Our Call for Jasper's 2026 Play Right Series is Officially Open -- Deadline Feb. 28, 2026
The Jasper Project announces the 6th cycle of its Play Right Series, a collaboration between area theatre artists and Jasper Community Producers—or theater aficionados, supporters and even newcomers. The project will culminate in summer 2026 with the staged reading of a brand-new South Carolina play.
Submitting A Play
The play submission window is now open.
Playwrights must be residents of South Carolina currently and during the summer of 2026.
The winning playwright must be present for development sessions with Community Producers in Columbia during the summer, 2026 (specific dates to be determined later), and must agree to offer program credit to The Jasper Project at any subsequent productions or publications.
Plays may address any topic, using language appropriate to the subject matter; we are not, however, considering musicals or children’s plays.
Plays should have no more than 5 cast members, though cast members may play more than one role.
Submissions must be one-act plays, 45-75 minutes in length, typed according to industry-standard format (see our Sample Format).
Please include, as a cover sheet, a brief bio of the playwright and description of the play, including cast size and any unusual technical demands, bearing in mind that smaller and fewer are usually preferable.
One submission per playwright, please.
Please submit your play no later than midnight on February 28, 2026, to playrightseries@jasperproject.org
Play Selection
When the submission window closes on February 28, 2026, the Play Right Series committee will read and select a play for development through the spring and summer. “Development,” in this case, means round-table readings with paid actors and directors that are attended by Community Producers and Professional Others, followed in the summer by rehearsals and presentation in early September 2026.
The process will be facilitated by Jasper’s Community Producers—community members and theatre aficionados invested in the development process and supportive of the state’s literary and theatre talent. In exchange for a modest financial contribution, Jasper Community Producers will be offered insider views of the steps and processes inherent in creating theatrical art by attending readings, rehearsals, informative talks, and presentations, including conversations with the actors, director, playwright, stage manager, costumer, and sound and lighting designer. The result: Community Producers learn about the extensive process of producing a play and become invested personally in the production and success of the play and its cast and crew, thereby becoming diplomats of theatre arts.
Busted Open by Ryan Stevens (2025)
One of the perks of winning the Play Right Series Project is having your play published in book format and filed with the Library of Congress. AND, we give you a large stack of books to distribute to the producers, directors, and family members of your choice!
(Don’t forget your Mom!)
Check out the plays Jasper has already published:
Moon Swallower by Colby Quick (2022)
Therapy by Lonetta Thompson (2023)
Let It Grow by Chad Henderson (2024)
At the Jasper Project, we LOVE facilitating new art from ALL the arts disciplines! Our Play Right Series is just one of the many projects that allow us to do so.
Spread the Word! Spread the Love! Make New Art! Make Columbia an Arts-Centric Home for Us All!
Southern Gothic Festival: A Free Two-Day Festival Returns to Camden by Emily Moffitt
The Southern Gothic Festival is coming back to the cozy Broad Street of Camden, SC this October. For the fans of the spooky and esoteric, and anyone with a sense of morbid curiosity, this festival runs from the night of Friday October 10 through all of Saturday, October 11. A variety of panels featuring discussions of literature, history, and the occasional ghost tour await audiences either for free or for a nominal fee. Authors and journalists make up many of the headliners, and here are some highlights.
USC and Columbia’s own Julia Elliott, the author of beloved short story collection Hellions, novel The New and Improved Romie Futch, and the short story collection The Wilds, is participating in the panel Haunted Landscapes: The Supernatural in Southern Gothic Fiction on Saturday, October 11 at 11 a.m. in the Historic Camden Education Center, alongside other authors Nathan Ballingrud (North American Lake Monsters and Wounds: Six Stories from the Border of Hell) and Lee Mandelo (Summer Sons and The Woods All Black). Topics of this panel will include subverting genre expectations, blending psychological depth with speculative elements, and drawing on regional mythology to create narratives that are as emotionally resonant as they are chilling.
At 2 p.m. on the 11th, award-winning novelist David Joy joins the festival for a conversation on the complexities of modern Southern identity through the lens of his most recent work, Those We Thought We Knew, and his earlier novel, When These Mountains Burn. Known for his stark, lyrical prose and deeply human characters, Joy explores themes of race, rural poverty, family, morality, and place–capturing the contradictions and weight of life in the contemporary South.
And for those more intrigued in the realm of true crime, two of the biggest cases in South Carolina’s history will receive their fair share of attention. Valerie Bauerlein, a Wall Street Journal Reporter and Writer, is conducting a panel about her book The Devil at His Elbow: Alex Murdaugh and the Fall of a Southern Dynasty at 12 p.m. on the 11th, and at 4 p.m., catch Dick Harpootlian, a veteran of the Columbia courtroom, discuss his experience prosecuting Donald “Pee Wee” Gaskins and Harpootlian’s upcoming memoir about the ordeal, Dig Me a Grave.
For a full schedule of events for the two-day festival, visit the festival website at SouthernGothicFestival.com. The majority of the events are free to the public, including an opening street concert with Valentine Wolfe and Wasted Wine on the 10th at 7 p.m.
Camden’s Books on Broad to Host Author Talk & Book Signing for Kevin Sack, Author of Mother Emanuel with guest Camden Mayor Vincent Sheheen
A sweeping history of one of the nation’s most important African American churches and a profound story of courage and grace amid the fight for racial justice—from Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Kevin Sack “A masterpiece . . . a dense, rich, captivating narrative, featuring vivid prose . . . expansive, inspiring, and hugely important.”—The New York Times (Editors’ Choice)
“Race, religion, and terror combine for an extraordinary story of America.”—Eddie S. Glaude, Jr., bestselling author of Begin Again
COVER ART BY JONATHAN GREENE
Books on Broad will host veteran journalist Kevin Sack for an author talk and conversation with guest Camden Mayor Vincent Sheheen, followed by audience Q&A and a book signing of his new book Mother Emanuel: Two Centuries of Race, Resistance, and Forgiveness in One Charleston Church on Wednesday, August 13, 2025, 6pm at Liberty Hall, Revolutionary War Visitor Center, 212 Broad Street, Camden, SC, 29020. The event is free to the public. Books will be available for purchase at the event, or, in advance of the event, at Books on Broad, 944 Broad Street, Camden. The author will sign books following the program.
Few people beyond South Carolina’s Lowcountry knew of Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston—Mother Emanuel—before the night of June 17, 2015, when a twenty-one-year-old white supremacist walked into Bible study and slaughtered the church’s charismatic pastor and eight other worshippers. Although the shooter had targeted Mother Emanuel—the first A.M.E. church in the South—to agitate racial strife, he did not anticipate the aftermath: an outpouring of forgiveness from the victims’ families and a reckoning with the divisions of caste that have afflicted Charleston and the South since the earliest days of European settlement.
Mother Emanuel explores the fascinating history that brought the church to that moment and the depth of the desecration committed in its fellowship hall. It reveals how African Methodism was cultivated from the harshest American soil, and how Black suffering shaped forgiveness into both a religious practice and a survival tool. Kevin Sack, who has written about race in his native South for more than four decades, uses the church to trace the long arc of Black life in the city where nearly half of enslaved Africans disembarked in North America and where the Civil War began. Through the microcosm of one congregation, he explores the development of a unique practice of Christianity, from its daring breakaway from white churches in 1817, through the traumas of Civil War and Reconstruction, to its critical role in the Civil Rights Movement and beyond.
At its core, Mother Emanuel is an epic tale of perseverance, not just of a congregation but of a people who withstood enslavement, Jim Crow, and all manners of violence with an unbending faith.
KEVIN SACK is a veteran journalist who has written about national affairs for more than four decades and has been part of three Pulitzer Prize–winning teams. A native of Jacksonville, Florida, and a graduate of Duke University, he spent thirty years on the staff of The New York Times, where he specialized in writing long-form narrative and investigative reports, often related to race. He has also written for the Los Angeles Times and The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, and his work has appeared in The New York Times Magazine. He was a 2019 Emerson Collective Fellow at New America. A native of Jacksonville, FL, Sack lives in Charleston, SC, with his wife, Dina Sack. They have three children.
VINCENT SHEHEEN was born and raised in Camden. He was a member of the South Carolina Senate from 2004-2020 and was desk mates with Senator Clementa Pinckney on the Senate floor. He was also a member of the South Carolina House of Representatives from 2001-2004. Mayor Sheheen was elected to Camden City Council in November 2024. He holds a Bachelor of Arts Degree in Political Science from Clemson University and a Juris Doctor Degree from the University of South Carolina. Vincent is co-host of the popular podcast about SC politics Bourbon in the Backroom, and has published numerous essays, articles, and the book, The Right Way: Getting the Palmetto State Back on Track. Vincent’s newest book, A Concise Guide to South Carolina State Government, is expected to be released in late 2025. Sheheen and his wife Amy have three children and one grandchild.
BOOKS ON BROAD is an independent bookstore and coffee shop located in downtown historic Camden proudly serving SC roasted King Bean coffee and offering a broad selection of new, used, and collectible books. Books on Broad is open Monday through Friday 7:30 am – 6 pm, Saturday 7:30 am – 4 pm, and Sunday 9:30 am – 3 pm. Shop from the website 24/7 at www.booksonbroad.com.
REVOLUTIONARY WAR VISITOR CENTER is one of the nation’s newest regional and national attractions, the Center features the first permanent exhibit that tells the powerful story of the American Revolution, the Southern Campaign and South Carolina’s major role in turning the tide of the war. The Center is also the gateway to all Camden and Kershaw County have to offer – from historic sites and regional festivals to a multitude of events and activities. https://simplyrevolutionary.com
ERRATUM -- Selected Poetry Authors and Bionotes Transposed in Spring 2025 Jasper
In the spring 2025 issue of Jasper Magazine the authors and bio-notes for our selected poems were transposed. The poem Children of the Sun, though attributed to Li Hubbard, was actually written by Ivan Segura, and the poem Do Not Tell Me to Flee, though attributed to Ivan Segura, was actually written by Li Hubbard.
Both poems are printed and correctly identified below and will also appear in the fall 2025 issue of Jasper Magazine with the correct attributions. The Jasper Project sincerely apologizes to both poets for this error.
