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Eaton jackson poetry january 2024

circles

birthing across the demure blue of island sea,

lucky throw of empty beer bottle by  a sad, ragged boy on the pier. Ships

unmoored, dragging their anchor up for tv. cities.  tv. countries      boy, looking on.

silhouetted picture of life imitating art,


happiness construct its own smile, its own castles

on naked, red unashamed dirt,

places stumbled upon, Transmuted into

comfort, reclining between thistles, rocks, A pillowed backpack

dreaming bigger dreams of  a better home,


washed away by dreaming, familiarity is felt for      cracked off piece of

recessed switch, in an electric room suspended from main grid,

Home,  labored moan, of mythical places where ships on hunting

safaris, capture what was free, caged trophies,


Home, a howl for more hallucinogens,

a cardboard bed in Manhattan, a scream, as the homeless is carted

away, and city’s gold street is scrubbed, washed of the infringement,


Home. Underpass stumbled upon

                  under


big bridge, New graffiti about mythological repatriation to a moment gone,

Home. A lazy hammock,

languid between coconut trees,

Home. Thousands of miles across thousands of seas….


Eaton Jackson is Jamaican and a naturalized American citizen. He has been writing for most of his adult life. In his writing, he aspires to be worthy of publication and to be read. His poems have been published in several print and online publications, including Tuck Magazine, The New Verse News, Scarlet Review, Querencia, and Passage Journal.

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Richard de-graft Tawiah flash nonfiction january 2024

This tongue will never force words from a body that wants to remain shut. But I am packing in things you will need for the journey. I feel the heaviness of your secrets. Pin in strength and ask if this is what people want to help you carry. No, it’ll kill them, I say. It’s better you don’t say it. Some parts of me still believe you deserve saving. You deserve any ear that wants to listen, so I cut in. (And this is painful.)

I find you crying, and this is almost like a home I’ve lived in before. I find familiar paintings I left on the wall—stretches of red colours, begging me to stop, begging me to leave, begging me to wait. When it hurts to share, it hurts to even find solace in the eyes of people who will genuinely help ease the pain. When it hurts to share, we do not know if we want to share or not. We do not know when you have to leave because some parts of us will want you to stay.

I’ve been here before. Exactly what the others tell you. But when I tell you this is not a good place to rent, trust me, I do not say this to comfort you. I say this to tell you that there will only be a burial after a burial, a funeral with no song, and on days when you can’t let go of what is to be left gone, you will run back digging to reach the corpse of everything that burns your nose, of everything that will make you close your mouth shut while you want to vomit. (And this is painful.)

And that’s too much heaviness for you to carry. That is too much pain. That is too much for your eyes to hold in. When these words find a place close to you, I hope you hand them an axe to cut through your doors. I hope it breaks through your windows. I hope it gives you sunshine, air, and all the feels to stay open. (And this won’t be painful.)


Something New

Whatever happens in the womb of a woman is a time capsule, and I am told it’s the man who puts everything there.

He tills the grounds, ploughs, wets each side and plants the seeds. Every sweat that breaks loose from his face is water to quench his thirst for the hard work he does.

The woman holds everything in until a labour is due, and I’m told this is done with pain. Pain is the only belt one wears to create something new. They do all this with their hands and hold on until the time of harvest.

I want to ask them why they do this—I won’t say they do this for pleasure. I want to know how long they intend to love their fruits—I won’t say forever; it depends. I want to ask them if they think only about themselves when they argue. I want to know if they feel the pain they cause to other lands when they set theirs on fire. I won’t call the shots. I won’t say the children; the fruits and the farmlands have a lot to say, a lot to ask, and a lot to know about what happens during the farming season.

I’ll be quiet. I’ll have my peace. I’ll let them wonder what their pain does to us.


I Am Nothing But Rust

People perceive I have the strength of a wall, and anytime they want to build trust, they use me as a pillar. In their conversations, they mention my name as a verb. A sure ticket to get the work done. An assurance. A soothing tap on the shoulder, the blues in their skies. The star that waits beside the moon.

The wind comes knocking, and I’m supposed to hold still, bleed where I am cut, and break the mouth that wants to shout this pain away into smiles because I can’t afford to let anyone down. And imagine if we wore our intentions like handbags. I bet people would really see how often I give up.

How often I tire of being a punching bag that sleeps over and over every night for another round of training because it needs to be there for others and not itself.

