Poetry
Welcome Home
By Lisa Braxton On car rides down I-95 When my feet barely crested the edge of the back seat I asked you why we didn’t live Down South Instead of Up North We wouldn’t be in the car eight hours getting there To see our kin. The ones who talked real slow And said “y’all” and “fixin’” and “flustrated” And “tarred” when they wanted to get some sleep. The ones who sat in house dresses on the front porch Rocking on metal-framed floral-cushioned lawn couches As they held onto fly swatters they’d forgotten to leave in the kitchen. Turning their heads until they almost broke At the sight of an ambulance going by. Then talking about it all evening Until the lightning bugs came out. You held loose onto the steering wheel Looked at me through the rear-view mirror Your eyes twinkling and simply told me “Your mother and I wanted a better life.” When my feet almost touched the footwell you told me what a better life was-- A place where a white playmate wasn’t your best buddy after school Then got on his school bus the next morning, threw rocks at you and called you a N______ As you waited for your bus to your own school The one with worn books and grades merged in one classroom. A place where you didn’t have to go to the back door of the restaurant to order a meal. Where you didn’t have to step off the sidewalk for “Miss Ann” and “Miss Kate” coming in your direction And keep your eyes lowered as they passed you. A place I could not fathom. Years after my feet reached the brake and gas pedals easily I took my own car ride Not venturing Down South But staying Up North In my own neighborhood Got chased by a driver I accidentally cut off. Got called a N_______, Practically got run off the road. Beauty Shop Rock
by Tsebiyah Mishael Derry on the west side highway at midnight on a thursday suddenly I smelt a familiar smell of silky smooth chemical dominance and teleported. the fuming thick white cream sweet on vision and vicious in its practice swift with its fine-toothed partner commanding the kinks to straighten out and stand down. In the shop the comforting clatter of robust rolling R's and thick Ts and fat As slide out from the mouths above me. laughter fills the air and blow dryers scream their sleepy howls beneath me the seat sticks to my thighs and hair wisps its strands in front of my eyes. I hold my head against the pull of an intimidating spherical brush. outside the world whizzes by and the street stays the same as it changes the evening drops a lady mops I look in the mirror and stare at my unlucky shiny straightened hair. years later, on the west side highway at midnight on thursday I was grateful for the strength I had to cut it all off. |
PANDEMIC HAIKU
By Martha Darr Dear elder dark ones space is at a premium no vaccine for you The Fabric of Our Cosmos
By M.A. Dennis I’m not trying to be fly no more. All that stuff doesn’t matter…. Chanel, Fendi and Gucci don’t mean crap right about now. – Trina Marshall Facebook post, 4/8/2020, 4:48 pm, Pandemic Standard Time The devil is a Fabricator! What a lie making you believe you had to try to be fly. Black woman you be fly you stay fly there is no try I put that on Baby Yoda. Black woman she makes the clothes; the clothes don’t make her. Oh, no! Black woman, Chanel serves at your pleasure. You make Fendi trendy. Gucci ain’t nuthin but a double G thang playing backwards-- that sound like satan to me. Monogram designers say: The devil is in the liar, liar a Black woman’s pants only need pockets (not names) to be on fiyah. Myrtilla "Betsy" Ross Puts God before Country by Ron Dwell
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The Pass
By Langston Epps
My great-great grandfather does not have a wikipedia page
But the man who owned him does.
I am a child of greenery and blackness.
Asphalt and lawns, skin and the sea.
This is the warm salt of my polluted blood, that dominates the surf
And runs in the gutters like filth after a storm.
The streets are an ocean.
I was drowning, but I kept my head down until I learned to breathe water.
Gulls in the sun, blindingly white.
They harried me, but I buried myself in the sand and concrete.
Now when they look for me above the surface all they find is their reflection in the waves.
And when they think they’ve spotted me,
I vanish into a shimmer of heat off the blacktop.
By Langston Epps
My great-great grandfather does not have a wikipedia page
But the man who owned him does.
I am a child of greenery and blackness.
Asphalt and lawns, skin and the sea.
This is the warm salt of my polluted blood, that dominates the surf
And runs in the gutters like filth after a storm.
The streets are an ocean.
I was drowning, but I kept my head down until I learned to breathe water.
Gulls in the sun, blindingly white.
