Poetry Thursday, Black History Month Edition

Beginnings
~Mahtem Shiferraw

This is not how it begins
but how you understand it.

I walk many kilometers and
find myself to be the same—

the same moon hovering over
the same, bleached sky,

and when the officer calls me
it is a name I do not recognize,
a self I do not recognize.

We are asked to kneel, or
stand still, depending on which land
we embroider our feet with—

this one is copious with black blood
or so I am told.

Someone calls me by the skin
I did not know I had
and to this I think—language,

there must be a language
that contains us all
that contains all of this.

How to disassemble
the sorrow of beginnings,

how to let go, and not,
how to crouch beneath other bodies
how to stop breathing, how not to.

Our fathers are not elders here;
they are long-bearded men
shoving taxi cabs and sprawled
in small valet parking lots—

at their sight, my body dims its light
(a desiccated grape)
and murmur, Igziabher Yistilign—
our pride, raw-purple again.

We begin like this: all of us
walking in solitude
walking a desert earth and
unforgiving bodies. We cross lines
we dare not speak of; we learn and
unlearn things quickly, or intentionally slow
(because, that, we can control)
and give ourselves new names
because these selves must be new
to forget the old blue.

But, sometimes, we also begin like this:
on a cold, cold night
memorizing escape routes
kissing the foreheads of small children
hiding accat in our pockets,
a rosary for safekeeping.

Or, married off to men thirty years our elders
big house, big job, big, striking hands.

Or, thinking of the mouths to feed.

At times
we begin in silence;

water making its way into our bodies—
rain, or tears, or black and red seas
until we are ripe with longing.

Black History Month, Poetry Edition

Incantation
~Chris Abani

What words can you wrap around

a dying brother, still dying, even now.

A man who has not eaten for a month

sips at water and says, even thirst is a gift.

He asks what other gifts God has given him.

I’m your gift, his daughter says from a corner.

And he smiles and rasps—

you can only unwrap a child once.

The rest is prayer and even more prayer.

You sing softly to him in a language

only the two of you speak and he

snores softly into your palm, breath and blood.

Black History Month, Poetry Edition

Speak Now, Or Forever. Hold Your Peace.
~Patricia Smith

Two weeks after 17 students were gunned down in Parkland, Fla., hundreds of worshippers clutching AR-15s slurped holy wine and exchanged or renewed wedding vows in a commitment ceremony at the World Peace and Unification Sanctuary in Newfoundland, Pa.

Draped in thick silk the hue of hemorrhage and bone, you fondle your butt stocks, muffled lust needles your cheeks. Your aim? To
make America great. Again,

your terse-lipped Lord has nudged you into the glare—numbed and witless in His name, you preen and re-glue blessed unions,
mistake America straight, contend

your unloosed crave for the sugared heat of triggers. Besotted beneath
your crowns of unspent shells, you hard-rhyme vows and
quake, aware of that weight again,

the gawky, feral gush of fetish. Every uncocked groom and rigid bride is greased and un-tongued, struck dumb by what’s at
stake. A miracle waits. You men

and women kaboom your hearts with skewered Spam and searing pink Walmart wine, graze idly on ammo and blood-frosted
cake. A prayer is the bait. Amen

woos guests in their ball gowns and bird suits, hallows your blind
obsession with your incendiary intended. Though you’ve
faked America, hate upends

all this odd holy—its frayed altars, fumbled psalms, assault rifles chic in itty veils. And we marvel at this
outbreak, bewaring that gate again,

left unlatched so this bright foolish can flow through. This ilk of stupid blares blue enough to rouse ancestors—y’all ’bout to
make Amiri berate again,

’bout to conjure Fannie Lou and her tree-trunk wrists. While you snot-weep, caress mute carbines, wed your unfathomable
ache, America waits. ’Cause when

the sacrament cools, and the moon is pocked with giggling, who’ll fall naked first, whose shuddering tongue will dare the barrel? Take that dare. Consummate. And then,

whose blood will that be?

Black History Month, Poetry Edition

Cento Between the Ending and the End
~Cameron Awkward-Rich

Sometimes you don’t die

when you’re supposed to

& now I have a choice

repair a world or build

a new one inside my body

a white door opens

into a place queerly brimming

gold light so velvet-gold

it is like the world

hasn’t happened

when I call out

all my friends are there

everyone we love

is still alive gathered

at the lakeside

like constellations

my honeyed kin

honeyed light

beneath the sky

a garden blue stalks

white buds the moon’s

marble glow the fire

distant & flickering

the body whole bright-

winged brimming

with the hours

of the day beautiful

nameless planet. Oh

friends, my friends—

bloom how you must, wild

until we are free.