Do Not Tell Me To Flee
by Li Hubbard
This experiment in necrophilia
we call the South
is my home
Here I have debts to pay
trans people to love
fights to lose
ropes to loose
Dialects and state
lines cannot separate my veins
from the delta of blueish blood
The oaks take root in my marrow
the fronds blossom from my pores
the tides stain me red
Borders carved in human skin
a queasy commitment
so easily mistaken for butterflies
Placing my nakedness in the fresh
turned, spit
spotted soil
sinking into the mud
It is the most natural thing
we are so good at dying slow
down here
Li Hubbard is a trans writer, museum guide, and server hailing from Florida. He co-runs Queer Writers of Columbia, a LGBTQ+ collective of creatives building community around craft. Li loves to gab about art and the local coffee scene. Follow him on Instagram: @li.hubbardd | @queerwriterscolumbia
Children of the Sun
by Ivan Segura
They say we don't know
what we want
that we all come from
a faraway land
That we are brown
and speak in tongues
and are in places
we don't belong
We all arrive
for different reasons
We are here to expand
and to become
We come for work
and also love
We are here for fate
or just because
We are the children
of the sun
we roam around
all as one
this ancient land
to all belongs
We move with freedom
stay strong
Are we really a nation of immigrants?
I ponder
Are we not a nation of immigrants?
I wonder
We are the children of the sun
Where we are is where we belong.
Ivan Segura serves as the Director of Multicultural Affairs at the SC Commission for Minority Affairs. He is also the Executive Director of Palmetto Luna Arts, a non-profit organization fostering Latino arts and culture in SC. He has over 20 years of experience in community activism, arts advocacy, and grassroots leadership for Latinos in SC.
Al Black's Poetry of the People Featuring Ruth Nicholson
This week's Poet of the People is Ruth Nicholson.
I run into Ruth at all the best poetry events. Her unassuming, friendly, and soft spoken nature belies the respect she has earned within the poetry community. Her poetic voice conveys her observations and craft with a gentle, humble, economy of words that many of us wish we possessed. She is always welcomed with smiles and respect at journal and anthology release events. She is a gift to our community of words and I look forward to hearing her share her poems the next time we meet.
~Al Black
Ruth Nicholson became a South Carolina resident forty-five years ago after receiving her formal education in Pennsylvania and North Carolina. She worked for Historic Columbia Foundation, Lexington County School District Two, and finally, Richland Library. Ruth is a member of the River Poets writing group. Her poems have been published in Emrys Journal, Kakalak, Jasper, several volumes of Fall Lines: a Literary Convergence, and American Journal of Nursing, among others. A memoir essay appeared in Fall Lines X, and three of her poems are included in the new anthology Coast Lines. In 2024 Ruth received the Scotty Davis Watson Prize and the Forum Prize from the Poetry Society of South Carolina. She lives in West Columbia with her husband and an eccentric tuxedo cat.
Doctor’s Orders
Take your creaking joints and fallen arches.
March them up and down the hilly streets
in circuits of your neighborhood.
Maintain your vigor with a healthy pace.
Ignore stares from the “cool dude”
who nurses his first cigarette of the day
before he lolls with the first of many beers.
Years from now, if he lives that long,
he will trundle his aging flesh and bones
in the same shorts you wear, the same
supportive shoes and socks.
Bask in morning birdsong as you walk.
Inhale the dimming moon and climbing sun.
Exhale frayed ends of last night’s dream
and be your own best medicine.
Only the Children
An autograph rides the wind
on the underside of leaves.
Dew clings to its pen strokes.
If the sun shines, italics bloom.
Children find it etched
on the monarch’s chrysalis
and lips of daffodils.
It nests in the chambered nautilus.
No microscope brings it into focus.
It defies the graphologist,
frustrates the naturalist,
mystifies the scholar of runes.
Eyes open, they glimpse it.
Eyes closed, they feel
its letters rise to meet
their fingertips, like braille.
Even Lions
Watch and listen as our cat laps water
from her bowl, eyes half closed.
Even lions at a water hole
look and sound this innocent.
Paws that launch switchblades,
teeth that tear flesh
are the last things we think of.
We hear in the lapping
a ticking clock, the click
of knitting needles,
rain that gentles us to sleep.
We smile and keep our distance,
as if entering a church
where someone kneels alone.
Reading with Kristine Hartvigsen Coming Up April 5th
Reading with Kristine Hartvigsen
Apr 05, 2025, 6:00 PM – 7:30 PM
Greenville Center for Creative Arts, 101 Abney St, Greenville, SC 29611, USA
Kristine's work has been published in Fall Lines: A Literary Convergence, The Limelight, and State of the Heart. Muddy Ford Press published her first poetry collection, To the Wren Nesting, in 2012. Her recent collection — The Soul Mate Poems — was published last year by Finishing Line Press. She lives in Columbia, South Carolina, and her poetry was featured prominently on a mural-sized canvas on the old NOMA warehouse building in the Cottonwood Art Crawl on March 8.
A workshop with Kristine Hartvigsen titled Haiku and Other Short-Form Poetry will precede the reading from 4 - 5 pm.
Presented by
Poetry of the People featuring Brooklyn Brown
This week's Poet of the People is Brooklyn Brown.
Every year, two or three young poets meander into Cool Beans and adopt Mind Gravy Poetry as their home away from home. They are in love with poetry, but put off by the way they have been taught poetry; they believe the best poetry is from the heart - understandable and not obtuse.
Brooklyn is a bolt of light in a fearsome night and assures me that poetry is cradled in good young hands.
~Al Black
Twenty-year-old Brooklyn Brown is a student at U of SC and believes that art is activism. She practices this notion through her poetry. She hopes to be a voice for young people who are struggling with the ups and downs of early-adulthood while also confronting bigger world issues. A creative from a young age, Brooklyn often expresses the turmoil of her own adolescence in her writing. Brooklyn is inspired by the classic romantic and confessionary poets that came before her, and hopes to connect with her readers’ senses through concrete language and vivid imagery, believing that good poetry is not only understood, but felt.
Peeling Oranges
I split my finger
on a piece of paper
yesterday.
today,
you want oranges.
you enjoy the way
the pulp does glut
your shallow throat.
and if the consumption
should bring you pleasure,
I will peel and peel–
only stopping for a moment
inbetween, to wince
at the citrusy sting.
____
Question
I have a question—
for legislators who have
an obsession with oppression,
and teaching lessons
that put people in their proper places
assigned by the shapes
of the features on their face,
or the colors of
the skins
that they live in.
I have a question—
for the men in these positions
at the top of their systems,
I have question,
about my body,
about its most vital organ,
not my mitochondria heart,
but my ovaries, of course.
I think that they are art—
But, do their brush strokes
maim you?
because they paint a mirror image of
the same ones that
made you?
Is it self loathing or a hatred
for the woman who created the soul
that would grow to rule
the bones of a man so cruel
as you?
Is it because your mother put
her foot down
since your father was
never around?
Do you still feel the weight of
her on your little head
each night before bed
while you lay to rest
next to your wrinkling wife,
who you’d stab with a hunting knife
if the decision of that fatal incision
would not make you
look like a bad guy?
do you dream that
your work to earn
the respect of your daddy even
after he’s dead will pay
as well as the price of the
people you damned to hell,
because maybe,
in heaven you’ll throw a ball
back and forth and
and back and forth
with him?
and your miserable actions
will be worth
the poison of your politics,
because at least you remembered
to pray about it?
oh, and I have a question—
for the righteous and resolute;
if I don’t believe in the same god as you,
must I burn for the sins that
killed your savior?
must I adhere to the rules of a ruler
who I owe nothing to, just because
you say that’s what I should do?
are millions of us wrong just because
you will die on the hill
where you took a red pill
that told you you were right?
well, what if
my mother’s words
are my hymns,
and when I hear them
they give me breath
like my mind has grown a lung,
and I worship the earth—
because it is she
who is my creator,
I’ve been my own savior
since birth, and I crucified myself to stand
up straight and tall today?
Is it not good
enough for you,
that I am imprinted
on the opposite side
of your same copper penny?
Will you not rest
until I pass
your grueling test,
until you’re sure that
I’m a perfect copy
of your idealistic embossing?
I’m left deafened by your preaching
that drowns out children’s cries
who we could have helped
if you’d just be quiet, and listen
for one minute.
so my question is—
If you died today
would you die a martyr,
or a failure?
was your mission for goodness lost
under your hunger
to indoctrinate innocents?
Would Jesus be proud
of your mansion,
while hungry kids imagine
a fridge full of food
in a kitchen as big
as the one that your
god-honoring
family dines in tonight?
you make sure to lead
in saying grace,
but did you ignore
your teenage daughters’
pale face
as she stares
at her untouched dinner plate?
Do you thank god for the meal
that the help prepared,
and ask for blessings
before your son runs
to the bathroom, to hide
eyes full of acidic tears
because he fears to be
feminine, so feeling
feelings makes him scared?
I have a question—
for leaders who
don’t lead by example;
is it purpose or power,
that fuels you?
is it oath or ego?
that is my question.
____
Dreams
A river flowing through
my dreams,
taking pictures far
from me;
good and bad,
and in between–
they all float down
the angry stream;
until my mind is fresh
and clean,
and I wake up on my
sheets serene,
only dampened
by the feelings
that the erosion
left behind overtime.
I dreamt a dream
of better things,
and then I dreamt
I grew white wings
and flew too close
to a star, ‘till I burned
and turned
torched and charred.
Lard with color and
poignant plotlines,
I dream some dreams
of beautiful things–
that dense and darken
before I wake,
and then my memory
my dreams doth take.
____
TREPIDATION
The trepidation
of my twenties
is tilling over my
noisy nerves
which wont shut up
about my body,
or the boy
that i'm afraid
will get bored of it–
and I think when
I am an old lady
I’ll eat the pies
I bake instead
of giving them
away;
I’ll put extra cream
into my coffee cup;
I’ll write a book
for young people
to read;
I think I’ll smell
like nectarine–
and maybe I’ll learn
to play guitar and sing.
I think i’ll feed pigeons
by a fountain,
and climb
a big mountain;
just to say it’s
something I did;
I think I’ll mentor
a creative little kid.
I think I might frequent
local art galleries,
and be known by some
as “that quirky old lady”;
I think I’ll travel more,
with someone I adore–
I think I will make a lot
of soup out of peas,
that no one will like
to eat but me.
