Al Black's Poetry of the People Features Jonesy Stark

This week's Poet of the People is Jonesy Stark. I met Jonesy about 12 years ago at an open mic; he blew me away. Some poets are good with delivery or good with their word craft; Jonesy is great with both. Often, I'm left in awe of  the relationships he sees in words. Jonesy quietly gives back to young people in need of  support an amentor. A hidden gem in South Carolina's poetry scene, I am honored to know him.

-Al Black

'Father, husband, educator and advocate of turtles. The tragic end results of Peter Parker being bitten by a radioactive poet.' He is a dude with dreads. Oft mistaken for a poet. Olympic gold medalist robot dancer. PHD in Yamology.

_____

Cardinal Sin

Chapter one First verse

“Thou shall not come for the black woman.”

Whether you be other or brother

Must be out your cotdamn mind

To fix your lips to spit some foolishness

And assume I’m finna let it slide

I’m beyond done with you Quasimodos masquerading as Shaka Zulus

You who fetishize the motherland yet detest her daughters

Are unworthy of association with either

In order to be the king

You must lay your life down for the queen

But rather than stand tall

Y'all quick to hotep two step

Dance around accountability

Content to sit on sideline as she unnaturally shifts her spine

Criticize as she throws out her back to pick up your slack

Denounce her for doing for self what you wouldn’t provide her

As if she’d wish to wear the weight of a nation

Defend its borders

Administrate its affairs

All the while making it seem effortless in heels with slayed hair

To be black and to be woman

Is to know no compassion

It is to forever be measured and always found lacking

It is the expectation to be more than a woman

While being treated like less than a lady

It is to walk through a world of pointing fingers

Rarely encountering a helping hand

Because it takes less effort to punch down

Than it does to lift up

It is to intimately know the sting of a slap

While yearning for a caring caress

It is giving the blessing of life to sons who will curse you

It is being crucified and exposed before the world

By the man who was supposed to protect you

It is enduring it all

And still fighting for they who fight against you __

House

I started writing poetry because I wanted a girl to like me
And a decade and a half later
I can sincerely say not much has changed
Guess Hov said it best
“You are who you are when you got here”
Hol’ up
You are who you are when you got hair
Them short and curlies
Folk, I’ve surely yet to meet an adult
We all adolescents imitatin’ what we was taught
Trying’ to live out gimmicks and images we bought
I mean practice makes perfect
And I’ve perfected the practice of actin’
As if I actually have a clue
When in reality I’m equally as lost as my son askin’ how to
See he’s thoroughly convinced I have infinite access to the answers
That his author father
Is the Merlin to his Arthur
When really I’m no mystic
Somethin’ far more simplistic
Just older
And not necessarily wiser
Gifted
With opportunity to make more messes
But how can I confess his faith is fully misplaced
Shake the foundations of his sense of security
I can’t
So I continue to adorn my red and blue suit
To battle monsters in closets and boogeymen beneath bedframes
Doing my damndest to deceive both he and me
To defy my kryptonite
The gnawing that comes from the knowing
Knowing that despite my desire
The “S” on my chest can’t shield him from life
Eventually I’ll have to rack my brain
Tryin’ in vain to explain
Why Lex Luthor is often the victor
Why I raised him like a Kent
In a world corrupt and bent
Taught him to walk straight 
In a slanted land where the bad guy wins
On that day the facade will falter
His reality irreparably altered
As his eyes realize my mystique
Is merely a smoke and mirror mirage
My omnipotence
Certainly less than advertised
My omniscience, nonexistent
Simply a paltry parlor trick
That moment will be awkward
But it will leave us both better
Liberated I free to give what little know how I’ve acquired
To transmit my ideas clear
Unfettered by paternalistic pretense
And he to transmit my middling musings
Into something actually advantageous
Reconstruct my copper cognitions and leaden logos
Into glimmering golden gnosis
Perhaps through his process
Successfully plot his path to the fabled land of adulthood

___

Venomous Virility

“Y’all niggas’ gay!!!”
This was my induction
Into the fraternal order of black masculinity
You see apparently
Six year old me
Had transgressed the border between
Showin’ love for the homey
And havin’ homo tendencies
Cuz real niggas give daps, not hugs
And mosdef don’t smile
While engaged in a man to man embrace
Vulnerability was solely for sissies
And unbecoming of a brother
Tears were for queers
Emotions kept tightly wrapped under covers
These cardinal rules came to reign
Occupied cavity in chest
Freshly emptied of innocent heart
Anger only acceptable outward expression
Of inward issues
Fists replacing tongues
As practiced tools of communication
Because there’s nothing a broken jaw can’t transmit
As impactfully as an eloquent, impassioned plea
Or so we were miseducated to believe
Because every muted word
Every tear unshed
Was a link in chains weighing down our souls
Denial of half our nature
Naturally made us semi-realized beings
Being constantly at war with ourselves
Being strong at too high cost
Of mental and emotional health
Denyin’ self wealth
Of integral life experience
Because boys don’t cry
We crawl through life with faded vision
And I say crawl because men
See, we don’t run
Unless forced to confront
Foe intangible yet can painfully touch
One we can’t vanquish via violence
Neither kick nor punch
I once witnessed my father lose that fight
In a moment of brokenness bend knee
Allow hurt heart through eyes to speak
Tears stain cheek
Once he’d gathered himself
And once more donned his armor of pride
He apologized
I don’t know which was worse
The fact that he felt the need to
Or that I both understood and realized
That in that moment he’d rather have died
Than of himself reveal that side
Losing control was a sin inconsiderable
Father, son bonding
Belonging to ball parks and bar stools
Never bedrooms…
Sorrow shown silent
Only at burial grounds
This’ the mis-molded mess this world’s made us
Sensitive spirits shackled within testosterone walled prisons
Accented with homophobic bars
Boys playing at being men
Barely brave enough to question
Who made up
These malicious mores of manhood?
These Guantanamo Bay ways of approved gender displays?
Who galvanized this jihad against genuine self-expression?
I know not
But I know this
I’m staging a coup
I’m no longer content too
Goose step to cadence of callous rhythm
Ho-hum humdrum pattern stern and militaristic
Monotone,
Mirthless
I will dance daringly to an ostentatious orchestra
Melodic flourishes fully seasoned with life’s many flavors
All while wearing colorful dream coats
Tailored to transmit its infinite textures
No more austere armor
I’m casting aside my sword
Picking up a pen and building bridges with my words
I’m splintering shaft of my spear
And exchanging it for a paintbrush
With aim of illustrating a better world for my son
One where he can sing, dance, laugh, and cry
With equal pride
One where the weapons of war are ideas
And border skirmishes serve to break down
Those between self and others
Oh what a world it’ll be

____

Inhuman

I didn’t want you to walk away 
But I didn’t know how to ask you to stay
I’ve never been one 
For one on ones
Too easily tongue tied when eye to eye
So on this stage I set free the secrets of this page
Prayin’ these words land not
Upon ears deafened by my silence
Victimized by my non-verbal violence
Tuned out by my inability to tune in
I am
More machine than man
Mechanically marching from moment to moment
Merely reacting to previously programmed prompts
Physically present but lacking sincere presence
In essence
I am empty inside
Hollow
Homunculi passing for person
Human in form
All the while lacking the essential qualities
A marvel of masterful magecraft
Cleverly crafted to casually deceive
Mirage of a man

...

