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.

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.

Al Black's Poetry of the People with Katie Ellen Bowers

This week's Poet of the People is Katie Ellen Bowers. Katie is a wonderful Upstate poet. She is a delightful read and a wonderfully entertaining poet to hear recite her work. She is a Charleston native now residing in Heath Springs, SC. 

-Al Black

Katie Ellen Bowers is a Southern poet and educator living in a small rural town with her husband and daughter. Her poetry can be found in several literary journals and magazines such as Kakalak, Qu Literary Magazine, and Sky Island Journal. She has been nominated twice for the Pushcart Prize for poetry. She is the author of the poetry collection This Earthly Body (Main Street Rag, 2024). 

Clippings

This morning, I trimmed my daughter's fingernails,

clippings of her growth throughout this week and days

past. Uneven crescent moons—stained and sodden from

sinking her fingers into the inkwells of earth and sky—fall

to my lap, and we speak of yesterday and tomorrow and

of today: her basketball game, fried tofu with fortune

cookies for lunch.

This afternoon, I trimmed my mother’s skin from her fingers,

clippings and peelings from the ring, pointer, and thumb.

Flakes of nameless shapes rest on my lap, as my own

fingers, nervous and nimble, pull a piece of skin away as easily

as petals fall when the summer’s heat has become too heavy;

the sebaceous glands of sweat and oil no longer soften

her skin, and we speak of nothing, the only sound the

click of nail clippers, the heaviness of our breath.

On the Desire to Desire

Lately, it's all just a bunch of mylar

balloons—once blown up, puffed

out, a crinkling of nylon and foil,

maybe even getting caught in power

lines, maybe sparking a fire, maybe

even causing a blackout, but really,

mostly, it's just a deflating yellow smiley

face, stretched out—deformed and

disfigured, unsure of what it was

supposed to be good for all along.

Three Lives

                                after Sarah Russell

If I had three lives, I’d keep this one

just as it is—each early Saturday on

the soccer fields, each tangle in my

daughter's riot of curls, each syllable

she sounds out as she's reading aloud,

and I'd keep each early Friday night in,

each wink across a crowded room, each

subtle shifting of stacks of books.

I'd keep it just as it is; keep them—

both just as they are.

But me? The other two? Well, in both

I’d run in the mornings, do yoga before bed.

I'd drink protein shakes with flaxseed

and oats and collagen, and then I'd gorge

on chocolate-covered doughnuts. I'd walk

with confidence into each room, laugh

loudly at all my jokes, laugh louder at

all the inappropriate ones, unabashedly flirt

with my husband; I'd never worry if my

eyeliner was too much or if my face looked

weird or if this and if that and if and if

and if and if and if and if and

I would enjoy all the early Saturday mornings

and all the winks across crowded rooms, and

I would just exist in my body and mind and soul,

just as I am. 

Off-Beat On-Beat

After all this time

our hearts still

do not beat as one, & resting against

my husband's bare chest

in the early morning hours,

I learn this.

No rhythmic sound

of two heart’s beats

falling

into

a synchronous tempo

together; a perfectly aligned

beat            by beat         by beat,

& listening, my ear

pressed to him, I hear of

the off-beats and the on-beats

and a slowing and a quickening,

and there are beats

I miss all together—

from my yawn, his feet moving against the sheets,

readjusting our bodies from where arms have

fallen asleep or thighs have gotten too warm—

I listen & I hear

our hearts’ beats beating,

unsure of which

thrum belongs to him &

which belongs to me;

they are not one,

they are together a

  continuous                 quickening

before slowing

     off-beats

on-beat.

Carry(, As a Feeling)

It’s true:

       It’s hard to carry on with your well-

       crafted composure when the weight of

       your dying mother is laid upon you; her

       swollen belly, holding four liters of fluid,

       resting against you; her crepe-paper skin,

       maintaining no elasticity, tearing beneath

       you. Holding up her body—

                                                 Nevermind.

      This won't be

                about that.

It’s true:

      It’s hard to explain, hard to carefully

      craft these words that I don't even want,

      the ones I hold day-to-day, room-to-room,

      breath-to-breath. Take them.

     Turn out my pockets, remove my contacts,

     pull out my teeth, just gag me until I vomit

     up every last word I've choked down so someone

     else did not have to bear the weight of:

     the anger, the guilt, the sorrow, the shame

     from the relief I harbor. It's true

      this won't be

                  about that

                  either.

                                                Nevermind.

My God, This Is Aging

This is aging? Wearing panty liners because, having stood up too quickly, you pee—just a little and just enough. Getting texts about the passing away of dogs and sending texts concerning the sickness of aging parents: Any updates? Any updates? Anything at all? All whopping point four ounces of twenty-seven-dollar eye cream because a decent night of sleep is only one-sixteenth of what it used to be, but you want to stay up late, want to bathe and shave your legs and have sex only to find your spouse asleep, while also wanting to stay awake to watch the latest episode of Fargo. Taking preventative antacids and ibuprofen that you know you will need after holding up your mother in the ICU,  the weight of her illness and age pressed upon you, reminding you of the way time seems to move all at once and not at all. 

This, also, is aging? Wearing panty liners because, having laughed too hard at your husband's impression of Hank Hill as you walk by the lawnmowers in Lowes, you pee—just a little and just enough. Getting texts about the accomplishments and the anecdotal snippets of the day-in and day-out. The precise rhythm of each night: the eye cream, the moisturizer, your spouse curling behind you as you settle into sleep, drifting apart and back together throughout the night; the way his hand pats your hip when he wakes to run in the hour before dawn; still being tired from sometimes wanting to stay up late to have sex whether your legs are shaved or not, from staying up late to watch X-Files. Picking up prescriptions for your mother for your father, as it’s the only way you know to help, other than holding a straw to her mouth, letting her drink, so she can speak of and laugh about something that possibly didn’t even happen, and you laugh, too, let go of things that no longer matter, as her laughter sounds as it always has, reminding you of the way time moves not at all and all at once. 

Al Black's Poetry of the People Featuring Larry Rhu!

This week's Poet of the People is Larry Rhu. I think I first met Larry when Curtis Derrick hosted a poetry workshop and Tim Conroy introduced us. Larry and I cohost Simple Gifts and I cherish sitting in his backyard garden to discuss literature and Boston Celtic basketball. He is a generous and humble friend and I am honored to be in his orbit.

