WRITING REDEMPTION: RESISTANCE! RESILIENCE! RESONANCE!
SOUND THE ABENG: WRITING BLACK, ABORIGINAL & INDIGENOUS LIVES
Sound the Abeng is a space of literary innovation that pays homage to the spiritual traditions, celebrations, customs and ceremonies that are central to the lives of peoples across the African Diaspora. We welcome you and invite you to read, reflect and share the contents of this digital journal. I am grateful to the writers who continue to pen words and rhythms of revolution; who inspire, uplift and offer us solace all at the same time. Their words elevate our spiritual consciousness and remind us who we are and why we must stay strong in the broken places. Even as they write literature that examines the lethal disparities produced by racism, sexism and poverty, they also write to acknowledge the power of words to uplift and sustain us within the broken places, confirming as Hemingway has written, while we are broken by life’s experiences, some stay strong in the broken places. The resilience and resistance that characterize the life of Black, Aboriginal and Indigenous peoples is carried along in the words of their poetry and prose, calling into power the stories that uplift and highlight our common humanity.
Sound the Abeng is a space of literary innovation that pays homage to the spiritual traditions, celebrations, customs and ceremonies that are central to the lives of peoples across the African Diaspora. We welcome you and invite you to read, reflect and share the contents of this digital journal. I am grateful to the writers who continue to pen words and rhythms of revolution; who inspire, uplift and offer us solace all at the same time. Their words elevate our spiritual consciousness and remind us who we are and why we must stay strong in the broken places. Even as they write literature that examines the lethal disparities produced by racism, sexism and poverty, they also write to acknowledge the power of words to uplift and sustain us within the broken places, confirming as Hemingway has written, while we are broken by life’s experiences, some stay strong in the broken places. The resilience and resistance that characterize the life of Black, Aboriginal and Indigenous peoples is carried along in the words of their poetry and prose, calling into power the stories that uplift and highlight our common humanity.
EDITORIAL
Resistance! Resilience! Resonance!
These three words connect and undergird the theme of this Christmas Edition 2023 of Sound the Abeng: Writing Black, Aboriginal & Indigenous Lives. Resilience has always been central to the foundation on which Black, Aboriginal & Indigenous peoples live their lives. And this, way before the violent interruption of our way of life by colonizers. You see, we have a symbiotic relationship with the land and the Universe in which it resides. Living in harmony with the land means creating a balance by weathering the storms of the natural world. It has always been a lifestyle of engagement and reciprocity. We sow. We reap. We slash and burn. The circle of life. This season of the Winter Solstice reminds us of the cycle and the circle of life to which we all must be vigilant participants. As we reflect on all the atrocities that abound, we know that everything is pointing the world towards the ancient philosophies of taking care of the land in order to reap the harvest. To do so, we must resist. We must resist encroachment on our land. We must resist commodification of our natural resources and our bodies. And as we continue to do so in the countless ways our ancestors have taught us, we delve into the resonance that imbues our lives with joys that many cannot decipher. We become warriors of resistance through the words we write, the songs we sing, the dances we perform; how we dress our bodies and design our hair. Nothing can stop us now, Bob Marley has reminded us through the poetic outpourings of his songs. This way of life has led to the spiritual abundance that rises above all attempts to constrain.
Our lives resonate with ancient philosophies that keep our revolutionary spirit alive. May we continue to bear witness to the triumph of Black, Aboriginal & Indigenous lives.
THE POETRY & PROSE OF WARRIORS OF RESISTANCE!
Featured Authors
Marva McClean is a poet, author and scholar/activist whose research agenda focuses on the African Diaspora and the historical empowerment of people of color. Dr. McClean pursues decolonized research methodologies with an emphasis on the physical, cultural and emotional geographies of Black, Aboriginal and Indigenous peoples as valid research material. She is the editor of The Struggle for Justice, Equity & Peace in the Global Classroom, IGI Publishing 2023 and host of Strong in the Broken Places: Poetics of the African Diaspora.