They harried me, but I buried myself in the sand and concrete.
Now when they look for me above the surface all they find is their reflection in the waves.
And when they think they’ve spotted me,
I vanish into a shimmer of heat off the blacktop.
Santísimo Sacramento
By Ozzýka Farah I wish I could go back to Sacramento wintertime life was easier then. waking up an hour early grabbing the comb to pick through knots & kinks made flat by not enough sleep putting unwrinkled clothes in the dryer warming them; what I most looked forward to. Mother dearest is ready for work in her Monday best; loose, colourful scrubs with birds printed on them my grandmother is alive frying dead livestock with southern grace. We talk briefly but never long enough, I forget to thank her for everything anyone could ever be thankful for. I have come to associate bacon grease sizzling in the skillet to our unconscious sacred morning rituals. Sleepwalk scramblings in the dark, the light being too painful for strained eyes & dilated pupils, hellogoodbyes, lopsided afros, & loose-fitting garments. Clothing was baggy then; we carry baggage now – it is even heavier. To someone who has never lived anywhere else, California can be so damned cold in the morning the golden rays break dawn down in layers filtering out bruised purples & beat up blues the sun is just a striptease, it only makes getting out of bed harder. I used to walk the morning skye or hop the fence when the neighbour was not looking. Walking to school to unlearn trying to find traction through the fields of frost-bitten grass on the way to school the sand track of the adjacent middle school tracks sand in- between the nooks & crannies of my outsoles on this particular morning, it is still dark & eerie; my nose spills, I use my sleeve to wipe, I tuck my red ear inside my beanie. Kids meet early at the top of the park, huddle in a circle for a blunt before first period – they will be back before lunch Tyree (the other one) would steal vodka from his father's cupboard & take homemade jerky from the trays of the dehydrator I ate meat then, so we would eat & drink like Vikings during class unbeknownst to the teacher who spoke of Steinbeck, spoke of Fitzgerald, spoke of Salinger. In early spring comes the blossoming of the callery pear that produces the scent of spermatozoa it is supposed to symbolise fertility & new life, apparently. Ironically, Sacramento is where dreams go to die where they are never born in the first place. Sevon tells me poets turn life into art - he admires that; I admire him because he has been through hell in his head poets put their hell on a page, critics define it as fine art – canonise it I put his hell aside, I cannot let myself think of it. It is not that I miss this place at all I miss who I once was at that time, in that place in a space where no amount of cow's milk will make you grow big & strong Sacramento suffocates when you become too big for the fishbowl or too tall for the ceiling I died in this town. My ghost is still there, miserable & cold though it is not cold unless you are from Sacramento. When First I Heard My Mother Scream
By Jamal Michel “They used to take pregnant women and dig a hole in the ground and jut their stomachs in it and whip them. They tried to do my grandma that way.” -Arkansan Marie Hervey, who lived on the Hess plantation in Tennessee. If Autumn a howling, sucking wind then it was around that time There, a scent calling the flies to Southern fruit Fertile soil, caked to my mother’s belly, a divot made in my image Hands from the field, the stuff of crust at the bottom of their pots Blood curdling from my mother’s gullet, stuck to my basal skin, my blood She named me Death, called out to me by name, I know it How the earth rocked, how it cradled and soothed My father sediment, held me close and covered my ears My mother sank her teeth into him, swallowed root and root and blood The sun, a crescent a boiling and cells make my eyes hurt Turn my eyes slits, make holes this divot, wholly her own 5th Avenue Kings Fruit & Vegetables, Brooklyn
By Jamal Michel Is where I was conceived as an idea, maybe at first by the ripened tomatoes or in the spaces left between newly stocked yogurt cups-- one such cup picked up by a young stud from Port-au-Prince who thought to take it to the Indian girl at check out, until he checked out and never asked for her number the first time but thought better the next, only thing was he needed at least four more cups of yogurt to make it a full conversation. Did they pick my name at the register? Or did my being float about their innocuous phone calls? Or perhaps in the unkempt lawn of their first home in Sylmar, CA? Or it certainly must have happened upon them all at once, at Olive View hospital, a brown boy swaddled in a blanket caught in their branches. |
College Football