Black History Month, Poetry Edition

Boat Journey
~Ladan Osman

Sunday afternoon on a city beach.
No sand, slabs of manufactured stone.
I watch two blondes, maybe sisters,
Inflate a raft. They use a bicycle pump.
One tries to assemble two paddles,
Gives up, puts them in her bag.
The one on the pump removes her top.
She has exerted herself into better posture.
Her breasts are larger than I expected.
I want to see if their tiny raft will hold them.
The clouds and current move north.
As they enter the water, Tony Allen warns
Against the boat journey: Running away
From a misery / Find yourself in a double misery.
I recall photos of British tourists in Greece
Frowning at refugees,
Greek children in gym class while hungry.
In the direction the raft floats, the sisters
Paddling with their hands, a planetarium.
I wonder if it houses a telescope capable
Of seeing the double misery on a Greek island.
Maybe its lens is too powerful.
The side of their raft reads EXPLORER.
Their soles are black. If you pay attention
To movies, white women have grimy soles.
I have seen black actresses with exquisite feet.
I recall my mother checking my socks
In the exam room before the doctor entered.
The sisters let their ponytails drag
In dubious lake water.
I’m not sure I hear these lyrics: Even if
They let you enter / They probably won’t let you.
Even if they let you enter / The baron won’t let you,
The baron won’t let you.
I note their appearances,
Takeoff point. Just in case.
I doubt any of our thoughts converge.
What is it like to be so free?
To drift in water in a country you call
Your own. Unprepared because you can laugh
Into an official’s face. Explain, offer no apology.

Black History Month, Poetry Edition

Headwind
~Amber Flora Thomas

Weak motion of grasses and tern before the sea.
Worry’s school cresting here and everywhere
as failings.

I pace the cliff path, my hands cupped above my eyes.
The glare steals your progress, a kayak needling
the wide open.

Love means you answer, this the child’s rebuke.
A pattern crosses the point, hemming
the horizon: steamship.

I didn’t know you were the green pitch
unable to beat the storm to shore.
You didn’t know I was the lookout.

Get accustomed to the sad girl picking you
out of the sea, the knot caught in her throat,
and the unraveling of her speech: an endless rope
thrown out of me.

Black History Month, Poetry Edition

The Crocuses
~Frances Ellen Watkins Harper

They heard the South wind sighing
    A murmur of the rain;
And they knew that Earth was longing
   To see them all again.

While the snow-drops still were sleeping
   Beneath the silent sod;
They felt their new life pulsing
   Within the dark, cold clod.

Not a daffodil nor daisy
   Had dared to raise its head;
Not a fairhaired dandelion
   Peeped timid from its bed;

Though a tremor of the winter
   Did shivering through them run;
Yet they lifted up their foreheads
   To greet the vernal sun.

And the sunbeams gave them welcome,
   As did the morning air—
And scattered o’er their simple robes
   Rich tints of beauty rare.

Soon a host of lovely flowers
   From vales and woodland burst;
But in all that fair procession
   The crocuses were first.

First to weave for Earth a chaplet
   To crown her dear old head;
And to beauty the pathway
   Where winter still did tread.

And their loved and white haired mother
   Smiled sweetly ’neath the touch,
When she knew her faithful children
   Were loving her so much.

Black History Month, Poetry Edition

A Memory
~Saeed Jones

When they finished burying me, what was left of me
sent up a demand like a hand blooming in the fresh dirt:

When I’m back, I want a body like a slash of lightning.
If they heard me, I couldn’t hear their answers.

But silence has never stopped me from praying.
Alive, how many nights did I spend knelt between

the knees of gods and men begging for rain, rent,
and reasons to remain? A body like the sky seeking

justice. A body like light reaching right down into the field
where you thought you could hide from me.

They’ve taken their bald rose stems and black umbrellas
home now. They’ve cooked for one another, sung hymns

as if they didn’t prefer jazz. I’m just a memory now.
But history has never stopped me from praying.

Black History Month, Poetry Edition, Poetry Thursday

Sea Sonnet: Dakar, 2018
~Lyrae Van Clief-Stefanon

I begged for tongues the way that I was taught—:
hanala si ke andana—: whispered close.
Was this the Holy Spirit that I sought?—:
Bashful tongue drawing silence from my throat.
Trinity lesson, clicked behind my teeth,
Welling like memory I stood to receive
There at the altar. Blood that flowed beneath
Scripture an ocean gave me to believe.
Atlantic, how you sing to me my own!
Rhythm of roar and stillness, treasured still,
Hushed in my marrow ] shut up in my bones! [
Less like a fire than crash and salt of will
Preserving as the sunset breathes the sky,
Parsing the wave’s lip pressed into a sigh....

Black History Month, Poetry Edition

See links below for info on Kara Springer

Sculpture With Fragments of Stuart Hall
~Christian Campbell

“I would have gone back,” the voice
full of shells, gravel, liquid washing
stones, back meaning lost island

or calendar, a thing rigged
with bones unbending, unfolding past
the hard symmetry of clocks,

vertebrae of thought moving now
in real time, home a word hollow
as the bone of birds—tody, cling cling,

gaulin, euphonia—“That dream was over.”
Such oneiric geometry, “The Blue Room”
built by Miles, his horn a grail from which

you sup the saudade of marine might-have-been
never-will-be, embouchure unthought,
no better than Vidia for leaving.

So we leave, skein of shadows,
silent psalms for how our scourge
was beauty, home; brightboys fleeing

the estate for another on that other
island, jolted by the freight of shame.
Mas Hall, thanks for the company

on the volte-face voyage, stingy-brim
on which we sailed, migration of monarch butterflies.
Landfall at Port of Avonmouth in a scene

from Hardy, landfall at Tilbury Dock
to step off the caravel in white gloves,
stout ties, leave to remain vagrant.