Opal Palmer Adisa is a Jamaican/ American poet, novelist, performance artist, and educator. The former Director of the Institute for Gender and Development Studies at the University of the West Indies, she consults worldwide on issues of gender and equity with a focus on ending domestic violence. Dr. Adisa’s work has been anthologized in more than 400 publications.
Emily Zobel Marshall is a Lecturer in Cultural and Post-Colonial Studies at Leeds Beckett University. Dr. Zobel Marshall's research agenda focuses on Caribbean literature and Caribbean carnival cultures. She is an expert on the trickster figure in the folklore, oral cultures and literature of the African Diaspora and has published widely in these fields. She has also established a Caribbean Carnival Cultures research platform and network that aims to bring the critical, creative, academic and artistic aspects of carnival into dialogue with one another.
Andrew Moss is an Anglo-Ghanaian author whose work explores and challenges the social constructs of race. Through his poetry and prose, Andrew advocates for teaching methodologies that celebrate hybridity and the rich cultural landscape that children of color bring to the classroom. His most recent publications include a novella, Nicked Names, (July 2020), Japanabandon, Manifest.oh!, Diaspora³ (February 2023) and Childish Recollections (2023). His chapter, The Triumph of Bi-Racial Identity: Funds of Knowledge as Student Agency was published in The Struggle for Justice, Equity, and Peace in the Global Classroom, by IGI Global in June 2023.
Geoffrey Philp, an award -winning literary scholar and former English professor, Miami Dade College, pens literature that problematizes urgent issues of the African Diaspora and the legacies of oppression. He is a recipient of a Silver Musgrave Medal in Literature from the Institute of Jamaica, a two -time alum of the Writers Room @ the Betsy Hotel, Miami, and the author of two short story collections, two novels, three children’s books, and eight books of poetry, including his most recent collection from Peepal Tree Press, Archipelagos which examines the effects of colonization on the health of the Earth.
Featured Authors
Marva McClean is a poet, author and scholar/activist whose research agenda focuses on the African Diaspora and the historical empowerment of people of color. Dr. McClean pursues decolonized research methodologies with an emphasis on the physical, cultural and emotional geographies of Black, Aboriginal and Indigenous peoples as valid research material. She is the editor of The Struggle for Justice, Equity & Peace in the Global Classroom, IGI Publishing 2023 and host of Strong in the Broken Places: Poetics of the African Diaspora.
Opal Palmer Adisa is a Jamaican/ American poet, novelist, performance artist, and educator. The former Director of the Institute for Gender and Development Studies at the University of the West Indies, she consults worldwide on issues of gender and equity with a focus on ending domestic violence. Dr. Adisa’s work has been anthologized in more than 400 publications.
Emily Zobel Marshall is a Lecturer in Cultural and Post-Colonial Studies at Leeds Beckett University. Dr. Zobel Marshall's research agenda focuses on Caribbean literature and Caribbean carnival cultures. She is an expert on the trickster figure in the folklore, oral cultures and literature of the African Diaspora and has published widely in these fields. She has also established a Caribbean Carnival Cultures research platform and network that aims to bring the critical, creative, academic and artistic aspects of carnival into dialogue with one another.
Andrew Moss is an Anglo-Ghanaian author whose work explores and challenges the social constructs of race. Through his poetry and prose, Andrew advocates for teaching methodologies that celebrate hybridity and the rich cultural landscape that children of color bring to the classroom. His most recent publications include a novella, Nicked Names, (July 2020), Japanabandon, Manifest.oh!, Diaspora³ (February 2023) and Childish Recollections (2023). His chapter, The Triumph of Bi-Racial Identity: Funds of Knowledge as Student Agency was published in The Struggle for Justice, Equity, and Peace in the Global Classroom, by IGI Global in June 2023.
Geoffrey Philp, an award -winning literary scholar and former English professor, Miami Dade College, pens literature that problematizes urgent issues of the African Diaspora and the legacies of oppression. He is a recipient of a Silver Musgrave Medal in Literature from the Institute of Jamaica, a two -time alum of the Writers Room @ the Betsy Hotel, Miami, and the author of two short story collections, two novels, three children’s books, and eight books of poetry, including his most recent collection from Peepal Tree Press, Archipelagos which examines the effects of colonization on the health of the Earth.