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 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

Jasper Project Board Member AL BLACK Creates New Poem to Celebrate Announcement of ONE BOOK 2024 Novel - BEAVER GIRL by CASSIE PREMO STEELE

In honor of the announcement of Cassie Premo Steele’s novel, BEAVER GIRL, as the selection for the ONE BOOK 2024 community reading project, we asked Jasper Project board of directors member and local poetry guru, Al Black, to read Beaver Girl and craft a poem in response to the message of the book. Al did not disappoint! Please read Al’s poem, and the signature poem for this project, The Remembering, below, then pick up your own copy of Beaver Girl, and write a poem, paint a picture, or create a piece of music in your response to the book and enter it in the Jasper Project’s THE ART OF ONE BOOK 2024 Arts Contest.

The Remembering

Leave your shoes here on the stump.

Go forward on bare feet,

step through into the Remembering.

The ground will know you.

The mycelium will announce your approach. 

Next to the beaver pond remove your gown.

Sit naked on the bank. Tonight is the Leaving of the Kits. 

The recitation of old stories 

of Livia, Chap and their families

Tales of a time when humans and beavers 

spoke the same language 

and learned to live together, again.

Tonight, young beavers must leave their parents

make space and time for the next litter.

They may invite you to swim 

to the far side of the pond with them.

There they will leave the water 

and begin their journey to new streams.

Not all of your sisters or all of the kits will remember, 

but if they listen,

they will feel memories of the Healing Time 

that came after the Great Dying Away. 

And maybe - if you are blessed,

you will remember and believe the old stories of a beaver girl

and that ancient laws of preservation are based in truth.

The door of enchantment is only open a short time

so do not question me, remove your shoes and enter the Remembering.

Al Black, 04/21/2024 

Al Black's Poetry of the People with Marjory Wentworth

This week's Poet of the People is Marjory Wentworth. Marjory Wentworth was and is poetry in South Carolina. She inspired us to become more than we had been and even though she has relocated to Ohio she continues to return and uplift South Carolina poets. Her influence will resonate through the poetry of South Carolina for decades beyond our living. 

Talking with Marjory on the phone is a gift of light.

-Al Black

MARJORY WENTWORTH is the New York Times bestselling author of Out of Wonder, Poems Celebrating Poets (with Kwame Alexander and Chris Colderley). Her books of poetry include Noticing Eden, Despite Gravity, The Endless Repetition of an Ordinary Miracle and New and Selected Poems. Her poems have been nominated for The Pushcart Prize 7 times. She is also the co-writer of We Are Charleston, Tragedy and Triumph at Mother Emanuel, with Herb Frazier and Dr. Bernard Powers and Taking a Stand, The Evolution of Human Rights, with Juan E. Mendez. She is co-editor with Kwame Dawes of Seeking, Poetry and Prose inspired by the Art of Jonathan Green, and the author of the prizewinning children’s story Shackles. She served as the poet laureate of South Carolina from 2003-2020, and in 2021 she received The SC Governor’s Award for the Arts. Her archives are held at the James B. Duke Library at Furman University. Wentworth teaches at Wright State University. She was named a Black Earth Institute Fellow for 2022-25. For further information see marjorytwentworth.com.

The Architecture of Containment

Enslaved Quarters Part 1

In the small square bedroom

Above the kitchen, heat rising

From the stove in waves so heavy

It was almost visible. A family

trying to sleep here, would lie still

As long as possible, tossing

And turning beneath moonlight, pouring

Through the only open window.

Sometimes a breeze

Carrying the scent of the sea

Rippled through the thick air

As if it could change everything

But the window turned in

On itself, on them and their entire world

The city beyond the high walls

Was as far away as the moon itself

Even the horses, snorting

In the stables

Across the courtyard

Could sometimes see beyond these walls

Flocks of seagulls would often

Find their way here

Strutting across rooftops 

Then rising through the line

Of magnolias

High above the walls

some would hover, almost still

Suspended in the air like hope

For The Poetics of Witness program, the Gibbes Museum of Art, Sep. 20, 2023 

1937

I never imagined my grandmother at rest,

until I saw the Dorothea Lange photograph

of a sharecropper wife and mother of seven

children near Chesenee, South Carolina;

because this woman is so relaxed,

as if her endless work is done.

Sitting on a chair – one arm stretched across

her swollen belly, the other hand

holding her chin; deep in thought,

her eyes are focused on something outside

the frame, dreaming into the distance,

she looks as if she can see beyond

the cotton fields and the small town

where she was born,

before the babies came one after the other,

before the lean years, when the store

still had barrels full of flour,

oats, and rows of sugary canned fruit

lining the dusty shelves.

After the war to end all wars,

she was young, and life was sweet,

the way it must have seemed

to my grandmother, before giving

birth to eight children on the kitchen table

in the gabled house on a bog road

across the stand of apple trees

in West Bethel, Maine, where snowdrifts

reached the roof most winters

and mud clogged the roads each spring.

In Hebrew, Bethel means house of God.

Sometimes, she must have wondered

where God was in that house west of Bethel,

those grueling years of war and rationing,

when the babies came one after the other. 

My mother, number 5, was the fattest. 

After three boys in a row, she was adored –

the only one to find a tangerine in the toe

of her Christmas stocking, beneath peppermints

and a pair of red mittens knit by her mother. 

She had never seen a tangerine,

and did not know how to eat it. At first,

she thought it was a ball that she could roll

across the floor and watch the black barn cat

try to catch it. This story was her easy way

of explaining how poor they were,

and how my grandmother could make a holiday

out of almost nothing.  Like the mother

in the photograph in Chesnee, South Carolina,

who sat down at the end of the long day,

watched the sun setting over the peach trees,

this woman who believed that the pink light

spreading across the tops of the flowering

branches was shining just for her.

Inspired by the exhibition The Bitter Years:  Dorthea Lange and Walter Evans Photography from the Martin Z Marguiles/”Sharecropper wife and mother of seven children, Near Chesnee, South Carolina” photographer Dorthea Lange

Flight

Clouds disassembling

Breathless in sunlight

Solid as the afternoon

I am not a part of

That is the place

I am looking for

The earth’s magnet

Of troubles, spinning

As far away

As I am travelling

 Nothing is Abandoned

Lined with miles of tangled vines,

coconut palms and bananas

growing thick and green,

the dirt road to the market

climbs through clumps of tangerine

bougainvillea and trees

laden with lemons and limes,

passing pink painted box homes

where bright laundry is always

drying outside on the line,

and roosters pecking at the earth

announce the day triumphant.