Lonely Oxonians together,
oak hatch of the Bod we’d shade,
then off to All Souls to cram

for mods, toiling in Codrington
we leaf through Thistlewood.
And so we are marked. Is it Marx

or Douglass with that beard? Bound
to become Judas-Brutus, blood
diamonds paid us in arrears to try

the line of Hopkins, Auden, Eliot, Donne.
Evensong at New Chapel to ease
the medieval weight of failure in the refrain

of white robes, one brown seraph alone:
“O hear us when we cry to Thee
for those in peril on the sea.”

’Gainst the towers most colored I feel,
dear Stuart, in these duds, our hide,
sub fusc aeternum. You grasp browning leaflets

on the stump; O betraying beauty of brown:
bankra, Barbancourt, Venetian ducats, dhalpuri,
khaki, Gauguin. Remember the strange fog a night

on Broad St. as if below Friedrich’s Wanderer?
But, as you taught, who more Wanderer than we,
the evicted on the victor’s turf, playing the past,

loss a force centripetal? All praise
to your mind a sextant, darklit as Diwali.
You bless our kin severance. How I wish

to forget your sister strapped to the sugar mill,
charged with spoiling the color scheme:
sedition. Ah, compay, even leaves of the croton

sprout from our eyes. There is no going back.
Thinking translucence you say, “Bend the stick,”
different than Lenin or United Fruit. The rank of Bombay

mangoes exceeds all migrations. The lignum vitae
insists on itself. Navel string toughens to twine
with the rhizome, portal in the ground.

1932–2014
     —with Kara Springer’s “Repositioned Objects I,” primer on wood.

Black History Month, Poetry Edition

The Dreamer
~Paul Laurence Dunbar

Temples he built and palaces of air,
   And, with the artist’s parent-pride aglow,
   His fancy saw his vague ideals grow
Into creations marvelously fair;
He set his foot upon Fame’s nether stair.
   But ah, his dream,—it had entranced him so
   He could not move. He could no farther go;
But paused in joy that he was even there!

He did not wake until one day there gleamed
   Thro’ his dark consciousness a light that racked
His being till he rose, alert to act.
But lo! What he had dreamed, the while he dreamed,
   Another, wedding action unto thought,
   Into the living, pulsing world had brought.

Black History Month, Poetry Edition

Burn
~Janice N. Harrington

The wind then, through seams of bluestem,
or switchgrass swayed by a coyote’s passing.

Where the fabric gapes, Barthes said,
lies the sensual. A prairie cut

by winding seeps, or winds or shearing wings.
Mare’s tails, mackerels, cirrus,

distance dispersed as light. Under a buzzard’s bank
and spiral the prairie folds and unfolds.

Here between the stands of bluestem, I am interruption.
I rake my fingers over culms and panicles.

Here seeds burr into my sleeves, spur each hem.
In a prairie, I am chance. I am rupture. The wind—

thief, ruffian, quick-fingered sky, snatches a kink
of my hair. The broken nap falls, wound round

like a prairie snake, a coil of barbed wire, a snare
for the unwary. In the fall, volunteer naturalists

will wrench invading roots and scour grassy densities
with fire. Wick, knot, gnarl, my kindled hair

will flare, burn, soften into ash, ash that will settle,
sieve through soil, compost for roots to suck

and worms to cast out, out into the loess that raises
redtop, turkeyfoot, sideoats grama,

and all the darkened progenies of grass
that reach and strive and shape dissent from light.

Black History Month, Poetry Edition

Where Is She ::: Koté Li Yé
~ r. erica doyle

Long ago I met
a beautiful boy

Together we slept
in my mother's womb

Now the street of our fathers
rises to eat him
::
Everything black
is forbidden in Eden

In my arms my brother
sleeps, teeth pearls

I give away the night
so he can have this slumber
::
I give away the man
who made me white

I give away the man
who freed my mother

I pry apart my skull
my scalp unfurls
::
I nestle him gray
inside my brain,

my brother sleeps
and dreams of genes

mauve lips fast against spine
he breathes. The sky
::
bends into my eyes
as they search for his skin

Helicopter blades
invade our peace:::

Where is that Black
Where is it
Where
::
Blades slice, whine
pound the cupolas

I slide him down and out
the small of my vertebrae

He scurries down the bone
and to the ocean
::
navigates home
in a boat carved of gommier

When he reaches our island
everyone is relieved

though they have not
forgotten me, belsé
::
Where is
your sister, eh?
Whey?

Koté belsé yé?
Whey?

Koté li yé
Koté li yé

To the sand
To the stars on the sea

Koté li yé
Koté li yé
To the one-celled egun
To the torpid moon

Koté li yé
Koté li yé
::
There:::

Koté li yé
drapes across a baton;
glows electric in shine of taser;
pumped dry with glass bottle;
::
There:::

Koté li yé
vagina gape into the night;
neck dangle taut with plastic
bags and poorly knotted ropes;
::
There:::

Koté li yé
belsé
Koté?