STRONG IN THE BROKEN PLACES: POETICS OF THE AFRICAN DIASPORA
These writers speak from the intimate chambers of their soul to reveal the redemptive power of storytelling and community. Their words are intended to inspire, entertain, and provoke thoughtful responses.
These writers speak from the intimate chambers of their soul to reveal the redemptive power of storytelling and community. Their words are intended to inspire, entertain, and provoke thoughtful responses.
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These featured authors have each made a contribution to the digital literary platform, Strong in the Broken Places: Poetics of the African Diaspora. This initiative evolved from the urgent need to connect with other writers during the early stage of the pandemic. From across the globe, poets and authors came together, seeking ways to connect and uplift and elevate and find ways to write and produce work even as they interrogated the despair and panic that engulfed the world. STRONG IN THE BROKEN PLACES has become a writing collaborative that stretches across the globe, scripting a narrative with literary warriors who are intentional in writing truth into history, in exposing the ugly realities of social injustice while at the same time offering up the healing power of words. These writers speak from the intimate chambers of their soul to reveal the redemptive power of storytelling and community. Their words are intended to inspire, entertain, and provoke thoughtful responses.
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THE POETRY & PROSE OF BLACK WRITERS
POEMS BY MARVA McCLEAN
RHYTHMS OF RESISTANCE
Shout it out loud
in long pulsating rhythms
unceasing melodies that tell
the story of a people who will not quit
breaking the chains of oppression
and sounding Nyabinghi rhythms of freedom
shout it out loud
the beats of this life force
this Indigenous language
of meditative lyrics
and writhing dance hall rhythms
this word-of-mouth revolution
cross fertilized on putrid soil
stained by the red stripe blood of
sugar cane and banana
shout it out loud
in native tongues
this cross fertilization of languages
that soothes and satisfies my soul
Bob Marley’s rhythms of resistance
Reggae music created
in the chords of ancient parables
that dance inside of me
a wicked revolution.
Shout it out loud.
I WILL NOT WRITE A DEATH SONG TODAY
( verses from the crucible of the global pandemic)
In the silence of the night, bizarre images swirl from across the globe
Corpses carried from hospitals in crisis
A child crying for a mother who has left her behind
The melancholy drone of the newscaster’s voice
Feeds and nurtures the nation’s despair.
There shall be no hugging and kissing.
And gathering is strictly forbidden
in public and in private.
School is closed.
Keep your distance.
Feast silently on your accumulated wealth
And shelter in place, protected from the
vengeful virus that feeds like vultures
Scurrying across the suffocating silence of this bleak landscape.
The dead shall bury the dead.
Searching for hope, I seize my pen
and the ink begins the lines of a new poem,
a discordant verse of my shelter in place.
Through the hallucinatory haze of this existential nightmare
A thousand pairs of desperate eyes look out at me;
A desperate people yearning for rain
Their dried roots thirsting for water.
When you get rain, you also get mud.
The mind remembers the details of the
images on the late- night news.
Black brothers and sisters walking the streets,
crying for freedom;
In distant lands, signs declare
No Africans,
Go back home to your shit- hole country.
These images of late have become my broken hallelujah.
I turn my head to shake the despicable storyboard
And from the tiny slats of the window blinds
Slivers of hope filter through,
riding on thin strips of moonlight.
You are not alone;
I hear the whispers of the ancestors.
You are not alone in this after-all.
You are from a long line of warriors;
resilience flows through your blood like the currents of the mighty river.
You have survived the Middle Passage
Regained your identity as one of the babies
of the Stolen Generation.
You have marched in the streets of Soweto and torn down
the walls of Apartheid.
You have sketched images of Trayvon in his hoodie
to remind the people that this genocide must stop.
You have welcomed hundreds of
Young Blackfellas stomping their way
into a new beginning.
No, my child, you will not write a death song today.
And so, I breathe and throw off the wretched mantle of despair
Resolved to live the promise of a new day rising,
and tomorrow,
Tomorrow, I will hold my face to the sun.