The road is the color

of the sun rising over the sea.

There is smoke on the wind

and prayers playing on the radio,

as the road fills with people   

walking in the same direction.

Everyone carries something:

buckets of picked peanuts, 

a small child on her mother’s back,

bags filled with mangoes, sugar cane

stacked on a tray. An endless

array of items passes by, from loaves

of bread to used batteries;

nothing goes to waste

in this roadside economy.

And nothing is abandoned

on this road pulsing with light

and the gifts the world brings.

Ghana, 2014

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.

Jasper Partners with One Columbia & All Good Books to present 2024 ONE BOOK Project -- Book Announcement Celebration April 21st at Bierkeller

A few hints: the author lives, works, and writes in Columbia, the book’s theme centers around nature, environmental responsibility, and climate change, and there are characters in the book that transcend perceived racial, gender, sexual orientation, and even biological divisions to remind us that we are all citizens of this planet.

The public is invited to join the Jasper Project, One Columbia, and All Good Books, along with our host, Bierkeller Brewing Company on Sunday afternoon, April 21st from 3 – 5 pm for the announcement of our new book selection for Columbia’s 2024 ONE BOOK project!

As an Earth Day Eve event, the Bierkeller has invited representatives from local environmental organizations to be on hand to help us set the stage for the announcement of this year’s book selection.

A few hints: the author lives, works, and writes in Columbia, the book’s theme centers around nature, environmental responsibility, and climate change, and there are characters in the book that transcend perceived racial, gender, sexual orientation, and even biological divisions to remind us that we are all citizens of this planet.

Columbia city poet laureate Jennifer Bartell Boykin will read a poem dedicated to the city, and southeastern regional poetry event host Al Black has created a new poem inspired by the selected book. Dr. Melissa Stuckey, USC professor of History, will speak as will One Columbia’s Xavier Blake, All Good Book’s Jared Johnson, and the Jasper Project’s Cindi Boiter. There will be an interactive arts table for the children, environmental information booths, and various arts and crafts vendors will share their wares and talents with attendees. And, of course, beer, wine, and authentic German dishes will be available from the Bierkeller.

In addition to announcing the calendar of events for Columbia’s 2024 ONE BOOK  celebration, the pre-Earth Day event will also allow for the announcement of a Jasper Project – sponsored and ONE BOOK - inspired visual art, literary art, and singer-songwriter competition open to Midlands area artists with prizes and a 2024 ONE BOOK culminating party on September 22, 2024.

The ONE BOOK, One Community project began in the Seattle public library system in 1998 when Seattle librarians invited the community of greater Seattle to read and discuss the same book over the course of a summer. Columbia embraced the project first in 2011, and we enjoyed several years of exciting, thought-provoking programming centered around a singular book. One of our most exciting projects was in 2017 when the Columbia community read local author Carla Damron's novel The Stone Necklace, a detailed and ultimately uplifting story focusing on the power of community to combat poverty and homelessness and set in Columbia. Along with One Columbia for Arts and Culture and independent bookstore All Good Books, the Jasper Project has renewed the project focusing exclusively on books by SC authors.

While the title of the book remains embargoed until April 21st, media representatives may be made aware of the information upon request.

What will the selection for Columbia’s 2024 One Book be? Join us on April 21st from 3 – 5 pm at the Bierkeller, 600 Canal Street, Suite 1009 to find out!

For more information contact info@JasperProject.org

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

This Week's Featured Poet of the People with Al Black is Stephen Wing

This week's Poet of the People is Stephen Wing. In the environmental poetry scene, Stephen Wing is a force to reckoned with. I spent three days at the Off the Grid Festival outside Spartanburg, SC with him last Autumn and he has featured twice for events I organized in the Midlands area. He is authentic and writes from his strong belief in the sanctity of nature. We need more Stephen Wings. 

-       Al Black

Stephen Wing discovered the wilderness in the summer after ninth grade, and suddenly the world made sense. A deep connection to wild nature has been his spiritual center ever since. His work as a poet ranges from the personal to the pastoral to the fiercely political. Once each season he hosts the “EarthPoetry” workshop, exploring metro Atlanta's many protected greenspaces and nature preserves. His new book Wild Atlanta combines poems from 23 of these locations with stunning color photos by Luz Wright. He is the author of three previous books of poems and the Earth Poetry chapbook series. Visit him at StephenWing.com.

Lightning’s Compass

With every flash and flicker of the sky,
I glimpse another few steps
of the trail back to my tent,
this slow pilgrimage between the trees
without a flashlight—
fork to the left, jog to the right,
slippery downgrade, low-hanging branch—
like my life sometimes,
the chain of epiphanies lighting up my path
and the pitch-dark
between

Underfoot

Every time I walk down
into the hollow
through the winter woods
or up the mountain again,
I stop right here.
Standing on the packed earth
of an old logging road
where the creek slips quietly
through its rusty culvert
underfoot,
I’m not so much listening as feeling
a kind of tickling caress
through the soles of my shoes
and I recognize
a crossing of paths, a choice,
a way back
if I could only turn
and follow.

Ever Since Evolution              
     
              for Dawn Aura

Of all that’s ever
begun with an orgasm,
I think I like you
best:

Ever since the Big
Bang, ever since Genesis,
ever since the Milky Way gave birth
to a green-blue baby
called Earth—

All down the generations
of amorous plankton,
the dynasties of protozoa,
whole species that married and merged
into new species,
brewing up an atmosphere of
hospitable chemicals . . .

Down the golden ages
in the Garden, whole
civilizations of bacteria
that slowly grew into specialized
cells of one another,
building over millennia
the confederation of organs . . .

Ever since Evolution
conceived a tribe of naked mammals
begotten by the lineage
of Chimpanzee, I think
of all the protoplasm in the diaspora
of Creation, you
are my favorite animal

Grandmother’s Seeds

                  for Anna Maude, my grandmother

She’s out in her garden,
bending down to touch the soil.
She covers each seed as she
must have tucked me into bed, long
ago.  Her old hoe is worn
to a shining crescent, sifting
earth into dark flour.

She never knew the shelves
in her bathroom were lined with
the signs of the zodiac.
I never heard her mention the moon.
She sprinkled poison like
holy water and thanked the Lord
for filling her deep-freeze.

She sits at the lamp
over her morning devotions.
Outside in the dimness
the first seed stirs in the ground.
She folds her glasses, closes
her book on its bookmark and goes out
to turn on the hose.

