Preview #4, Journal of Pan African Studies, Poetry Issue

Preview #4,

Journal of Pan African Studies, Poetry Issue

Opal Palmer Adisa, Oakland CA

Transformation

now that the guns are silent

now that the rains have beaten the blood

into the soil that nurtures our food

now that children are orphaned

now that wives are widowed

now that men whose mind have been destroyed

return with limbs missing

eyes glazed over

thoughts erratic

now that cousins have forgiven cousins

and brothers are shaking hands

now that women are strolling in the market

and stopping to talk and laugh with each other

now that buildings have been destroyed

and whole lives made empty

now that what was is no longer

and what could have been requires a miracle

now that our eyes are no longer blurry

and we cannot remember why we were

fighting in the first place

now that forgetting will take several generations

and memory must be constant as breath

now that we have a chance to change

the future and treat the past as a persistent sore

now that we have to think out of the box

and spell conflict as lack of trust

the ego running on its own course

now that we understand fear and love

in a different light and appreciate the cost

now that a woman can dream again

of having her son in her old age

now that a man can smile at the idea

of reaching to enfold his wife with his arthritics hands

now that we are truly ready hopefully

to sit at the table and listen with our hearts

and the lives of our children

now that

now that

now that

now when we must stare into each other’s eyes

now when we must massage each other’s soul

now when we must learn the abc of forgiveness

now when we must actively practice love

practice love

practice love

until it guides our feet to dancing

until it pumices away our anger

until it lights the lamp of our generosity

until it raises our arms in flight

until it washes us with joy

now that we know love

now that love enfolds us

now that we are love

now finally

finally

now we are human beings again

--Opal Palmer Adisa

Dr. Opal Palmer Adisa is a poet, playwright, essayist, professor at California College of the Arts. Her current play Bathroom Graffiti Queen will be performed at Oakland’s Eastside Arts Center, along with Marvin X’s BAM classic Flowers for the Trashman, produced by the Lower Bottom Playaz.

Ayodele Nzingha, Oakland, California

Reasons

I got reasons
reasons for war
reasons for inner peace
reasons
for my reasoning
it ain't random
you can put it on the margin
call it fringe
it’s a matter of the matter
ya condition is in
or the paradigm ya
lens is in
if its crazy to be sane
then
you know
how a double
consciousness go
walking and wounded
wounded still walking
behind the veil
seeing
I got my reasons
reasons
why I flaunt my nappy hair
still think in Ebonics
fluent in my overstanding of
the lens in ya literacy
and i still be me
got my reasons
why I don't care bout
ya reasons
season after season
it looks the same
it ain't geography that's
easy to see
its beyond the lie of race
it’s not nuanced in class
(I pray ya the last of a dying
breed) cuz I
can't explain the greed
what kind of fear
prompts that kind of need
but I see it
and I reason
I don't matter
so I stay brave
enough to smell rain coming
get my news from the dead
eat well
sleep on clean sheets
and wear oils of lavender and frankincense
while I can
I reason time belongs to God
and you are
not
God
you got ya reasons
I guess to be confused
manipulating thangs
the way you do
what's a lie told
over and over
it’s the truth
broadcast it and
make it divine
but season
after season
I resist the
change necessary
to see through your
eyes
I got my reasons
with this target
on my back
I lack the motivation
to see how you reason
your rationales
decide ya bottom lines
devise ya acceptable collateral
damage tolerance
I got little tolerance
for ignorance
and reasons
not to trust you
done studied you thru Tuskegee
and the subways
don't trust you on the airways
seen you thru the haze
covering the high ways
as you follow the oil pipe ways
seen you
my eyes were open
(heard you plotting death
and everyone's destruction)
my ears were open
(God don't forgive em
they don't care what
dem do)
feel you wining
when I’m quiet
so I got reasons
to scream
I got reasons
to sleep eyes open
I got reasons
not to forget you
jailer keys jangling from the
belt below your fat belly
I remember them dumb
(its true you eat your young)
big ass eco foot prints
yes and ships
planes
bombs
weapons of mass destruction
and doctrine
manifesting ya reasons
to suit ya actions
I got reasons to
fear your secret thoughts
and your out loud lies
got reasons
to hit ya with the stank eye
while keeping my good eye on you
got reasons
to say ju ju when you pass
spit in the road and burn herbs
where are the souls that
should show though the eyes
I fear the reality
behind your disguise
I got reasons
to pray to old Gods
got reasons to
read more than the gospel
(yeah though I live in
in Babylon where idiots do
get they babble on)
got reasons to
teach my young to
beware merry go rounds
and lies about shiny things
that you pay for with ya soul
teaching em’ to remember
no matter how it hurts
to know the truth
instructing them to
ward off evil
by working
hex the devil
by dreaming
saying to them
write poems
don't kill one another
even lyrically
love the old
protect the young
sharpen intellects
to sword points
to make my point
got reasons
to keep reasoning
with the tone deaf choir
(more fire aya)
until its
too late
for reason
reasoning or
reasons

11/2009

Ayodele “WordSlanger” Nzinga

Ayodele Nzingha is a poet, playwright, actress, director, producer. She is a longtime student and associate of Marvin X, but now has her own theatre, the Lower Bottom Playaz in Oakland. She is a Phd candidate and mother of six children. She is mounting a production of August Wilson's Gem of the Ocean and producing Opal Palmer Adisa's Bathroom Graffiti Queen and Marvin X's BAM classic Flowers for the Trashman at Oakland's Eastside Arts Center.