Lawrence Rhu is the Todd Professor of the Italian Renaissance, emeritus, at the University of South Carolina. He has published books and essays about the American and European Renaissances and edited Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale. His poems have appeared in Poetry, North Dakota Quarterly, Innisfree Poetry Journal, The Poetry Society of South Carolina Yearbook, Pinesong, Fall Lines, One, Main Street Rag, Conversations: The Journal of Cavellian Studies, Jogos Florais, Forma de Vida, and other journals. They have won awards from the Poetry Society of South Carolina and the Pirate’s Alley Faulkner Society of New Orleans. 

Instead of a Letter

Ever since your scary diagnosis, Jerry,

your Kawasaki Ninja’s helping us

document nostalgia’s hits or misses:

Fats Domino at El Casino Ballroom

in downtown Tucson, Oracle Union Church

beyond the Catalinas. Grandfather Ford—

an old Ford, he’d say, but still serviceable—

supplied its pulpit with clear messages

he shared implicitly (or I divined)

between approach shots on the practice range

when he taught me to golf during junior high

and we began our easy-going exchanges.

Nothing oracular about that town

except the name and my experience

of friendship with a kindred soul whose calling

required some explanation of its quiet

moments, like golf, when others take their turn. 

Chemo and radiation are still shrinking

your tumor while our sunset dialogues

help reconstruct our common histories

with anecdotes and our imaginations

in FaceTime calls from two time zones away.

Bits and pieces patched together come

to represent whatever meant the world

to me and you, my father’s other son

in spirit and my mother’s other student.

Grammar and medicine, their offerings,

helped you avoid English X at U of A

and then through medical school at UNM.

Transcendental brother, Anglo caballero,                              

biker, physician, my dear friend, your Ninja

and horses call to mind a life of travel:

happy trails, lonesome roads, and our reunions                    

in Rio Hondo, New Orleans, Missoula,

Boston, Prescott—even Italy,

when I was teaching high school there in Rome.

In just three months you’ve biked eight thousand miles

in perfect weather on backroads and blue

highways, inspired by sunlight and fresh air.

Has anyone lived long enough to be

“almost a native,” as some born elsewhere

used to say after many years in Tucson?

May we not homestead in creation, staking

our claims, not taking what’s given for granted,

settling in some ever nearer region?

Benefits of Doubt

For D. T. S.

No inference made, no implication either—

I did not infer what you did not imply,

but thanks. I appreciate your concern.

Ghosts haunt words with shades of meaning

difficult to dispel. Slips and lapses

make us marvel at the secret life

of language in conversation with itself.

Perfect strangers intrude upon the best

intentions, foiling our plans. Still, we’re thrilled

to entertain felicities unaware.

It all depends upon our being being

attuned. So, drop your guard. Speak your mind.

Learn what you mean in sync with those awaiting

news of you and yours. I’ll listen up. Online

or off, count on my friendship as a reader.

Arborist

Two trees or maybe three I knew for sure:

the fig and sycamore…but now I can’t

recall the third. The Church of Rome inspired

my confidence about the first—fig leaves

cover places Michelangelo

and Donatello felt the shepherd boy

need not blush to leave exposed. A protest

rallied us to save the sycamores

along the Charles River by Mem Drive.

But I knew cacti of my desert boyhood

well before hope of a better school stole me

away from home to greener climes with all

four seasons, ice and snow, and trees Thoreau

once learned by heart alone. The orchard keeper,

my beloved, leads me now through arboretums

around the world. Unlike Walden’s chronicler,

even in dark woods, we wander as a pair.

Released from rigors of the father tongue,

which he so harped upon, the fallen world’s

transformed into a commonwealth we share.

Memento

No reason for the trip but Sunday free

we headed toward the North Shore on Route 1

— itself a brilliant stretch of salesmanship

where concrete cattle graze invitingly

on green cement before a steakhouse door,

one of many bright commercial fancies

up and down the strip.

We toured the infamous Witch House in Salem

where pre-trial interviews were held before

witchcraft and wizardry scared slaughter out.

There must be reasons why the Lord would fail them.

Soon, a host of innocents told why.

Our high school guide recited all the facts

and ushered us about.

Then, on to Marblehead where several hills

are strewn with brayed slate gravestones by a pond

the locals fish on weekends when they’re free.

Hourglasses, death’s heads, cross-bones are the frills

that trim the verses written for the dead.

We paused and read their prayers so quaintly rhymed

and lost to history.

May her virtues take her where they should

graven on the slate of Mary by her John

invoked the angels she’d soon bide among

To such as she I’m sure that death is good.

We moved from stone to stone like other tourists

till evening took the light and brought a chill

that made us move along.

Going back on the same route we came by

we passed a dinosaur at a putt-putt course,

a lowering hazard on the thirteenth hole.

The traffic slowed. A siren gave a sigh

and blinked upon a wreck beside the road.

Three bodies, under cover, lined the pavement.

The cars slowed to a roll.

Streetcar through Parnassus

Don’t you think somebody ought to pray for them? - How six-year-old Ruby Bridges explained her prayers for protesters against school desegregation

From Lee Circle to the Garden District

nine muses cross the tracks,

divinities of total recall

once upon a time.

From history to astronomy

along St. Charles Avenue

the streetcar bumps and grinds

from Clio to Urania, the goddess

Milton summoned puritanically 

insisting on a Christian meaning

for her pagan name. No such

precise distinction here obtains.

That culture clash sounds academic,

the harmonizing rhetoric antique.

The Heavenly Muse now names

some lapsed Presbyterian

daughter of faded Memory. 

Yet, in the roundabout, Lee’s empty place

on the Olympian column top

prompts Clio to review her latest draft

—its epic or tragic plot—

with Calliope and Melpomene.

That vacancy makes room

for hope to change the shape of time

imposed by powers that be—

or were and wished to stay.

Cycling between the Odd Fellows’ Rest

and the Archdiocesan Cemetery,

beyond the neutral ground,

I turn toward Metairie and soon discern,

from beneath the Interstate,

a marble soldier

ready to read the roll of casualties,

the toll his counterparts memorialize

on a thousand small-town New England greens.                   

Whatever local muse prompts song,

as I recall, no run of Boston streets

bears gaudy classical names

if you don’t count the Marathon.

There’s no Mardi Gras with krewes,

like Bacchus or Endymion

or Comus’s raucous gang

routed in that Puritan’s court masque.

Yet who’s to say they won’t be coming back?

Here or there, in Cambridge or Fenway Park,

or on the banquette where first graders once

braved mobs with Federal Marshals,

walking to school and hoping

against hope for a fresh start.