I will rise up from the ashes of this dystopia
And write a poem to the ancestors
and let the verses rise
above my broken hallelujah
asking them to send my roots rain,
to quench the thirst of this parched soul.
For today, I will not write a death song.
NANNY OF THE MAROONS
Warrior woman, Bush woman
Black woman free,
Nanny of the Maroons;
An enduring symbol of courage
Strength, and determination
Echoing throughout the valleys,
Hills and mountain top
Her ancestral whisperings
Tie us together
A lineage of warrior women,
knitted through memory
Molded by history;
Warriors of resistance.
No, no woman, no cry
Her voice echoes faintly but sure.
Ashanti woman, Warrior woman, free,
Subversion knitted in the arteries of her veins;
seeding the red dirt with droplets of truth, resilience, power, and guile
to feed our soul in the making of the Americas.
She pulled freedom to her bosom and claimed it for me
I hear the ancestral whisperings of her cry;
Know yourself, study the earth, strengthen the mind.
Listen for the movement of the birds in the wind
Watch for the animals roaming the fields
Be mindful of the insects crawling the earth.
I sit in contemplation and Nanny comes home to me
I see her in my grandmother, hybrid woman, plantation bride
Struggling to carve of the red dirt, a path for herself,
A road for her children, a place for me.
The generations shift and she comes again.
Her spirit enshrouds me, my mother, my daughters,
My sisters, myself.
Up in the dark hills of Maroon Town
She echoes the words that stitch us together
A quilt of historical reality,
A tapestry of cultural empowerment.
I claim the strength of her spirit,
The power of her might.
I hear the whisperings of her ancestral cries,
Know yourself, study the earth, strengthen the mind.
She shows me images of my people centuries ago
Women slaughtered, stretched thin on the treadmill
Foremothers raped, brutalized, left dead
Off-springs snatched from the warmth of their suckling bosom.
No, no woman, no cry.
The whisper is soft, the resolve is firm;
Stand up and face this frightful world
Be brave in battles, steadfast in your journey.
Her spirit enfolds me, my mother, my daughters, my sisters, myself.
The screams, the agonies,
the pain and the blood
My raging heart aroused,
confirm my resolve to
Fight!
Fight! If not with the sword, the power of the pen,
The power of the word.
No, no woman, no cry.
I reach out and grasp this enduring image of myself;
Ashanti woman, Warrior woman free!
I claim her as my mother, my daughter, my sister, myself.
I am in her image
I am in her blood.
I absorb her courage,
her cunning, her guile
I sip from the gourd of this
inheritance
Grandmother of my grandmother
and fore-mothers all
she bonds us together,
ancestral whisperings
echoing throughout the generations,
Know yourself, study the land, strengthen the mind.
No, no woman, no cry.
Fight! Fight! If not with the sword,
The strength of the mind;
The power of the pen, the power of the word.
In ancestral whisperings Nanny comes home to me.
POEMS BY EMILY ZOBEL MARSHALL
Anansi’s Tongue
Oh, come closer, see my
freed tongue dance &
spool itself across this page
scattering syllables from
corner to corner so
that you cannot
avoid this
silken story
my tongue, sparkling, alive with
new tales & old
rememoried
rhythms
Oh, lean closer, let my tongue
glide
into your ears, you knew it not but
you have only ever
been listening
for the sound
of this
story
spinning
Shhhh
hold the thread
for now
it begins…
I Need Milk Too
for Kamau Brathwaite and Joseph Zobel
he stole my milk
forced your brown nipple into his wet mouth
my milk taken deep into his gullet
o I need love too. love to
he stole my nourishment
suckled hard, the white baby, head nestled behind the curve of your breast
left me alone in my indignity
so I need love. love too
how to understand
all of this this lack this fury
I cannot stitch together memories of you, mother
I have lost thread I have lost needle
this pain, these pains, this burning
but
I need love too I need milk too
when I wake I cannot always remember the dream
your calloused palms, mother, holding the spread of morning sky
the swaddling sheet you wrapped me in, tightly
olive oil glistens on your skin, red Kente dress
billowing in an early harmattan. this is all I have. one more loss in
a chain of lack reaching far from Ghana
I need love to. I need milk too.