I think i’ll reach out to a friend
from high school
and spend more
of my summers
in a swimming pool;
I think i’ll wear
a cute swimsuit,
and ignore the way it fits
my herky-jerky divots.
I think I’ll start to pray;
not to god,
but to my mother, who
I wish could live forever
and always be there
to give me her best answers.
I think I’ll have children;
in the form of house cats–
and wear colorful
bucket hats.
I think I’ll care less
about what people
think, and I will finally love
all of my body;
because when I wrinkle
and begin to grey
I’ll thank my bones
for carrying me
every day–
even when my tattoos
begin to fade
I’ll still have stories
to tell the twenty-somethings,
as well
as secrets to take
to the grave;
and when I think
about my face
and how it might look,
in a few decades–
I smile at the picture
and wish that
I could hug her
she looks like me,
but softer;
she’s full of forgiveness
and laughter
she's a spitting image
of her golden mother,
she’s got paleing hazel
eyes like her father,
and the confidence
of her brother.
But I am her,
and she is me–
she is everything I can be
So I don’t have to wait
to heal my heart,
or create my art;
I think I just have to start.
Al Black's Poetry of the People featuring Xavier Khalil
This week's Poet of the People is Xavier Khalil.
A few months ago, Xavier showed up at Cool Beans for Mind Gravy, he sat quietly in the back, eventually, he shared on open mic and kept coming back for more. He made friends with the regulars and felt confident enough to have his own 30 minute feature.
Xavier is a kind and passionate poet with a voice that needs to be heard and I am blessed to have him in my creative life.
~Al Black
Xavier Khalil is a native of Atlanta, Georgia. He has been involved in the arts from the age of 8; participating in oratorical contests in elementary school. He moved to Beaufort, South Carolina to receive better education opportunities and lived with many family members while attending high school. Creative writing has been a lifelong hobby for Xavier, and more recently has found his love for poetry in 2023. The 22-year old's poetry reflects the essence of the Black queer experiences surrounding themes of spirituality, love, activism, and life's quarrels with grief and addiciton. These passions are further extended in Xavier's work through his podcast Choosing Joy and various social media platforms where he constantly advocates for humanity. He is an alumnus of the University South Caolina Aiken where he earned his Bachelor of Arts in Communicaiton with a minor in Sociology. Currently Xavier is working on his Master in Higher Education and Student Affairs degree at the University of South Carolina in Columbia."
“Meet Me”
Meet me at the coffee shop
Across the street from the Horseshoe –
Park by the meter
And, I’ll meet you at 2
This scene fits us
Is there an us?
Is it too early to discuss?
Maybe an idea we both want
I trust.
No matter I just want you –
I mean be with you –
I mean experience you –
Wait.
I just enjoy your company
Is all
How we engage
In conversation
And swoon as each other talks
Its cute
How we banter
Going on about psychology
(Stanza 5)
Sociology, biology
Theology, geography
Nationalities
Whew its…
And did you say
Music?
You be the R&B
To my neo-soul
You go On & On
Like Erykah’s songs
Making my soul glo
You’re “Golden” boy
Like Jill
Caught constantly
Giving me the feels
And chills and thrills
From Black history
To Mariah vs Whitney
Singin’ lil songs
Hearing you, “Say My Name”
Can we admit we’re
(Stanza 9)
The Children of Destiny?
After this please
Let there be more
Don’t let it end
Once you close your car door
After this
Come see me
Not in my visions or dreams
Comes see me, physically
Come see me, again, spiritually
Strip me emotionally
Nigga come see about me!
And allow me to be naked – fully
Sorry, if that’s too much
If, it was too strong
I’m sorry
I promise I wont do any wrong
Don’t run, please…
I’ll just be your friend
I know that love’s too scary
And we don’t want this to end
(Stanza 13)
So, I’ll just be your friend
May the love of our bond
Grow true
And organic
But until then…
Meet me at the coffee shop
Across the street from the Horseshoe
Park by the meter on Monday
And I’ll meet you at 2.
"Bridges and Railroads"
Driving across the Broad River Bridge
It’s so different now
So the same
So opposite simultaneously
Chocolate neighborhoods
Replaced by golf courses
Shops for mommas and poppas
No replaced by corporations
Because they bought someone
Reparations
Thanks to high taxation
Chocolate faces
Moved to other chocolate places
Across the bridge – 2 or 3 –
On the other side of train tracks
2 or 3
Only for suited giants
To do it again
Killing off the wildlife
Destroying their land
Mossy, ancestral trees
Collapse
No care for the significance
Removing black bodies
Further from themselves
Because you pull them
By the root
It’s now deer season
But the bullets aren’t hitting
The right young Buck.
The shooter is jailed
While the true hunter
Mounts the bodies on the walls
Using the black bodies
And the brown/red skin
As rugs and mink coats
As you dwell in a home
Erected in a plot of land
That was once their own
Ignorance of the beautiful
Culture and bodies that inhabit
Are encouraged
Looked at as anomalies
Oddities of black magic
and spirituality
Not realizing
These beings are
Slowly being ostracized
Tantalized by outsiders
Who see their existence
As profit
And the lost minds
Haven’t a clue of what to do
About it.
Displaced
Shoved into obscurity
In massive fish tanks
Of barren yards
And unstable mobile homes
Chocolate people
Are losing their way.
In their home
Didn’t think I’d see the day.
“Brown Boys Feel Fluorescent”
I make you feel like
A white boy?
Some safety
Visibility
Security
You adore from me?
I validate you
And give you innate freedom
In tandem
Denying myself that same
The right to exist
And be cherished
For the humanity
In your brown body
I make you feel
Like a white boy
Brown boy
I cherish
You make me feel like
Like a spirit
You make me feel like
Like a spirit
So big
Infinite
Free and confined
You give me space to be wild
You to have grand emotions
To obsess
To express
Display feelings
Be passionate
But, in making
Me feel my spirit
Makes me feel
Trapped in this human experience
I inherited
This one that you hardly
Acknowledged
This body you barely
Touch
This figure
That houses the very spirit
You freed
I make you feel
Like a white boy?
Not spoiled, but entitled –
Deserving.
Privileged.
You make feel like –
Like a spirit
Not holy; certainly not evil
Just too free
Too astral
Unfortunately
You only see that
The reinforcement of
Perfection
Not giving a human connection
I am guilty for this
I am merely a reflection
Of how you view
What is perfected
So in making you
Feel like a white boy
-protected-
You make me feel like Spirit
-easily neglected-
Picking and choosing
When to feel my presence
Yearning for me
But so displeased by
Your imperfection
My love you constantly
reject it
Oddly, I cannot be mad
At you
Because seeing my spirit
Means the “white boy”
In you wants to protect
Protect my pride
Protect my freedom
Protect my ambiguity
My duality
Protect me from your truth
Protect my vibrant spirit
From being dimmed by you
Brown boy
Blue bird
Look at your reflection
In the river
Let the water cleanse your feet
It’s not whiteness you feel
It’s a freedom you’ve been denied
The freedom that heals
A freedom I had no clue
I could even give
As I look
My spirit
Shines outside this skin
It glows outwardly
And vibrates through me
Within
Standing parallel
Across the street
We a re on
You and me
Living separately
The Spirit you see
In me
Is shared
We share it with Thee
So, I thank you
Thank you for helping me to see
Brown boy I made feel safe
Thank you for recognizing
My grandness
The protection
The freedom
The privilege I afforded
It didn’t make you feel “white”
It finally made things
Feel to a degree
Alright
And you important
Hand to hearts
Eye to eye
Soul to soul
Brown boys make
each other feel free
protected and safe
Brown boys dance
In the dark
In the nighttime
Becoming jovial
-effervescent-
Transcends them
To fluorescence
Brown boys made
Each other feel like glowing
Bright, white
Hues
I never made you
Feel like a white boy
I simply made you feel your spirit, too.
“It’s Foggy Outside”
It’s foggy outside
In these times
There are blurred lines
Where cars and worlds
Collide
It’s cold and wet
Out here
Be careful
Don’t slip
The weather makers are
Praying on your downfall
Our downfall
If you will
They want hit and runs
They want blame
They want pointing fingers
Stinging scars and burns
Cause by their flames
It’s foggy outside
Be careful walking
Through these low clouds
Be careful stalking
For your next meal
Stay low to ground
Look out for your neighbor
Don’t hurt each other on your prowl
In these times
Wanting to thrive
What a luxury to be
Alive
Right now we just survive
Until the sun dies
Behind the rain clouds
The sun still shines
But the time we once had
Is no longer on our side
Its of essence
And its precious
As the fog children
Walking in the midst
Of a global depression
It’s cold
It’s foggy
It’s rainy
It’s nasty
Barely sunny
It’s the time slipping
Down the road
And through our fingers
Please feel the hope
The faith
That still lingers
Don’t be fooled by
The occasional peak
Of sun during dark day time
Don’t let the warm day time
Dry up your inside
Don’t let confusion make
Your temperature rise
Be looking out the window
Because its foggy outside
Call for Literary Artists - Wine About It Anthology Series
The Wine About It Anthology Series is a collection of stories focused on resilience, identity, and community, highlighting diverse voices and experiences from across South Carolina. Each volume showcases the diverse culture of the state with local narratives, celebrating storytelling, culture, and social justice. Paired with unique wine selections that enhance the reading experience, the series offers an immersive, sensory connection between literature and wine.
This collaborative initiative brings together Lit Between the Wines, Liberation is Lit, and Uncut Gems Agency to curate a dynamic experience that fosters community engagement, education, and empowerment. Each business plays a crucial role in uplifting underrepresented voices while promoting social justice through storytelling. The series culminates in Wine & Vinyl: A Multidisciplinary Art Exhibit, where literature, wine, and visual art offer a celebratory experience that reflects the rich cultural landscape of South Carolina.
ESSAY -- A Legacy of Greens: Cooking Memories with Birdie and Betty Jean, By Marcum Core
Special to Jasper Online
photo by Marcum Core
I can’t look at a bunch of greens without thinking about my grandmother, Birdie Shivers, and my aunt, Betty Jean Carlisle. Both were incredible cooks, the kind who could turn humble ingredients into meals that made you feel loved and full in every sense of the word. Spending time with them in the kitchen was a privilege—and a lesson in patience, humility, and flavor.