The Naked Scientist

I am the naked scientist
singing as I set my specimens free
Joyfully I observe the positions of things
and nudge them off their courses,
gauge their direction and budge them
from their places

The green things around me lap my exhalations,
my fresh odors startle the ancient
solution of gases, I let my hand pass experimentally
down the mossy flank of a boulder
purring in the sun

I ache sometimes at sunrise
for the waking of the world to what it knows
Each day I gather data, and grieve
for the grieving of one or two or eleven people
I hadn’t counted before

And I look over my notes at sunset
comforted by this work of the Study of Woe,
calculating my Theory of Revelation
in the face of entropy and decay

I live to know this world as my grandmother
knew her Bible, but best of all
I love the pilgrimage
of the search—

(Shall I tell you my discovery?
It is all alive.
And the snowflakes are not
all one sex.)

Asphalt Nights

Looking back now, I often
regret that night in my delinquent youth
when I impulsively
borrowed a shovel and buried
my memories of childhood down by the creek
under a full moon.
How was I to know the entire floodplain
would be paved for parking
when they built the new mall?
Night after night now I dream I’m a lost child
roaming mile after mile
of fresh black asphalt under the floodlights
between the slumbering cars,
kicking my shadow ahead with every step,
stopping to listen
at every storm drain for the faint
trickle or drip of some other world
to wake up in.

Man Breathing Life into Metal
(Note italics at end)

The saxophonist wets his lips
and caresses his mouthpiece

sucks it in and lets it escape
and then draws it back

into himself so its dark twisting
entrails join with his own

clamps the dormant light of that
gleaming muscle in his

fingertips and forces through its
thin lips from his own

the infinite compression of a breath:
the golden bell sings out

with the panic of inarticulate matter
waking to the agony it is

to be an animal, the joy it is
to move and speak and sing

“Now when I get through playing it,
it going to be just as warm as my body . . .”

Moth

I bit my fingernails too short
waiting for this bus, I stood
too close to the road too long, peering
through the haze of engine fumes—

Everyone around me pretends not to know.
So naturally by now they‘ve all
long since forgotten.
No one on this bus remembers
poetry overhead among the ads:  today
hundreds of cockroach silhouettes,
the extermination campaign . . .

A dead moth
on the stairs in the train station knows:
startled black and red and yellow eyes
on shattered wings
stare past me through the concrete overhang,
and suddenly I see
right through the step I’m about to take—

Its furry underbody
leaves a yellow pollen on my fingertips.
Ridiculous
to carry the fallen creature home.
Ridiculous to choose one place
out of all the galaxies
to go.

Distant Singing

Listen:
somewhere off in the distance,
a motor.
It too has a song.
It’s the song of pushing eagerly forward,
heedless of how,
careless of where,
regardless of why,
intoxicated
with the singleminded joy
of burning its little tank of fuel,
never mind
where the fuel came from
or where that little plume of smoke
might go.

Hurtling Through Darkness

Hurtling
between the silver ribbons
uncurling eternally
out through the darkness,
steering by a chain of diamonds
strung through space,

I start again every time
I stray from my lane and they
bump under my tires, the reflecting
eyes of all the animals
who have died for this highway—

Focusing my own wild eyes
into the rainstorm,
the floodlights of billboards,
the pulse of blue lightning
at the power plant,

leaning back in the cushioned engine
of my will
with the road’s vibration
humming in my vitals,
gripping the steering wheel as tight as my life,

I ride the thirsty beast
of my momentum, obedient to the signs,
barely in control,
hurtling through the darkness of the eons
of extinction

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!

MONIFA LEMONS is this week's Featured Poet

This week's Poet of the People is Monifa Lemons.  Before there were titles for poets there was Monifa - one name, no title, was enough.  She personifies what it means to be a poet: gracious, mentoring, talented, and selfless. To know Monifa is to experience poetry in and of the Kakalak. I am honored to call her friend.

Monifa Lemons, also recognized as SelahthePoet, began her poetic journey in Columbia, SC in the late 90s, both as a Spoken Word Artist and as a host at various venues. Her work can be found in various publications. She is currently an elementary school teacher, and a facilitator with USC Trio Upward Bound. Her focus is on creative writing and intentional creation with children and community. She is also following her entrepreneurial dreams as Coffee Roaster and Co-Owner at Haiku Coffee 575, a company she opened in Fall 2020 along with her four daughters and has returned to her original art of acting, playing the principal role of Mama in the short film Crooked Trees Gon' Give Me Wings, Directed by Cara Lawson and Produced by Hillman Grad Productions.

After Dogon Krigga

Bouncing lateral
On wind cutting our eyes
At revelations

B Boys spinning like
Dreidels on pointe listening
To scratched petals bloom

No blinking allowed
Instead, a creation stare

Calloused eyes don’t crack   

Letter from my Grandmother 

Monisa, 

it’s still da same. Dem chickens still gotta be fed, even pass dat rooster. You still gotta wake earlier when youra mothuh. You still gotta find dem chaps a home. You still gotta find a job. a real one. You still gotta stir grits, even if you raisin’ chillen that don’t want em. You still gotta do all of it. Ain’t nobody gon’ cayit forya. You still need a car. You shouldn’t be afraida da walk. You still gotta carry da wood in e’en when there ain’t no stove. You gotta wash. He’s still your uncle an’der was nothin’ we could do. You still gotta learn’na sat here an’ stay. Here. Wit’ us. You know howta make dat nana puddin’? Den you gotta teach’em. Still.   

Moon Cycle

I pinch tissue between first second and thumb
Wrap the roll like gauze over and over. Hand

Slide off palm. Fold in half. Reach between legs. Shove cover.
The hole He hallowed. Seeping. Cursed.

With standing we adjust. Loose.
Plugged crazy. Gathered insane. Stuffed.
Granules of sugar in my spoon. Stirred.
Echoes muffled. Hope absorbed. Picked by cotton.
I now walk in the room.

Water Beckons

Water beckons. Step by step I fill
myself. Up my legs. Down my hands.
slap. splash and play.
Wash me
River. Wash me whole.
Twirl my spirit til I know knot.
Cleanse me. Send a smile down.
Stream it tickling past the legs of another.
Call them out
to wade. Join us…
within the wade.

You Look good

You look good. You look good. Yeah good.

You look good. What are you doing now?

What are you doing? You look good.

You look good. What have you been doing?

What.

What have you not been doing? What were you not doing?

When did you care? When did you care about looking good?

When you do that, you look good.

Look.

Look, you are good. You are good. When did you start to care.

When did you start to care about looking? You look like you care.

About looking good, you look like you care.

You care now. We see that. We can see that you now care about

your look.

See. Look. at What. Care.

Care.

You care now. You now care. Care has been taken in your look.

Now.

What could you be doing? What have you done?

You care. We'll care now. To look at you.