:::          I burn

my skin shines blacker, lacquer

:::          non-mwen sé                  flambó

ashes tremble in the moonlight

:::          sans humanité

my smoking bones fume the future

:::          pa bwè afwéchi pou lafiyèv dòt moun

Black History Month, Poetry Edition

Violence, I know you
~Khadijah Queen

so well it’s like you’re my real
lover, the reason I can’t stay
attached to anyone, making a heaven
out of beginning again & you
knock at my voice
as if I could speak you back in
as mine & I had time enough to learn
the secret of cruelty
as if that made it lose
its power over me, its antics
failing notice,

but it lives in us all like a question
we can’t answer but keep trying
because it feels good to & the secret
is it can’t last,
& that is when it hurts—
we
who can’t bear to lose &
stitch to any nothing
that acts like a landing place but turns
out to be a fissure, we pretend
voices tell us it’s music
& familiar or alien
we listen, it’s only a dance

Black History Month, Poetry Edition

But My Chains
~Kyle Dargan

But my loyalty
        points—my purchasing
        power. Nothing.

But my economies
        of scale, my digital
        compression :: companionship.

But my all-
        you-can-eat
        loneliness, my rail-
        rapid integration.

But my market-
        driven love
        handles, my accrued
        vacancy.

But my taste
        in artisanal
        bootstrapism.

But my choice
        of protein, of pit-baked
        avarice, of indulgences.
        [CHURCH collects
        as does CAESAR.]

But my supply
        side floods, my O’
        so buoyant home
        staked and sandbagged
        on striving’s pebbly shore.

But my internal
        combustion, my miles,
        my carcinogenic
        Kingdom Come. Nothing.

But my fast casual
        history—every morsel
        wrapped in a bank
        notes’ blood-sketched
        hagiography.

But my user-friendly
        righteousness, my Gross
        Domestic Amnesia.
        [In place of the old wants …
        we finds new wants.]

But my comfort,
        my tariffed aches,
        my engorged
        prerogatives. [I made
        this money,
        you didn’t. Right, Ted?]

But my ability to believe
        that what I’ve paid for,
        I have made. Nothing

        to lose, except ownership
        of this wallet-sized tomb—
        these six crisp walls.

Black History Month, Poetry Edition

Oriflamme
 ~Jessie Redmon Fauset
 
            “I can remember when I was a little, young girl, how my old
               mammy would sit out of doors in the evenings and look up at
               the stars and groan, and I would say, ‘Mammy, what makes
               you groan so?’ And she would say, ‘I am groaning to think of
               my poor children; they do not know where I be and I don’t
               know where they be. I look up at the stars and they look up at
               the stars!’” —Sojourner Truth

I think I see her sitting bowed and black,
   Stricken and seared with slavery’s mortal scars,
Reft of her children, lonely, anguished, yet
   Still looking at the stars.

Symbolic mother, we thy myriad sons,     
   Pounding our stubborn hearts on Freedom’s bars,
Clutching our birthright, fight with faces set,
   Still visioning the stars!

Poetry Thursday, Black History Month Edition

Improvisation on Them
~Linda Susan Jackson

He courts her with Soir de Paris & braids myths in her hair.

To hear time how they need it to be is the sound of dare.

His soft-burred tenor soaks her like grapes in wild yeast.

A beautiful loser, she takes pleasure in being incomplete.

He draws tears from grown men when he plucks his box.

She is reckless, never trained, so much a wound clock.

They move like movement in a still life picture.

She sings behind the beat and leans into the future.

Stepping out of sequence as though they’ve just begun.

Then again, the start moves back, depending on the run.

Black History Month, Poetry Edition

The Prophetess Sojourner Truth Discusses the Two Different Versions of Her Most Well-Known Speech, One Nearly Unknown and One Very Beloved Yet Mostly Untrue
~Honorée Fanonne Jeffers

I believe that white lady
meant well, but she took liberties
with my story.
There was a pint,
and I am a woman,
but I never did bear
thirteen young.
There was an audience,
and I did stand.
At first, hesitant, but then,
speaking God’s clear
consonants in a voice
that all might hear, not
with apostrophes feeding
on the ends of my words.
And I am six feet tall,
and some might say, broader
than any man.
And I was a slave.
And my child was taken
from me, though I fought
to get him back.
And I did work hard.
And I did suffer long.
And I did find the Lord
and He did keep
me in His bony-chested embrace.
And if I showed you my hands,
instead of hiding them in my sleeves
or in a ball of yarn,
you could see my scars,
the surgery of bondage.
And I have traveled to and fro
to speak my Gospel-talk—
surely, I’ve got the ear of Jesus.
But I forgive that lying woman,
because craving is a natural sin.
She needed somebody
like me to speak for her,
and behave the way
she imagined I did,
so she could imagine
herself as a northern mistress.
And there I was,
dark and old,
soon to fold my life
into Death’s greedy hand.
And in this land,
and in this time,
somebody who could never
shout her down.