he stole my milk as you wetnursed his white puckered flesh
so I lie in the green wind-lashed cane fields
he stole my milk as you wetnursed his white puckered flesh
so I lie in these wind-lashed cane fields that swallowed my grandmother’s body
& at the break of dawn I will rise and refuse to cut them
Witch
Roll the word around your mouth and let it conjure,
do its work, spell-bind, because its calling you
think, does it sound like fear and midnight curses or
feel like power, pulsing with deep-time knowing?
They say a coven is 12, 13 with the devil but he never
helped the thousands of sisters outcast, demolished
by men in fire & water. We are women of appetites
who enjoy the pull of trembling flesh, of hot breath, of
our naked natural selves. We are the book readers,
the thinkers, the nonconformers, the wise ones,
the radicals. We are the crones, the whores, the
spinsters of healing & herbs, the women with
secrets, the ancestral whisperers. We are not only
Obeah women with Asante understandings, Cailleach
hags of Scotland, the ghosts of Pendle and Salem, but
we are all witches, it’s just a matter of how many parts of
our witchery we decide to hide.
Invitation for Mami Wata to Relax in the River Wharfe[1]
Mami Wata, come now, oh blessed one
follow me, for they have sexed you
written you
walked you over glass shards
stolen your feet
carved your light, painted you
mind-shaken you and forced you to
burn and blister for a man’s
undeserving lips
They say you are
charmer of serpents, calming with water-cool hands
they call you
Lasirèn, Yemanja, Santa Marta la Dominadora
Oxum
siren signaller of sailor-death
Middle Passage guardian, womb-space warden
healer of diasporic agony
man-strung, dragged to the surface of boiling seas
still dripping with deep-story algae
Come now, Mami Wata
for you are tired
I am girl-river-swimmer, daughter of land
at home in Yorkshire waters
you are safe in my long-brown-body slipstream
come, many-faced African womanfish
push upriver from grey Northern seas
with migrating salmon energy
you’ll find me
I’ll show you where the otters play
you can stroke their shining, looping muscled pelts
I’ll adorn your riverbank bower with
marsh marigolds, waxy silver lilies
my son will fish you minnow suppers
Crowned with cow-parsley, come to rest in my pool
not muse of all, painting-trapped, but lying on your back
river currents like a lover tickling your knotted spine
watching a mango-ripe sun
pour golden over the Wharfe
[1] The river Wharfe is a river in Yorkshire, England
- POEMS BY OPAL PALMER ADISA
Happy International Men’s Day, November 19, 2023
every tree has roots and yours run deeply
i know you know you personally
know you in that lean-in intimate space
know you lovingly a radiant sun-flower
you are my son my nephew
my cousin my uncle
my grandfather and godfather
my husband my lover
you are the man whose face and history
is intertwined with mine
our hearts and pains run along the same river
we have transcended unspeakable hardships
and in the midst of the hurt cherished love
i know that you have been taught that bravery
wears a stern face with tight fists
but my brother my comrade
my relative my lover
let me assure you that gallantry and strength
are evident in petals as in sturdy branches
and i need you to touch me tenderly
so i can surrender to the soft spaces in your eyes
i’m always here for you
know that you can share your pain & anguish
your most pressing dilemma and
i will listen without judging you
as weak or less than because i know and love you
our history is interlaced
running the same course of the river
washing out into the sea for release
to find and determine our own path
i recognize some of the pressures of manhood
that have been unfairly imposed on you
i realize that you might have been told
that stoicism is the way to be
but brother son
comrade brethren
you are secure and safe with me
shed the tears that need to be released
for your friend murdered
for the job you didn’t get
for the woman who ignored or used you
for whatever anguish about career
or anxiety about money
or uncertainty about your path
for all the thoughts and hopelessness
circling your head like wasps
i see you i know you i love you
as you are brick and sponge
and can live any of the multiple ways to be a man
to be a partner to be a father to be a friend
to be an upstanding member of your community
fling off your impervious mask that
has been squeezing your vulnerability
let me see your real face
let us reason together
i embrace your masculinity
your definition of self.