This week's Poetry of the People is a guest from NC - Andrew K. Clark

This week's Poet of the People is Andrew K. Clark.* I first got to know Andrew after a poetry reading in Hilton Head when I had dinner with him after his reading. He was living in Savannah with his wife, Casey, and preparing to relocate to the mountains of North Carolina where he grew up. He now resides and writes in the mountains outside Asheville. He is a prolific poet and author and is a delight to know.

-Al Black

Andrew K. Clark is a novelist & poet from the Western North Carolina mountains, where his people settled before The Revolutionary War. His poetry collection, Jesus in the Trailer, was published by Main Street Rag Press. His first novel, Where Dark Things Grow, is forthcoming from Cowboy Jamboree Press on 9/10/24. His work has appeared in The American Journal of Poetry, UCLA’s Out of Anonymity, Appalachian Review, Rappahannock Review, The Wrath Bearing Tree, and many others. He received his MFA from Converse College. Connect with him and read more of his work at andrewkclark.com. 

beautiful screaming

I tried to quit
I really
did
throw’d everything away
so many times
swore off the makeup
swore off them wigs
I’d go to bed
try to forget everything
squeeze my eyeballs
inside out
but seemed like
it called to me
from in the bin
called me
to put it back on
come stand in front of the mirror, boy
it was hardest when
the sun went out
***
first time I didn’t even
mean for it to happen
I got all made up
& I don’t know why but
I went outside
down there
by the pond
that old dirt road
you know the one
the lover’s lane
there was a car pulled
near the water
and I wanted
to see inside
catch me a peek
of what they was doing
only when I did

the girl seen me
she screamed
screamed so loud
it busted my ears
so loud she shook
the whole goddamned world
and the boy trying to jerk
up his pants
& I fell in love with her
right there
& the sounds she made
I ain’t never heard
nothing so beautiful
& she made me
beautiful too
& she seen me
like nobody ever seen me
& she saw how beautiful I was
& everything tingled everywhere
in the whole goddamned world
the whole world tingling up
its goddamned spine
and down between
its goddamned legs
& I went back the next night
& the night after that
seem like more cars come
down by the pond
like people wanted me to
just scare the living
shit out of them
like it turned
them on too
& I gave them what they wanted
& they gave me what I wanted
all that screaming
them tires spinning the dirt
***
them kids made up
hashtags for me

things like
#clownscare
& #clownopocalypse
& it went on like that for a long time
& I made all the papers
& it was beautiful
till
they caught me
& they put me back
in the home
& they chained me
under the box springs
pumped me so full
of all them drugs
& I love all them drugs
when I’m under
the box springs
pumped full
I can’t remember
who my first-grade teacher was
or where I learned to dress up
or who my daddy is
but I do remember
all that screaming
all that beautiful screaming
& how they seen me
really seen me
for the first time

equine | canine

the horses up
the mountain
went wild, forgotten
by their people
nobody come by
to even feed them
until
they forgot they
were horses
grew as feral
as jackals
fought off bears
killed off the coyote
stayed alive
even during winter
no grass on the ground
teeth grinding
down the trees
they fucked each
other constantly
foals rising from
the dark earth
each spring
they ate their brothers
whose legs fell lame
teeth rounding
sharpening canine
until
their eyes grew large
dark manes matted
no one could
approach them
no one could
pet them
but me

paper dolls

drought and famine and violence and
tinder enough to burn the world down,
and it’s only tuesday. but one thing you
understand is that you got to get right
with god. it don’t pay to wait. you ‘re
on the last verse of just as i am, without
one plea, sister gail keeps playing long
as there are sinners out there and you
better get up, fight your curled up
atrophied limbs, fight your jangled up
trifling, get down front to that altar and
make yourself low before the preacher.
you don’t have to do it, i know.
salvation is a choice. but if you don’t,
you should know a few things. one, the
devil has nightmares too. they wouldn’t
make sense to you because they’re
made up of all the beauty of gods green
spring bright fondling, the way vines
creep under doorways and rise to
choke the tallest thickest trees in the
woods out back. did you know there
are flowers with black spider eye
faces? god made those too. bottomless
night holes that fall for miles, sucking
you in by your eyeballs, pulling fibrous
orange slice chunks from your back,
bent and stretched and uglier than you
can imagine. two, you had no choice
but to do it. you might could’ve
become a preacher yourself, shopping
pinstripe suit catalogues, starching
your collars out in a dingy basement,
pull cord lightbulbs burning your scalp.
you might could’ve earned your keep
on the mission field or in a soup
kitchen but when mama took up that
knife and cut that man across his face
for the way he mocked her cooking,
you ain’t had no choice. three, scissors
and girly magazines in your hiding
place under the skirting of the trailer,
stretched out on the warm dirt, you

found magic powers. kaleidoscoping
girls every which way and that: take
this head and put it on that body, put
these legs under those hips, take her
tits and put them on that one there, and
this one, she should be a dancer, so
change her shoes. so much flesh, so
much sin and skin that you mix and
match in peach and black and orange
and cream - you’re nothing if not
wicked. four, when they found your
stash, pulling back the purple curtain,
they took all your lovers away, best
friends too; you had no choice. sister
gail finished the song, and the preacher
ain’t called for another verse, so thank
hallelujah for lighter fluid, kitchen
matches and sweet sulfur black and
blueness.

Pollination
(after Lindsey Alexander)

My beard is a honeycomb you lick when hungry.
On your way to the icebox,
on our daily hike through the woods,
you can’t help but stop and taste it.
Bright and untamed,
Zizzing like bees
in a white box;
your face stays sticky and
you keep licking your cheeks all day,
even during video calls.
Eventually, you send
a dozen mouths
to extract me,
drip by drop,
while you lie back
and wait to be fed.

*While Clark is not a SC poet, we are honored to share his work with you this week via Poetry of the People!

REVIEW: Letters to Karen Carpenter by Richard Allen Taylor - Reviewed by Lawrence Rhu

The heart of Richard Allen Taylor’s new collection, Letters to Karen Carpenter (Main Street Rag, 2023), is “Undeliverable,” the first of its four sections. There Taylor apostrophizes the late singer of poignant hits and anthems of romantic promise like “Close to You” and “It’s Only Just Begun,” as he struggles directly with his book’s core premise and challenge. The intimate beauty of Carpenter’s voice, combined with the pathos of her early death due to complications of anorexia nervosa, often served Taylor and his late wife, Julie, as a compelling soundtrack to their life together, especially during her last days when she was dying of leukemia.