Black History Month, Poetry Edition

west of philly
~Yolanda Wisher

they asked me to write a poem like a lush life,
a johnny hartman poem. a poem that would make
your fake eyelashes fall off. a poem with the city all
up in it. a poem, matter of fact, like a city, one that
can only be reached by train. yeah, write us a poem
like a train, but not like coltrane. just write a coltrane
poem that contains the essence of the city, the way
the horizon sounds like elvin jones playing cymbals
& trash trucks. i mean, just write a poem that contains
the essence of west philly—a poem you’ve already
written—write that. yeah, write a recycled philly poem
about a philly that doesn’t exist anymore. write the
sequel. write a new romancing the stone, but set it in
philly, starring a black woman poet & a belizean sailor.
write that scene where your angry neighbors shut down
a fast food joint with danny devito or those motley kids
discover the smirking mouth of a creek buried under
43rd. make sure it’s juicy with brotherly love & that other
stuff. drop-in a cheesesteak, but make sure it’s gluten-free
because our audience is particular. y’know, like people who
don’t like poetry. not that you can’t write what you want,
but for now, just write it like you love every damn inch
of the city. even the hawks & vultures & raccoons & the
characters like knives sharpened by the week, or like fruit
bruised & first-frosted. write it like you believe the city has
seasons, that it can change in its deepest cracks, unseen
corners. write like you know these corners, you know
why this building is painted pink, why this one is empty,
why this one is a missing tooth on the block. write it like
you know what it’s like for a tooth to be taken. write it
like you know what it’s like for a home to be lost. or try
writing it like you carry the voices of lost homes to bed
with you. like they are evidence & you are a detective.
like they are memories & you are family. write it like you
can see beyond seeing. like you know the origin of
shoulders sharp as javelins, can decode 3-pointed stars
hunched under streetlights. like you are related to the men
selling socks & incense, oils & belts. like you can read the
compass on their faces. like you can recreate the arpeggios
of the one-eyed singer or the $200 upright with beer-colored
keys at the thrift store. just write a poem like a secondhand
store full of dishes & leather jackets. vibrating with the leftovers
of people. bleeding in solidarity with a woman in a ripped red
sweater like an ear, wailing in the street one summer night.
a poem full of peach seeds & lightning bugs. a poem that can
change the color of the sky.

Black History Month, Poetry Edition

Taking Out the Trash
~Kamilah Aisha Moon

Someone else used to do this before.
Someone responsible,
someone who loved me enough
to protect me from my own filth
piling up.

But I’m over 40 now & live alone,
& if I don’t remember it's Thursday
& rise with the cardinals & bluejays
calling up the sun, I’m stuck
with what’s left rotting
for another week.

I swing my legs like anchors over the side
of the bed & use the wall for leverage
to stand, shuffle to the bathroom.
In summer, I slide into a pair of shorts & flip flops,
wandering room to room to collect
what no longer serves me.

I shimmy the large kitchen bag from
the steel canister, careful not to spill
what’s inside or rip it somehow
& gross myself out.
Sometimes I double bag for insurance,
tying loose ends together,
cinching it tightly for the journey.

Still combing through webs of dreams,
of spiders’ handiwork glistening above
the wheeled container on the back patio,
I drag my refuse down the driveway
past the chrysanthemums & azaleas,
the huge Magnolia tree shading the living room
from Georgia’s heat, flattening hordes
of unsuspecting ants in my path to park it
next to the mailbox for merciful elves
to take off my hands.

It is not lost on me that one day
someone responsible,
someone who loves me enough
will dispose of this worn, wrinkled
container after my spirit soars on.

I don’t wait to say thank you
to those doing this grueling, necessary work.
But I do stand in the young, faintly lit air
for a long moment to inhale deeply,
& like clockwork when he strides by,
watch the jogger’s strong, wet back
fade over the slight rise of the road.

Black History Month, Poetry Edition

#Mood
~Bree Jo'ann

I like literature that makes me think:
         Banana Republic, Victoria’s Secret, Forever 21,
A constant reference to the things that I’m supposed to want, but ironically, but effectively, like a commercial that employs racial stereotypes but still makes me want to go to that restaurant to scoop the vestiges of salad on my plate with a piece of bread.  Before I moved, I was obsessed with the mall. I wanted to spray myself with scents and wear overpriced loungewear as a nihilistic act.

I like Instagram posts that make me think:
         Crystals, juice, my psychic,
These collective practices of the personal. I can feel my heart is a gravitational force, and my head bonded only by mystical means. One end attracts, the other repulses.  Some of my friends live in the neighborhood, some live in the woods. We talk about how to combat gentrification and what to do if you see a ghost.

I like Twitter posts that make me think:
         Meaningless, prescription drugs, inadequacy.
I felt resistant to aimless positivity for a long time. I wanted to be a soulless yoga bitch with blacked out eyes doing drugs on a pontoon, a perfect body filled with destruction. I wanted to create a cult to my body, but most jobs think its cute to show gratitude with carbs and Seroquel gives me the munchies.

I like life experiences that make me think:
         Fish tank, trees, justice, we made it, aliens, secret society, perfect feed, torrent download, hair and makeup, freak paradise, small objects on a window sill, sweet flea market find, alternative section, slow motion suburban intro with darkwave soundtrack, oasis in the ghetto with organic snacks, etc.