When Will We See Ourselves
Opal Palmer Adisa
Is there no Jamaican
woman who likes her natural hair
observing the rows of women
dressed in their blue gowns with
yellow stoles
I'm happy but also feel hopeless
they are graduating
all with false eye-lashes and
back or shoulder-length bought hair
I can't help but decry
how much richer just this one
graduation has made the asian
distributors
when will we graduate to love
us as we are
put our hard-earned
money in our own pockets
and thank our ancestors
instead of jesus
POEMS BY ANDREW MOSS
Ghetto Cats’ Nine Lives
ghetto cats' nine lives
twist the jazz jive
on flimsy hot tin favela rooves
to golden podiums, palanquins
& stools, pounce Wakanda Black Panther leather fists
Hansberry’s Young, Black & Gifted activists
Sparkling pasts grip Afrofuturistic
Armstrong’s trumpet blows
the Abeng horn
from maroon Jamaican villages
in conks, cornrows and Rasta tams
Songs of Freedom wail ghetto cats
Not domesticatus felis, house negroes,
Nor field slaves, rye catchers of mice & ‘men’
sculpted nine live numbers purr
perfect under New World sun horizons,
Onyankopon above thunders a rain
& Asase Yaa in fertile feline soils
Buckra break Massa’s manacles & shackles
Nanny, Toussaint, Bogle & Bustamante
Yaa Asantewaa, Accropong to Accompong Ashanti
warriors, cast in Benin bronze
Mask the master’s cat o’nine tail whip
In Anansi plantation tactics outwit
in Ga, Fanti, Twi & Creole tongues twist
Adinkra symbols & hieroglyphics
Livingstone’s uncivilised missions outstripping
Detroit ghetto cats spin electro decks
breakdance open the underground railroad
DJs embattled, Drexciyan survivors of old
Subaqueous empires, rise up, ensnare
Super Mario Afro Roman Soldiers
"Kicky kicky like ah Balotelli"
- KOFFEE
Balotelli gave me the permission
to wear my Italian jersey with conviction
Another badge of honour, my scudetto medals
beat against my heart, red, white and green
Medallions hang – in tricolor glory
Galea atop, he brushes himself off
up and down before and after battle
Ultra fans scalped without hassle
The first and last of the Mohican clan
In a Palermo ghetto, exchanges from a Merchant
with Menace, euros of flesh weigh
by calabash, recalibrating the scales
of injustice, balance an Act in two
halves united by a rainbow flick and splash
The gladiator delivers passes
fresh as pizza dough elastic
In a tro tro chariot he advances, Super Mario
an alchemist like Barnes before him
who served banana splits garnished with fifty
pence pieces sharp in heptagonal hate
Hadrian’s walls, he decimates
Milan’s marble and glass ceilings
An Afro-Roman soldier
Numerus Maurorum Aurelianorum
in a division of Aurelian Moors
hybrid civilization est. decorum
He towers from the Aballava fortress,
over amphitheater stadiums,
our legions will follow you in phalanx
under the same standard: pennant, flag and banner
A black star in gold, green and yellow
red, white and green shield shooting rainbow
flicks, Cruyff turns and bicycle kicks
Super Mario’s Afro-Roman soldiers
Hopes aloft wherever we may Rome.
