Poetry of the People featuring Cynthia Francis

This week's Poet of the People is Cynthia Francis. 

I met Cynthia through poet, Jane Zenger. She is a newly retired educator busy finding her voice through poetry. There is no ambiguity or trying to decide what she means; her poetry is refreshingly direct and unapologetically to the point. Zealous to hone her craft, she can be found actively participating in poetry readings and workshops. I look forward to her future involvement and development in our poetry community.

Al Black

Cynthia Francis began her teaching career at the Fort Jackson Schools 39 years
ago. She started as a second-grade teacher, then moved to pre-kindergarten, and
ended her career teaching kindergarten. She served on several committees and
organizations during her professional career. Chairperson for Professional
Development Schools with the University of South Carolina. Chairperson of the School
Improvement Council/Committee, President of the Fort Jackson Association of
Educators, Chairperson/Organizer of Multicultural Project at Pinckney Elementary
School. Member of Who’s Who, and Former President of SCECA(South Carolina Early
Childhood Association). She has recently supervised interns for the USC College of
Education.

Redone

Stop living in the shadow of memories,
plucking out pieces of sentiment
capturing thoughts and triggering emotions.
Stop dwelling in the spirit
relevant to feelings.
Life doesn’t come with guarantees.
You’re just a being
needing to make a stance.
Sometimes, you have to take a chance.
Just listen to the quiet!
It’s like the world stops
at the end of the day.
You, in your space,
moving towards a place.

____

Love Finds You

Love finds you when you’re never looking.
It sees you from the inside.
Things unseen,
no one watches for
through the quietness
which tells it all.
Listen carefully to unspoken words,
it lets you know the strength
and fortitude of your worth.
Love finds you when you’re never looking.
Connects the wrong,
yet, gives the sense you belong.
Half the duo, silent and strong.
A heart-filled love, free from loneliness
someone who shares, no more emptiness.
A life that cares, no broken promises.
Love’s a sanctuary gathers forth
a restless spirit from within
and brings peace which smoothly transcends.
Love finds you when you’re never looking.
It sees you from the inside,
a subtle moment catches like fireworks
then later subsides.
Love is everlasting, never-ending.
It ebbs and flows until time ends.
Love finds you.
It sees you from the inside
when you’re never looking.

____

Life

Life is a full circle.
Each day brings opportunities to learn,
grow from the past.
Memories are not to be ghosted,
put in jars, placed on shelves,
become forgotten, only to reinvent themselves
in the future as unwanted guests.
Life itself does not have an expiration date.
The idea of living holds tremendous weight.
Stand up, hold tight
living is not quite dead yet.
There’s still light.
With living comes discomfort, mess, discord, stress.
It also reminds you of those hard times
that leads to your best moments.
Life can express itself in the shadows of comfort
while pulling to the present those feel-good pleasures of self
connected to others in memories.
Joys shared, actions delivered, show we care,
relaxed in the company kept.
Life is a full circle,
but we allow it to slip away.
We give time the upper hand.
One side of the hourglass is full of sand.
We can’t recover, can’t reuse.
can only make new the time we have now,
so, let’s use until it’s gone.

____

Too Much

They moved shows from the stage
brought raggedy selves in our faces.
Tails throbbing, hips bobbing,
words flirting, asses twerking.
Someone shouting, “Back it up, gal!”
Everyone’s talking nonsense.
All done in constant pursuit
to screw consumers
of their dollars and cents.
Fill their drawers with lingerie,
bribe young girls to cover their lips
with filthy named gloss
cosmetic stores won’t sell.
Put your name out there, show who’s the boss.
Your name on the latest perfume,
that’s how you can sell it.
Nothing soothes the soul like being told you’re at the top.
At some point, this bullshit has to stop!


Poetry of the People – Marv Ward

This week's Poet of the People is Marv Ward. Marv has three books of poetry, but is best known as a blues musician in the Piedmont tradition. I first talked with Marv at the old Utopia Bar. He was sitting at the bar killing a drink and started regaling me with stories of carousing and playing music. Years later, I had the privilege to write the introduction for his first book of poetry. Since Marv has retired and settled down, he is more often seen sipping his favorite caffeine beverage, but still enjoys regaling folks with his stories about playing music up and down the east coast in every venue and gin joint that enjoys good live music.

Complacency

Complacency
      is the end point of existence.
The fear of change holds us in a death grip,
and prevents evolution and growth.
     Only when we step out of line,
           alter the norm,
               or challenge the expected,
     can we find true fulfillment.
Life needs nourishment.
     Stagnation kills the soul.
           Dreams can only become reality through action.
Why dream if complacency is your mantra.
     Live life,
and relish the probability of your dreams.

LAST TRAIN LEAVING

When the probability of departure
      changes from if to when,
          the perspective of the excursion

leaves little hope,
     for a change of destination.
Once the Conductor
     has punched your ticket,
your only resolve,
     is to pray,
          for a smooth journey.
It’s best to leave your baggage,
     at the station.
No round trip fares are accepted,
     and being unencumbered
          will make the ride more peaceful.