Black History Month, Poetry Edition

The World That the Shooter Left Us
~Cyrus Cassells
                                                   (Stand Your Ground)

In this one, ladies and gentlemen,
Beware, be clear: the brown man,

The able lawyer, the paterfamilias,
Never makes it out of the poem alive:

The rash, all-too-daily report,
The out of the blue bullet

Blithely shatters our treasured
Legal eagle’s bones and flesh—

In the brusque spectacle of point-blank force,
On a crimsoned street,

Where a revered immigrant plummets
Over a contested parking spot,

And the far-seeing sages insist,
Amid strident maenads

Of at-the-ready patrol car sirens,
Clockwork salvos,

The charismatic Latino lawyer’s soul
Is banished, elsewhere, without a shred

Of eloquence in the matter—
And the brute, churning

Surfaces of the world,
They bear our beloved citizen away—

Which means, austere saints
And all-seeing masters,

If I grasp your bracing challenge:
At our lives’ most brackish hour,

Our highest mission isn’t just to bawl,
But to turn the soul-shaking planet

Of the desecrated parking lot
(The anti-miracle),

The blunt, irascible white man’s
Unnecessary weapon,

And the ruse of self-defense
Into justice-cries and ballots?

Into newfound pledges and particles of light?

in memory of J. Garza, 1949-2017

Black History Month, Poetry Edition

An Hymn to the Evening
~Phillis Wheatley

Soon as the sun forsook the eastern main
The pealing thunder shook the heav’nly plain;
Majestic grandeur! From the zephyr’s wing,
Exhales the incense of the blooming spring,
Soft purl the streams, the birds renew their notes,
And through the air their mingled music floats.
   Through all the heav’ns what beauteous dies are spread!
But the west glories in the deepest red:
So may our breasts with every virtue glow,
The living temples of our God below!
   Fill’d with the praise of him who gives the light,
And draws the sable curtains of the night,
Let placid slumbers soothe each weary mind,
At morn to wake more heav’nly, more refin’d;
So shall the labors of the day begin
More pure, more guarded from the snares of sin.
   Night’s leaden sceptre seals my drowsy eyes,
Then cease, my song, till fair Aurora rise.

Black History Month, Poetry Edition

At Harlem Hospital across the street from the Schomburg the only thing to eat is a Big Mac
~Samiya Bashir

after Z. S.

Still, somehow we are
carousel. We spin bodies
to the wall and back.

We are woman and
man and man. We
are surgeon and

operation. We are
everybody we love.
We are inside them.

We are inside and we
are laughing. We are
man and we will die too.

We know that much.
We are our own
shadow. We are want

of touch. We are woman
and man and man don’t look.
We are curvature—look!

We are train.
We are star.
We are big

tiny spiders. We are
crawling. We are biting.
We are hungry. We are

a stopped carousel. We are
bodies dropped to the floor.
We are shaking. We are our own.

Still, somehow, we are
laughter. We are the doorway out.
We are (again) the doorway in.

Poetry Thursday

No Ruined Stone
~Shara McCallum

When the dead return
they will come to you in dream
and in waking, will be the bird
knocking, knocking against glass, seeking
a way in, will masquerade
as the wind, its voice made audible
by the tongues of leaves, greedily
lapping, as the waves’ self-made fugue
is a turning and returning, the dead
will not then nor ever again
desert you, their unrest
will be the coat cloaking you,
the farther you journey
from them the more
that distance will maw in you,
time and place gulching
when the dead return to demand
accounting, wanting
and wanting and wanting
everything you have to give and nothing
will quench or unhunger them
as they take all you make as offering.
Then tell you to begin again.

Black History Month, Poetry Edition

The Glory of the Day Was in Her Face
~James Weldon Johnson

The glory of the day was in her face,
The beauty of the night was in her eyes.
And over all her loveliness, the grace
Of Morning blushing in the early skies.

And in her voice, the calling of the dove;
Like music of a sweet, melodious part.
And in her smile, the breaking light of love;
And all the gentle virtues in her heart.

And now the glorious day, the beauteous night,
The birds that signal to their mates at dawn,
To my dull ears, to my tear-blinded sight
Are one with all the dead, since she is gone.

Black History Month, Poetry Edition

Watershed
~Tracy K. Smith

200 cows         more than 600 hilly acres

            property would have been even larger
had  J not sold 66 acres to DuPont for
        waste from its Washington Works factory
where J was employed     
                                            did not want to sell
            but needed money   poor health       
mysterious ailments

Not long after the sale cattle began to act
deranged   
                      footage shot on a camcorder
grainy          intercut with static       
Images jump repeat      sound accelerates     
      slows down       
                    quality of a horror movie

the rippling shallow water       the white ash
      trees shedding their leaves
                                               a large pipe
discharging green water   
                                            a skinny red cow
hair missing      back humped
                                             
a dead black calf in snow         its eye
      a brilliant chemical blue 

                                            a calf’s bisected head     
      liver     heart    stomachs    kidneys         
              gall bladder      some dark      some green     
 
cows with stringy tails         malformed hooves         
      lesions      red receded eyes        suffering   slobbering     
                  staggering like drunks

It don’t look like
                             anything I’ve been into before
                                 

I began rising through the ceiling of each floor in the hospital as though I were being pulled by some force outside my own volition. I continued rising until I passed through the roof itself and found myself in the sky. I began to move much more quickly past the mountain range near the hospital and over the city. I was swept away by some unknown force, and started to move at an enormous speed. Just moving like a thunderbolt through a darkness.