By Raihana Haynes-Venerable “I was drugged at the football house” the white girl whispered in my communal living space, smell of weed emanating from the hotboxed bathroom on the side of the kitchen there are no tears but pain seeps through her pours in beads of sweat that leak into the couch cushions -- previously stained by unanswered questions, hormones, blackouts. I remember how he pushed my head down, palmed my skull like a football the taste of his cum and my stomach acid held between my cheeks, in the bathroom there are no tears “I was drugged at the football house” she says again and I wonder if this couch trapped similar secrets. She was the first to approach me — over ten more came forward later, we had a meeting in a classroom where I sit on the floor as women replay their own personal horror stories for a room full of people too ashamed to look in eachothers eyes, midway through two football players walk in say, “we want to help” say, “we think its wrong” say, “what can we do” — I am hesitant to speak because I am only anger. The players are Black, I know them well enough they are freshmen not much power — yet change is slow, a professor in the room explains “this has persisted for twenty five years” the men want us to find solutions to problems they are more equipped to solve the women are still mourning what has been stripped from them, from the women sitting next to them, from the women outside the room. I speak with one of the players alone in the classroom after everyone else has left, a strong voice indeed, kind mild mannered Southern Christian man, I am only a few years his senior but there is no authority here “druggin’ girls? that’s some white boy shit” he says with a stern seriousness, he is confident in his conviction that somehow Black men are immune to misogyny. When do we stop looking at the few rotten apples and begin to examine the roots of the whole God damn orchard? A week later the football team and Project S.A.F.E chalk the quad with platitudes, a phallic hopscotch sketch, “solidarity” - “trust” - “survivors” scattered on concrete so visible, so vocal, a ploy to be witnessed when I see him, I can feel my stomach churn, seeking an escape, liquid comes up my esophagus and I taste him in my mouth again. He smiles, his braids shake as he skips around the quad, he slaps a teammate on the ass, grabs a piece of chalk and writes “we are here for you.” cradle. By Nailah Mathews my grandmother lived in a lagoon of silt between the nine middle west winds, somewhere around zephyr four-point-five-nine. this was a woman who ate stone plums for pleasure who made mosaics from bones and vomit, who had enough hands to shove all her husbands down the stairs at once. my mother was born east of magic, spoke only in verbs until she became a woman and when that moon came, the sky opened up. she received one nut for each wish the world made she baked pies with them, made the houseblockneighborhood smell like hope for the future. i was born south of no-man’s land, no more than handful and a half of miles from isiscyra my mother touched a screw on the railroad tracks forty-five days before she got fat in the belly and it still did not protect her from me. her granddaughter is a keloid scar on my retina. she walks in phalanx formation. she has electric cheekbones, she is vulpine at the dinner table. she is the miracle of girlhood savagery. Seeing Oscar Grant at the Movie Theater
By Jamal Michel Your son, like mine, was unarmed at the time he was killed by a law enforcement officer. No words can ever assuage the pain we feel as parents when our precious children are taken away from us in such a violent, senseless manner. -Wanda Johnson, Grant’s mother His daughter was old enough to walk by his side and not atop his shoulders, but he wrapped his arm around her like he did her mother It was their date night She pointed to the poster next to them, the one with jazz trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie and he proceeded to fashion his own trombone from thin air, her face reddened, and he ever the star ever the show did a number, while no one watched She raised her phone to capture him still and he smiled wide, like in all his photos, his laugh lines worn down further with each grin And he paid for the soda And she paid for a candy bar His phone rang before they made it to their theater and I heard, just as he passed me, him in a low and assured voice whisper to the receiving end of the single most important call in the world, say yes, love I’ll tell you all about it at home |
"Watts UpRise" By Ron Dwell
How Jim interprets Basketball in a HOA lead community
By Durell Thompson Basketball Goals: can be in a Lot (20') from the curb. Backboard must be perpendicular And mounted on black metal. Portable basketball goals In the street right-of-way must be painted or portable. To be placed on any Lot, A Basketball Goal Must be in Compliance with these restrictions. Provision or any remedy costs and expenses will be collected by the association By any means. Omission to comply violates the owner as a nuisance. In such cases, the association will amended owners who fail injunction With a declaration of collection chargeable by foreclosure or liens. A remedy for basketball goal violation is including sums maintainable by Applicable lawful, rates plus time and interest payable to The Association. SHE DIED BEFORE OBAMA
