Thursday, October 7, 2010

Preview #9, Journal of Pan African Studies, Poetry Issue






Preview #9, Journal of Pan African Studies, Poetry Issue



Askia Toure, Boston, Ma



AFRICAN DIVA: AN ELEGY AMONG THE RUINS

(for Kamaria and our sisters)


I hadn’t wanted to venture down certain

avenues, exploring startling aspects of

inhumanity and ruin. I hadn’t desired

to confront infamy face to face.

I longed for gentler things: your delicate

face illumined by love’s tranquility, or

spiritual ecstasy; your sepia arms enfolding

a child. Yet, Mosetta, this century,

of primal savagery, this era of death’s

bizarre mockery sickens the soul.

I am awed by your perpetual strength

and certitude. You seem to blossom like

a lotus in mire. Your mellow calmness

inspires miraculous hope—my empress

of a thousand battles, mistress of celestial

vistas, imagination’s jasmine diva.

In a grander age, when mystics reigned,

sages would astound the World with tales

of women like you: Sheba, Nefertari, Tiye,

and thousands more. Alas, today, as barbarism

stalks ruined capitals, and life violates

the breath with endless rot, your supreme

virtues are mocked by surly thugs, high on

misogyny’s vicious cocaine. And yet,

to aspire towards the ultimate, sublime

Unity of Being, to exalt beauty

and excellence remains a beacon of any

time and place. And, because that striving

heart belongs to a woman of the African race,

the clouded day is suffused with glorious

rays, as we move together, striving always

to resurrect the visionary heart.

--Askia Toure

Askia M. Toure', poet, activist, Africana Studies pioneer, is an award-winning poet,
and the author of eight books, including "DawnSong!, winner of the 2003 Stephen Henderson Award in Poetry. He is also an American Book Award Winner, 1989,
he lives in Boston, and is a member of the African-American Master Artists-in-
Residency Program (AAMARP) in African-American Studies @ Northeastern Univ.,Boston. He can be contacted at: askia38@yahoo.com.


Neal E. Hall, MD, Philadelphia PA

for black Americans,
9-11 is 24-7,
a labyrinth of terror buried beneath shallow
words on revised pages of America’s iniquities
dating back four hundred years,
when blacks were snatched and kidnapped,
ship jacked and hijacked to America’s labor and
concentration camps to be bought and sold
into unspeakable servitude on land we would
come to lose ground to some
lesser place and foreign cause.
For black Americans,
9-11 is 24-7,
… an endless cycle of America’s weapons of black
destruction crashing and imploding, 24-7, into
towering black hopes and aspirations…
… a viciousness finding continuous
momentum in prescribed brutality,
administered 24-7, to infuse in us
enough terror to keep us in a lesser
place for economic gain.
For black Americans,
9-11 is 24-7,
Four hundred years and more of
democratic sleight of hands,
jiving and conniving, slipping and sliding across
smoke and mirrors…
… Jeffersonian poker face democracy
bluffing its hand of freedom,
always with the ace of tyranny
concealed up its white sleeve
to place race-based road blocks
strategically on unpaved roads to
nowhere to ensure that blacks get there…
… discriminating mercenary legislative, judicial
homicide beheading black men from the souls
of black homes and families; cutting short the
lives of one out of twenty black men
imprisoned ten times the rate of white men’s
crimes as a means of genteel 1 genocide to keep
us from finding from among us a deliverer to
lead us from this lesser place…
… a good old boy network of
murder, rape and intimidation,
torture, beatings and mutilation,
social isolation and economic decimation to
keep us enslaved children of slave children
ripped from the breasts of slave mothers sold
into tortuous misery by those first families
hooded in democracy.
For black Americans,
9-11 is four hundred years and more
of America crashing and imploding,
24-7, into our towering black
hopes and aspirations.
Four hundred years and more of
no reprieves, no parity, no sign of mercy,
no justice, no relief in sight for us…
… no world coalitions proffering UN resolutions
for economic restitution…
… no international peace keepers
amassing at these plantation shores to destroy
America’s weapons of mass black destruction…
… no search and rescue teams to search and
rescue us from the ruins of America’s racial
injustice and exploitation…
… no gathering dignitaries to raise our tattered
black flag half-mast, found buried deep
beneath the shallow hypocrisy on revising
white pages of America’s history.
… no 9-11 commission to investigate the
disposition of 36 million 2 holocaust victims
swept quietly and anonymously under white
stars and stripes forever.
… no day and time set aside to memorialize
four hundred 9-11s, each with nine thousand
black men, women and children stacked black
side up, black high to make easy America’s
economic climb…
… no marked graves black with names
to fare - thee - well to distant sounds of tolling
bells…
… no heaven or hell to turn back or put back
black hopes and aspirations snatched and
kidnaped, ship jacked and hijacked.
For black Americans,
9-11 is 24-7.
______________
Human Rights Watch - United States, Punishment and 1
Prejudice: Racial disparities in the War on Drugs;
www.hrw.org/campaigns/drugs/war/key-facts.htm
African American History, Melba J. Duncan, Ch. 3, p. 31 2
Copyright © 2009 by Neal Hall, M.D.

Neal E. Hall is a physician-poet. His current book is Nigger For Life. According to Dr. Cornel West, “Dr. Hall is a warrior of the spirit, a warrior of the mind…an activist, a poet.”