R’s taking on the case I found to be inconceivable

It just felt like the right thing to do   
                                                                a great
opportunity to use my background for people who
                                 really needed it
   
                                 R: filed a federal suit
                                          pulled permits
                                              land deeds 
                                                      a letter that mentioned
a substance at the landfill   
                                               PFOA       
                           perfluorooctanoic acid

a soap-like agent used in
                                               Scotchgard TM
                                                                          Teflon TM

PFOA:                 was to be incinerated or
                              sent to chemical waste facilities   
                                    not to be flushed into water or sewers

DuPont:
                 pumped hundreds of thousands of pounds
                          into the Ohio River 
                 dumped tons of PFOA sludge
                          into open unlined pits

PFOA:
             increased the size of the liver in rats and rabbits       
                              (results replicated in dogs)
             caused birth defects in rats   
             caused cancerous testicular pancreatic and
                          liver tumors in lab animals   
             possible DNA damage from exposure
             bound to plasma proteins in blood   
             was found circulating through each organ     
             high concentrations in the blood of factory workers 
             children of pregnant employees had eye defects       
             dust vented from factory chimneys settled well-beyond
                          the property line
             entered the water table
             concentration in drinking water 3x international safety limit
             study of workers linked exposure with prostate cancer
             worth $1 billion in annual profit

(It don’t look like anything I’ve been into before)   


Every individual thing glowed with life. Bands of energy were being dispersed from a huge universal heartbeat, faster than a raging river. I found I could move as fast as I could think.


DuPont:
               did not make this information public
               declined to disclose this finding     
               considered switching to new compound that appeared less toxic
                        and stayed in the body for a much shorter duration of time
               decided against it
               decided it needed to find a landfill for toxic sludge
               bought 66 acres from a low-level employee
                        at the Washington Works facility

(J needed money       
                                         had been in poor health   
a dead black calf           
                                         its eye chemical blue       
cows slobbering             
                                         staggering like drunks)


I could perceive the Earth, outer space, and humanity from a spacious and indescribable ‘God’s eye view.’ I saw a planet to my left covered with vegetation of many colors no signs of mankind or any familiar shorelines. The waters were living waters, the grass was living, the trees and the animals were more alive than on earth.

                                 
D’s first husband had been a chemist
                                                                     When you
worked at DuPont in this town you could have
everything you wanted
                                          DuPont paid for his education       
secured him a mortgage           paid a generous salary
even gave him a free supply of PFOA


He explained that the planet we call Earth really has a proper name, has its own energy, is a true living being, was very strong but has been weakened considerably.


                                                                   which she used
as soap in the family’s dishwasher     


I could feel Earth’s desperate situation. Her aura appeared to be very strange, made me wonder if it was radioactivity. It was bleak, faded in color, and its sound was heart wrenching.


                                                                Sometimes
her husband came home sick—fever, nausea, diarrhea,
vomiting—‘Teflon flu’

             an emergency hysterectomy
                                                                  a second surgery       


I could tell the Doctor everything he did upon my arrival down to the minute details of accompanying the nurse to the basement of the hospital to get the plasma for me; everything he did while also being instructed and shown around in Heaven.


Clients called R to say they had received diagnoses of cancer
         or that a family member had died

                  W who had cancer had died of a heart attack

            Two years later W’s wife died of cancer

They knew this stuff was harmful
            and they put it in the water anyway

 I suspect that Earth may be a place of education.

PFOA detected in:
                                American blood banks 
                                blood or vital organs of:
                                                                            Atlantic salmon                                                                                                     swordfish     
                                                                            striped mullet
                                                                            gray seals
                                                                            common cormorants
                                                                            Alaskan polar bears
                                                                            brown pelicans
                                                                            sea turtles
                                                                            sea eagles
                                                                            California sea lions   
                                                                            Laysan albatrosses on a wildlife refuge
                                                                                          in the middle of the North Pacific       Ocean       
 
Viewing the myriad human faces with an indescribable, intimate, and profound love. This love was all around me, it was everywhere, but at the same time it was also me.


                                        We see a situation

        that has gone

                                  from Washington Works

All that was important in life was the love we felt.

Black History Month, Poetry Edition

Dr. Booker T. Washington to the National Negro Business League
~Joseph Seamon Cotter Sr.

’Tis strange indeed to hear us plead
   For selling and for buying
When yesterday we said: “Away
   With all good things but dying.”

The world’s ago, and we’re agog
   To have our first brief inning;
So let’s away through surge and fog
   However slight the winning.

What deeds have sprung from plow and pick!
   What bank-rolls from tomatoes!
No dainty crop of rhetoric
   Can match one of potatoes.

Ye orators of point and pith,
   Who force the world to heed you,
What skeletons you’ll journey with
   Ere it is forced to feed you.

A little gold won’t mar our grace,
   A little ease our glory.
This world’s a better biding place
   When money clinks its story.

Black History Month, Poetry Edition

On Contemplating the Breasts of Pauline Lumumba
~Brenda Marie Osbey

Pauline Opango Onosamba Lumumba 1937–2014

When it is finally ours...this beautiful
and terrible thing....
—“Frederick Douglass” by Robert Hayden

1.
we like to imagine that liberation comes in the natural order of things
carried on such fabled winds of change that
even in the heat of assassination
slaughter and awesome dying for right of millions, or
else some solitary
beautifully ordinary brother
cannot be missed or misconstrued

but there are so many added costs and taxes
as to trip us up quite easily
in all the clamor and bravura of this liberation business.
and then, of course,
the grief-stricken bared breasts of pauline lumumba—

no half-century long enough to bury
the blank and heavy forward-propelled pace
widow flanked on two sides by men
daring
aching to protect her and she
already worlds beyond—

who among us looks on those breasts
and is not bowed?

