Preview #14, Journal of Pan African Studies, Poetry Issue

Preview #14,

Journal of Pan African Studies, Poetry Issue

Guest Editor, Marvin X

Deadline for submissions November 15

Send submission to jmarvinx@yahoo.com,

Include bio, pic, MS Word attachment

Neil Callender, Boston MA

The Maroon is Dead! Long Live the Maroon!

On the night Malcolm died, tough men, hewn from

Louisiana's woodlands and paper mills, and from

the battlefields of Europe and Korea gathered in their

town of Bogalusa. Our Maroon King, our Zumbi, lay cut down

in Harlem as these Maroons of the Sword, these Deacons for Defense,

accepted the quest to slay the Klu Klux dragon.

Weeks later, Maroons of the Pen, ascended

to Harlem, the crown city of Afro-modernity, to feed Africans

words of resistance and self-knowledge, to feed Africans

the manna of their own greatness, reconnect the African body

to the African mind and the African soul, quilt together what was

ripped apart in coffles, and in pest houses off Charelston, and in the barracoons

of Savannah.

From the wastelands of the Maafa--these barren and humiliating centuries,

precincts of death and apathy, the Maroon arises as redeemer.

He is opener of the way, she is the destroyer of illusions-- invincibility

of the Klan, superiority of Greece, ... ... . The Maroon is

keeper and maker of memory, the link between Imhotep and Lewis Latimer,

Queen Tiye and Ella Baker, between what was and what must be.

--Neil Callender

Neil Callender is a poet who is committed in his work to the rebirth of African Civilization. He believes that the erasure and falsification of the African past is integral to the project of oppressing African people and denying their humanity. The terrain of culture is central to telling the truth about the drama of the African story. He lives in the Boston area and teaches writing at Roxbury Community College. He is published in the antiwar anthology, Poets Against the Killing Fields.

Benicia Blue, Chicago IL

No Whammies No Whammies

No Mommy No Mommy

I am home by myself

Older sister isn't home yet

I am 8 or 9 or so

Me being home must be illegal

Must be a crime

Must be bad for Mommy

The police sure don't like it

The neighbors sure don't like it

I sure don't like it

Mommy going to the boat

With cash in hand

The dollars go afloat in the currents of

C

A

S

I

N

O

Mommy sailing away

Mommy stranded on her island of chance

Chances are I won't see her till morning

I Am 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20...

I am still home waiting

Her Boat of No whammies No whammies

This house of No Mommy No Mommy

Part 2

It’s just a release

I'm free when I'm there

It’s only me when I'm there

No responsibilities

No two girls

No two little girls

No two grown girls

I don't need them on my back

I don't need them checking my pockets

I need money in my pockets

Cha-Ching another hit on the slot Machine

This is my Fulfillment

This is my new void

This is my no worries

This is my no stress

This is my no tears till later

This is my destruction

This is my no Husband

This is my bankruptcy

This is my moving

This is my eviction notice

This my single parenting

This is my two daughters

This is my vulnerability

This is my bills to pay

This is my debt to make

This is my escape from life

This is my problem to solve

This is my addiction to crack

These are some reasons to go

These are some excuses to make

These are some issues I know

Gambling

Gambling

Gambling

Can take

--Benicia Blue

I am a Chicago native, a class of 2011 undergraduate at Columbia College Chicago. My major is in poetry. My work has been published by Girlspeak webzine and Mad Licks Zine. My poetry has also been featured on Young Chicago Authors website and Chicago public radio.

Tanure Ojaide, Nigeria

Songs from Across the Ocean Divide

1

There

you watch African Magic

an hourly addiction for many

or Super Story

on Thursday nights with light

here

I am racked in fantasies

of the interdependence of men and women

and the complementarity of light and dark

a human narrative

and when you switch channels

to Chelsea or Real Madrid

scoring fabulous goals

with hat tricks

I will still be staring at your photo

an untiring sport

waiting for you medicine-woman

to turn here your magical attention.

2

Over here, it’s neither dream nor vision

the sort in which the sokugo possesses you

to be a wanderer on an unending road

nor the sort in which the more water you throw

at the fire-engulfed the more irate the flames;

no, it’s not launching into a compulsive storm

that the rest of the world sees as a suicidal venture

but to you proffers only solace rather than peril.

It’s not the warring waves into which the swimmer

hurls himself to be helplessly lost in cosmic rage;

what transpires here is neither dream nor vision

of a fantasy that belies life as one knows it

in which in protest for denial of one’s desire

one takes the inevitable path to self-immolation—

either all or nothing; supreme peace or total war.

This is not a dream or vision of flight

on the back of a falcon coasting the skies

over a shark-infested ocean and singing

a lullaby for unborn virtues to come to life.

This is a spell of unknown proportion whose

words only the medicine woman can chant

to bring the world to the normalcy of ecstasy;

only she possesses the power to calm the waves,

put out the voluptuous flames, bring to an end

the civil war that ravages the entire polity,

and make love a dividend of freedom fighters.

This is not magical realism in which a man bleeds

out of love, a woman holds a man on a leash;

residence in an island of light or dark

in which it is forbidden to sneeze and throw

greetings across a fence to a neighbor;

a colony of mute parrots, even signs banished

with tongues and eyes sick from disuse.

A minstrel cries from a devastating fever

to the medicine woman out there gathering

her chants from weeds, forest herbs, garden

and daring to heal one not given a chance

and so cocksure of her curative craft.

A Fellow in Writing of the University of Iowa, Tanure Ojaide was educated at the University of Ibadan, where he received a bachelor's degree in English, and at Syracuse University, where he received both M.A. in Creative Writing and Ph.D. in English. He has published sixteen collections of poetry, two collections of short stories, a memoir, three novels, and scholarly work. His literary awards include the Commonwealth Poetry Prize for the Africa Region (1987), the All-Africa Okigbo Prize for Poetry (1988, 1997), the BBC Arts and Africa Poetry Award (1988), and the Association of Nigerian Authors Poetry Award (1988, 1994, and 2003). Ojaide taught for many years at The University of Maiduguri (Nigeria), and is currently The Frank Porter Graham Professor of Africana Studies at The University of North Carolina at Charlotte. He received a National Endowment for the Humanities fellowship in 1999, a Fulbright Senior Scholar Award in 2002/2003, and The University of North Carolina’s First Citizens Bank Scholar Medal Award for 2005.