LONESOME WHISTLE

The mournful bellow of a freight locomotive
singing through the silence of the dawn,
reminds me
that I still live in the South.
And as I roll in my bed,
I can hear the echoes of
Jimmy Rogers’ and Hank Williams’
anthems in my head
and I rest easy in the company
of compadres who have eulogized that haunting symphony.

PURPOSE

A question I wrestle with is the enigma of purpose.
Often, late at night,
while lying in my bed, before I fall into Morpheus’s arms,
my soul twitches with doubt.
Do I have one?
Have I or will I ever fulfill mine?
Is it real, or just a manifestation of human frailty and guilt?
If we have a “purpose”
are we meant to know it?
Or are we just pawns in some ethereal game,
used to obtain an objective,
then sacrificed to advance the celestial strategy?
Being sentient and reasoning beings,
I must believe our existence means more than propagating the species,
perhaps our continuation has more to do with species evolution than proclivity.
But we seem to continue to produce an abundance of lost souls.
Lingering uncertainty propels our lives,
the search for an answer, is our driving force.
We invent religions to satisfy our misgivings
and dogma to ensure our trepidations have cause,
but faith is merely “the blind leading the blind”.
Some have developed a manic obsession with “finding my purpose”
as if it were a child who had wandered away at the fair that we must meet at the “rocket”
to regain our mental stability, but no one knows where “the rocket” is.
Philosophers and gurus avow that just “being” is the sole essence of living
and there is no other impetus to the daily grind.
So why does my soul keep twitching through the night and filling my dreams with despair.
Even when I am “here now” I am constantly musing my predicaments.
Perhaps purpose is its own destination, you can’t get there from here, but you are already there.
I don’t know if I will ever have an answer, no realization is forthcoming
and I am starting to call the constant twitching a “dance”.

Ward’s Bio

Blues and Americana singer, songwriter, guitarist and poet "Reverend" Marv Ward has performed throughout the United States and shared the stage with some of the most well-known artists in music today. The Rev. has played his original and visionary blues stylings in venues all over the country and has shared stages with music legends such as Aerosmith, Joan Baez, The Vanilla Fudge, Dave Van Ronk, Paul Geremia, Maria Muldaur, Nappy Brown, John Hammond, Steve Goodman, Bob Margolin, Big Bill Morganfield, Mac Arnold, Mooky Brill and many more. Listed in An Encyclopedia of South Carolina Jazz and Blues Musicians, Ward writes poetry with the same passion that he composes his songs. He has three collections of poetry “One Lone Minstrel, “Healing Time,” and his latest “Bar Stool Poet”, to go along with his six published solo CD’s. A native of Lorton, Virginia, Ward lives in Columbia, South Carolina. He previously served in the United States Naval Reserve and has worked in broadcast and educational television throughout North and South Carolina. At age 76“, The Rev.” is still going strong performing with local ensembles “Wallstreet and The Blues Brokers,” Jelly Roll and Delicious Dish,” and occasionally with the “Shrimp City Allstars” and still writing. A holiday CD and perhaps a fourth book are in the works.

Poetry of the People – Glenda Bailey-Mershon

This week's Poet of the People is Glenda Bailey-Mershon. I have known Glenda for only a year or two after she moved back to her home state. She is gifted poet and prose writer and gives back to the literary community with kindness and a wealth of expertise.

IN THE PHOTOGRAPH SHE LIFTS HER HANDS

unpinning long hair. Chestnut, I knew only because relatives said her hair and my sister's were the same. 

In sepia, her gesture asks to be admired. And who could not admire the luminous eyes of youth, the sensuous mouth, the heavy hair about to fall?

Yet her eyes say she is puzzled, unfamiliar with the procedure. Innocent as a fawn in sudden light.

What I remember is her stiff hands spinning, yarn spilling from pointed fingers, her sharp tongue calling down our rising spirits.

And yet the photograph . . .

Youthful beauty surprised by life.

Grandmother?

A “GYPSY” (ROMA!) POET WALKS INTO A COFFEESHOP

The audience gapes. What’s this woman doing,

singing when she should be droning poetry?

I warble about having rhythm. No one knows

that’s Manouche swing. It’s what they asked

when I booked: Tell what inspires you.

 

Everything’s a song, I say, letting loose again, whether dirge or dance or ballad beat.

I snap fingers, swish my skirt.

The woman at the first coffeeshop table

has stopped knitting, pokes her husband

who looks up from his golf score, sees

 

I am about to show them how once

I skatted a whole poem because I wanted

to say, we Roma are here, most of us 

are mixed, some got Africa in our bones,

Spain in our step, French lilac scent

 

beneath our nails and under our skin.

Farther away, the pulse of Rajasthan.

And if I really want to confound, I’ll say

we married Persian tanbur and chang,

Turkish oud, Greek lyres and Parisian

 

accordions, then swung it all on a reed with dancing keys, but I know

I only need say Django, and they will sit up. Guitars are what Americans fancy. Now

I have to bring them down to hear enjambed

 

lines, marching stanzas. Somehow they get it, smile, clap their hands to the rhythm when asked. Yet when I finish and take my turn for the proffered drink at the bar, people stare and point their chins, say “Gypsy.” That’s all they need to know. 

 

I sashay my way out of the shop, smile.

They will be pulsing in their beds tonight.