-for my sister By Cynthia Robinson Young Remember how she worked? Left school when she was sixteen at the factory she was always on time General Electric wouldn’t have it any other way punch in punch out punch in again Foreman always watching She hardly spoke back or asked for a little respect when foreign hands roamed when icy blue eyes rested on her a little too long She never took days off not even when we were sick but called us during her lunch hour and during her smoking break to remind us to keep up the salt water rinse and promised to make Campbell’s Chicken Noodle when she got home at four When she went on strike and joined her friends in line, in hopes of something better for her for us for everyone in the house depending on her She did it with money that insurance plan she invested in since we were little girls hiding in the curtains from the only white man we knew in a suit who, once a month came to collect those dollars she pocketed away for her two daughters Half orphaned at nine and fourteen She made us go to college She made us co-sign at the bank told us to prepare to pay it forward then found a car to drive us to the Ivy Towers white landscaped more than black white landscaped more than brown white landscaped more than Newark and advised us to return made us promise to be somebody kept saying Yes You Can She died investing money a few dollars here and there pensions and retirement riches written on paper and tucked in the leather brown purse that could burn up in an instant if we didn’t grab it in a fire She was always saving dollars tucked inside bras dollars hidden away from the men because we never know how men can be She died waiting for retirement She died waiting for a chance to rest from working two and three jobs She died before she held her ninth grandchild, read to her tenth and spoiled her eleventh She died before she saw the ones who looked the most like her She died after she had buried Her husband Her sister Her own mother She died before she taught us how to take her place Before she taught us how to stop weeping how long will it take to stop searching for her in every brown mama face? She died before she taught us How to bury the dead when to bury the dead meant to bury our mother. |
Cracker--
By Durell Thompson My son has earthquakes in his Heels. When he moves about the apartment, he stomps so hard that the Neighbor downstairs takes cover. My Son with earthquakes in his Toes, is 20 pounds--he Is, according to the pediatrician “Short and underweight”. My son with earthquakes in His feet love to eat crackers-- when he tells us that he wants a cracker. The word Cracker… creams and splits from His mouth like warning sirens. Immediately after the floor shakes: he runs to the cabinet And Bangs on the door Until we comply: I want to rename his plate tectonics jr-- his mom disapproves. My son has earthquakes In his soles-- The earthquake Makes him a prime Target for scrutiny-- For example, the neighbor downstairs would Beat on the floor anytime My son ran to the cabinet. I told him, before he hung up in my face, you can’t stop An earthquake So enjoy the ride-- MAKING A TEE SHIRT QUILT FOR MY BLACK SONS
By Cynthia Robinson Young 1. In step one you collect them one by one. Beware; they tend to pile up rapidly. You soon find out that one gives birth to many, a ruler measuring your child’s growth. Your memories are sweetly stored within them like faded photographs with rips and frays. Then one day you realize there are too many, the closets and the drawers have overflowed. The shirts, like years, have piled up way too quickly. Your children have outgrown the ones they loved Amassed like years your sons have quickly passed, unaware that you’ve always been present, not noticing the cotton of your touch. 2. In order to not let your sons go too soon, you must progress onto the second step: You gather shirts, and now with scissors sharp, then cutting off the excess, leave its heart. You must be careful not to cut too close, And when the squares are cut, square upon square, You lay them out to see what goes with what. You want to have a faultless fit together, though faded, shrunken, stained, some very used. None of the shirts can be considered perfect but they are paired now, like your sons will be. So sew the imperfections all together. Don’t mourn cut shirts and broken promises But know the “good ole days” are every day. New tee shirts will replace the ones you’ve cut. 3. The next step is the most important one. A backing must be chosen to enfold your sons with dreams of perfect parenthood, a maternal nest of softness you create, a womb where tags and stiff clothes don’t exist. 4. Now, sandwich cotton batting in-between, a buffer against the coarseness of this life, then sew with equal stitches time together, your fingers pock- marked from quilt needles pushing through layers of years of thick-headedness, and finish with a binding that you bless. 5. At last the time has come! Release the quilt. Release the days and hours that you’ve spent and pray the seams can hold their lives together And keep them from the harm the streets might bring, the dangers from their Blackness, hovering. |