In “Recruiting You, Karen, as a Pen Pal,” Taylor acknowledges his own mother’s quiet disappointment in him for rebuking his daughter’s impulse to address her dead grandfather during a Thanksgiving prayer. Thus, Taylor both confesses and disavows his paternal inclination to lay down the law about communication with the dead. Such religious inhibitions give way to imaginative play audible in this poem’s title and its transformation of “a brass lamp” into a magic lamp that delivers his late mother’s “unsolicited advice.” Moreover, that maternal heirloom, duly capitalized in the next poem, names the record company that released the Carpenters’ first single, Magic Lamp.

You’ll recall that, before there was writing, Orpheus sang as he descended to rescue Eurydice from the land of the dead. Those who turn the feelings such a story relates into compelling songs or poems can deeply affect us. We understand what they are saying, or we know that, someday soon enough, grief will teach or remind us, and we will understand again. In Letters Taylor achieves such effects in representing the process of grief and mourning. His serious yet playful approach enables him to bear the weight of such heavy loads both honestly and nimbly. The epistolary form opens a space for tones of confidentiality and intimate exchange. It puts Taylor in conversation with addressees who are out of reach but familiar and loved. Of course, there are darker sides to such imaginary conversations, and Taylor does not pretend otherwise. In a down-to-earth way, he expands our horizons, so they include mercy and gratitude along with suffering and loss. You can hear it in “Note to Karen about Mortality,” the opening poem of Letters:

                        I watch a lone hawk ride thermals, rise

                        without effort—and think of mortality’s leaden

                        weight, sloughed off like last year’s molting.

                        Not that I believe in reincarnation. Not that I

                        disbelieve. I mean the hawk reminds me

of you, and my wife—who loved your music.

“Undeliverable,” the book’s second section, represents raw encounters with the Grim Reaper in “Chemotherapy” and “Untitled Poem about Dying,” as mute acknowledgment of the limits of language reveals in the first word of the latter poem’s title, “Untitled.” In the following quote, the memorable simile, “like a canal lock,” provides the title for a poem about a waiting room where caregivers bide their time while cancer patients undergo tests and procedures on the day after Valentine’s Day: “The room has filled and emptied many times today, // like a canal lock passing ships into the darkness.”

Though the book’s first two sections display Taylor’s resilience and wit in the face of daunting loss, its final two sections, “Postcards” and “Change of Address,” give those qualities freer range and greater opportunity to shine in his lines. Taylor’s elegiac imperative inspires many poems, but it also leaves room for hope and recovery as well the play of language that gives delight.

-Lawrence Rhu

Lawrence Rhu is the Todd Professor of the Italian Renaissance emeritus at the University of South Carolina. He has written books and essays about the American and European Renaissances, and he edited Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale for the Evans Shakespeare series from Cengage. His poems have appeared in Poetry, Two Rivers, South Florida Poetry Journal, Forma de Vida, Jogos Florais, Quorum, Fall Lines, Pinesong, and the Poetry Society of South Carolina Yearbook. In 2018-19, three of his poems received named awards from the Poetry Society of South Carolina. A fourth, “Reading Romance with a Lady Killer,” received the 2018 Faulkner-Wisdom Poetry Award from the Pirate’s Alley Faulkner Society in New Orleans. In 2019, his unpublished poetry collection, “Pre-owned Odyssey and Rented Rooms,” was runner-up for that Society’s Marble Faun Award. In 2020, Conversations: The Journal of Cavellian Studies published or reprinted a dozen of his poems together with his essay on poetry and philosophy, “Other Minds and a Mind of One’s Own.”

This week's Poet of the People is Moses Oaktree - Al Black

This week's Poet of the People is Moses Oaktree. I met Moses several years ago in Augusta, GA, when he was the manager of the Book Tavern Bookstore and a staple of the local poetry scene. Pre-COVID he would sometimes make an appearance at Mind Gravy. After COVID he moved to the Midlands and exploded on the scene. He is (in my humble opinion) the best spoken word poet in the area. He owns the stage and his work stands up well on the printed page. He is a top draw in the region and I fully expect him to become a force throughout the Southeast on his way to a national reputation.

- Al Black

Moses Oaktree is an artist, storyteller, and co-founder of Charleston, SC’s UnSpoken Word Open Mic.  Mosely has performed his signature features across the United States, especially for his homes of New Orleans, Atlanta, Columbia, and Charleston.  His style melds southern lyricism, historical intrigue, and a surrealist take on the African/African-American tradition to create a contemporary black American myth.  He is currently working on his first book of poetry, “Heaven Be A Black Land”.

  Just. Like. You.  

 Met someone who looked Just

Like You Today.

Honestly, it was uncanny. Your curves;

Your style--

God knows I missed your smile. She was a song

I’d once known well.

I reached for her hand out of reflex. A habit in death throes;

Memories of you echo Through places in me That have no name.

Why do you remain?

Your smile could lift the waves.

I stopped myself just as I felt

the warmth of her body. Goosebumps;

Hot needles in my skin turn to ice. Shudders;

She walked way in the moments tween my

Stutters.

I am reminded

Your smile was paradise.

I, too

                                                                            I love telling folk how Dr King’s “I Am A Man” slogan turned queer in the next iteration of the movement.

I love talking bout Black Lives Matter being run by queer/women.

I love talking bout Bayard Rustin.

I love talking bout how voices, once hushed, still can find their way into the Light.

“I Am A Man”

We are equal as human.

                                                                                                                                            “Black Lives Matter”
                                                                                                                                         We are equal as human.

The final rendition will be “I, too, have a soul”

 But if they kill me, they’ll say it wasn’t true.

  Notes From Abraham

“Life was a constant miracle”, He say.

His body like smoke in the wind; He who gives shape to mist.

Substance like vapors, Both solid and shapeless.

He leans closer before he persists.

“Each breath was a gamble with death”, He say.

“I won so many times I musta cheated. Pain----

Illness----

At times, I was broken.

I took losses, but was undefeated.”

“I wanted it all…” He say.

“I made deals with the Devil- Chasing keys to Heaven.

We don’t realize the moment we

Lost Cause

The more I realized what beauty was;

The more fluent I became in the language of

God”

                                                                                                                                                               Time

Time Manifested

as flesh and bone

Dove into itself to discover its soul Then walked Earth’s mighty plains As the ghosts of the future.

                                                                                                                                                                         I am

                                                                                                                                                                                             .