We care to look at you. You look good.

Now.

Al Black Celebrates 1000th Poetry Event March 13th at Cool Beans

At the Jasper Project, we’re excited to share the news of a celebration of one of our own, Al Black, SC’s poetry guru!

Fueled by a labor of love to share and encourage the creation of poetry among his friends and neighbors writ large, for years, Al Black has been staging poetry events ranging from readings to open mic nights to song writers’ circles, and more. Next Wednesday, March 13th will be Al’s 100th poetry event. We’re happy to join the SC Poetry Society in congratulating Al and celebrating this momentous occasion at t pm at Cool Beans coffee in Columbia, SC.

The event is open and free to the public.

Congratulations, Al!

This Weeks's Poetry of the People with Al Black features Charles Watts

This week's Poet of the People is Charles Watts. I know Charles from his work with the Poetry Society of South Carolina when he sends me emails asking if I paid my dues this year and from hearing him read his work at various events. He uplifts any room he is in and is an asset to Carolina poets. —Al

Early in his career, Watts had an underground play (“Visigoths”) produced in Los Angeles, which led to scriptwriting contracts for several TV series, including “Kojack” and “Here Come the Brides.” He fled Hollywood, got an MFA in poetry, and went to Iran to teach literature at several Universities. For five years, he edited Seizure, a magazine of poetry and fiction. He has also been a cab driver, social worker, refugee worker in camps in Malaysia, Indonesia, and Costa Rica, and owner of a tour company. His poems and stories have been anthologized in Road Poets, Adirondack Epiphanies, Schroon River Anthology, Northern Oracle, and Karma in the High Peaks, which received the “People’s Choice Award” for best book of 2010 from the Adirondack Center for Writing. His poems won the Patricia and Emmett Robinson Prize (2015 - Poetry Society of South Carolina) and first place at the North Country Writers Festival twice. His books include Cure Cottage (five one-act plays), Raptures (short stories), Waking Up in a Beautiful Room (poems), and The Road to Swat (a chapbook of travel tales). He splits his time between Charleston, SC and Lake Placid, NY.

Of That Which We cannot Speak

“Of that which we cannot speak, thereof we must be silent.”

Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus

-Ludwig Wittgenstein

God does not manifest in the world

Because s/he does not exist in it

The mystical fact is that creation abides

Beyond the realm of words, beyond saying

Theology is an impotent attempt

To blur our vision with bones

Sans flesh, odes to the ineffable

That can only lead to misinterpretation

The ethical, the metaphysical, the aesthetic

The existence of the real and indescribable

Truths that my words can only compromise

Or misrepresent or falsify the meaning of

Darwin my beagle inhales squirrel musk

Spots the beast on a branch and howls, leaps

Against the tree truck and snorts like a pig

And I can describe it but not what he feels

Not the truth within his experience

Which is equally real to him as his dream

Of a forest filled with rabbit deer coyote fox

And all the joys that force his tail to wag

Oh, do not ask me to be silent

I must write my words until they approach

The edge of truth, not the truth itself

For that is where God dwells

Cancer Redux

A year and a half

Clean and clear

Is all that was granted

Through the chemo and

Immuno and who doth know

What else became involved

There was not a single symptom

No nausea, palpitation, fever

Fear, regret, or why the hell me

Took up swimming and made a mile

Took up walking the dog as we

Both forest bathed in the mountains

In fact, did all that was asked

And yet here we are

With new scans and new cancer

Send no damned affirmations

No prayers or it will be alrights

No links to peace and serenity sites

I am not happy nor am I pissed

Nor have I given up nor

Accepted what I cannot change

The recycling truck just passed my window

My view of the pond is clean and clear

If Nothing Lasts

If nothing lasts

Everything matters

The lizard on the palmetto palm

The glass hummingbird feeder

Its contents and patrons

The mouse I emptied into the trash

After the trap I set committed murder

The monk who condemns me for it

The sparrow that broke its neck

Trying to fly through the window

Into my room, the fly I swatted

Fireworks over the palace of ice

A week before the rain

Begins its melting

The mushrooms I picked and ate

Even though I could hear their screams

In the silence of the forest

The snow leopard that stalks me

In my dreams, the poison frog

I lick to fall asleep

My coonhound, who ambled with me

Out of the car into the vet's office

For his final shot at life

Everything matters

If nothing lasts

The Emptiness of Time

In a world with no sense

Of time, no word for past

Or present or future, where

All is the eternal moment

With no separation of then

From when or when

From now, there is

No need for watches

Watch only the moon

Test your emotions

As they change from

Night to night

At the new moon

You will be open

To new ideas

Write a poem

As the moon moves

Toward fullness

You will get more done

Edit the poem

As the moon begins

Its fading you will

Get no thing done

Time to dance

And in the moon’s

Fourth week

Organize yourself

Coldly calculate

The subject of your

Next poem

Poetry of the People Featuring TAMARA MILES

This week's Poet of the People is Tamara Miles. Tamara is a dynamo. She hosts workshops, readings, salons, and poetry walks in state parks. As the president of the Poetry Society of South Carolina. She is busy attempting to visit every corner and every county in South Carolina. 

Tamara Miles has been teaching English at the college level for over 25 years. Her poetry has been published in a variety of journals and anthologies, and she has a small event chapbook called Earth Gospel. She was the director of the Writing Studio at Orangeburg-Calhoun Technical College for five years. Spirit Plants Radio hosted her radio show called Where the Most Light Falls, which featured poetry and music. She attended the Sewanee Writers Conference in 2016, and a Rivendell Writers Retreat in 2017 as well as several other festivals and conferences. She has been a featured poet for many events, including at O’Bheal in Cork City, Ireland and at a festival in Devon, England.

Townsend’s Rocky Mountain Hare

(an ekphrastic poem)

Drawn on stone, the Audubon pair sit side

by side and stare, alert to the hawk, one’s long ears

hung back, his mate’s up like a question, one tail

harnessed flat to ground, one hooked to sky,

on the whole designed for speed, earnest

as a schoolboy’s raised hand to his teacher’s

hostile eye --- and after school, the mad dash home

in early summer heat --

jackrabbits, half helpless on the wormwood plain,

white throats thick, markings as signal red as a fawn

or a fresh bruise ---

only their feet fly to where they might hide out

in a hollow, but here they are held still as punctuation

marks that halt a rush of thoughts and hush wild words ---

years I spent in flight, the suspected hazard

unresolved on canvas. A harsh world for the ones

who wait, huddled, for their names to be called,

for the brief lifting upward, before silence.

 Tommy’s Dream

Tommy grew on rural land,

away from the city’s clatter.

At seventeen, bruised and battered,

stumbling home, he fell half alive

and could go no further.