My grandmother, Birdie, was the queen of efficiency. She ruled her kitchen with precision, and if you weren’t actively helping, she wanted you out of the way. Watching her cook was like watching a master at work: her hands moved quickly, expertly rinsing, and seasoning greens with an ease that only comes from decades of experience. There was no measuring—just a pinch of this, a splash of that, and somehow, it always came out perfect. I had a dedicated spot in the breakfast nook that allowed me to see everything, soaking up her techniques like a sponge. My favorite was when she would mix turnip and mustard greens. Tender greens was the term she used for that combination.
I have always appreciated the regional and familial nuances in soul food cooking. Birdie, hailing from Detroit, MI by way of Sardis, MS was from the school of stem removal and would talk about people left “All dem stems” in their collard greens. Perhaps that’s why she enjoyed mixing mustards and turnips because the stems weren’t so robust and the whole leaf could be used.
I always looked forward to being Aunt Betty Jean’s little helper in the kitchen. I was much younger when she looked after me, but old enough to help her shell peas and mix the cornbread batter. She’d hum a song while she was preparing the meal which typically (while I was in town visiting at least) included collards. The most rememberable thing about my Aunt Betty’s greens were how fine they were chopped. They were chopped before cooking and chopped even more after they were done cooking and not served with pot liquor versus my grandmother who left all of the liquid in the pot. Come to find the technique my Aunt Betty used is common in Eastern North Carolina, Goldsboro. I grew up eating their greens. Both are very different styles but with similarities. They both believed in removing the stems and cooking intentionally with love.
The smell of simmering collard greens was like an embrace. It filled the house and signaled that something good was coming. By the time dinner was ready, the greens were tender and infused with a depth of flavor that only slow cooking can create. They were served alongside cornbread, black-eyed peas, and whatever else was on the menu, but for me, the greens were always the star.
Now, every time I make greens, I think of Birdie and Betty Jean.
Their lessons weren’t just about cooking. They were about life: finding joy in the process, taking time to do things right, and sharing what you create with the people you love. Every pot of greens I make is a tribute to them, to their wisdom, and to the countless meals that brought our family together.
So, when I look at a bunch of greens, I see more than just a vegetable. I see my heritage, my family, and the women who showed me that food is love. And no matter how many times I make them, greens will always taste better when seasoned with their memories.
MIDIMarc, also known as MIDIMarcum, is a music producer and recording engineer from Hopkins, SC, with over 20 years of influence in South Carolina’s hip-hop scene. Renowned for his mastery of sampling, he has remixed albums by icons like Nas and Jay-Z, created tribute projects honoring Michael Jackson, The Notorious B.I.G., and Pimp C, and earned accolades such as Jasper Magazine’s 2018 Artist of the Year. A 5x Beat Battle Champion and creator of the instrumental series Prolific, he has collaborated with key South Carolina artists like Master Splnta and DJ Cannon Banyon, cementing his legacy as a pioneer and inspiration in the state’s hip-hop culture.
Join the Jasper Project and SCAA for a Reading and Launch Celebration of Southern Voices – Fifty Contemporary Poets Edited by Tom Mack and Andrew Geyer
By Cindi Boiter
Poetry and place come together beautifully in Tom Mack and Andrew Geyer’s (editors) new book, Southern Voices – Fifty Contemporary Poets (Lamar University Press) Which launched on October 1st on the campus of University of SC at Aiken, where Mack is a distinguished professor emeritus and Geyer serves as chair of the English Department. The two previously worked together editing the fiction anthology, A Shared Voice: A Tapestry of Tales (Lamar University Press, 2013), and have joined forces once again to bring us a new and intriguing look at contemporary poetry from the South.
“Because of the overwhelming success of that collection of paired tales, the folks at Lamar University Literary Press wondered if we could put together an equally attractive book of poems,” Mack says. Mack also edited Dancing on Barbed Wire (Angelina River Press, 2018) which Geyer co-wrote with Terry Dalrymple and Jerry Craven. “We knew from the outset of the multi-year project that we wanted to cover the whole South from Virginia to Texas, from Arkansas to Florida; and we thought that 50 would be the minimum number of poets (4-6 poems by each) that we would need to do justice to the complex geography and culture of this distinctive region of the country.”
South Carolina poetry aficionados will not be surprised by the list of distinguished contributors to Southern Voices, among them Jasper’s own poetry editor and inaugural Columbia city poet laureate, Ed Madden, along with Libby Bernadin, Marcus Amaker, Ron Rash, Glennis Redmond, and forty-five equally accomplished poets from across the region.
“Once we decided on how many poets to include in the book,” Mack says, “we divided the South in half. Because I had edited the South Carolina Encyclopedia Guide to South Carolina Writers (USC Press) and managed the USC Aiken writers’ series for over a decade, I volunteered to invite 25 poets from the Atlantic coast, the part of the South I know best. Drew (Geyer), a native of Texas and a member of the Texas Institute of Letters, focused on Southern states from Alabama to west of the Mississippi.”
The theme of “place” features prominently in this collection, Mack says. “It thus made sense to invite as many state and local poets laureate as possible since those individuals had already been selected by governmental entities to represent a particular locale. All of the Southern states have state poets laureate; and some states, such as South Carolina, have poets laureate who have been selected to represent cities and towns. Columbia, Charleston, Greenville, and Rock Hill, for example, have municipal poets laureate. Thus, we were expecting that most of the poems submitted by each invited poet would focus on place: physical, emotional, spiritual, or psychological. We were not disappointed.”
But the co-editors recognized early on that the representation of contemporary Southern poets looks increasingly different than in decades past, as it should. “From the very beginning of the process, we wanted to put together a book that reflected the changing demographics of the region, its growing diversity and burgeoning equality of opportunity. Thus, in choosing our invitees, we kept gender, ethnicity, and sexual orientation in mind,” Geyer says.
In his introduction to the volume Mack writes, “Perhaps no other region of this vast country is haunted more by the past. In the case of the American South, heavy lie the legacy of slavery and the specter of the Civil War. … Yet, the winds of change can be felt throughout the American South, due in large part to both a generational and demographic shift—the region is consistently being enriched by transplants from other parts of the country and other nations of the world.”
“This Southern Voices collection is a testament to how far we’ve come,” Geyer agrees. “The poets in this anthology are Black and white and brown, straight and LGBTQ+, native Southerners and northern transplants—a mélange of artists from across the Greater South most of whom have served as the poets laureate of their states and/or local communities. These are the poets whose work everyday folks living in the South chose to represent them. The diversity of voices that you’ll find in this incredible volume is reflective of the people who make the place what it is.”
Launch celebrations and readings for Southern Voices are scheduled throughout the state. The public is invited to attend the Columbia event, sponsored in part by the Jasper Project and the South Carolina Academy of Authors, from 6 to 8 pm on November 14th at All Good Books in Five Points. Poets scheduled to read from the collection include Ed Madden, Glenis Redmond, Libby Bernardin, and Ellen Hyatt.
A version of this article appeared in the Fall 2024 issue of Jasper Magazine - Available now throughout Columbia
Celebrate Hispanic Heritage Month by Supporting Local Hispanic and Latino/a Creators by Christina Xan
National Hispanic Heritage Month runs from September 15 – October 15 and highlights and celebrates Hispanic and Latino heritage and identity in the United States. Hispanic (those from Spanish-speaking countries) and Latin (those from Latin America) culture is rife with history that enriches the communities we dwell in. Columbia is one of these diverse spaces, and the art that emerges from this city, specifically, is inundated with a multitude of cultural perspectives. This Hispanic Heritage Month, Jasper encourages all patrons to seek out multidisciplinary art from Hispanic and Latino/a artists and to explore how the creators’ backgrounds affect their work. Don’t know where to start? Jasper talked with six Columbia-based artists about how their cultural identity affects their creative process. Learn about them and their work below.
Daniel Esquivia Zapata
Daniel Esquivia Zapata – Visual Artist
Describe the kind of art you make.
Daniel’s work explores ideas about historical memory, official historical narratives, and what he terms the politics of remembering. He does this through life-size figurative drawings that combine historical texts, the human body, plants, and animals to generate strong spaces that work as poetic imagery, probing the dynamics of narratives in history and historical memory. This represents an exercise not only of why and what, but also of how we remember, especially in societies with conflicting narratives, obfuscated historical memories, and legacies of colonialism. He uses a combination of traditional figure drawing techniques, liquid charcoal and fragmented print and hand-written texts to draw on several layers of mylar, creating life size drawings that combine representations of the human body, plants, and animals to create news bodies that work as metaphors for political bodies intersected by history, newspaper articles and archives. With these drawings Daniel seeks to unveil the "place of memory" within our bodies amid intersecting discourses, making tangible the essence of our collective past and present. His work has driven him to create images that replace the common container metaphor of memory with one that understands memory as something dynamic and interconnected; something alive, inhabited by ideas, narratives, and discourses that live, age, die (or are killed); something like an ecosystem of memories and narratives, and ecosystem that is inhabited by beings of texts.
Describe the role your cultural identity has in your work.
In Daniel's life, a multiplicity of narratives and multinational experiences has made him think deeply about the dynamics of discourse and narratives in our societies, especially as an Afro-Latino in the Americas. For Daniel, the intersection of different identities has profoundly influenced his work. His experiences as the son of a human rights lawyer and a social worker in a multiethnic and multiracial family in Colombia; as a victim of forced displacement from his hometown in 1989; as an Afro-Colombian who studied at a HBCU in the US South [Benedict College]; and as a citizen living in Colombia and grappling with the legacies and present realities of its civil war; these experiences have all presented points of encounter with the forces of history’s multiple faces—unofficial, alternative, contested, surviving—that build and situate someone’s identity.
Alejandro García-Lemos
Alejandro García-Lemos – Visual Artist
Describe the kind of art you make.
Alejandro García-Lemos is a visual artist based in Columbia, South Carolina and New Orleans, Louisiana. He holds a MA in Latin American Studies from Florida International University in Miami, and a BA in Graphic Design from the School of Arts at the National University in Bogotá, Colombia. His work focuses on social issues, mostly on aspects of immigration, sexuality, biculturalism, religion, and community. His works have been shown mostly in the Southeast. Alejandro is a former member of the National Association of Latino Arts and Culture (NALAC), as well as the founder of Palmetto & LUNA, a non-profit organization promoting Latino Arts and Cultures in South Carolina since 2007. Lately his work has been shown in Colombia.