Ghetto Cats’ Nine Lives
ghetto cats' nine lives
twist the jazz jive
on flimsy hot tin favela rooves
to golden podiums, palanquins
& stools, pounce Wakanda Black Panther leather fists
Hansberry’s Young, Black & Gifted activists
Sparkling pasts grip Afrofuturistic
Armstrong’s trumpet blows
the Abeng horn
from maroon Jamaican villages
in conks, cornrows and Rasta tams
Songs of Freedom wail ghetto cats
Not domesticatus felis, house negroes,
Nor field slaves, rye catchers of mice & ‘men’
sculpted nine live numbers purr
perfect under New World sun horizons,
Onyankopon above thunders a rain
& Asase Yaa in fertile feline soils
Buckra break Massa’s manacles & shackles
Nanny, Toussaint, Bogle & Bustamante
Yaa Asantewaa, Accropong to Accompong Ashanti
warriors, cast in Benin bronze
Mask the master’s cat o’nine tail whip
In Anansi plantation tactics outwit
in Ga, Fanti, Twi & Creole tongues twist
Adinkra symbols & hieroglyphics
Livingstone’s uncivilised missions outstripping
Detroit ghetto cats spin electro decks
breakdance open the underground railroad
DJs embattled, Drexciyan survivors of old
Subaqueous empires, rise up, ensnare
Super Mario Afro Roman Soldiers
"Kicky kicky like ah Balotelli"
- KOFFEE
Balotelli gave me the permission
to wear my Italian jersey with conviction
Another badge of honour, my scudetto medals
beat against my heart, red, white and green
Medallions hang – in tricolor glory
Galea atop, he brushes himself off
up and down before and after battle
Ultra fans scalped without hassle
The first and last of the Mohican clan
In a Palermo ghetto, exchanges from a Merchant
with Menace, euros of flesh weigh
by calabash, recalibrating the scales
of injustice, balance an Act in two
halves united by a rainbow flick and splash
The gladiator delivers passes
fresh as pizza dough elastic
In a tro tro chariot he advances, Super Mario
an alchemist like Barnes before him
who served banana splits garnished with fifty
pence pieces sharp in heptagonal hate
Hadrian’s walls, he decimates
Milan’s marble and glass ceilings
An Afro-Roman soldier
Numerus Maurorum Aurelianorum
in a division of Aurelian Moors
hybrid civilization est. decorum
He towers from the Aballava fortress,
over amphitheater stadiums,
our legions will follow you in phalanx
under the same standard: pennant, flag and banner
A black star in gold, green and yellow
red, white and green shield shooting rainbow
flicks, Cruyff turns and bicycle kicks
Super Mario’s Afro-Roman soldiers
Hopes aloft wherever we may Rome.
POEMS BY GEOFFREY PHILP
RUN YOUR HAND THRU MY HAIR
Run your hand thru my hair, over my brow, eyes, and ears; lead me like a man, lost in a maze, to the dark wine of your lips. You make my body sing when you run your hand thru my hair. With my arms open like a gift, calm my fear with your palm make my toes curl with joy when I lay my head on your lap. Run your hand thru my hair when my feet ache from a long walk down a dim lane, and I can’t take one more step, yet home is so far away. Run your hand thru my hair |
For Anna
On nights when my daughter awakens from her nightmare about the monster in our backyard, I comfort her by saying, “It’s only a dream, darling.” “But I can hear him, Dad, growling at our back door, scratching windows in the kitchen, and I’m afraid one day he will kill you and take mom.” Sometimes, before I limp back to my room, listening to the rise and fall of her breaths, I laugh as I tuck her under the covers. But most of the time, I lie to keep her childhood memory of safety alive, so that on a morning when I’m no longer home, and she wanders into the backyard, searching for herself, and stares into bloodshot eyes, her breath won’t be as shallow, nor her hands as shaky, and pray that she will forgive me. |
Songs of the Archipelagos
For Small Island, Big Song The come from places you could easliy forget, somewhere between the Pacific and Indian Oceans: Islands where statues gaze at the horizon, like when the ancestors in deep time first launched their canoes, not knowing if or when they'd return to the caresses of their loved ones, risked the currents and disappeared into the mist. Yet they sing, despite the threats of cyclones, love songs to their children, barely out of diapers but old enough to recognize what the stutter in their mothers' voices means- maybe the waters creeping up the stilts of their home, year after year, is a sign that the ways of the elders will be lost when heads of yam, stems of taro are drowned in salt. |
RESONANCE
THE MARLEY BOYS-TEACHING LESSONS IN BROTHERHOOD & PROSPERITY
With resistance and the insistence of justice the heartbeat of his music, Bob Marley revolutionized music and poetry with a resonance that has spread across the entire globe.