He went to bones in a row

of blackberry bushes three miles

from his country door. Blackberry

vines covered his body until his skull

and twenty-five other bony pieces

of him were spotted by a neighbor

searching for dark fruit.

I read about in the newspaper.

I remembered the lake house

I rented, for a year in Heflin, Alabama,

where blackberries grew wild

around a spring, and snakes

that must have been there did not bother

me.

My small worries didn’t matter.

The blackberries grew so rich

and fine that year, boldly black,

and at homes all around the south, juicy-full,

our hands that picked them scratched

and bled in scorching heat to find

and claim them for cobbler served

warm with ice cream.

With these hands,

we made our pleasure. We tasted

what was left of Tommy’s dreams,

sadness spooned through the batter.

In a Dream, My Father

A city at night, a carnival

in neon green just across

the water,

welcoming

Ferris wheel, bridge,

a kind of train or sled

pulled by jackaloxes,

and next a cart of fruit

spilling toward me.

I caught a navel orange,

bruised at the top, studied

it and put it back.

A fancy hall, red-painted

walls; I pushed a man

in a wheelchair toward

a door,

and on the other

side people waited in line,

excited to see the show.

I can’t give you everything,

I said, but I can give you

this,

and in his childlike way

he stared, holding tight

to a stuffed animal

I’d won.

Kitty Hawk, 1903

As boys, the bike-shop brothers

flew their kites and clutched

at guiding strings.

They saw the gathering wind

had blind ambitions,

and witnessed, too, a band

of birds climb toward

culled clouds with ease

as if the sky had called

their names.

Then, in the dreams

that come to boys,

the names they heard above

were theirs – Wilbur wrote

of his obsession as disease.

Always, first, a dream is met

with some suspicion, both

within the self and out.

What crafted wings

could bear the two to clouds?

Their parents winked --

others must have laughed

out loud, offered nothing

but derision.

Now, in December,

to the Outer Banks

they came, past the seven

hundredth glide, and for twelve

seconds rose on powered wings

because they were more

brave than proud

and sought true freedom

more than fame.

Poetry of the People's Featured Poet - Libby Bernardin

This week's Poet of the People is Libby Bernardin. Libby is not only a gifted poet, she is a kind and gracious human being. Meeting her is a spring morning where you feel confident the world will go on and you belong in it. She makes you feel important and not the other way around. Reading her poetry is the warm air of a furnace at your feet while sipping tea at her dining room window while she tells you the history of every bush and flower in her yard.

Libby Bernardin is the author of House in Need of Mooring and Stones Ripe for Sowing, both published by Press 53. She has published two chapbooks and contributed to many journals. She has won poetry awards from the Poetry Society of SC and the NC Poetry Society, and is a member of both poetry societies. She is a lifetime member of the Board of Governors of the South Carolina Academy of Authors. She writes and shares new work with The River Poets, a group of women who are dedicated to poetry.

____

The Price for Long Lives is Sorrow

You could say a long and measured life walks with a dream,

mysteries clotheslined across the sky blowing like sheets—

Words keep unpinning     unfolding     letters spelling

out worn-out stories. What am I to do with Joseph

of the many-colored coat, an imprisoned Hebrew

with God-inspired dream talk. Pharaoh chose

him who stored the grain to save plague-torn Egypt.

And where are the Josephs among us?

The would-be king thank God is gone.  We have a new leader.

May he be among the long lived for we the people

who haven’t the courage of a sharecropper’s son

crossing the bridge—first to violence, last to peace,

always his aim. His caisson marches. Remember his

long life of sorrows, his scattered good-trouble seeds

like wildflowers—purple fringed     lily-leaved     sweet shrub

spicebush     bloodroot uproot into the world     blossom     blossom.

 (Included in House in Need of Mooring)

Again,                                                            

morning moon    Pink    among leaves  

drops into the West    

flirting I think    

with me

demure as a silken scarf

 plucked

            by a sly wind

to flutter out

the window

from a bed side table

the barest hint of liminal—

O Holy Space 

that winters where you bloom—

light another day

dreams now ebb 

into darkness as the croon

of a white crowned sparrow

lilting notes distinctive

as its pink bill     opens the day—

and    here      yet again     anew

 (Italicized line from David Havird’s poem, “Midnight Oil”, included in his book, Weathering)

~~~

 Litany                                                                                                                                                                                                  

 As the world holds beauty in the deep and lonely forests

                                    Conduct me in wonder

As the moon rises high enough for me to see from my bedroom window

                                    Conduct me in fascination

As the woodpecker pecks around the pecan tree burl

                                    Conduct me in pleasure

As the white camellia layers its petals, pinwheels of sighs

                                    Conduct me in love

As the iris blue flag flutters in a wind

                                    Conduct me in resilience

As the hatching from mother alligator swims confidently in briny water

                                    Conduct me in gentle laughter

As the snake sheds its skin, leaves it on the rim of my strawberry pot

                                    Conduct me in respect

As the red-winged black bird breeds in marshes and scrubby fields

                                    Conduct me in new life

As starling murmuration creates angular shapes of dark clouds over Norway

                                    Conduct me in astonishment

As I wonder about the god hiding, languishing in the star-filled sky

                                    Conduct me in faith

As I hold my hand over my heart about suffering in Ukrainian photos

                                    Conduct me in compassion, in mercy

As I cover my eyes in anguish over the murder of children in Uvalde

                                    Conduct me in mourning and right action

As there is any inequity in my hands, ire in my heart

                                    Conduct me in truth, the morally right, the just

As I have lived a long life of love complex as the moon’s pull of tides

the sight of the Southern Cross in Brazil, the birth, the birth, the birth

Conduct me in knowledge, grace, heart

~~~                            

Shreveport 1954, Before the Late Crowd                     

It was a barrel of a room. music a boom

from speakers, the sultry drumbeat

as though a queen arrived expecting voices

with hands full of dollar bills, me sitting

between my cousin and her husband—

and before me, a beauty with stars on her tits

and I guess a G-string—oh she was stacked

and shone like she could make it in LA.

So, what’s she doing in this raunchy beer-smelling

place with me feeling sorry for her, as we watched

those long stockinged legs—a garter for dollars—

wrap themselves around a pole, no moola

anywhere I could see—early patrons

just eatin’ peanuts over at the bar,

knocking down a few—then the MC

introduces a Miss Douget? here on her 18st

birthday give’er a hand, guys, c’on put ‘em together

for the Carolina girl, and me turning around to see her,

Miss Douget. Miss Douget? then my cousin elbowing

me and whispering, Stand up, stand up, take a bow

which I reckon I did, stunned—Did I hear a drum roll?
I awkwardly stood up, sat down red-faced—beauty

blowing me kisses, gingerly.No warily.

Later that night, I thought of her pole dancing

on my birthday, and I hoped she would make it to LA,

and I would find her on the cover

of Photoplay Magazine, far away from

that vacuous room, empty except

for a few beer-barrel guys with no money

in their hands for her garter.