This week's Poet of the People with Al Black is Lang Owen

This week's Poet of the People is Lang Owen. Before the printing press, balladeers carried poetry and news to the people; Lang Owen writes in that tradition. He is a gifted singer/songwriter who writes poem songs about people and the human condition. Every so often you meet someone who paints stories that sound new every time you hear them sung - I am privileged to know Lang Owen. www.langowen.com/

-Al Black

Lang Owen works straight out of the 1970s singer-songwriter tradition, employing poetic lyrics to express the challenges and possibilities of the current day, often viewed through the perspective of individual's imagined interior lives. Lang’s gift for seeing the world around him and dialoguing with others about their lives informs his songwriting, which often takes the form of conversations between characters in his songs. Lang released his third album, Cosmic Checkout Lane, in April 2024, his second collaboration with musician/producer Todd Mathis. “Cosmic Checkout Lane is about living our wisdom at any moment, including standing in a grocery store checkout line,” Lang says.

In 2022 Lang released She’s My Memory, which the Post & Courier Free Times ranked sixth on its The Best of South Carolina Music 2022 list. Lang’s 2019 debut album Welcome To Yesterday was hailed as “evocative storytelling at its finest” by music writer Kevin Oliver. Lang has played multiple venues in North and South Carolina, and received airplay on radio stations in the United States, Canada, Ireland, and Luxembourg.