 

AN INCANTATION FOR MY GRANDMOTHERS

Corn mother

Earth heavy

Great Raw Woman

What you must have been in childbed! 

Birthing with the force of two hundred hurricanes, crouching low, arching high, pushing out

squalling life and catching it in two fiery, rough hands.

Rocking, rocking, face like the moon over ravaged land.

 

Each day, I see you, 

rivulets of water running out of your body  across scorched fields,

over red clay front yards singing orange zinnias.

 

Your daughters, we are feathers tossed by angry winds,

falling lightly

half a continent away.

 

Quiet strangers riding fierce city rails,

stepping unseen through snow-hushed streets,

dancing to rain drumming on roofs,

greeting the sun in glowing glass.

  

Watching the moon rise in canyons of steel,

we find your image in junkyard windows,

in our own eyes, mirrored

under fluorescent lights. 

 

We quick-step down long alleys,

flame incense in silent rooms,

fathom the earth beneath asphalt and brick, 

recognize its rhythms beneath the thrum of cars.

 

Even city towers gleam with your life.

Skyscrapers spark starlight in the eyes of the Ancient Ones.

Lesson

Daughter, this is your womb. She put her warm hand on the child's belly and drew the outline of a cave.

 

Out of this cavity you will draw that which is most precious to you.

Into this space

you will draw that which is mysterious, unknowable. She drew a line from  the womb to the heart.

 

This is the straightest of lines.

 

Do you understand?

 

BACK WHEN I WAS JUICY

Back when I was juicy I pried the lid off morning, knifed from my bed, onto cold floor boards, scattered pennies enough for coffee in the café,  or a luscious scrum of chocolat on a cold Sartre afternoon. 

 

Virgin among molded tomes,  I, willing wand of destiny, jumped to conclusions about infinity while frat guys in the booth behind bet on the constants of integration.

 

Down the long green moments I strode, confident, to and from  class, shouldering book bags,  tippling volumes from overhead shelves,  palming change like bribes for fortunes, assured of redemption in the hands of destiny.

 

Every Saturday, I rambled bookstore to bookstore among other explorers,  seeking keys to unlock furtive encounters behind mothers’ cast-off lace curtains.

 

Jampot oozing thick syrup seeds, I melted into one after another armored knight. Later, we read each other  tales we could not fathom back when I was juicy.

UNORTHODOX RHYME

Preachers tease us with heaven’s riches  Make us choose: wives or whores  Warn us, we’re too big for our britches 

Then forbid abortion, divorce

 

Warn us we're too big for our britches 

Want us to scratch all their itches 

Then forbid abortion, divorce 

Good men writhe with remorse

 

Want us to scratch all their itches 

Scratch our own, they call us witches  Good men writhe with remorse

Veils conceal life’s source

 

Scratch our own, they call us witches  Force us to choose: wives or whores 

Veils conceal life’s source  Camels pass by your riches.

 

NOTE: This poem is dedicated to the South Carolina Legislature, who apparently think their religious beliefs should control all women’s health care.

BIO:

Glenda Mariah Bailey-Mershon is an American poet, essayist, novelist, cultural historian, and human rights activist. Born in Upstate South Carolina to a family with roots in the Southern Appalachians, she has explored in poetry and fiction her European, Native American, and Romani heritage. Her published works include the novel, Eve's Garden, a family saga of three generations of Romani-American women; the full-length poetry collection, Weaver’s Knot, an exploration of millworker communities ; Bird Talk: Poems; saconige/blue smoke: Poems from the Southern Appalachians, which plumbs the ties between European and Cherokee cultures in the mountains; A History of the American Women's Movement: A Study Guide, and four volumes as editor of the Jane's Stories anthologies by women writers, including Jane's Stories IV: Bridges and Borders, which includes work by women in conflicts around the world.

Glenda has been a finalist in Our Stories fiction contest; featured author at the Illinois Book Fair, the Other Words conference; and the St. Augustine PoetFest. For the 2024 Associated Writers and Writing Programs (AWP) national conference, she chaired a panel entitled “Toward a Romani Women’s Canon.”

She is a former bookstore and small press owner, and has taught women's studies, writing, anthropology, and political science. She is the originator of the Jane's Stories anthologies and Jane’s Stories Press Foundation, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit that offers the Clara Johnson Prize in Women’s Literature. As a tutor, she helps young people achieve their GED degrees and learn strong conversation skills in English.

Poetry of the People – Bugsy Calhoun

This week's Poet of the People is Bugsy Calhoun. Bugsy has been a fixture of the spoken word community performing throughout South Carolina and surrounding  states. Coming out of the COVID lockdown he pivoted his focus and is now the leading organizer and advocate for spoken word poets in the Midlands. The spoken word community has become a force with events almost every night of  the week. Poetry in the Midlands is indebted to Bugsy Calhoun and I am honored to call him my friend.