I’m that thing that will fit in every bag. Like a comb or a perfume, or anything that stays to be used.

And they say the value of a thing is in its usefulness, but what they don’t say is that every useful thing must be treated with compassion for it not to lose its colour. And here, I’ve lost my colours, and I am nothing but a rust writing you a poem. I am nothing but rust, reminding you to give me back my shine.


Richard De-Graft Tawiah is a creative writer, spoken word poet, and LLB graduate from Central University. He is a 2022–2023 Nadèli Creative Cafe Bootcamper. He’s fueled by his passion for words and the change they bring. His journey includes volunteering at the Foundation for Educational Equity and Development where he channels his love for community service through literacy and youth empowerment. He also volunteers at Nadéli Creative Company on the Book of the Month Team. His works are published and forthcoming at the Global Writers Project, Ghanaian Writers, Nadèli Creative Company, and elsewhere. Find him on instagram at richydegraft, on Facebook at Richard De-Graft Tawiah, and on LinkedIn at Richard De-Graft Tawiah.

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ewa gerald onyebuchi personal essay january 2024

November 2023: Trans-ekulu, Enugu.

All my life I have viewed death at arm’s length, through the lens of a stranger. Even the death of other family relatives smelled differently, almost like a faraway thing. But when I think about my parents, I wonder the colour grief would assume when they exit this earth. When it finally strikes home, would death take on a smell too putrid for catharsis? Would grief succeed in stealing the rooms in my body, becoming too intimate to eject?

*

A light rain patters down the roof of our house while I thumb through an old album of pictures. I am sitting in one of the four black sofas, tucked in a rectangular ring. I don’t know if this is my mother’s favourite chair, but she never fails to plop down on it whenever she strolls into the living room. I believe when someone does something or uses a thing, unconsciously, over time, that action or thing becomes a vital part of them. Just like this sofa has become a repository of my mother’s body, imbibing her scent and warmth. The sofa sits on the left, beside a glass center table, directly opposite the TV plastered to the wall. It’s a privilege to take my mother’s seat, to rock my body against the spaces she’s been. At this point, I stop fiddling with the pages, and close my eyes. Instead of me, I imagine her on this chair, and train my ears to the gentle tap of her hands on the arms of the chair. On most evenings after a shower, my mother wears a faded blue and black patterned wrapper. Even now, I picture the wrapper flung around her body and inhale the dry muskiness that speaks of age.

Mama, a retrenched bursar, is not dead. She’s in Abuja, with my father, who works with the Ministry of Mines and Steel Development. My parents are both alive but sometimes I fear that one day, the thread holding their existence in place would snap and all that would remain are memories heaped on history’s back. My father is 5.8 feet, taller than my mother, and he wears a dark skin, while my mother is the colour of ripe pawpaw. Both have fairly large noses to accommodate their round faces; unlike Papa, Mama has a pair of beautiful bright eyes. But sadly, these features are slowly eroding with the passage of time. My mother’s hair is now glazed with specks of white, and unlike her, my father wears a cleanshaven head and beard, as if he’s determined to make a case against nature, a demand for his youth. In the pictures, my parents’ bodies have witnessed a series of metamorphoses. There’s a picture of them, taken when their eyes were full of light and ardor. A time when they wore their afros with style, thick and glossy, and grinned. Against a black and white background, Papa can be seen sporting an afro, a craggy beard and a pair of bootcut trousers. He poses in front of a tree, his arm resting on the shoulder of another man in afro. There’s a tenderness to my mother’s pose: the tilt of her head to one side, the smile on her face, the graceful arch of her back as she plants a hand on her waist, her knee-length gown devoid of pleats. In today’s world, their pose could be tagged prosaic and their clothes too simple to meet the new wave of high fashion taste.

There are other pictures of my parents taken at different places and events. Some of them make me laugh, smile and cry at intervals. I hold a picture against the light and blink back hot tears. It was probably taken in 2013, but the memories are fresh as dew. Somewhere in Kogi State, we are standing in front of a church building, posing before a camera: our parents and three brothers, my sister and I dressed in white beside the Bishop clad in a purple vestment. We have just been confirmed, newly conscripted soldiers of Christ, and everyone else is radiant with smiles except me. I don’t know how to smile before a camera and each time I force it, my face comes out squeezed. I remember that day, the sun boiling over our heads, the sweat dribbling down my face as the photographer urged me to smile a little, and my parents glaring at me.