Bob Marley must be nodding his head, locks floating around his handsome face as he observes the way his children and grand-children live life large in the principles of Ubuntu as they carry on his musical legacy and principled livity of Rastafari. It is interesting to see the seven boys, mostly of different mothers, coming together, supporting each other, living in harmony, even as they strive to fulfil their particular vision rooted in the foundation their father established. With resistance and the insistence of justice the heartbeat of his music, Bob Marley revolutionized music and poetry with a resonance that has spread across the entire globe. Here in this video clip of his funeral service, May 21, 1981, his two sons (by Rita Marley) Ziggy and Stephen remind us of the true meaning and value of our cultural life and how this becomes the resonance that feeds our soul and our kin across the generations. In the second video, African American boys dance the Capoeira, an ancient acrobatic and complex dance carried over by Africans to the plantations of colonial Brazil. Soccer legend Pele popularized these moves into his stylistic ginga maneuvers on the field which became known as the Beautiful Game & earned him Athlete of the Century.
Credit: Marley's funeral service video clip-YOU Tube Iron Lion -777=2017
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You are cordially invited.......
STRONG IN THE BROKEN PLACES: POETRY AS A TOOL FOR ACTIVISM & HEALING
Dr. Emily Zobel Marshall will be the featured author on Strong in the Broken Places, Thursday, January 25, 2024@ 5:30 PM ET/Via Zoom. Emily will read from her recently published collection, Bath of Herbs and other publications as she shares her journey as a scholar, cultural custodian and poet. Please purchase a copy at amazon.com or peepaltreepress.com. River Rites, taken from this collection, is testimony to the courage and conviction with which Emily interrogates the intersection of the natural world, public history and the interior of the private self.
RIVER RITES
I seek baptism
absolution
from fighting enough
to scare our neighbors,
from ruptured family,
cancer.
So, water-borne, I thrust
my brown body across
the cloud-rippled sky,
Afro-lady cum pond-skater.
With each stroke you tame me, Yorkshire river,
with each stroke you claim me, Yorkshire river,
I, daughter of diasporic waters,
each long muscle flexing,
now unfettered, darting towards
the sun's reflections,
I shed history like a shattered shell.
These are my river rites,
my resurrection complete.
STRONG IN THE BROKEN PLACES: POETRY AS A TOOL FOR ACTIVISM & HEALING
Dr. Emily Zobel Marshall will be the featured author on Strong in the Broken Places, Thursday, January 25, 2024@ 5:30 PM ET/Via Zoom. Emily will read from her recently published collection, Bath of Herbs and other publications as she shares her journey as a scholar, cultural custodian and poet. Please purchase a copy at amazon.com or peepaltreepress.com. River Rites, taken from this collection, is testimony to the courage and conviction with which Emily interrogates the intersection of the natural world, public history and the interior of the private self.
RIVER RITES
I seek baptism
absolution
from fighting enough
to scare our neighbors,
from ruptured family,
cancer.
So, water-borne, I thrust
my brown body across
the cloud-rippled sky,
Afro-lady cum pond-skater.
With each stroke you tame me, Yorkshire river,
with each stroke you claim me, Yorkshire river,
I, daughter of diasporic waters,
each long muscle flexing,
now unfettered, darting towards
the sun's reflections,
I shed history like a shattered shell.
These are my river rites,
my resurrection complete.
What's joy, if not that deep sense of sheer gratitude about being part of an initiative, now a circle, that has the capacity to nurture and to heal, and perhaps, even outlive itself. This is the crucible of Resonance which opens the portal to spiritual preservation of Black, Aboriginal & Indigenous peoples.
Thank you for engaging with this publication and much gratitude for your support.
Marva McClean
Thank you for engaging with this publication and much gratitude for your support.
Marva McClean
In this space, poets and authors continue to celebrate the healing balm of words and the generosity of spirit that writers of the African Diaspora convey. Today, STRONG has evolved as a cultural space: a spiritual space that feeds a global community which resonates with resistance and resilience.