Holding Up My Own Oscar Poem by Sarah Mkhonza

Holding my own Oscar award
On the platforms of the world
Is no longer a dream
It is Lupita possible
I repeat Nyongo doable.

You made me feel just right
Short hair no chemicals fight
For your smile acted it into
The me who was afraid of life.

Like other young people
You were told not you
Why you to be this not just that
You fought words and moulds
For nobody would mold success
And put it in front of me.

Can my hands hold your Oscar
I get close in my mind
My Oscar is in my poetry
You made me a poet laureate
I hold an Oscar right now
For you made me learn to see worlds
That betrayed and owned up not
You made me learn that acting it
Is close to touching it.

Which young person did not see it
The young woman in themselves
Reaching for the roof tops like you
Shaking tree tops in long gowns
Acting roles from the pain of the past
And saying never by succeeding
In the days when Barak was President.

We saw the past in roughness
Troubles that bled of hate
Beatings that began in antiquity
And ended on the back of a woman
Still we saw the upside
We who overcame the odds
Now stand in the light and read
Watching it played by you for us to take
And eat the chitlins of the past
Of blood seeping out off a back
And swallow the textures thereof.

I will lift up my own Oscar high
It may not be now that we share
It may be an Oscar in the night
When nobody sees me working
On a future to come like yours
For it is in the making
Whenever my acts lift things up not down.