Describe the role your cultural identity has in your work.
For this particular question I had to look up the exact definition of cultural identity … Cultural identity is a part of a person's identity, or their self-conception and self-perception, and is related to nationality, ethnicity, religion, social class, generation, locality, gender, or any kind of social group that has its own distinct culture. Therefore my cultural identity is omnipresent in my work, as I had mentioned many times before, I am three times a minority, I am Latinx, gay, and immigrant, how could you avoid those aspects as an intrinsic part of all your art?
Emily Moffitt
Emily Moffitt – Visual Artist
Describe the kind of art you make.
The type of art I create boils down to what I have the most fun with. I'm still trying to make my way in and have my foot in the door of the Columbia art scene! Like most Gen Z artists, I got into art from a young age via immense media consumption: video games, anime, cartoons, comics, and the list continues. As a result, the kind of work I create typically falls under the "illustration" category. I go back and forth between illustration and fine art, and sometimes I still think the distinction shouldn't even matter! As a recent college graduate who has now experienced the adulthood rite of passage that is working a 9-5 while still having time for hobbies, as long as I take even 10 minutes of my day to get my hands moving and draw something in my sketchbook, it's a successful day for me.
Describe the role your cultural identity has in your work.
The "fine art" I created started with a body of work that explored my heritage and connected to it more after my grandmother passed away in 2021, and I aim to continue it either by maintaining the "dreamscape" title or by starting a new collection. My goal in the fine art world is to create a body of work that I'm constantly thinking about, called "My Mother's Kitchen," since the closest ties I have to my Puerto Rican heritage stem from cuisine, my relationship with my mom, and the amount of time I spent growing up in and around the kitchen watching my mother make the recipes she grew up making with my grandmother. At this point, it's just a matter of me finding the time, and holding myself accountable, that's preventing me from following through! I do find that my mixed heritage sometimes feels like an obstacle when I do work, however, and that's an internalized hurdle I try to overcome when I create, too. Taíno symbology persists throughout my heritage-based work, and I wanted to also focus on the importance of my relationships with my mom and sister. My Puerto Rican heritage has been driven and shaped only by women in my life, and I wanted to pay homage to that, especially since my sister and I feel the same internalized obstacle of sometimes feeling "not Latina enough."
Claire Jiménez – Author
Describe the kind of art you make.
Claire Jiménez is a Puerto Rican writer who grew up in Brooklyn and Staten Island, New York. She is the author of the short story collection Staten Island Stories (Johns Hopkins Press, 2019) and What Happened to Ruthy Ramirez (Grand Central, 2023). She received her M.F.A. from Vanderbilt University and her PhD in English with specializations in Ethnic Studies and Digital Humanities from the University of Nebraska–Lincoln. In 2019, she co-founded the Puerto Rican Literature Project, a digital archive documenting the lives and work of hundreds of Puerto Rican writers from over the last century. Currently, she is an Assistant Professor of English and African American Studies at the University of South Carolina.
Describe the role your cultural identity has in your work.
My writing is very much influenced by the work of past Puerto Rican writers, especially the Nuyorican poets. I am thinking of Pedro Pietri's "The Puerto Rican Obituary" and the work of Judith Ortiz Cofer. I remember reading Silent Dancing and "The Story of My Body" for the first time as a young person, who had a hard time finding books by any Puerto Rican authors in the bookstore in the nineties. These texts were inspiring to me as a young reader, and they definitely shaped me as a writer.
Loli Molina Muñoz
Loli Molina Muñoz – Author
Describe the kind of art you make.
I write poetry and fiction. I have just finished my first poetry chapbook manuscript in English, and I also have a feminist dystopia novella in Spanish, both of them searching for a warming publishing house.
Describe the role your cultural identity has in your work.
Being born and raised in Málaga, Spain, I grew up immersed in both Spanish and English language thanks to literature, music, and pop culture, which deeply influenced my work. However, I have also lived in Coventry (UK), Wisconsin, and finally moved to South Carolina in 2013. For this reason, my work explores themes of identity, feminism, migration, and the intersections between cultures.
[ALMA] SPANISH
Querida madre:
Estos días pienso mucho en usted.
Ayer me acordé de su guiso de
carne y quise hacer uno yo.
No me supo igual.
Me faltaba el sabor añadido de sus
manos y el olor de su delantal.
Los niños dijeron que estaba muy
bueno. Yo les di las gracias y sonreí.
Dos lágrimas que se escaparon
disimulando para no ser vistas.
Tampoco vieron las dos cartas del
banco avisando del desahucio.
Les dije que vamos a pasar unos
días en casa de Alejandra.
Les hizo ilusión pasar un tiempo
con sus primos y eso me alivió.
Luego recordé aquella vez que
usted me dijo que eligiera mi
muñeca favorita.
Crucé el desierto de la mano de
Alejandra con la muñeca pegada
a mi pecho como un amuleto.
Aún conservo mi muñeca.
Aún tengo a Alejandra.
Voy a estar bien.
No se preocupe.
[ALMA] ENGLISH
Dear mother,
These days I think about you all the time.
Yesterday I remembered your beef
stew and I made one myself.
It did not taste the same.
It did not have that extra flavor from
your hands or the smell of your apron.
The kids said that they liked it.
I thanked them and smiled.
Two tears escaped trying not
to be seen by them.
They did not see the two eviction
letters from the bank either.
I told them that we are going to stay
some days at Alejandra’s.
They were happy about spending
time with their cousins and that soothed me.
Later I remembered that time
you told me to choose my favorite doll.
I crossed the desert holding Alejandra’s
hand and the doll stuck
to my chest like an amulet.
I still keep my doll.
I still have Alejandra.
I’ll be fine.
Don’t worry.
Giovanna Montoya
Giovanna Montoya – Ballet Dancer
Describe the kind of art you make.
I’m a professional ballet dancer, so my art is dance. Ballet is a theatrical art form that integrates music, dance, acting and scenery to convey a story, or a theme.
Describe the role your cultural identity has in your work.
My cultural identity represents who I am; a dedicated, driven, disciplined, strong woman, which stands up for what’s right, and never gives up. I am always aiming to move forward, trying to do better every day, even if it is little by little, and working hard to achieve my dreams and goals. These have been imperative assets to possess, that have helped me to become a professional ballet dancer with 15+ years of experience. Ballet is a beautiful but difficult art form, which requires a lot of time, sacrifice, effort, love, endless hours of training, and a great deal of discipline and dedication. I would never have become a professional ballet dancer if it weren’t for the commitment, dedication, responsibility, and integrity that my parents showed and instilled in me from a young age. Coming into this country as an immigrant it’s very difficult, and you have to work very hard to achieve success. That’s something my parents made very clear to me from the beginning, and they led by example. Always working hard, never giving up and excelling in their fields. My dad is a statistician for the Mayo Clinic. My mom is a Veterinarian doctor and was a University Professor in my home Country Venezuela. I’m so thankful for my parents and my cultural identity that has shaped me, and played a pivotal role in the person that proudly I am today.
Poetry of the People with Evelyn Berry
This week's Poet of the People is Evelyn Berry. Over a decade ago, led by Evelyn Berry, an inspired group of Aiken High School students would pile in a car and journey to Columbia to attend Mind Gravy Poetry. I am fortunate to still know several of them through the wonder of Facebook—and Evelyn continues to lead and soar above us all. Some day, we will say we knew and were energized by Evelyn Berry on her way up and be grateful for the experience.
-Al Black
Evelyn Berry is a trans, Southern writer, editor, and educator. She's the author of Grief Slut (Sundress Publications, 2024). She's a recipient of a 2023 National Endowment for the Arts Poetry Fellowship and lives in Columbia, South Carolina.
Self-Portrait at Nineteen
All summer, I worked shifts at Old Navy
& snorted molly from an iPhone screen
in the backseat of a car parked nowhere,
a happy heathen not yet grief-plundered.
Once, I was a boy unafraid to die.
I would swallow almost anything meant
to kill me if, at first, it got me high:
pills left over from surgery pilfered
from my parents’ medicine cabinet,
coffee cups of dark liquor, gas station
feasts, bounty of grease, sugar, cigarettes.
How else to parachute from the body?
Aliveness, this useless extravagance
I have wasted once before, but no more.
prodigal daughter
what I know of sin, i learned in the sty
amid the swine, slurped mud and called it wine.
femme-fouled boy, faggot-spoiled sacrifice
offered at the altar and abandoned.
forgive my reckless want, lord, to belong
as more than soiled sacrament, fat sow
knife-split to gorge the prophets of gendered
violence. prayer, in their hands, a blade.
what do i know of penitence, patience,
except once the lord sent frenzied demons
into a drove of blameless pigs to drown?
how did we decide which beast to slaughter?
lord, i too am an impure animal.
i left home a son, return a daughter.
Eos
After Mary Evelyn Pickering De Morgan
Once, the goddess of dawn cried out, forlorn,
her son cast into dirt beyond the walls of Troy,
Achilles’ sword drawn through his chest,
his soul gone, replaced with a feathered flock.
Her tears poured graceless as swans,
like a vase overflowing with morning dew
until grief bloomed new gardens.
Describe to me the weight of this.
Mourning replenishes the earth, ushers
Soil into rebirth, new river traced
from the boy’s doomed blue veins.
What is a song worth without its wound?
Let me, for once, taste paradise without the tinge of blood.
Let me glimpse the cusp of dawn without the flood of night.
The Decoy
After John Collier
To be painted femme fatale, condemned fatal:
a woman’s beauty is a dangerous deception
in the hands of a man who demands
to own her like a plucked rose.
Let me be the decoy instead,
damsel in undress, glinting
luminescent like a knife
bound to my ankle.
SCETV and USC Press Celebrates Jazz Legend Marian McPartland with Book Launch Event at Koger Center for the Arts
South Carolina ETV and Public Radio (SCETV), in partnership with the University of South Carolina Press, is proud to announce a special event celebrating the launch of Shall We Play That One Together: The Life and Art of Jazz Piano Legend Marian McPartland, a biography by acclaimed jazz historian Paul de Barros. The event will take place on Oct. 1 from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. in the Gallery on the second floor of the Koger Center for the Arts in Columbia.