Poem1

Dear momma I still call your number knowing you won't answer what would I say if you did answer I would tell you that I'm ok even though most times I'm not I would confess that I failed as husband like my father but above all things I'm doing my best to be a good dad I did what you said started over from the ground up my time on earth has been a Testament to your teaching since you been gone how I wish I was there holding your hand whipping your tears away before you finally let go to be with God I wouldn't tell you about all the pain I've been in physically and mentally but I know you would hear it all in my voice because you my mother my Queen who knew everything about me before I knew it myself you had the cheat code to my thoughts and ideas Spiritually you with me the most time I feel like a motherless child holding onto memories Google mapping the house I was raised in wishing I can scream your name can throw the key down let me in I will probably never visit your grave site because I pay my respects to you Myra Dee Dee And Ra Ra when I set foot on Bergen Street if I'm lucky I go to the house and breath in my heritage allow the Nostalgia to wrap his arms around me like a warm blanket I close my eyes and hear your voice like my conscience never will I forget you as long as blood flow in my veins looking in the mirror I see you looking back at me sometimes I remember the echoes of encouragements of you reminding me your Umi your son to how to stand a be a man in this cruel world the Queen in you has birth the King in me I'm forever grateful for you love it will reside in me for as long as I live no longer living in blue sky's that's now turn grey since you been gone

Poem2

This is about the sacrifice and the struggle
Black Wall Street being reborn on the backs of black business owners of today
 reclaiming our reparations like reconstruction
 this is about bold beautiful sisters who refuse to work for somebody's nine-to-five
 but for themselves they will work 25 8 taking this time in there life to dedicate something that they can leave as a legacy for oncoming Generations
this is for the brothers that bond together to build generational wealth by lifting each other up by their own bootstraps never looking for a handout but ready to hand out what is necessary for us to stand on our own two feet
 no this isn't big business
 this is Mom and Pops
 beauty salon an barber shops and restaurants
that make food for our souls visionaries who made something out of nothing never taking nothing for granted
To be brave enough to say to world im am here
 and I have something you want to give change after service is rendered with a smile to share conversation ideas and gratitude with strangers that become your friends and neighbors over time
 to become a staple in your community overtime
 to know what you are doing is bigger than you
to truly embrace being a boss
Business Organizer Scheduling System
Brothers of the Same Struggle
Building Opportunities for Self-Sufficiency
 to stand by it and guarantee it
This Is Black business

Poem3

It takes a special kind of ugly to beat the beautiful out of you to belittle your very existence to berate you with a bunch you insults viciously verbal bombarding you with derogatory descriptions to transform a mahogany brown into blacks and Blues beat you with in a inch of your life in love to call for God and no one answers mac can't make up the excuse for his anger to contemplate dying in your sleep than living awake in a nightmare to sleep with the enemy to justify his actions to question your self maybe it was me or something I said to lye in bed going over all the lies he said to be trapped in the prison of askaban the cracked walls don't feel pain like I do crack ribs remind me every time I breath what this kind of love feels like butterflies in my stomach have morphed into crows that circle over my head I'm scared to see tomorrow I try to hold on to memories a love story that
 now turned into a horror flick hoping things will get better not ready to grab the life preserver from saviors nor listen to advice or prayers because they don't him like I do to put band aids of our good times over fresh bruises has become a new chapter in our walk together it took me losing my eye site to see that he wasn't the one for me even Scooby do showed the monsters hide behind mask to realise that wolves in sheeps clothing are not only found in fairytales

Poem4

Mothers and tired of black children being made into Martyrs from unjust murders we have been Willie Lynch since we were captured from the shores of Africa white hoods have been traded for black and blue police uniforms made it legal to hunt men like me because Justice is blind Thirteenth Amendment and the industrial Prison Complex is the new slave trade mandatory drug sentences equal genocide for people with melanin murdered by cops equal admin leave the benefits and pensions niggars have no color no conscience or code of conduct for every black person killed on camera there were 20 more who will never get named or a hashtag or there last words made into catch phrases to be sold on t-shirts we have been spinning our wheels for too long murder hashtag protest no conviction riot repeat Officer Jim Crow applied Chokehold and segregated the life out of his black body the color of his skin pose the threat hands up don't shoot threat I can't breathe threat he was wearing a hoodie threat in the confines of my own home threat we got Soldiers with no leaders they'll show you better than they can tell you what happens to our leaders any man that tried to force change has been made a Mater by America's bastard children I am fortunate to survive my lynchings scared and afraid of those who supposed to Serve and Protect today there's too much talk with no actions tired of Facebook and Twitter rants social media activist being called a Nigger don't make me one unplug and wake up from the Matrix red and blue pill resemble every police lights in the distance agent Smith Reminds Me of every racist cop in existence I'm afraid for my son his mother my daughter and lastly myself speeches and poems don't make you an activist action in your community does athletes are willing to speak on Kaepernick taking a knee but won't take a stand themselves the president called them filled niggars play ball it is the only time that we can run and not get killed for it we are sick and tired of being sick and tired they are no riots without reasons protest reform and Revolt and are the seeds of revolution see the hate that is made is the hate that you gave there will be no change until we change freedom from mental slavery breaking the chains I pray we can find a resolution From the Ashes of the flames