Everybody Here 

Everybody here’s my therapist

I need all the help I can get

I look around, I’m losing my ground

I don’t like what I see one bit

I float by like a whisper, you hand me a megaphone

In our own little worlds somehow we’re not alone

We’re not alone

Everybody here

Everybody here’s my archeologist

Digging in the dirt for things I miss

Down on hands and knees beneath the olive trees

Finding my love still exists

We live in memory like statues standing in Rome

In our own little worlds somehow we’re not alone

We’re not alone

Everybody here

I don’t know what I’m dreaming any more

I just know you’re believing

I don’t know whose shoes are on my floor

I just know you’re not fleeing

What I can do is wash your feet

Patch you up when you’re bleeding

I’ll keep your secrets discrete

I’ll say what you’re meaning to me

I float by like a whisper, you hand me a megaphone

In our own little worlds somehow we’re not alone

We’re not alone

Everybody here

Gravity 

I’m not a smart man, but I know gravity

I drop nails from many a roof, it’s physics obviously

Don’t take paper in a frame to see that things fall

I’ve done this job for twenty-eight years, I’m a jack of all trades

I fix everybody’s leaky walls, water moves in strange ways

Don’t take paper in a frame to know a hammer’s what you need

House to house, I drive around, lots of new cars everywhere

From my truck, I see it clear, this town’s in disrepair

I guess that’s why God put me here

My knees are shot, all the ups and downs, I tell my boy get your degree

I’ve done some things of which I’m proud, it never came easily

Don’t take paper in a frame to know what builds you breaks you down

House to house, I drive around, lots of new cars everywhere

From my truck, I see it clear, this town’s in disrepair

I guess that’s why God put me here

I paint all your empty rooms, I like the smell of something fresh

I leave a little bit of me in there, where your baby lays down to rest

Don’t take paper in a frame to know love’s all in your hands

House to house, I drive around, lots of new cars everywhere

From my truck, I see it clear, this town’s in disrepair

I guess that’s why God put me here

Love Sputnik 

Mr. Hardy taught the sciences, the stuff of life

Backrow kids mocked thinning hair and tattered ties

Astronomy was his true love, Mr. Hardy had no wife

Russia launched first satellite shook the world

Beep beep on ham radio, spaceage unfurled

Mr. Hardy daydreamed at his desk of a long-lost girl

Oppenheimer called out God

Galileo searched the stars

Mr. Hardy lectured genius does no tricks

Sir Iassac’s apple fell to ground

Einstein wrote it simply down

Mr. Hardy questioned who on earth invents

Love Sputnik

18,000 miles an hour light across the sky

Mr. Hardy said change rockets into our lives

When she burned up in the atmosphere, Mr. Hardy cried

I recall a film about the sun Hardy showed

Man in glasses explained giant stars someday explode

In the cosmic scheme of things no one is betrothed

Oppenheimer called out God

Galileo searched the stars

Mr. Hardy lectured genius does no tricks

Sir Iassac’s apple fell to ground

Einstein wrote it simply down

Mr. Hardy questioned who on earth invents

Love Sputnik

Mr. Hardy gazed alone at night crescent moon

Mr. Hardy knew she’s inching away too soon

Mr. Hardy retired from everything that very June

Oppenheimer called out God

Galileo searched the stars

Mr. Hardy lectured genius does no tricks

Sir Iassac’s apple fell to ground

Einstein wrote it simply down

Mr. Hardy questioned who on earth invents

Love Sputnik

Man With A Broom

Thirty years I swept floors, F & M Bank

Retired with a big mug, too many last hugs

Cards and thanks

Now I use a red broom, sweep my curbside

Photos, bottles, pennies, cigar butts

You know it’s not right

My sight is still good, careful when the cars pass

My doctor says she’s never seen a man my age 

With such a strong back

I’ve got so little to leave this big world

I never had a son or a precious little girl

I’m just an old man with a broom

On the street in the sun Monday afternoon

Man with a broom

I found a brown shoe on the sidewalk nearby

My whole day puzzling what happened to that foot

Can’t say why

My shadow tells time, I don’t wear a watch now

I can see no point in counting the hours 

As they wind down

Who’ll pick up this broom? Nobody wants to sweep

I’m scared things all go to hell when I fall into

That long sleep

I’ve got so little to leave this big world

I never had a son or a precious little girl

I’m just an old man with a broom

On the street in the sun Monday afternoon

Man with a broom

Neighbor kid walks by with those earphone things

Give me a listen, though it don’t beat Bob Dylan

My heart still sings

Wife calls me inside, says I’ll die from the heat

But this broom’s what I’ve got, and I’ll sweep ‘til I drop

On this clean street

I’ve got so little to leave this big world

I never had a son or a precious little girl

I’m just an old man with a broom

On the street in the sun Monday afternoon

Man with a broom

Used Books

I Sunday browse your shop for hours

We talk about writers when no one’s there

And you proclaim love for Hemingway

For your age that’s pretty rare

You say you can relate

To wine and war and fate

And how this life is so unfair

Your eyes ask me why, you wait for me to try

I scratch my head, I can’t help you there

You wanna be heard, you gotta listen

You wanna be read, you gotta buy somebody’s book

You wanna be found, you gotta know who you’re missing 

You wanna be seen, you gotta really, really look

Oh I swear, my sweet Karina

I once told a girl you never mind my words

“I mind them too much,” she said with a smile

She vanished like a ghost in a cloud of cigarette smoke

I missed that coming by a country mile

I tell this tale to you, I’m no fountain of any truth

Might be the one thing I do today worthwhile

No doubt it’s been said by poets long since dead

There’s nothing in this world we can’t defile

You wanna be heard, you gotta listen

You wanna be read, you gotta buy somebody’s book

You wanna be found, you gotta know who you’re missing

You wanna be seen, you gotta really, really look

Oh I swear, my sweet Karina

Old Man and The Sea, I peruse with iced coffee

I’ll soon forget every page I turn

My days are scribbled down, torn up paper on the ground

Take what I say this once for what it’s worth

You wanna be heard, you gotta listen

You wanna be read, you gotta buy somebody’s book

You wanna be found, you gotta know who you’re missing

You wanna be seen, you gotta really, really look

Oh I swear, my sweet Karina

Poetry of the People with Al Black featuring Tim Conroy

This week's Poet of the People is Tim Conroy. I met Tim Conroy several years ago at a Columbia literary event and cajoled him into doing his first poetry feature. We became fast friends, haunting and terrorizing coffee shops throughout Columbia. Later, we teamed up with singer/songwriter, Lang Owen as the Two Hats & a Ponytail trio. When Tim's wife retired, they fled to Florida; however, he will be back in Columbia to perform Tuesday, 05/07 at Simple Gifts and Wednesday, 05/08 at Mind Gravy with Lang and myself for the Reunion Tour of Two Hats and Ponytail.

Tim Conroy is a military brat who has lived all over the country and eventually ended up in South Carolina. A retired educator and beloved social rabble rouser, he has published two books of poetry, Theologies of Terrain, Muddy Ford Press 2017 and No True Route, Muddy Ford Press 2023. During COVID, he co hosted the YouTube poetry interview series, Chewing Gristle

Lousy

My Dad said lousy a lot

to describe his children

a lousy jump shot, a lousy right fielder,

a lousy bedmaker, a lousy dishwasher,

with a lousy attitude.

We had lousy eyes, freckles, and postures.

But he would never admit,

we were stationed in lousy towns.

We could have become lousy

because he fought in three lousy wars,

where he won a few lousy medals.

Every year, we left friends and moved

on lousy cross-country car trips.

He had a lousy temper and backhand.

His world turned lousier when our mom divorced him.

He was lousy in love with her.

He tasted lousy when schizophrenia

came for one of his sons.

Afterward, he was never a lousy grandfather

or a lousy money giver.

He remained lousy at saying sorry.

When he died, we never felt lousier

and knew a pilot's love didn't land empty,

his caps and his godawful shirts,

his lousy flaws, our hearts.

No True Route, Muddy Ford Press, 2023

The Flight Jacket

hung in the closet to forget the throttle

and how it zoomed from carriers during

the Korean War, dipped into battle

of the Chosin Reservoir for the troops

to make a break for it through scarred paths

and never told its story, zipped up mute

stayed cold to the touch preferring the dark

every day its arms down not saluting

while its empty pockets refused to hold

onto the sound of bombs and men waving

screaming hello, goodbye, and blood marking

each sleeve forever, but the leather saved

many lives, though not Dad’s, his explosions

and how he didn’t want us to touch him

The Child We Need

 In front of imperial drones,

swollen under cement blocks

—tongues, old and young

because we doubt what is told

because it takes silence to listen

because we need to learn gestures

to rise reversals from wombs.

War-born babies and hostages

with no chink of light, no angels,

no safe mangers even for donkeys,

only hunger and inconsolable wails

until we embody the dead,

the child we need to live won’t

sing and fly paper kites in Gaza.

The Best Part

The truth be known,
gay or straight,

the priest gets paid,
the nun has a shitty deal,
the minister wants his ass kissed.

 Meanwhile I have felt a voice
in the forest of owls and ordinary spaces.
Strangers have rescued me from peril;
like you, love has saved me.

Your neighbor is human.

We don’t listen or tell it right,
we take it literally,

we can’t write it down better,
we make it too complicated.

Who have you loved in this journey?
What is it you have given?

From Theologies of Terrain, Muddy Ford Press, 2017

A Fitted Game

 The American Legion is full of men and women who battle

video games for printed slips to exchange at the bar for cash.

They don't dare add up the losses, so full of gin and silent friends.

Some say it's a loss of purpose and only passing time.

My Dad would have died playing if he hadn't croaked in bed.

His fingers reached, but I did not know what to tell him.

Their sacrifice isn't gone, and the popcorn kernels are still free,

salted, and buttered, sliding down throats that burn like cigarettes.

The flashing screen doesn't care who presses the fortune of the hours,

shouldering memories with sips. No soldier deserts the machine

that programs a fitted game, though many dream of a different outcome.

I have loved those players who won once

Al Black's Poetry of the People Features Janet Kozachek

This week's Poet of the People is Janet Kozachek. Shortly before COVID I hosted an ekphrastic poetry event at the Arts Center in Kershaw County, Camden, SC; Janet has had a lot to do with introducing me to many opportunities to host poetry events in Camden, Orangeburg and Hampton County. She is a dynamic advocate of the creative arts and a talented poet, writer, and visual artist. I look forward to participating in whatever event she creates next.

-Al Black

Janet Kozachek  has led a long and eclectic career as a writer and visual artist,  pursuing work and advanced study in Europe, China, and New York.  She was the  first American to matriculate in the Beijing Central Art Academy (CAFA), where she studied  painting, poetry, and calligraphy.  Ms. Kozachek moved  to the Netherlands with her husband Nathaniel Wallace,  to teach with the University of Maryland overseas division for two years.  Returning to the United States she became a graduate student at Parsons School of Design. 
During graduate work at Parsons in New York, Kozachek studied painting and drawing with Larry Rivers, Paul Resika, Leland Bell, and John Heliker, and poetry with  J.D. McClatchy.  It was this brush with McClatchy, then editor of the Yale Review and author of Painters and Poets, that first inculcated the idea for Kozachek that painting and poetry could emanate from the same creative source in western as well as in  eastern art.

In South Carolina, Kozachek embarked on a long peripatetic career as an artist in residence and sometimes adjunct professor teaching Chinese art and Mosaic making throughout the state under the auspices of the South Carolina State Arts Commission.  Kozachek founded and became the first president of the Society of American Mosaic Artists in 1999.  She wrote for, and co-edited, the society’s quarterly publication, Groutline, and co-authored the catalogue for the first international exhibition of mosaics in the United States.   She also actively wrote for Evening Reader Magazine, publishing essays on art and social issues.  She is the author of four books of poetry. 