This unique evening will feature live music from a jazz trio led by Mark Rapp of ColaJazz, light refreshments, hors d'oeuvres and a cash bar. Attendees will have the opportunity to meet author Paul de Barros, purchase signed copies of the book, and delve into the life and legacy of one of jazz’s most influential figures- Marian McPartland.
Paul de Barros, known for his extensive work in jazz, has crafted a compelling narrative that chronicles McPartland’s journey from the British novelty circuit to becoming a revered jazz pianist and the voice of jazz in America. Shall We Play That One Together: The Life and Art of Jazz Piano Legend Marian McPartland explores McPartland’s 30-year tenure on her NPR show, Marian McPartland’s Piano Jazz, where she introduced tens of thousands of listeners to jazz music through interviews and performances with legendary artists.
The event will also mark the kickoff of a new season of ColaJazz Presents, a series dedicated to showcasing the rich jazz culture in South Carolina, featuring the ColaJazz Trio.
Shall We Play That One Together? Book Launch and Jazz Celebration
October 1, 2024, 6:30 - 8:30 p.m.
The Gallery, 2nd Floor, Koger Center for the Arts, 1051 Greene Street, Columbia, SC
Free admission; books available for purchase onsite
This event is free and open to the public.
The University of South Carolina Press is a leading academic publisher, dedicated to advancing knowledge and scholarship through the publication of outstanding books across a range of disciplines, including history, literature, and the arts.
Al Black's Poetry of the People featuring Tre Fleming aka Poetré
This week's Poet of the People is Tre Fleming aka Poetré. Tre is an insightful poet and spoken word artist known professionally as Poetré. A multi-talented performer from Columbia; you should check him out the next time he hits the stage.
Poetré is a writer, comedian, poet, film producer, and podcaster from Columbia, SC. His works are inspired by his love of hip hop, mental health, social commentary, and self reflection. In 2024. He represented Columbia, SC as a part of the Tribe Slam team in the annual Southern Fried Poetry Competition in Florida, as well as competed in his first King Of The South Slam. He can be found on IG, and TikTok under @PoetreIsLife and for business inquiries at Poetreislife@gmail.com.
____
LIVING OUT LOUD
If I have to stand onstage and scream, I will.
Yes, my people have come a long way, but still.
This is about community, living in unity.
My country, my world, not just you and me!
I am a voice for the voiceless, ones not in the room
Ones who have passed on, and ones in the womb.
I am justice for those who feel like it's just us.
And my Tribe will fight, even if it's nobody but us.
We are a generation of speakers, activist, and thinkers.
Not longer waiting for the cue from our leaders.
We are about that action, standing on business
Waiting on the revolution to be televised?
This is the internet!
We want it instant.
We will put our foot on your necks, until you show us respect
No matter race, gender, religion, I need us to shout.
Cause no longer will the minority be quiet.
WE ARE LIVING OUT LOUD!
FACES IN THE STREET
The city is crowded, per usual.
Everyone busy in their own pursuit.
A homeless man asks for spare change, if possible.
A mother just got a call from her son in the hospital. A kid is lost.
He knows where he is, but not in life.
A man texts a woman that's not his wife.
Someone is late for their first day of work.
Just trying to make sure there were no wrinkles in his shirt.
Someone is just out for exercise.
Another person is smiling, but crying inside.
A couple is holding hands. They just got married.
A couple is holding hands. The wife just miscarried.
A girl scout is selling cookies, but people rarely stop.
A person is looking at a window of a store where they can't afford to shop.
A young teenager is looking for a place to stay.
The parents kicked him out because came out today.
A veteran is enjoying his first day home from war.
A lady holds her purse tight, cause she's been robbed before.
All these people around that I never get to meet.
Their stories untold. Just faces in the street.
BAD MEMORY
Remember when we first met?
It was on a day I'll probably forget.
It was raining,
Nope, it was sunny outside
Things get foggy as the days go by.
Remember that time we laughed till we cried?
Couldn't remember what was so funny, no matter how hard I tried.
Or how about that one trip you kept asking me to go?
I can't remember the name of the resort,
I just remember the snow.
Remember singing karaoke in front of everybody?
I forget what song we sang, but I remember you smiling.
Or when I tried comedy for the first time.
I remember you being so supportive, but what was the punchline?
Or what about the time we volunteered at the shelter?
I can't remember that one lady's name, but I'm glad we could help her.
I remember so many moments, I just forget some details.
I forget the exact words,
I even forget to make this rhyme.
So I'll make up for it some time.
I remember what is most important, not names, days, places, or what we wear.
I just ask that when you remember those times, don't forget that I was there.
HEAVEN
She looks like heaven
She's what angels sing about
She's what pastors scream and shout
She's my eternity
Cause being without her is hell to me
Those pair of eyes are paradise
And her smile cause from somewhere high
She's the reason why I sing
When she laughs, an angel gets his wings
On my mind, she's my halo
Her love is Gospel, cause she says so
Her voice makes me rejoice when I hear it
When I'm down, she's my spirit
She came from somewhere far above,
She's the world, she's my savior, she is Love
Everyone knows it, the choir, the deacon, the ushers, the reverend
I'll sacrifice everything,
Cause she looks like heaven
FIRST LOVE
The first time I fell in love was with a woman who loved other men before me.
Yet I was her first.
It took me a while to build myself up to meet her.
Even though she had fallen for me way before I could greet her.
See I was nothing but love.
I had to form into an entity from God before we could meet.
Because the pain that she went through to meet me was the gift with no receipt.
The first woman that held me in her arms was the first woman I loved.
I didn't pick a mother.
I was a choice she made and planned for.
And she prepared me for the women I would love.
What she did was traumatized me from light skinned girls!
Not, I'm just playing.
She taught me what love was through how she loved me and my siblings and to how she loved strangers.
She showed what caring about someone means in the late night phone calls, the 2 am Emergency room calls, one call from jail, the cosign on a student loan, the "hey I love you" texts at 11:42 on a Tuesday just because.
She taught me how to walk. Walk away from a fight that you don't need to win, walk away from a toxic relationship, walk away from a lie, and walk away with my head held high.
She taught me how to talk. Like literally talk. I could read before preschool. I am able to articulate what I want, how I want, to who I want. No just talking. She taught me how to speak. She taught me how to say something.
She taught me unconditional love.
She taught me was hustling was.
She taught me how to save.
And who not to save.
She never pushed my father out of my life.
She proved she'd never disrespect my wife.
I can never thank her enough.
And even though the roads been rough,
She's still my first love.
Poetry of the People featuring Amanda Rachelle Warren
This week's Poet of the People is Amanda Rachelle Warren. I met Amanda about ten years ago when she appeared at Poems: Bones of the Spirit with her poet, colleague/partner in life, Roy Seeger. She is a delightful and engaging read and an even better listen. She and her husband were recently included in Southern Voices 2024/25, Fifty Contemporary Poets.
-Al Black
Amanda Rachelle Warren's work has appeared in Tusculum Review, The Carolina Quarterly, Appalachian Heritage, Anderbo, and the Beloit Poetry Journal as well as other journals. Their chapbook Ritual no.3: For the Exorcism of Ghosts, was published by Stepping Stone Press in 2010. They are the 2017 recipient of the Nickens Poetry Fellowship from the South Carolina Academy of Authors. Their first full-length collection, Rituals for to Call Down Light, was published by Finishing Line Press in Spring 2024. They teach at the University of South Carolina Aiken.
____
Solus
1.
Rain knocks pollen from the air.
Everywhere it hits: an o of yellow neon.
Everywhere it runs: a spot of clean smooth, nothing.
2.
Nothing wakes me.
Not the warning sirens,
not the loud rumble, not the flash
of light outside the window.
The rain dampens everything with a soft hush.
I dream of water. Of the open window,
drops swelling the wood in its sash,
wrapped tight in my pink comforter,
the rain hits my upturned face,
and I pray the way a child prays,
though I know how pain cuts the self into paper dolls.
The light through the window does not wake me.
I am shielded by rain.
3.
In this dream I am crying.
In this dream I am always crying.
What never happened will keep
never happening.
4.
I am tired. The rain does not stop.
I want to sit in the closet and cover myself in wool sweaters.
I want to wash and dry everything in the house.
I want a cup of tea, so I make one.
5.
He and I are, he and I are. A dirty lie.
He and I. The window cracked to let the rain in.
Drops pattern the left shoulder of my jacket;
fall with the weight of blossoms.
The rain makes me want to smoke.
Everything looks so clean. I want to
dirty it up. Smack it around a bit.
I drive. I gnash my teeth at the car in front of me.
Move motherfucker. Jesus Christ.
The smoke tastes like a bad idea. I want more.
I put my palm up to the sky, lick the pool that gathers there.
Angle my wrist. Roll my eyes and pray,
loving the syllables of submission.
Lord, I will do anything. Anything
you want Lord, anything. I will do anything:
I am stretched thin
I am not in a forgiving mood.
Something is coming for me, scratches towards me,
rain seeps through it, threatens,
wants me emptied, ready to fill again.
Tenure Track Appointment
By the time I print the directions to who knows where, they're already memorized. I've overlayed the map on the overlay of my brain. I've run through the turns and gauged whether I or Google know better.
I know better. But today I've nowhere to go. I wait. There's something I should probably be doing, but what is it? Someone tell me.
It is Tuesday and my husband is divesting the blueberry bush of its blossoms. It stands there in naked glory. If we pinch back the fruit this year the bush will grow fuller. I want to run.
This fall we'll be fruitless. And we'll feed the pecan trees. And we'll see how tall the tea roses he has gentled back from nothing more than a green stub grow. And should we wait on the strawberries too? We ask, and I imagine my teeth full of small seeds. Pick a direction. For fuck's sake.
Next year will be better, tomorrow will be better, has been my motto for so long. I'll just have to work harder. If I just work harder. Then I can rest. Then I can get back to that creek- side flecked with mica so the shore shines in sunlight. Then I can learn more complicated stitches so the scarves I knit for Christmas look less like a desperate attempt to offer something of worth if not value. Then I can figure out what everyone means by self-care. Who has time to put their oxygen mask on? I'm gasping here.
When the first real paycheck of my life arrives, I will buy a shirt not on sale to remind myself that the body exists, that it must be fed in many ways. Ways that are not cookies bought without coupons; save a dollar. Ways that are not just words.