Poem5

I dedicate these words to my father and to those with the courage to help where help is needed for those fighting the good fight we won't lay down and die we will keep on living through the support of loved ones and Samaritans who know about service and sacrifice may you find the strength to endure to live a life of longevity finding your second chance to Salvation somewhere between holistic and Hallelujah together through tolerance we can transform the treatment of transgender individuals teaching there is a better way because this disease does not discriminate race religion Creed color identification or orientation to those who find themselves hopeless or homeless may you find refuge in these words remember to rise every day to reclaim your respect with resounding resilience and accept that death is not in your diagnosis may you find a fulfilling life on your journey Embrace every day as it comes remember the reward and living your best life stay uplifted when ugly actions and words draped in ignorance and rejection find you with quil I quilted scripted stitchings of words giving by infected and affected projecting that through love knowledge wisdom understanding education perseverance empathy and compassion we can eradicate the stigma of those who live with HIV and AIDS and come together to understand that it's your dignity not your diagnosis that defines you

Poem 6

This poem will not be superficial
This poem will recognize that reparations are pass due
This poem will be acknowledgment that the sacrifice of our ancestors is present in our present generation
This will feel like Gil Scott-Heron giving honor to Maya Angelo
Fueled by the Passion of James Baldwin
An ode to Madame Gwendolyn Brooks, Nikki Giovanni and Paul Laurence Dunbar
This poem will be a freedom song
A new Negro spiritual
We will lift every voice and sing
This poem is the realization that free at last is still a dream by Dr. King
It's knowing that trouble won't last always but joy will come in the morning
To understand that black is beautiful, black is strong, black is powerful, black is resilient
Black is survival by any means necessary
Remember we were kings and queens
Before the slave trade and middle passage segregation and Jim Crow, Black Wall Street and Tuskegee Experiments
Cause we be making something from nothing
We be feeding our families with the leftovers of our oppressors
We be innovation black inventions H.B.C.U. black education, black girl magic, refined minds divine nine
We are the culture that you wish you was
The style you pattern yourself after
We are Joe Louis, Jackie Robinson, Jim Brown
Maya Rudolph, Phillis Wheatley, Mary McLeod Bethune
Fred Shuttlesworth, JamesBevel, Stokely Carlmicheal Ralph David Abernathy, Jessie Jackson, Andrew Young, Bayard Rustin,
Miles Davis, John Coletrain, Thelonious Monk & Donald Bird
We are love supreme and a dream deferred
We are first black president serving two terms
This poem is confirmation that black lives matter
Black is the origin that birth nations after
It's I self-love and master
Knowledge wisdom and understanding
That there's magic in your Melanin
The reflection of God in every man
We are more than we shall overcome
Our existence is the testament to everything we overcome
We're more than any month, more than any color, more than any Name

Bio

(Bugsy Calhoun) Jamal Washington a poet emcee born and raised in the OceanHill Brownsville section of Brooklyn NY, Debuted his poetry at the Brooklyn Moon. He is founding member of the Unusual Suspects poetry Troop and member of Black on Black Rhyme and the slam master of Columbia's slam team Tribe Slam he Co-hosts an open mic at The House of Hathor called the J.A.M. Session with his wife (Wintah Storm) Karen Joyner Washington he also has 6 spoken word and hip hop music projects on www.Bandcamp.com/bugsycalhoun Bugsy works in the community using his poetry to build Bridges not barriers he works with Tracy Oakman who runs the Princes Empowerment and Boyz II Men infused mentoring program.

To understand the rhythm and flow of Bugsy's poetry it is best heard live and I encourage you to step outside of your comfort zone and listen to our spoken word poets in their element.

Poet of the People – Susan Finch Stevens

This week's Poet of the People is Susan Finch Stevens. I first met Susan when Kwami Dawes resided in South Carolina and ran the South Carolina Poetry Initiative. She is a gifted poet and generous with her time and energy. 

Her leadership as president of the Poet Society of South Carolina drew me back into the organization when I was disillusioned with its leadership and direction. Susan Finch Stevens is one of the gracious, kind and skillful poets that the Carolina coast is known for.

Just Sayin’

with a nod to William Carlos Williams
 
I forget eggs boiling on the stove
when scores of cedar waxwings
begin their yearly ravishing
of hollies out front. I know full well
by midday all berries will be gone,
plucked from the evergreens
like last December’s ornaments
once the new year rolled around.
Tomorrow I’ll miss the yaupon’s
red adornments, the dahoon’s
crimson spangle, but today I delight
in gluttony, the riotous ecstasy
of waxwings more akin to Bacchus
than Icarus. I envy the drunken
throng’s frenzy as they plump
their bellies full, their habit
of choosing the tipsy dizziness
of overripe fruit over the dizziness
of attaining new and solitary heights.
Today I relish the marauders’ trills,
the sleek beauty of their black masks,
and the waxy red tips of their wings.
I take delight in tails edged with a yellow
somewhere between the sun’s bright heat
and the dull yolks of the overcooked eggs,
which I will discard this once without remorse.
I ask no one for forgiveness
when I take instead from the fridge
the bright berries I suddenly crave.
They are delicious, so sweet and so cold.
 