After “Nashville After Dark” by Ada Limon

~~~

A Photograph, February 23, 1934                                                  

Forever in sepia on their wedding day—

Their lives unreel as moonflowers

open to the dark sky

Or early evening primroses uncurl at dusk

A light wind scatters leaves and twigs

I put down the photograph     

on my kitchen counter—

            begin to knead my dough     think of how

mother rolled her biscuits in the palm of her hand.

Once, after a hurricane snapped off tree crowns

from the tallest pines     felled a thick

                                    limb from the old oak

wrapping Spanish moss around and around

a twig, yet      not even in two hours green burst forth

light ladled on trees

in the longingly pure air—Father came

home     the day’s shift done

puts his hands on Mother’s

waist     pulls her slightly to him

plants a kiss in her hair

I am calm watching them    

I was always calm watching them

I look out my window

I think     how young they are     I could swoon

            at their fierce beauty    Did I come to soon

 crush of time already            

burdensome—remind me

how quickly storms shift from high winds to breezy jasmine scents

            love returns                 yearns for better times

~~~

About Yesterday…

It’s always behind us

holding on to what needs to go—my husband’s death,

your divorce—those days left us brooding

under a dappled bluesy sky

Today you and I alive with the sun’s

glint on the loquat tree, breakfast on the porch—frittata of onion

& mushrooms served with avocado

We watch the young flicker feed, furtive, wary

                        We take solace in our past

for me the farm, Grandfather and Grandmother in their kitchen—

he rolls his cigarette, watches her, hands in biscuit dough

their yesterday in growing crops, feeding field hands

You at play on the river,

fishing, your stories of Daddy Ben & how he taught you hunting

ethics—kill only what you will eat, waste nothing of your catch

be a good master to the pup I give you

So about yesterday, it’s behind us

flits of memory—lost loves we can’t catch, grief rendered

            useless, the choices we made, but look here—this poem

                        I wrote for you on the desk you made for me

Poetry of the People featuring Jane Zenger

This week's Poet of the People is the Bard of Cedar Creek, Jane Zenger.  Jane, is a legend from the Pee Dee to the Broad to infinity and beyond. She is a force of nature - an organizer, educator, environmentalist, small farmer, who also happens to be an excellent poet. A gifted storyteller, Jane will make you laugh and gasp in the same stanza. Buy her book, Night Bloomer, and know she is a life well-lived.

Jane Zenger lives in Blythewood, SC in an old forest on the edge of Cedar Creek . She has a BA in English literature and a Ph.D. in Reading and Literacy. Jane studied poetry at USC with the late James Dickey and her work is included in his book, From the Green Horseshoe.  ‌She‌ ‌was‌ ‌a‌ ‌feature‌ ‌writer‌ ‌and‌ ‌poetry‌ ‌editor‌ ‌for‌ ‌‌Auntie‌ ‌Bellum‌,‌ ‌a feminist‌ ‌magazine‌ ‌published‌ ‌in‌ ‌South‌ ‌Carolina.‌  ‌She‌ ‌also‌ ‌edited‌ ‌‌The‌ ‌Spotlight‌,‌ ‌a‌ journal‌ ‌dedicated‌ ‌to‌ ‌at‌ ‌risk‌ ‌youth,‌ ‌teen‌ ‌pregnancy‌, ‌and‌ ‌dropout‌ ‌prevention. She worked as an English/Reading teacher in both urban and rural South Carolina schools and was a USC instructor, researcher and director of federal Teacher Quality Enhancement programs. As an undergraduate she did archaeological research on an early man site through The University of Alaska. She also worked on a USC environmental impact study on the coast. Jane has worked in Texas, China and Zambia. She is a passionate advocate of the Spoken Word
movement in South Carolina and has recently completed Night Bloomer from Muddy Ford Press. This new book of poetry reflects love, heartbreak, travel adventures, comical events, and always- her close connection the woods and creeks where she lives.

____

The Unraveling

What is there to love in a world unraveling?

It’s unsafe to put such precious cargo as a heart

and soul in the broken box of my body.

I can’t stop thinking on this cold spring day,

watching the creek  overflow, what’s next?

There are the same old wars waging,

the same fires we extinguish over and over

sprouting up again, rising from a mystical phoenix.

The same old hate and anger boils over.

Wars I can’t smash, bury, ignore or accept.

The wrong people are making the same choices

over and over. When their choices bully me, I resist.

In the world that kind of ignorant selfishness

leads to loss and division, disease and death.

What century is this where the infantile, selfish,

and belligerent still retain power?

When is the dawning of the Age of Aquarius

that we were promised?

On this afternoon I flow through the meadow.

I wish I could punch the clouds full of acid rain.

I won’t punch the clean willowy ones after an April storm,

or the ones today glowing pink, orange and purple at sunset.

I drop to the ground face down to experience the

soil scent and the soft grass and clover. I sense another

world upside down, feel a mild wind, the old buck snorts,

I hear distant airplanes and at least five, no- six bird calls 

and something chirping. The crows acknowledge me and

buzzards form a wide circle. My cats gather round curious,

but not really caring why I am upside down. They wait,

preening and watching the birds so as not to waste time.

So fortunate in their blissful oblivion.  

Whip Lash in the Pandemic                                    

I can be blistered in the sun one day,

and frozen from the inside out the next,

losing my footing in the turbulence.

I feel like a kitten in her mother's mouth

being dragged and bumped, helpless.

But at least I am not left behind.

I have to find myself again every morning.

Find the humor in how I am going down.

It is a whip lash and I am serving time for all my sins.

Encourage me. Discourage me. Ignore me. Adore me.

It’s all the same. The tide is always running out.

The sky is winter pale, nothing on either horizon.

Baby birds are blown out of the nest,

trying to fly, only to be eaten by my feral cat

Other creatures waiting below.

My body is broken as well- from the day

I tried, stiff and weak, to fly after so much time

quarantined, sequestered, afraid.

This is the year  of one pandemic after another.

This sorrow bangs me like a limb on a window pane.

I am not shattered yet, stubborn as I am.

From my perch let's examine today,

the joy of being alive, of being loved helps.

I am mining memories. Someone is

reminding me to breathe...sing...cry…reach out.

Selfish choices placed me on this precipice,

tethered to the vows I made. That life is over.

I live for love and I long to live. Yes, you may come in.

It Only Takes a Moment to Die

When you took your last breath

It was so simple

So calm and unanticipated

So remarkably

Like any other day

Like a wisp of a cloud

On a clear sky

I knew the time was near

I knew the moment would be

yours only.

Unpredictable.

Controlling death as you did our life.

I slipped away for just a moment.

Stepped alone into the morning air.

You stepped alone into eternal peace.