If the inkwell runs dry, we fill the well. We dig deeper into the substrate, look for the water table. Here it's all sand that doesn't hold. Every time my husband mixes good dirt into the raised beds, the trees encroach, and the digging is harder. Some summers the tomato leaves crisp in the hard sun and offer nothing. Sometimes there is blight. Sometimes. Sometimes. Some.
Next year, maybe, I can keep my fucking hands off my fucking face like my mother says to and stop picking. Stop damaging myself because there's nothing wrong: food on the table, internet too. I can stare half-asleep at puppy videos, glut myself on other people's recipes and how-tos--never lift a finger. Next year, I'll paint the risers on the stairs. Each step a lighter blue so it looks like I'm rising with them.
And we'll do something about that railing, right? So many coats of thick cheap paint rounding the edges of good wood. But I haven't even refinished the cabinet I bought last year. I haven't even hung the pictures in the hall because first the hall needs painting and before that we've got to spackle the seams and make decisions. Hopefully not wrong ones. But paint is cheap, my husband says. Whatever decision you make it's fine. And “it's fine” is not meant as apathy. Don't tell me what I mean.
Maybe instead, I'll run...map each road from here to where with a good pen on blank newsprint rolled across the hood of my car like it's already full of someone else’s' directions. Fishcamps. Right of ways. An exclamation point in thin black ink where the cartographer suddenly realized that wayfinding isn't a competition. A circle near Level Church because that's where the local radio station cranked CCR's "Lodi" and where some ghost whispered the lyrics by heart through the speaker's rough crackle.
In two years, the lowest branch on the pecan tree by the front gate we do not use, will touch the hundred-year-old house it took us 20 years to afford.
There's a map to two years from now that I have neither printed nor read. But “the man who plants the date palm…” some wise jackass once said.
Tomorrow, I'll convince myself to stay until the goddamn blueberries arrive. Right now, my hip hurts. Right now, my hair is a mess. Right now, I am afraid to get in the car because I don't know if I'll stop.
In the fall, I will move into my second-floor office and worry about birds throwing themselves suicidally against the windows that do not open, and I will wonder if the smell of my bare feet will carry to the faculty office next door, or should I need a shawl to cover my arms because I've heard the offices are cold, and I am disgusted by the idea of a fucking shawl of all things nesting in my brain.
Already this is changing me. Jesus. What will it mean to not be angry? What will it mean to not humble myself before myself? What would it mean to think I somehow earned something? I hope I don't know. I hope I never know. And that this doesn’t mean that this right here is as good as it gets.
The Dead are the Worst
Oily coffee from the gas station because
why not stay up all night?
The dead rattle on while I try to sleep,
so I rise, pick a road, ride it out, I guess.
Rain makes the sodium lights hiss like a directive:
Shut your mouth. Danger. Drink up. Remember.
The root of vulnerable is wound.
Suicides are speaking from the tree line.
Something haunts my oil pan.
I keep the radio low.
So the dead don’t surprise me.
So I can still write them off as interference.
The laughter of one gone brother leaves trails on my eyelids
like the trail of reflectors in the side view.
His memory is scar like the road is scar. How?
Like the car is hot metal, machine. Facts.
Brake dust darkens the seam of his pockets. Wait.
The dead lie through the tinny speakers. Below the wah-wah.
Tonight, one is explaining the afterlife as matter-of-fact
as baseball plays beneath the chorus. How I’m
stuck in the middle with you.
This car feels like a church in disrepair.
The chorus likes to point out
the things I already know. Jokers to the right.
I drive to the top of the ridge to make things clearer and fail.
I try to find some direction in the mid-station static,
where the dead hiss and crackle their EVP. I find
one word: Sincere. Piercing, and loud. Then, Stupid.
Well, fuck you too.
I’m down to a quarter tank.
The moon is completely gone.
Which of the dead is saying Break a leg, boys?
Which is just repeating sorry?
One of them slips his foot on the gas beside mine,
in a voice all slick with temptation says:
We could really make this sucker fly.
Brother, You Don’t Even Know
In his wallet, he carried
a stack of business cards: coal black, no
text, no nothing, on either side. We
in our confusion, passed
them between us, forgetting
momentarily, that Uncle Hugo is
what we quaintly call "gone."
We will try to ignore the symbolism
of cards that convey nothing
found in the pocket of our dearly
departed. Dear Gertie holds
the cards to the light
expecting some meaning to shine
through the coal black dark.
Cousin Ansel wonders silently if
this is all a consequence of war,
some trauma never pinned to language.
Shake before using,
read the poison bottle
Uncle Hugo slit
his throat with.
The note in his pocket,
jammed beneath
dusty peppermints, read:
forget the cognac, I didn’t think
this was a kindergarten.
Uncle Hugo would have
rather died like a wind-chime,
clunk-clunk, in the linden tree
which grows nothing but shade,
but someone, perhaps Darling Frieda,
perhaps Little Hannah, returned
the step ladder to the shed and for once
locked it.
Nothing is ever where it should be.
Except, perhaps, Uncle Hugo
sprawled casual and cold in the pantry
in his good brown suit.
Blood congealing around the jars
of blueberry jam Great Aunt Delilah-Jean
so patiently canned wishing some small
summer sweetness spooned, come winter,
over her award-winning buttermilk biscuits.
Paul will grab the mop.
When the sweet, baby-headed
undertaker comes to lift
Hugo's stiffening body,
Hugo’s false teeth will clatter
to the ground and never be found.
Hugo, a tough nut, never cracked
a smile once he, what we quaintly call "returned,"
from the war, which he never did.
He told Aoife once that his dreams
were filled with jam-thick blood.
He told Aoife that once, when Aoife was small.
He never smiled. But we hope
he’ll have gold teeth in heaven to do so.
After Die Brücke (1959)
No Peach Pie in Barstow
On Coolwater Lane my phone goes dead. Over 3,000 miles
on a single charge because I don’t talk much that way.
I just want to sink into the small kidney-shaped pool
at the Motel 8 and wash the day from me. Five fights
in fifty miles, my co-pilot finding fault in everything:
sky, mountains, other drivers, douchebags from Havasu
hauling jet skis and trophy wives, the places we stop,
the places we don’t, the distance left to go.
The pool is closed, chained tight. It is sunset—
yellow ball of sun sinking behind the Pinos,
behind the Tehachapi, on the other side of Mojave. She
goes to bed, sprawls and scowls.
I lean on the aluminum fencing looking towards Calico,
where I would go were I alone. I wonder how far
I could get without her noticing
that I am really, truly gone.
There is a glass bottle of peach Nehi rolling in the floorboard
where it has been rolling for nine days. Picked up from a
peach pie stand on the Ace Basin Parkway in South Carolina.
I have brought it this far. And there’s not a peach pie in sight
anymore. Not a one. For the first time, I miss my actual, physical home.
I unbraid my hair, bleached by the sun so light in spots it is like gold, release
shed strands to the hot wind along the National Road,
proof I was here wishing it were beautiful.
On the Way to Needville
I drive to the coast and stare at the gulf for a while.
From the granite outcrop, that stays the wear of tide,
I see the edge of something which is not a horizon.
Behind me oil derricks pump the past up, burn it away.
Beyond the breakers, platforms rise like small angry cities.
I am a small, angry city unto myself. Small and angry
and staring at the grey water like it isn’t a foreign body.
I am thinking how this is not the body I would build for myself.
But one that feels the speed of the earth I am cemented to.
I get in the car. This is pointless. I’m thinking
I could drive for days with no one passing me. I wouldn’t
even have to say my name aloud to myself. If I didn’t want it.
There’s nothing but endless Texas fences fencing nothing but scrub.
It is pointless, the way I move toward homesickness,
writing “I should have taken you with me” on postcards
addressed to some old self. We need to stop lying
about being comfortable when nothing fits this skin of skin
that holds us to the whiplash ground. The lean trees grow
twisted in the salt wind, they grow twisted in the flatlands,
they grow twisted in the deep imaginary woods I imagine I came from.
We could be anywhere and not belong. We could be everywhere.
And road burnt we’ll always find our way here, or somewhere the same.
Miles to Badaxe
Everyone in Birkenstocks, no one in moccasins.
The weather is unseasonably warm.
Corpses of fish flies heap in the sills.
Lake birds preen their fat bellies.
Everyone dusting the calcium chloride from their blue jeans
and reaching for the cooler between this town,
and that town, and that corner bar,
and party store and grab another cold one
because the green of the fields and the green
of the trees is flying by like too much goddamn green.
And the green mile markers tick higher, northing,
with the green names of German street signs
and the green moss on that Bavarian-gabled wreck
of a ruin of a house on North. And there’s the green water,
and the green shore of Canada, and the green of your shirt,
and “someone must really like green” the realtor said once
to my husband's German father who is chopping
back green branches in his green pants and green
shirt and green socks and Birkenstocks,
and I’m just glad the axe is dull, so he won’t chop off his toes.
One Book Winner Cassie Premo Steele Leads Community Discussion on Her Novel Beaver Girl
On Tuesday, August 27th, Cassie Premo Steele will offer insight into her 2023 novel Beaver Girl during her author’s talk at All Good Books (734 Harden St).
The Jasper Project, in conjunction with One Columbia, and All Good Books, announced Steele’s novel as the selected community reading for the 2024 One Book project earlier this year.
One Book was first adopted by Columbia in 2011, modeled after the One Book, One Community project that started in the Seattle public library system in 1998. The goal is to highlight literary art by South Carolina authors and to emphasize a sense of community around storytelling.
Beaver Girl is “set against the backdrop of a post-pandemic and climate-collapsed world” as it follows 19-year-old Livia through a journey with a beaver family in Congaree National Park. The story both reveals the unique role of beavers in the world’s ecosystem and the “redemption, resilience, and interconnectedness of all living beings.”
Next week’s Community Book Discussion will give readers of the book a chance to pick Steele’s brain and interrogate the themes of the story. Even locals who have not had an opportunity to read the book can take advantage of the evening to get to know a local author and learn more about this community-oriented project.
Jasper talked with Steele ahead of the event to find out just why this event is so vital—both as part of this project and beyond.
JASPER: Why does this discussion matter to you as an author?
STEELE: For the past five months, the 2024 One Book Project has hosted events giving people the opportunity to read and learn about the themes in Beaver Girl. I’ve led workshops on beaver ecology and ethics from Congaree National Park to Oregon and Washington State. I’ve engaged in panel discussions about the novel with beaver scholar Emily Fairfax online and a host of scholars and activists here in our community at the Nickelodeon Theater. And I’ve given classes on writing “the code of the water way” to writers and science educators from across the states of Oklahoma and South Carolina.