Sea-girls

Maybe the dark cursor of a boat moving
            along the horizon at the bottom
                        of the sky’s bright screen
            has caught the attention of two girls
heart-deep in the Caribbean Sea.
            Or perhaps they see frigate birds
                        at long last returning to land.
            From my dry vantage point
with these old eyes,
            I see nothing beyond the pair
                        but unfathomable shades of blue. 
            A rogue wave sends the two reeling,
heads thrown back in raucous laughter
            drowned from my hearing
                        by the salt-white noise of the sea.
            Footing regained, they link arms,
each to each, to brace themselves
            against another rush of water
                        clear enough for them to see
            the shell-pink of their summer pedicures.
Clear enough for me to see legs and feet changed now
            into sea tentacles by the smoke and mirrors
                        of water and light.
 

Apples for Athena

for Hope
 
Athena desired the golden apple
meant for the fairest goddess of all,
but Paris gave Aphrodite the prize
in exchange for the hand of Helen
whose face would launch a thousand ships
and lead to a horse of wood and deceit.
But enough about that!
I don’t mean to tell you today
about that apple or that horse.
I don’t mean to tell you today
about that Athena, but about
the Athena here in this barn
where I’ve brought my granddaughter
and her offering of apples.
This Athena would surely shun
the golden one, preferring instead
the succulent fruit to which she now
lowers her head. The mare works
her long jaws, rolling an apple
from side to side until a crunch
sweetens her mouth and even her breath,
which is already sweet with the ghost of hay.
I know this because I am standing here
close enough to feel the warmth emerge
from her enormous lungs.
They are as big as angel wings.
No, wrong mythology.
They are as big as aeon wings
or the wings of Nike, goddess of victory, 
who was close enough to that other Athena
for the two to become, in the minds
of many, melded into a single deity.
Just as this Athena, who now takes
a silver snaffle into her mouth,
becomes one with my granddaughter
Hope, mounted and ready to gallop—
if not to Mount Olympus, at least
to her own version of paradise.                

Scoliosis

My shadow stretches impossibly long and straight across my childhood
yard in the slant of late day sun. I am tiny and mighty with my towel cape
and that dark immensity emanating from my small feet. My shadow
is formidable, but
already my spine
is curving, refusing
its stature, pulling one
shoulder to hip, a body part-
ly bent on being closer to
the sticker-spiked ground,
a tension of opposites
embodied as I grow
taller and shorter
at once.

Death’s Door

Four catbirds in as many days
propel themselves full force
into the clear deception
of our front door’s glass pane.
Shadow-grey, darker skullcaps,
the birds arrive at the threshold
as though dressed in self-mourning.
One by one, I bury them in the yard
amidst the remains of hamsters and fish
and other small creatures who have died
in this place where we live. The dogs
are elsewhere. The dachshund’s bones
well settled beneath oaks in a beloved
country spot, his tombstone the arc
of his half-buried dish. The mutt’s
divided ashes scattered there in part
and also a stone’s throw away
in the plaid currents of a brackish creek.
The cremated spaniels, who never met
in life, wait patiently in death to be
unleashed together on the beach
where they both romped.
The Weimaraner, ash-grey in life,
joins me in this new ritual of burying birds.
By the third day, the dog knows the routine
and noses a covering of dirt and dead
leaves onto the lifeless form I drop
into the ground’s yawning furrow.
I hang an ornament on the door,
not in mourning, but in hope of exposing
the skulduggery of autumn light and glass.
But on the fourth day,
the dreaded thud once more.
That night we talk of the birds
but avoid all mention of omens.
Instead we speak of what we could buy:
perhaps a solid door to block all light
and reflection as though we might
put an end to this grave trickery.

BIO:

Susan Finch Stevens’ poems have appeared in journals and anthologies, including Connecticut River Review, One, Kakalak, and The Southern Poetry Anthology: South Carolina. Her chapbook Lettered Bones was selected as a winner in the South Carolina Poetry Initiative Chapbook Competition. She is a past president of the Poetry Society of South Carolina and served many years as the society’s recording secretary. She has been a featured reader in Piccolo Spoleto’s Sundown Poetry Reading Series, both individually and as a member of Richard Garcia’s Long Table Poets. She served as poet-in-residence at the Gibbes Museum of Art in Charleston. Her work has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Susan lives on the Isle of Palms, SC with her husband David and their mischievous Weimaraner Maisie.

Poetry of the People – Ashley Crout

This week's poet of the people is Ashley Crout. I met Ashley a few months ago and since then I have heard her do readings and had lunch with her and another friend. It is like we have known each other for years. 

You can hear her this Wednesday at Mind Gravy. 04/10 - 7 pm Cool Beans.

Bio

Ashley Crout was born in Charleston, SC, and graduated from Bard College and the MFA program at Hunter College. She is the recipient of a poetry grant from The Astraea Foundation, has received awards from The Academy of American Poets and the Poetry Foundation and is a four-time Pushcart Prize nominee. Her work has been published in Michigan Quarterly Review, New Orleans Review, Atticus Review and Dodging the Rain, among others. She lives in Greenville, SC, with her hound, Stella.

