"Lion's Tooth" by Niki Herd
Lion’s Tooth
I’ve spent my days counting raindrops. I’m at eleven thousand & sixty-four. I cannot rely on words but I rely on words. Like when I say baby or mamacita. Like when I say I love every version of you. I lick the right breast, that cartography of want. The next wall over, neighbors whisper. No one trusts anyone. Nearby, men have built a colossal center. It’s not for shopping. Tomorrow will be the end of this black-blue night. Tomorrow will be the end of us too. I am a colorful bouquet of necessary flowers. I am a child in a field blowing dandelion seed. The French call it lion’s tooth. Surely, there’s an open hand to catch it all—
Photo Credit: Madeline Brenner
Niki Herd is the author of two poetry collections, The Stuff of Hollywood, finalist for a Lambda Literary Award, and The Language of Shedding Skin, as well as the chapbook _____ , don’t you weep. She coedited Laura Hershey: On the Life & Work of an American Master. Herd’s poetry and essays appear in Poem-a-Day, Rabbit (Australia), Adroit, Poetry Daily, New England Review, Salon, and This Is the Honey: An Anthology of Contemporary Black Poets, among other journals and anthologies. Her work has been supported by MacDowell, Ucross, Bread Loaf, and Cave Canem. She teaches at Franklin & Marshall College.
This was an incredibly put together piece. Thoughtfulness and intellect that I can not find anywhere else was well written with just a touch of beautiful adjectives. The grammar, line breaks, were most impressive.
Poet here. Old lady retired surgeon, my grandchild is trans and I’m still learning.
Can we connect?
The Soul in My Eyes
People ask me what I see when I look at the world.
The truth is, I don’t see what most people see.
I don’t see rich people and poor people.
I don’t see Democrats and Republicans.
I don’t see races, titles, degrees, uniforms, or bank accounts.
I see souls.
I see souls trapped inside bodies trying to understand why they are here.
I see souls carrying pain they cannot explain.
I see souls carrying joy they cannot describe.
I see souls searching for something they lost before they even knew it was missing.
The world teaches us to identify people by what they have: their job, their education, their color, their religion, their social status, their possessions, and their achievements.
But none of those things are the person.
Those are labels.
The soul is the person.
The soul existed before the title.
The soul existed before the uniform.
The soul existed before the money.
The soul existed before the opinion.
The soul existed before the world told us what we should become.
When I look at history, I do not see a timeline of events. I see a timeline of souls struggling to survive the conditions they were born into.
Some were born into kingdoms.
Some were born into poverty.
Some were born into freedom.
Some were born into chains.
Yet beneath every circumstance was the same question:
How does the soul survive?
I believe much of what humanity calls progress has come from souls searching for a way to release what they carry inside.
Music is a soul speaking.
Art is a soul speaking.
Literature is a soul speaking.
Dance is a soul speaking.
Prayer is a soul speaking.
Even silence can be a soul speaking.
The soul is always trying to communicate something deeper than words.
The problem is that the modern world has become obsessed with the brain.
The brain measures.
The brain calculates.
The brain competes.
The brain builds systems.
The brain creates rules.
The brain creates institutions.
The brain can create wonderful things.
But the brain can also forget why it is creating them.
A machine does not need a soul.
A human being does.
The more we build systems without understanding the soul, the more disconnected we become from ourselves.
We become productive but empty.
Connected but lonely.
Entertained but restless.
Informed but confused.
We know more than ever, yet many of us understand less about who we truly are.
The soul understands something the brain often forgets.
The soul understands feeling.
It understands beauty.
It understands loss.
It understands love.
It understands suffering.
It understands resilience.
That is why I have always been fascinated by the history of people who endured hardship and still found a way to create.
The greatest testimonies often come from those who had the least reason to keep going.
People who were abused.
People who were forgotten.
People who were overlooked.
People who were broken.
Yet somehow, they found a way to sing.
A way to build.
A way to laugh.
A way to love.
A way to leave something behind for others.
That is the soul refusing to surrender.
The soul, in my eyes, is the most powerful force in existence.
Not because it dominates.
Not because it conquers.
Not because it controls.
But because it survives.
The soul survives poverty.
The soul survives heartbreak.
The soul survives betrayal.
The soul survives war.
The soul survives manipulation.
The soul survives the lies people tell about it.
And when everything else has been stripped away, the soul remains standing, holding the memories of what it endured.
Perhaps that is why I am drawn to stories.
Stories are not information.
Stories are evidence that a soul was here.
Every photograph I take.
Every book I write.
Every memory I preserve.
Every piece of Poetic Cinema I create.
Is my way of saying:
A soul lived here.
A soul felt this.
A soul survived this.
A soul witnessed this.
Long after the names are forgotten, long after the titles disappear, long after the arguments fade away, the soul remains the most honest record of who we were.
That is what I see when I look at the world.
Not colors.
Not categories.
Not possessions.
Not status.
I see souls.
And every soul is trying to remember something the world convinced it to forget.