Tuesday’s discussion, though, will be a homecoming, returning back to the local bookstore where the Jasper Project, One Columbia for Arts and Culture, and All Good Books chose Beaver Girl for this year’s community reading selection. And as the characters Livia and Chap learn in Beaver Girl, there’s no place like home.
JASPER: Why might people want to get a behind the scenes look for this book specifically?
STEELE: The community book discussion will be an opportunity for people to share stories about their fears about environmental disasters and the losses the pandemic and political upheavals have caused — themes addressed in the novel— but also their [positive] experiences with the natural world, their strategies for self-care and connection, and their hopes for a future where we enjoy the abundant richness of diversity in our human and more than human communities.
JASPER: Why should people take the time to meet local artists?
STEELE: We have a rich, diverse city filled with creative people, and we live in a unique biosphere region that is unlike anything else on earth. The book shows us how we can learn to live together in harmonious ways — and what can happen if we do not.
JASPER: Why should the community be excited for this event, specifically?
STEELE: In the end, Beaver Girl is really a book about family and community. Who do we love? How can we learn to trust again after great trauma? What members of our community need care, and how can we be open to communicating with those who are different from us? The moderator of our discussion, Ruth Smyrle, took care of my stepdaughter when she was a baby, so there’s an element of family woven into the event itself. I hope people will feel that reading and discussing Beaver Girl gives them an opportunity to feel part of a beautiful and diverse community.
The Community Book Discussion will be Tuesday, August 27, from 6:00pm—7:30pm at All Good Books.
If you can’t make it on the 27th you can also meet Steele at one of the following events:
Monday, September 9 at 6:30-7:30 PM - Queer-Themed Book Discussion with Cassie Premo Steele, Author of Beaver Girl, Moderated by Maggie Olszewski, Queer Poet and Employee at All Good Books, to be held at The Hoot, 2910 Rosewood Drive, Suite 1, Columbia SC
Saturday, September 7 at 10 AM-12 PM - Summer Forest Journaling with the Author of Beaver Girl and Earth Joy Writing at Congaree National Park : Free but space is limited. Register here.
Tuesday, September 17 6:00-7:30 PM - All Booked Up, the S.C. Sea Grant Consortium’s Coastal Reading Club for formal, non-formal, or homeschool educators, discussing Beaver Girl. Online. More info here.
Sunday, September 22 at 3:00-6:00 PM - ONE BOOK 2024 Round-Up Party and Potluck Dinner with BYOB. Music, Art, DJ, Poetry, Cozy Conversations and Hugs! One Columbia Co-Op, 1013 Duke Avenue, Columbia, SC
Al Black's Poetry of the People with Ellen Malphrus
This week's Poet of the People is Ellen Malphrus. Ellen is a vibrant force in South Carolina's literary community as she links the present with the past. A former student of James Dickey, and is a fierce warrior and advocate of the literary craft.
I am still waiting for the honor of hosting and sharing the mic with her at an event.
-Al Black
Ellen Malphrus is author of the novel Untying the Moon (foreword by Pat Conroy). Her collection Mapmaking with Sisyphus was a finalist for the 2023 Marsh Hawk Press Poetry Prize. Publications include Atlanta Review, Chariton, Weber: Contemporary West, Poetry South, James Dickey Review, Blue Mountain Review, Natural Bridge, Southern Literary Journal, William & Mary Review, Fall Lines, Yemassee, Haight Ashbury Review, Catalyst, Without Halos, and Our Prince of Scribes. She is a professor and Writer-in-Residence at USC Beaufort who divides her time (unevenly) between the marshes of her native South Carolina Lowcountry and the mountains of western Montana.
____
Mother Emanuel
for Reverend Clementa Pinckney, Reverend Sharonda Coleman-Singleton, Mrs. Cynthia Graham-Hurd, Mrs. Susie J. Jackson, Mrs. Ethel Lee Lance, Reverend DePayne Middleton-Doctor, Tiwanza, Kibwe Diop Sanders, Reverend Daniel Lee Simmons, Sr., and Mrs. Myra Singleton Quarles Thompson
In her custodian’s closet the big
squeeze handle bucket
sits on its rollers, weary and dented,
stained past judgment day
when the wash water went
pink to red to crimson
with each faithful swath
across the solemn floor
and anguish
flowed through city pipelines
down the river
out to sea,
mingling with millennia of
mopped up blood—
ensanguined taint of senseless history.
We bow our heads, as nine cannot,
in awe of a
congregation who chose compassion.
Chose peace—
lest Charleston roil up in
hot black waves of wrath.
As surely it could have.
As some say it should have.
Dozens of unassailed steeples
rise above the peninsula canopy—
yet the grace of but one
makes this the
Holy City.
~
Founding Father
As you gallop
through the park
in granite stillness
children stretch from playground swings
toward the cloud-capped roof of innocence—
expecting to break the sky
if they spring out far enough.
And even if they land in earthbound sneakers
they have traveled farther
than your stone horse will take you
ever again.
A child’s rein might lead away from
this block of town square immortality
but they are busy
and don’t come close enough
to notice
your green streaked face
or hear the echo
in your bloodless veins,
Hero.
They don’t know that
you die again
as they squeal in sunlight
and still more
in the sharp of night—
when floodlights point
clear and cold.
~
Intermission
So you pitch a blue tent
in the field out back and
carry in enough booze
to pour yourself out,
prove you are alive
or not.
And you must be alive because
you are unfit to sleep in the house—
because you would lie in the dirt but
you’re not drunk enough to stand
the mosquitoes.
Who cares about the snakes.
You must be alive because
the knife bolts you
when you find it
in the sleeping bag—
because it’s the trap
you want to kill and
when you slash the top of the tent
the stars step back.
And you laugh.
That happens to you.
You, who must be alive because
you’re not watching yourself
wander
numb
by the river—
because that’s you, laughing.
Crying.
Crying when you remember
it is your mother who’s dying—
not you.
Live guilt blossoms
because you would even consider
stealing the stars
from yourself
when soon there will be so much darkness.
And they are fragile, the stars,
despite how they sometimes slice you.
Yes, you must be alive because
look at you scraping
labels from the empty bottles
and slinging them
to the recycle pile—
because you pick up the knife
and wonder where you put
the duct tape.
Nobody dead would do that.
~
Conjure Woman
Maiden, I have called you. Enter.
Closer now, and fade the lamplight.
I have watched you
in the nighthawk alley
aching alone in the stillness. But
in that courtyard news will never come.
Bound and bent they keep
him, far from the reaches
of your ever listening.
Yet his cries mingle in the pale wind,
and I hear them every nightfall.
I will tell you where to find him,
if you choose the dread and desert.
Only then can you begin to know that
nothing stands but dark. And
light bends to make the night more seemly.
They will tell you
white and white and white
and never stop. They will tell you
that but cannot keep you.
Ride in distance
through the furied sunset
past dahlias trailing
wildly across black dirt.
When silver separates the thunder
branch off at the thistle tree
and listen.
And if you can bear it, from
there you can hear the world.
Then you will find him.
Then you can know
why they tremble in the splintered twilight
and would sooner tear their hearts than say
that
I am of the other wonder.
~
Communion
The happy situation of a
notebook filled with lines—
no matter how poorly or
well placed on the page,
one following the next,
written here by me
or there by you
as we carefully
crashingly
longingly
lovingly
try to tell it
like it is,
was, will be.
Try.
We hold the pen and
roll our fingertips while
trains insist on distant tracks
and years bend over edgewise.
From time to time we walk away
to refill the larders
of life
but we always come back to them.
Words.
I didn’t think of you there
with your pain and tenderness
while I slow danced and
shimmied with my own.
But you are so clear to me now,
leaning over your cluttered desk
or propped in a bed of pillows.
I have wishes for you—
to finish drafts
and publish work
and catch every train
your heart sends you.
And when I take up my pen
for the first mark of the day
I will raise a glass in your honor
whether I remember to lift it or not.
The South Carolina Writers Association Storyfest 2024
The South Carolina Writers Association will host its annual conference, 2024 Storyfest, Sept. 27 through 29 in Columbia, featuring more than a dozen acclaimed authors, agents and editors.
The event, to be held at the DoubleTree by Hilton, will include talks and classes by writers from South Carolina, Georgia, California and New York, including Lynn Cullen, national bestselling author of “The Woman with a Cure” and “Mrs. Poe;” Grady Hendrix, screenwriter and author of “How to Sell a Haunted House” and “The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires;” and Tiffany Yates Martin, author of six novels and the how-to book “Intuitive Editing: A Creative and Practical Guide to Revising Your Writing.”
Other features of 2024 Storyfest will be masterclasses, free talks, panels and keynotes addresses, manuscript critiques, craft classes, and meetings with sought-after editors and agents, including Andrew Geyer, the award-winning author or co-author of 10 books and editor of SCWA’s literary journal, The Petigru Review.
Other speakers include award-winning South Carolina novelist and short story writer Scott Gould; Southern Indie Bookstore bestselling author Mindy Friddle; Columbia poet laureate Jennifer Bartell Boykin; New York Times noteworthy author Cinelle Barnes; military science fiction and post-apocalyptic writer Alex Rath; and screenwriter and producer Alan Roth, a winner of the prestigious Nicholl Fellowship Award in Screenwriting.
Some of the South’s top publishers also will attend, including Arcadia Publishing, Palmetto Publishing and the University of South Carolina Press.
Registration is open with early bird registration fees for the full three-day conference of $250 for members and $325 for nonmembers; those fees will increase by $30 on June 16, so register early to save! Student registration for the full conference is $140. A one-day ticket for SATURDAY SESSIONS ONLY is available for $195. Masterclasses, manuscript critiques and query pitches will be available for additional charges as add-ons to your registration. For full details go to 2024 Storyfest. If you are not a member of SCWA, join now to enjoy the member rate for Storyfest along with other SCWA benefits. Membership is $75 annually; go to Join Us. (Be sure to renew if you haven't already!)
The hotel rate is $169 (plus taxes and fees) for 1 king or 2 queen beds. For reservation information, go to the 2024 Storyfest main page.