CLOSED ADOPTION

All I knew of my birth mother then
was the fierce red color of her hair
that burned away any usual humanness,
her build still slight with youth
and her love of the horses she rode
across the mind of my childhood.
I filled my room with horse figurines
so that we would have something shared
between us when she came one day
to find me. But sometimes what is missing,
does not know how to return. You find
yourself seeking the safety of certain devotion
such as the loyalty of vaguely human horses
like the ones in westerns who know how
to head home if ever they are separated
from their cowboy in the course of the story.
I cannot end this with even a brief singular nod
of acknowledgement. I saw her once
decades too late, the woman who carried my life
until it could be separated from hers.
I recognized her the way I know myself
in the mirror. She moved as I moved. Her face
was trapped in my face. I would not let her out.
I had never resembled anyone. You would think
it would have connected us. I was once
brand new in the world. I needed her then
is what I said during our single intersection.
She had no language for how she heard this,
did not respond. I considered being devastated,
then I decided to take my life back.
I pictured all my horses restless in the barn,
alerting me to a dangerous presence, a coming
storm indifferent to my safety, my survival,
the interdependent structures of my house.
You’ve grown old, I might say. I will outlive you.

SONNET IN A TIME OF CONTAGION

A slant rain deadens the night-dark highway.
There’s something I’m trying to leave behind.
In some yesterday, a new disease came.
You now must hold yourself still in stopped time,
 
stand at a remove from the living world—
seen but unheard, your voice hushed by distance.
Skin on skin touch forbidden, that’s the curse.
You could be coated with it. That’s the dance.
 
You could look like yourself but carry it,
sicken someone, accidental murder.
You could hate it but find you’ve married it.
This has happened before. It grows further.
 
I mean your death could stand right next to you
and you wouldn’t know it. You wouldn’t move.

WOMAN WHO SAID $37 MILLION JACKPOT WIN HAD RUINED HER LIFE FOUND DEAD IN HER HOME

And so it seems you cannot buy your way out of lonely.
 
How many years did she string her
luckiest numbers together looking
to match the winning sequence
before the unlikely day that she did.
 
She had not meant an avalanche of dollars
but the people she believed they would draw
towards her. She had never before been special
to anyone. She had outlived an entire line
of women who aged unwitnessed, unmentioned
by any voice in any room.
 
Some tragedies are about what does not happen.
 
Maybe she sat in her usual house, and the money
overwhelmed her with its possibles, its faces
of former rulers as immovable as the dead become.
Maybe she waited for the townsfolk to begin
to swarm their singular greeding hive mind
at her property’s edge. She dreamed of crowds
that at once would know her, at once would love her
if only they all drew together imitating an embrace.
 
There is no account of the how it had,
as she is said to have said, left her life a ruin.
Maybe it could never have been enough
for the madness of hands sticky with want
that surrounded her mother’s mother’s house
and outstretched their temporary mouths
revealing the entire top rows of their teeth.
 
Maybe all those who beamed at her briefly,
just polite enough to make their faces grateful,
bought garish gleaming boats and sailed away.
Maybe she felt smaller then as if seen
from a distance until she was almost an absence
like the failure of light outside her windows.
Even her body left her alone in her sleep.
 
Authorities found her days too late – unable
to separate what once she was, a physical house
abandoned, from the thin sheet she’d drawn to her
as one does when desperate for the necessity
of touch. Maybe, in her wealth of grief, she submitted
to sleep so fully, its shutdown of conscious
calculated wants, that it kept her body in such
a stillness that it never moved again. Maybe
she lost all knowledge of how to lift herself out
 
again into the gold sun, the sight of its glare
like coins placed on the eyes of the dead.

LAND DWELLLERS

When you are inhabited by a geography, its waters –
the animal scent of the marsh, the brine-soak
of the ocean – rise into your mouth. You swallow.
 
You are never not swallowing. Its land hums under
your feet. You cannot place the song. Its land loosens
into silt. The rust red dust sinks, is sinking, until it settles
 
on the flat of your diaphragm. To breathe, you have to
lift entire cities as if holding an offering up to God, excavate
your body from the roots of the family that named you.
 
You never had their thick drawl in your mouth, how it
stretches every word backwards into a story that glories
the past. Your mother and your mother’s mother could
 
have been someone but they only sat watching the world.
Slatted rocking chairs cast them forward then back
then back. The slowed sound of their language lingers,
 
like the crushed lavender scent at their necks, long
after it means whatever it meant. Your chest is resonant
with human voice. You are both the house and the one
 
locked out, your flushed face cooling against the windows.
One day you will run. One day you will run back
for the same reasons that you left. You are populated
 
both with those whose sins are unforgivable and those
who prophet a God to them. Every one of them, every last
one of them, is yours. Every goddamn one of them is you.

This week's Poet of the People is Kathleen Nalley!

This week's Poet of the People is Kathleen Nalley. I first met Kathleen at an event hosted by Kwami Dawes. Since then she has journeyed down to the Midlands several times to read at events I have hosted and I have had the privilege to read a time or two with her in the Upstate. She is a force of nature - a strong wind of sanity blowing from the foothills of South Carolina.