Song of the Sinuses

(On the occasion of the discovery that researchers playing ancient ceramic musical instruments would sometimes hear a note that others could not because it was generated from resonance inside their sinuses) 

The archaeologist,

with his vinyl gloves 

and his plastic straw,

played the ancient globular flute,

last touched a millennium ago

by Shaman’s lips.

Six whole notes

climbed up a scale

as the pressure of modern air

yielded sound.

For the record there were six notes.

The archaeologist heard seven.

Investigators played that tape

again and again

– in search of that seventh note.

that they were certain that they heard.

What was that seventh unrecorded final note

that could not be bound 

yet rang persistently in their heads?

It was a singular sinus sensation!

The lonely note was for 

the hearing of the solitary.

It was a spiritual resonance

of an internal sound

echoing in the caverns of their skulls.

Not every note must be noted.

Not every thought must be voiced.

Not every sound need be heard by others.

Not every action must be known,

nor every meaning ascertained.

Not every desire must be met.

There must be quiet in the world

to leave a space for internal music.

Listen.

News Cycle

( After a Drawing by Laurie Lipton)

Another school shooting

the jaded eyes and numbed mind

observe on the rectangular

porthole to the outside world

Another invasion

I watch the troops float onscreen

above my painted toes

Another disaster

A family sleeps on borrowed blankets

outside the rubble

of what was once their home.

I scan them while reclining

in my own bed

in my air-conditioned room.

Another war

feeds my evening news cycle

I watch it through

the hazy steam

that emanates from my

museum shop coffee cup 

decorated with scenes from

Picasso’s Guernica

aesthetically wrapped snugly

around the glazed form.

Purchased for just

$9.99 at the museum shop.

Another famine

plays out across my television

Mothers cradle emaciated infants

My cat cries out

wanting to be fed

I pause to feed her

and switch the channel

I am told

that brain surgery is performed

with just local anesthetics

to get below a scalp’s surface

with sedatives to blunt awareness

of what is inserted or extracted 

from the matter of mind

Brains don’t feel pain

Patient patients

close their eyes then

and don’t panic 

at what they see or hear

Another massacre?

Too many in a day now

to be counted

With the precision of a scalpel

the news cycle enters

through an anaesthetized cloud

of indifference

blunted by frequency

numbed by distance

cushioned with a thick cotton blanket

blocking out the fear

that the news 

some day

will find me

Celestial Beings and Lesser Gods

(Zaparozhia and Melania Perik)

Objects upon a white cloth

lay as offerings to people passing by

in the torpor of late afternoon shadows.

A solitary apple, a tempting trinket,

sit as the trappings of yearning

for a warm bed and respite from hunger.

A mass of woman sits

swaddled in a woven coat

and a thinking hat.

She nods her head downwards,

as hypnogogic hallucinations

fly within and without the hollows of trees.

Celestial beings and lesser gods,

half human and half chicken,

turn right side up and upside down

in their flight between somnolence and wakefulness.

They have been conjured.

They cavort among the boughs,

and then are exorcized 

from haunted limbs. 

Crow

Crow watches you

with eyes you cannot see,

black on black  against the setting sun,

waiting in quiet silhouette upon a branch.

Crow seeks you

in benevolent predation,

to feed upon your sorrows,

and swallow your regrets.

Crow finds you

alone among the living,

lost within memories of departed souls

who call and call your name.

Crow grasps you

in her claws folded

tight around your waist,

her black beak cool against your face.

Crow knows you

when you cross the bridge

into that great void

and come back home again.

Poetry of the People with Al Black featuring Frances J. Pearce

This week's Poet of the People is Frances J. Pearce. I first met Frances over a decade ago in the low country, where she is a respected fixture of the literary community. I've heard her read at literary events and admired her steady hand when she served as the President of the Poetry Society of South Carolina. Her poetry speaks of family and friends as she observes the passing of days casting her luster on our community of poets.

Mount Pleasant resident Frances J. Pearce is a poet, essayist, and fiction writer whose work has appeared in Archive: South Carolina Poetry Since 2005 (Ninety-Six Press), The Fourth River, North Carolina Literary Review, Kakalak, Fall Lines, I Am a Furious Wish: Anthology of Lowcountry Poets (Free Verse Press), and elsewhere. Her poetry chapbook Those Carolina Parakeets Once Far from Extinct was published by Finishing Line Press. She is a past president of the Poetry Society of South Carolina. 

Yorkshire Pilgrimage 

On a drizzly August afternoon, Marion, Jo,

Katherine, and I traveled on foot up the perilous

hillside path to find her resting place—not

amongst ancient graves surrounding the church,

but in the walled section beyond the gate, behind

Dunleavy, beside the Drapers. All lined up like patients

in a ward. Black letters on gray granite. Full name.

Dates. A line of verse: Even amidst the fierce flames

the lotus can be planted. A tangle of weeds. Blades

of bright green grass. A lantern leaning against Sylvia’s

headstone, an unfilled basket resting on the mound.

Later, jackets drooping, skin wet, we four pilgrims

filed down the High Street of Heptenstall, passing by

the wafting aroma of mutton pie. The others cut through

occupied pastures and returned to our borrowed rooms

in Ted’s hillside house, a mile from where he buried you.

Alone, I entered a pub, empty except for the German

Shepherd, sporting a red collar, seated next to a window.

Night Sounds in a Neighborhood along the Wando River

Sometimes palmetto fronds

rustling. Sometimes a foghorn

cautioning an approaching ship.

Sometimes the buzz of mosquitoes

out for blood. Sometimes a deafening

boom as lightning ruptures

a loblolly pine. Sometimes the call of

barred owl in pursuit of wharf rats.

Sometimes a shipping container

plummeting to ground at the nearby port.

Sometimes the swish of a car traveling

across wet pavement. Sometimes the

explosion of a transformer. Sometimes

the scream of the vixen calling her mate.

Often the neighbors’ various dogs

barking. One time, a sudden screech

when your speeding truck missed the

curve. Tonight, the floofy cat pretending

I’m her kitten, purring into my ear,

It’s all right. Everything’s all right.

Congratulations to Poetry Out Loud Winner JESSIE LEITZEL!

JESSIE LEITZEL

The Jasper Project congratulates Jessie Leitzel on winning first place in the South Carolina Poetry Out Loud State Finals, held Saturday, March 9th at Richland Library. Leitzel was one of six finalists who competed in the finals for the national recitation competition and will go on to compete in the final competition in Washington DC later this spring.

