Only Language Can Hold Us Together
only language
can hold us together
i watch the women
bead their hair
each bead a word
braids becoming
sentences
she would
never comb her hair
it was always wild
like new poetry
it was difficult
to understand
she would enter
rooms where old women
would stare & mumble
& bold ones would say
“where’s her mother”
she never understood why
no one ever understood the
beauty of her hair
like free verse
so natural as conversation
so flowing like the french
or spanish she heard or
overheard she thought she knew
“i want to go to
mozambique” she said one day
combing her hair
finding the proper beads
after so long
“i want to go to
mozambique” she said
twisting her hair
into shape the way her
grandmother made quilts
each part separated &
plaited
“i want to go to
mozambique or zimbabwe
or someplace like luanda
i need to do something
about my hair
if only i could
remember
the words
to the language
that keeps
breaking in my
hands”
Notes:
“Only Language Can Hold Us Together” was originally published in Where Are the Love Poems for Dictators? (Open Hand Publishing, LLC, 1986) and is part of the folio “E. Ethelbert Miller: Friendship Is What Keeps Us Whole.” Read the rest of the folio in the November 2025 issue of Poetry.
Source: Poetry (November 2025)