-Al Black

Kathleen Nalley is the author of the prose poetry collection, Gutterflower (winner of the Bryant-Lisembee Editor’s Prize), as well as the poetry chapbooks Nesting Doll (winner of the S.C. Poetry Initiative Prize) and American Sycamore. Her poetry and book reviews have appeared in New Flash Fiction Review, Slipstream, Limp Wrist, Rivet, Southern Humanities Review, The Bitter Southerner, StorySouth, and elsewhere, and her poetry has been anthologized in several collections. She received Jasper’s Saluda River Prize for Poetry in Fall Lines in 2016 and was heralded by the Richland Library as one of “10 SC Poets to Watch.” She’s participated in several community poetry projects in Columbia and Greenville, S.C.--most recently, in coordination with Greenville Poet Laureate Glenis Redmond for the Greenville Transit Poetry Project and for the Metropolitan Arts Council of Greenville’s Visual and Verse exhibit. Over the years, she has served as poetry editor of south85 literary journal, as an adjudicator for the Fine Arts Center of Greenville, as a judge for the SC State Library’s annual student poetry contest, and as a board member of the Emrys Foundation. She currently teaches literature and writing at Clemson University.


The Last Man on the Moon

 

Everyone knows Neil Armstrong: Staypuft moon walker, American posterboy, question to Jeopardy answer. The way Aldrin was all the buzz. Everyone loves firsts: first date, first love, first sex, first lunar walk. No one talks of lasts: marathon walker, buffalo corpse, minimum-wage worker, the sister not quick enough to the table, Eugene Cernan, who drove a lunar rover a mile, then knelt and traced his daughter’s initials—TDC— into dust. Cernan: the last man on the moon, the end of a legacy. The Omega. The Z. The period at the end of a sentence. The one whose name we don’t remember. The one who etched his daughter into the cosmos.


Black Dress

 

Although your mother cooked

pasta, lasagna, tiramisu,

you weren’t allowed to eat

more than three bites,

 

always a size two, to stay a size two,

always a halved grapefruit

on the counter, a bowl of peaches

rinsed of their syrup, fists

measuring perfect portions.

 

Boyfriends knew to deny you

milkshakes at the Starlite Drive-In,

where high school lovers swarmed

the parking lot, having only a few

hours before fathers would go looking.

 

You subsisted on Saltines

for weeks before senior prom;

the black dress your mother made

intentionally a size too small,

her tape measure lassoed

around your 21-inch waist.

 

Now, in the mirror, all you see

is what you never were,

fat and bulge and droop, the last

bobby-socked girl to be asked

to dance. Now, laugh lines

corner your mouth.

 

You don’t remember being

beautiful, the powder blue

eyeshadow, the brown scalloped

lace, your hi-rise and hospital job

in Charlotte, flirting with young plastic

surgeons who cut skin open,

lifted spleens to tables, painted

skin with scalpels.

 

Mid-life, you’ve got wonderfully

open carotids, jeans that fit,

secret cravings and scales

like gargoyles in every room

watching over the numbers,

 

those damn numbers that creep

into your sleep, wake you

in a panic, as if you’re walking

late to class naked, as if there’s

an algebra test you forgot to take.

 

Behind the louvers of your closet,

the perfect little black dress

in case someone dies.

 

 Judicial Hearing Ghazal

The girls school girls—were they were dressed to impress
the boys school boys at the weekend parties on your calendar?

Another beer down the hatch, another punch bowl to spike, another girl to access,
another notch on your belt, another to-do checked off of your calendar.

The boys lined up in trousers and ties, dressed for success—
a train of future executives and judges with no time on their calendars.

Punch-drunk, literally, those girls that you pressed
against you—funny, their names don’t appear on your calendar.

One says you forcibly groped, shifted her dress:
unmentionables unmentioned on your calendar.

Another says luckily she had emergency egress
before more harm could be done. She kept an emotional calendar.

The women who’ve come forward, their memories repressed
years, decades—did they keep calendars? (And how were they dressed?)

The parties, the drinks, the boys, their aggressions—details from all three coalesce,
details corroborated, at least, in part, by your calendar.

They’ve experienced PTSD for decades, traumatic duress
while you climbed the ladder, made appointments on your calendar.

A limited investigation, limited witnesses addressed
within a limited scope—the vote already fixed on the calendar.

Women know how it goes. #metoo. #whyIneverreported. We persist, nevertheless.
Take it on oath: November 5 circled in red,
                                                                          circled in red, circled in red
                                                                                                          on our calendars.


Life Sentence

In 2014, Oskar Gröning, 93-­‐year-­‐old former Nazi accountant, was charged with 300,000 counts of accessory to murder

 

For 60 years, you’ve sought absolution

in birds,

their wingtip and beak,

their freedom of flight.

You dumped 661 pounds

of seed in your yard,

shallow bowls overflowing,

just so you could pass the years

witnessing their formation: always a V,

nary a soldier not following suit.

Sixty years you’ve waited, contemplated

your garden, your lawn pocked

by all those small empty saucers.


What Man’s Hands Wrought

Long before there was fracking there was you unearthing the very earth digging trenches in soil spilling your chemical goo turning mud to muck leaving nutrients to dry fuck you nature heals herself in time even the most eroded can make anew grow pickups from seed littered the wind always knows what to do carry things away carry things where they will bloom wildflowers color the landscape permeate the air oh her honeysuckle hue she’s wild always wild always remade no matter the matter or intrusion or drilling or fracture believe her she will

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