Mona Lisa Saloy,

New Orleans LA

On not being able to write a

post-Katrina poem

about New Orleans

It wasn’t Katrina you see

It was the levees

One levee crumbled under Ponchartrain water surges

One levee broke by barge, the one not supposed to park near ninth-ward streets

One levee overflowed under Ponchartrain water pressure

We paid for a 17-foot levee but

We got 10-foot levees so

Who got all that money-- the hundred of thousands

Earmarked for the people’s protection?

No metaphors capture this battle for New Orleans

Now defeated and scorned by the bitter mistress of big government

New Orleans is broken by the bullet of ignorance

Our streets are baptized by brutal neglect

Our homes, now empty of brown and white faces, segregated by

Our broken promises of help where only hurt remains

Our hearts like our voices hollow now in the aftermath

Our eyes are scattered among tv images of

Our poor who without cars cling to interstate ramps like buoys

Our young mothers starving stealing diapers and bottles of baby food

Our families spread as ashes to the wind after cremation

Our brothers our sisters our aunts our uncles our mothers our fathers lost

Stranded like slaves in the Middle Passages

Pressed like sardines, in the Super Dome, like in slave ships

Where there was no escape from feces or

Some died on sidewalks waiting for help

Some raped in the Dome waiting for water and food

Some kids kidnapped like candy bars on unwatched shelves

Some beaten by shock and anger

Some homeless made helpless and hopeless by it all

Where is Benjamin Franklin when we need him?

Did we not work hard, pay our taxes, vote our leaders into office?

What happened to life, liberty, and the pursuit of the good?

Oh say, can you see us America?

Is our bright burning disappointment visible six months later?

Is all we get the baked-on sludge of putrid water, your empty promises?

Where are you America?

--Mona Lisa Saloy

Dr. Mona Lisa Saloy, Author and Folklorist, is currently Associate Professor of

English, Director, the Samuel DuBois Cook/Daniel C. Thompson Honors Program;

founding Director of the Creative Writing Program, a successful 15-year-old program, at

Dillard University.

Gwendolyn Mitchell, Chicago IL

Childhood Revisited

The collective voices of warnings, hear me right.

Too many grapes, purple stains on my pink shirt

My mother doesn’t scold. She washes my hands in the kitchen sink

Asks me to put cans on the pantry shelf.

This is my job now that I am four-years-old and ready to go to school.

First day of school

I am excited to be in kindergarten

And not have to watch out of the window as my two older sisters leave me behind.

When mother walks me into the room with the yellow and blue walls

I almost want to cry, but I don’t.

I see so many toys and things to do.

It’s just me at first, then other children wonder in.

“Hey, that toy is just for boys.”

I am told to get down and not play with the pretend horse in the corner.

I dismount and as a hay-colored hair boy pushes it across the room, I am thinking

It is a stupid horse anyway, didn’t even move on its own

Not like our red hobbyhorse that I can ride whenever I want.

I look around for something else to do

Girls are gathering in the make-believe kitchen

I want to play, but they seem too busy to see me

Even though I know how to play grown-up and house

And have a “real china” tea set at home

This the second time that I want to be invisible.

I wonder to the reading corner and pull a not-too-new book off the shelf, start flipping pages, a blur of tears well up in my eyes.

A tall brown-haired lady says it’s time to begin our day, put playthings away

sit at the funny shaped tables, fold our hands

She tells us her name, it’s long. She asks us to repeat three times so we will remember.

She sings when she talks and I think I’m going to like kindergarten after all.

For two days, I didn’t mind that no one sits near me at music time

Or chooses me as line partner when

we walk down the corridor to the lavatory.

But on the third day, we play “little sally walker” and the children on both sides of me have to be told to hold my hand

It is then I realize that no one else looks like me

And I want to be invisible once again.

--Gwendolyn Williams

Gwendolyn A. Mitchell, poet and editor, is the author of Veins and Rivers and House of Women and the co-editor of two anthologies of literary work. She received her MFA in English from Pennsylvania State University. Ms. Mitchell resides in Chicago, where she serves as Senior Editor for Third World Press.

Deadline for submissions October 15, 2010. The Journal of Pan African Studies is an online journal with a worldwide audience. Send submission to jmarvinx@yahoo.com, MS word document, including bio and pic. We especially want to hear from hip hop poets, spoken word artists, conscious rappers.

--Marvin X, Guest Editor