Jeannette Drake, Virginia

SLAVE SONG

Leh us carry on da sa

da sa da sa

da sa of who do

not so few who do

da wind snake comes

send him away

all dey songs de buried

heah, heah, heah

in sacred ground who do

who do

death awaken

death awaken

Paul and Silas

Paul and Silas

Paul and Silas

come through heah

who do who do

not so few

I wants none of dis nonsense

gon on befo’

don’ been in de house far too long

no use to holler now

whuppin time don’ past

for me, who do

who do not so few

de massa rose

de massa rose

de massa rose

and come through heah

wind snake come back

dis time who do who do

who do come through heah

da sa da sa da sa

of sunshine

sunshine

sunshine ovah who do

not so few

who do stand ovah de pot

de cast of iron pot

stirrin’ stirrin stirrrin’

de stain away

de blood de mud de sweat

away away away

stir de massa stain away

upon ma lips

upon ma brow

the scent of dead chullens

flowers now

who do not so few

come by heah

to run and cry

and rot away

beneath de cracklin’ flame

de singin’ of de mulberry tree

de branches was once free

da sa da sa da sa

of sunshine blowin in ma hair

da sa da sa da sa

of darkest night

dere ain’t no place to hide

Lawd Sweet Jesus

where is you at

come stem dis bruisin’ tide

de massa rose

de massa rose

de massa rose

wind snake blowin’

round de cabin door

Lawd Sweet Jesus

where is you at

help me find de other shore

da sa da sa da sa.

Jeannette Drake, writer of poems, short stories, and essays is an artist and Licensed Clinical Social Worker (retired) who holds an MFA in creative writing from Virginia Commonwealth University. Occasionally, she conducts dream work and expressive art workshops. The author of Journey Within: A Healing Playbook, her writings appear in Callaloo, Obsidian, The Southern Review, Xavier Review, Honey Hush! African American Women’s Humor, Go, Tell Michelle: African American Women Write to the New First Lady, www.disabilityworld.org, Tough Times Companion III, Richmond Free Press, The Book of Hope and The World Healing Book, The Sun Magazine, Coloring Book: An Eclectic Anthology of Fiction and Poetry by Multicultural Writers and ChickenBones: A Journal, at www.nathanielturner.com among others. She has received awards and fellowships from the Virginia Commission for the Arts, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, the Hurston/Wright Foundation and a scholarship award from the Leonard E.B. Andrews Foundation for visual art. She is currently working on a novel.

Al Young, Berkeley CA

The Emmett Till Blues

What they use to just do and just done it to me,

they doing it directly to all yall now, doing it

and doing it and doing it to the world.

Shoot and cut and smash my head in,

take me to the river, sink me down –

you call that religion? Yeah, yeah!

It hadn’t of been for my mother bring

my busted body back up to Chicago and let

Jet get pictures for the world to look at,

nobody would of known. I’m long time gone.

Nowadays wouldn’t be no way I’d get to say

this on television, no way yall would even see

a picture of me. Do yall even know who this is

talking to you? This is Emmett Till. I died

and died and died. Soon as yall figured

America was saved, here come Guantánamo

and Abu Ghraib. Here come greed and

here come grief. The Thief of Baghdad

make they own commandments. Geronimo,

wouldn’t of paid them no mind. What you think

they might pull next? Talk to me. I been done died.

--Al Young

--Al Young

Widely translated and acclaimed, Al Young’s 22 books include poetry (Something About the Blues: An Unlikely Collection of Poetry, Coastal Night and Inland Afternoons: Poems 2001-2006, The Sound of Dreams Remembered: Poems 1990-2000, Heaven: Poems Collected 1956-1990), fiction (Seduction By Light, Sitting Pretty, Who Is Angelina?), and musical memoirs (Mingus Mingus: Two Memoirs, Drowning in the Sea of Love, Kinds of Blue, Things Ain’t What They Used to Be, Bodies & Soul). From 2005 through 2008 he served as poet laureate of California. Other honors include NEA, Fulbright, and Guggenheim Fellowships. The Sea, The Sky, And You, And I, a poetry & jazz CD (featuring bassist Dan Robbins), came out last year from Bardo Digital. He currently teaches at California College of the Arts, San Francisco. Exhaustive information about this Berkeley-based author may be found at www.AlYoung.org


Susan Lively, East St. Louis IL

King

His eyes reflected:

dignity, respect, love, hope,

sadness, despair and loss.

Somehow he is still alive,

he lives on in my head.

Somehow he is still alive,

he is not truly dead.

He speaks to me from pages,

he speaks to me with more than words.

He speaks to me from pages,

and love is all I’ve ever heard.

His posture was studious:

a study in perseverance, in patience,

in steely, stubborn, self-determination,

in peaceful disobedience, a rebel is born.

He is alive in me,

I feel his fire, his spirit,

he is not truly gone.

He speaks to me from TV screens,

he speaks to me with more than words.

He speaks to me from reel to reel,

and love is all I’ve ever heard.

His smile

was a rare gift:

wise and beautiful and never resigned,

to the pain his heart knew,

to the fear within his mind.

His hands, so unassuming,

held us all,

held the fate of the world.

He speaks to me from history,

and love is all I’ve ever heard.

Do we ever know

how truly powerful we are?

Our words and deeds live on,

long after we are gone

--Susan Lively

SUSAN MARIE LIVELY

Born in Belleville, IL, Susan Lively is a poet, spoken word artist, host, and author. She performs in the bi-state area under the name “Spit-Fire” and has performed at and hosted literary events at local colleges and universities. She created and hosts the show “Open Mic Night @ The Inn” at The Cigar Inn and is a member of The Eugene B. Redmond Writer’s Club of East St. Louis, IL. Susan’s spoken word performances have been featured on internet, radio, and television and her poetry has appeared in Head To Hand, The East St. Louis Monitor, and The PEN.

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