2.
beloved companion the letter begins
beloved companion

we are not alone
and history will one day have its say

how does one look into the frank, unstoried eyes of one’s child and say we are not alone?

how does one address the letter that reads
whether i am free or in prison alive or already in death’s maw?
to what khakied and accursed postal worker falls the task of bearing
so hard and heavy final and unbearably dear a letter?

in what corner of
one’s dank and filthy cell is it written?
where do the flower petals of one’s springtime dress fall away to on
     receiving it?
and what is the weight of those hands, slim-fingered and otherwise
     empty
full now of driest air
coming slowly slowly
from neighboring forest and savanna?
when does the gnawing of marrow begin to tell
the ages-old story
of the death even of hope
when after everything
after all
we are not alone?

3.
month of the wolf
month of solemnities and annunciations
as good a beginning as any
january then surely was seasonable enough for death by torture by
     beating by
shooting by three adept and clearly necessary firing squads for
     three men already half-dead
fully bloodied from head to heels
orifices swollen to proud flesh ripe-red for the plucking
one at a time in a row from that tree
buried unburied dismembered doused with acid how
how many ways to kill
men whose ideals
clearly were that much more costly than
uranium?
uranium.
yes.

january
seasonable for mourning-time—
assassinating martyr-making widowmaking time of year

4.
they liked in those brief months
they liked to report on your loveliness, didn’t they?
european press couldn’t get enough of you—
your slight waist and native grace
the pretty way you held the pretty child
how you held to the arm of the young hero-husband
so clearly perfectly patently marked both for victory and for early death
eyes wide with all the world could then imagine of vicious and reverberating grief
pretty young wife and mother become symbol become widow
to generation and to continents history and biographers—
nothing said of the shambled life from center to border
flight into egypt beyond and back again
death-startled children in tow.

what will they write in a single decade’s time of how
you yourself chose the warm tenth-month of
sacrifices and of minor feasts, lesser saints
fewer and requisite number of martyred virgins
told no one of your journey—
december and death in your own bed—
asleep
asleep alone as ever you were
leaving now fully alone continents grieving
worlds humbled
contemplating now and forever, again
bared grief-flattened breasts
as earth
as at the inevitable and deliberate coming
of end times
of hope.

Black History Month, Poetry Edition

Child’s Pose
~Brionne Janae

imagine your heart is just a ball you learned to dribbled up
and down the length of your driveway back home. slow down

control it. plant your feet in the soft blue of your mat and release
it is hard but slowly you are unlearning the shallow pant

of your childhood. extend your body—do not reach
for someone but something fixed and fleshless and certain—

fold flatten then lift your head like a cobra sure of the sun
waiting and ready to caress the chill

from its scales. inhale—try not to remember how desperate
you’ve been for touch—yes ignore it—that hitch of your heart

you got from mornings you woke to find momma hysterical
or gone. try to give up the certainty she’d never return

recall only the return and not its coldness. imagine her arms
wide to receive you imagine you are not a thing that needs

escaping. it is hard and though at times you are sure
you will always be the abandoned girl trying to abandon herself

push up arch deep into your back exhale and remember—
when it is too late to pray the end of the flood

we pray instead to survive it.

Black History Month, Poetry Edition

Dark and Lovely after Take-Off (A Future)
~Yona Harvey

Nobody straightens their hair anymore.
Space trips & limited air supplies will get you conscious quick.

My shea-buttered braids glow planetary
as I turn unconcerned, unburned by the pre-take-off bother.

“Leave it all behind,” my mother’d told me,
sweeping the last specs of copper thread from her front porch steps &

just as quick, she turned her back to me. Why
had she disappeared so suddenly behind that earthly door?

“Our people have made progress, but, perhaps,”
she’d said once, “not enough to guarantee safe voyage

to the Great Beyond,” beyond where Jesus
walked, rose, & ascended in the biblical tales that survived

above sprocket-punctured skylines &
desert-dusted runways jeweled with wrenches & sheet metal scraps.

She’d no doubt exhale with relief to know
ancient practice & belief died hard among the privileged, too.

Hundreds of missions passed & failed, but here
I was strapped in my seat, anticipating—what exactly?

Curved in prayer or remembrance of a hurt
so deep I couldn’t speak. Had that been me slammed to the ground,             cuffed,

bulleted with pain as I danced with pain
I couldn’t shake loose, even as the cops aimed pistols at me,

my body & mind both disconnected
& connected & unable to freeze, though they shouted “freeze!”

like actors did on bad television.
They’d watched & thought they recognized me, generic or bland,

without my mother weeping like Mary,
Ruby, Idella, Geneava, or Ester stunned with a grief

our own countrymen refused to see, to
acknowledge or cease initiating, instigating, &

even mocking in the social networks,
ignorant frays bent and twisted like our DNA denied

but thriving and evident nonetheless—
You better believe the last things I saw when far off lifted

were Africa Africa Africa
Africa Africa Africa Africa Africa...

& though it pained me to say it sooner:
the unmistakable absence of the Great Barrier Reef.