“Leitzel was composed, confident, and they presented themself as a bright and progressive representative of South Carolina,” says the Jasper Project executive director Cindi Boiter who, along with Jasper Project board of directors member, Al Black, Marilyn Matheus, and Lester Boykin, adjudicated the event. Ray McManus was the host of the event, and Paul Kaufmann was the accuracy judge. Shannon Ivey was the performance coach and Eric Bultman served as recitation coach.

Leitzel is a nonfiction writer and poet studying creative writing at Charleston County School of the Arts in North Charleston. They are the co-founding editor of the literary magazine, Trace Fossils Review, a 2024 Presidential Scholar in the Arts nominee, a gold medalist of the Scholastic Writing Awards, and a YoungArts Award winner with distinction in nonfiction.

Winning second place was Abhirami Nalachandran from Calvary Christina School in Myrtle Beach and Catherine Wooten of Westgate Christian School was awarded the third place prize.

Other finalists included Eve Decker of Spartanburg Day School, Erin Maguire of Socastee High School, and Gemma Williams of Ashley Hall in Charleston.

Congratulations to all the finalists, as well as to the Columbia SC arts community for coming out to support your literary artists!

Poetry of the People with Marlanda DeKine

This week's Poet of The People is Marlanda Dekine. A force of nature and a force for good, her poetry inter-weaves with her social justice values and inspires and intoxicates. I first met Marlanda in the upstate; she has now migrated to the Pee Dee and is recognized for her work outside South Carolina. 

BIO: Marlanda Dekine makes connections of depth through poetry and facilitation. She is the author of Thresh & Hold (Hub City Press) and i am from a punch & a kiss (unnamed LLC). Her work has been anthologized in This is the Honey: An Anthology of Contemporary Black Poets (2024), What Things Cost: An Anthology for the People (2023), and Ecological Solidarities: Mobilizing Faith and Justice in an Entangled World (2019). She is a South Carolina Arts Commission Spoken Word/Slam Poetry fellow (2023), Castle of our Skins Shirley Graham Dubois Creative in Residence (2021), Tin House scholar (2021), and Palm Beach Poetry Langston Hughes fellow (2022). Her poems have been published by Orion Magazine, Oxford American, Southern Cultures, and elsewhere. She received a Governor’s Award from South Carolina Humanities (2019) and the New Southern Voices in Poetry Prize (2021). She is the founder of Speaking Down Barriers, an organization working towards equity and justice. Dekine holds a BA in Psychology from Furman University (2008), an MSW in Social Work from the University of South Carolina (2011), and is currently a MFA Candidate in Poetry at Converse University (2024). For more information, visit www.marlandadekine.com.

____

sarah’s glossolalia

i was not born
on an island tethered to water

my spirit is timeless
knows of places larger than 48 states

i don’t read maps
i lay down in clay
cracks tell me where i am

i think of lou’s tongue
in my mouth
i do this to become a madhouse
filled with faces of dolls

while her tongue is in my mouth
i think about who’s seeing our tongues

i went out into rain
let my mouth riddle off words
wonder sounds
brought in our future
oh to be free

  from a voice 

i don’t need to be a woman 

    I am a child of gods with many doors 

i don’t need to be a man 

     i am a child of their blue skies  

past is future

grandpa moses will you let me in
all queer and free in your image
my voice a pulpit voice like yours
listen to me going on
on my soapbox with my secrets
all out in the open
we buried yours with you
did you wish hell on great-great-greatgrandma sarah and ms lou
for what they brought to us
when i go to any ocean
water tells me things
i’m not supposed to know
i used to forget for you—
is that your voice hidden inside of thunder
i remember you in your chair
saying holy holy holy your large finger
dressed in a crimson masonic ring
your hands large over my entire life
i don’t know your rituals
do i have the right to make rites in your honor
all my rings bear no allegiance
i stay light as getting up from an altar call

love

there are so many ways
we don’t want to love
the man tells me
not to write for the straights
the woman tells me not to kiss
my woman in front of the boy
my woman wants me to say
she is my woman

    she is my woman

i want right words
for our hurt
the first moment the hurt hit my body
i felt it in my stomach
i was six years old
i don’t want the boy to know
hurt in his little stomach
the way my beloveds can feel
when i got the hurt again
and they ask you good

i’m bad off and imagining
my next glass of rye whiskey
after remembering
some don’t know how to love
a part of me well

i am trying to get the hurt down
right onto the page

so children will know
not to follow
our shipwrecked words
bodies floating
in brown water
that was blue
i want the boy to paint
the water blue now
to go into his own room and conjure
colors beyond our muted rainbows
beyond america
the experiment that is not a home

my heart is a home i am cultivating
it helped me to say my feelings were hurt
when my ego (an unpoetic word) wanted to say
fuck you i don’t need you

i don’t think i’m writing for the straights
but maybe i am writing to that part of myself angled
just so i can see how many degrees
i am not removed
because i too am human
i’m digging
because i know my ancestors
put love here too
inside my little puny heart
i am building a home
wherein i am not a victim
of weaponized language

spirit i am yours
within a cosmos
where the boy has a future
written over his life
and the boy is free to feel
and speak over his life
whatever water it may need
and the boy’s paint becomes
his great-great-great-grandma sarah’s face
and he is surrounded by women
sitting in a circle doing nothing
other than what they want

Join Us Under the Jasper Literary Arts Tent at Rosewood Art & Music Festival – October 7th

You’re invited to join the Jasper Project and some of your favorite local writers of poetry and prose under the Jasper Literary Arts Tent at the 2023 Rosewood Art & Music Festival on Saturday, October 7th from noon – 5 pm.*

You’ll get to hear some of your favorite Columbia-based writers read from a selection of their works, purchase their books, and then meet the authors and have your books signed.

*Authors will read during the first half of each hour and then sign and greet friends during the second half of each hour.

901 S Holly St, Columbia, SC 29205

 SCHEDULE OF EVENTS

Noon – 1 pm

Carla Damron

Jane Zenger

Sandra Johnson

 

1 – 2 pm

Evelyn Berry

Debbie Daniel

Susan Craig

 

2 - 3 pm

Terri McCord

Ann Chadwell Humphries

Robert (Bo) Petersen

 

3 – 4 pm

Jo Angela Edwins

Randy Spencer

Kristine Hartvigsen

4 – 5 pm

Al Black

Ed Madden

Cassie Premo Steele

For more information about the performing and visual artists you’ll see at the Rosewood Art & Music Festival, check out the festival website!