For death, like life, is an unpredictable gift.

Poetry of the People Featuring Ann-Chadwell Humphries

This week's Poet of the People is Ann-Chadwell Humphries. Ann declares that she is from the earth and belongs here. She is a force of nature - granite sparkling in the sun. Silica and alkali metal oxides stirred in the magma of life's challenges, congealed into the poet, Ann-Chadwell Humphries. I am honored to call her a friend.

Ann-Chadwell Humphries, a blind poet from Columbia, SC, was selected by Muddy Ford Press to publish her first collection, An Eclipse and A Butcher. She has twice been a finalist for the Carrie McCray Nickens and once for the Julia Mood Peterkin poetry contests. She won Syzygy’s Emerging Voice Award, sponsored by The Jasper Project, for “An Eclipse and A Butcher.” She is a speaker scholar for South Carolina Humanities and her papers are archived at USC Special Collections Library.

____

Thirteen Ways of Looking Through Darkness
~If it's darkness we're having, let it be extravagant — Jane Kenyon

I
At the fire-fringed margins of the universe,
Images of the origins of light stream
Through the eye of a gold-plated telescope.
II
I am fluent in Light and Dark.
The demise of my retina
Reveals infinite sentient worlds.
III
When illumined, darkness loses its dominion.
Technology renders the unseeable, seeable.
IV
Lightness and darkness
Are one.
As much in the mind as in space
They are one.
V
I do not know which to prefer,
The beauty of resilience
Or the beauty of interdependence,
The odyssey into the unknown
Or the transcendence thereof.
VI
The freight of low expectations
Slow-grinds the human spirit.
The only way around is through.
VII
O voice of self-doubt and discouragement
Why do you shout?
Why do I listen?
Why dismiss the universe
Of riches there for the taking?
VIII
I have wandered outermost reaches
And territories of resistance,
And come to exalt
The company of Darkness.
IX
Infrared waves send images
Of unprecedented clarity
Through the lens of the deep space telescope.
X
Reticular spirals and arcs
Flower in the womb of morning.
Bots of importunity align.
XI
When I was diagnosed, doctors advised
That I not overthink; I could prepare.
Not chase cures in China nor Europe—
for They knew I would
Go to the ends of the universe.
XII
I have learned to see with my feet, my ears, my skin.
Import my imagination.
My heart is not blind.
XIII
Years of tests, classes, cursors, prisms
led me on an arduous journey
into the gravitational pull of blindness—
my new orbit—frisson from the cosmology of sight.

Wildflower Trail

Overgrazed ranch land proffers rare views
of blue hills that rumple and bunch until fracture
on the fault line into limestone cliffs, spring jeweled
water from chambered aquifers into creeks,
into rivers fringed with cypress tresses combed
by wind, siren temptress, intoxicant to tourists
and retirees. Overnight, bare-boned water and sewer lines
incise hillsides, weave asphalt webs of infrastructure
for tract housing between Austin and San Antonio.
My parents succumb, lured by open spaces, slower paces
and light-filled rooms of new construction, new appliances—
fresh start from hard work. My father plants cedar elm
for shade, Blue Italian Cyprus for windbreak—
this is Texas harsh—and as trees grow, so grows development:
Methodist church, elementary school off the bypass,
doctors’ office complex within walking distance.
In the undeveloped acreage behind, my father hangs
a blue gate shaped like the Alamo, drags a mower
through that gate to mow walking trails, shortcuts to church.
In March, the field flames in airy wildflowers which wave
fiesta-colored blooms to passersby on the farm-to-market road.
And in their yard, my father trims the bluebonnet patch
that spreads each year as if inviting flower kin. In that seasonal
profusion, my parents host a wildflower brunch for neighbors
and library friends for guests to wade waist-high amid bliss.

The Coffin Maker

An occasional call with plea and please for a coffin
tomorrow or day after for a friend’s stillborn granddaughter.
His motion slow and solemn, he sorts through his pile
of special wood favored to repurpose. Finds an orphaned
burled walnut he had forgotten, hardwood not too heavy
for something this small. He makes a pattern, his hands
fit the wood into a clamp, align with the saw an extension
of himself, reciting Keats as he makes a six-sided box, corners
interlocked like fingers, and with a tiny tip, traces
a thread of glue to bond all surfaces, taps nails as surety.
Shakes coffee cans for hinges; from a nail, pulls a rope
to knot for handles. He breathes blessings into the wood
as he cuts top from bottom like her little life cut from us.
Sands and oils for rich luster, its aura, a comfort for the family
to trace the grain, bend to kiss, the fragrance like her sweetness.
~
She will be lowered into black dirt free of rocks
dug by her grandfather and uncles. They will hold hands
at the family cemetery where she will lie with other infants
and ancestors. Word-of-mouth will spread that Grover made
the coffin. In time, a daughter will brave a call for a pine box
for her father handmade rather than ordered from Costco.
~
There in the corner stands his own box partially made
to remind him he has a place — chokes on his prayer,
“God forbid I survive my wife.”

If You Hear My Voice...
~2011

~1~
On a snow-fringed hillside overlooking the Pacific,
a black rotary dial nests inside a lone telephone booth.
~2~
There was only an eight to ten-minute warning.
~3~
A grandfather salvaged an old metal and glass structure
from thousands of abandoned ones in a field,
set it in his garden, a cenotaph for his family who drowned.
~4~
Eighty miles off northeastern Japan, a 9.0 earthquake
thrust from the ocean floor. Two years later,
the beaten hull of a fishing skiff reached California.
~5~
A frayed cord connects the receiver.
Black numbers spin on coins of white paint.
~6~
Snow fell the day of the disaster,
iced all roads out.
~7~
Hello, hello, are you there? Are you cold?
Be alive somewhere, anywhere,
words misted in sea spray.
~8~
Waves thirteen stories high crushed
thousands fleeing in cars.
~9~
Daily, he refreshed incense, rice, fruit
on his home altar trying to fill his hollowness.

~10~
Twenty thousand dead, six thousand injured,
three thousand missing, quarter million unhoused.
~11~
News spread of the phone booth. Early spring, cherry blossoms
whitened his garden. A woman in a puffy pink parka arrived,
full of loneliness swept from silent rooms.
She opened and closed the bifold door, sat for a moment.
As she dialed, she murmured their old number.
~12~
On a blue night meadowed with stars, a young man approached
in flip-flops and shorts. Speak to me, my son. Let me hear you say
I love you, Papa. I am so sorry I could not save you.
~13~
The Fukushima nuclear plant spewed radiation
into sea life for miles, for years.
~14~
The evening sun slides into its fire. Harvest over,
an old farmer stands before the door. Farmers hold their words,
for crops do not speak. Do you have enough to eat?
Don’t worry about me. You go on. I’ll find you.
~15~
Do you think Grandfather heard us?

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