without sin, ours go 

We didn’t care and settled there
a special place to be explored
A mistranslation we ignored
sacred meant ‘soul-danger’ place

Sound that sets the ground to quake
sound evaporates dry lakes
swallowing shimmer vibration tremor
triggered sonic horrors where we lay 

One by one we disappeared
where once we stood, each to other reappears
on enduring rock, flesh-shredding breeze
red ochre sands absent of blue green

This report a whisper of the gone
who did not listen though forewarned
We ignore the signs to slake our needs
and disappear without a trace

Akua Lezli Hope

Akua Lezli Hope, a Grand Master of Fantastic Poetry (SFPA) and paraplegic creator of poems, patterns, stories, music, sculpture, & adornments, has been in print since 1974.  Her collections include Embouchure: Poems on Jazz and Other Musics (Writer’s Digest Book Award) & Otherwheres: Speculative Poetry (Elgin Award). A Cave Canem fellow, her honors include NEA & NYFA fellowships; SFPA, Rhysling & IGNYTE awards; and NYSCA grants for Afrofuturist, speculative, pastoral poetry & disability poetics. She created the Speculative Sundays Poetry Reading series & edited NOMBONO: An Anthology of Speculative Poetry by BIPOC Creators, the first of its kind.