Years later, I wish I had smiled. I wish I wasn’t a mimosa plant, always shutting myself out of the world, away from my parents each time they stepped into my space. Growing up, love was measured in small dosages and passed around. When we greeted our parents, we added sir or ma, thanked them after every meal, chanted“Daddy welcome, Mummy welcome”, following their return from work or the market. There were no hugs. It wasn’t a taboo to hug our parents or siblings, but it could be viewed as perfunctory, too elastic to be real. Our parents were the adults I was first introduced to early in life, and without the strings of cordiality properly binding us together, I saw them only as parents—people who had decided to be married, have children, protect them and provide their needs. I didn’t fully understand the reason for the chasm between my parents and me or my sudden withdrawal each time they tried to reach out, to show affection. Perhaps, it had something to do with the countless times they fought in our presence without a speck of regard for us, their children, our feelings. Or the moments Papa launched vile words at Mama from the quiver of his mouth that ran like a faulty tap, unashamedly, even while we pleaded with him to stop. Maybe I couldn’t comprehend how two individuals, living under one roof, could become depositories of distinct attributes. How they could so easily morph from the sweet-loving couple they had been moments ago into ravenous wolves determined to tear each other to smithereens.

Still, one thing stood out among us: our love for the mundane. Like telling stories or spending the whole weekend huddled in front of the screen, watching Africa Magic or Telemundo (despite my love for both gradually fading away). My parents, especially Mama, fed us with stories of people, places and moments in their past life. She told us about the Biafran war, how some people fled their homes in terror, and those who could not escape the onslaught ended up as dead bodies lining the streets of Okigwe. How a mother had flung her crying baby into the bush to escape being seen by the soldiers and returned hours later to find the spot where she had thrown the child empty. The baby was gone.

My growing up was bushwhacked by bouts of illnesses that ate into my time for school and house chores. Yet, I remember being struck by malaria and fever at the same time. It was so profound that I was confined to my bed for days, only wriggling off to the toilet to vomit. I thought I was going to die. One evening, the door squealed open, and my father walked in.“Imeriagha?” he said. “How is your body?”I could barely nod or open my mouth. His eyes were laced with fear as he asked if I had vomited again, and I nodded my response. He leaned in and touched my head and said my body was too hot. It felt awkward, his hand on my body, his outright display of warmth and affection, the way he said “ndo.” I was so used to my mother’s touch—her hand running down my body, as if trying to massage the hotness away, her measure of love—that his felt alien.

*

Over the years, the gulf between my parents and me has congealed into walls; so, I’m making a deliberate effort to break through them. I am 27 and still living with my mother. As a teacher working at a private school, it’s almost suicidal to plant my hope on monthly salary. After school, I scuttle from house to house for home lessons, because I’m trying to make ends meet. Because I’m so passionate about being successful, and because I want to be available for my parents. To help oil their path towards senescence, to support them financially just as they’ve done for me.

Despite all these, I try to carve out time to be with my family; and although it’s difficult to fully comprehend my parents when they talk, I provide a listening ear. Where needed, I humour their dry jokes, cringe at the death of an old friend, stifle the urge to lash back at my father when he insults me. I don’t blame them when they fail to recall what I told them some days ago. Neither do I remind them of the staleness of their stories. On second thought, who gets tired of old wine?

Maybe everything happening to my parents—the sudden loss of memory, the stories they tell that sound like songs on repeat—is all part of the ageing process. But I’m scared of losing them. In the pictures, I compare their lives from whence they started to where they are, and I feel so hog-tied at the hapless reality of their slipping away. I scroll through my phone’s gallery and pause at a photo of them standing beside my younger brother, dressed in a convocation gown. This picture is the most recent I have of my parents, and I can’t help but imagine how stilted they look from those wrinkled lines, how fragile the smiles on their faces appear, the exhaustion on my mother’s face. It’s mentally tiring to picture a moment when their smiles, faces and voices would become bags of memories I’d have to carry throughout my life.

*

Two months ago, Mum slipped off a flight of stairs at the back of the house and twisted an ankle. Whenever I remember this incident, how I had been absent from home when it occurred, my heart hammers against my chest. Sometimes I imagine a different scenario: what if her head had landed heavily against the block of cement and not her hands? What if she lay on the ground, still, her eyes wide with tears, blood oozing out of a gash in her skull, the world moving on without her?

The X-ray showed that she sustained a fracture, and the doctor suggested a bed rest. Still, Mama has a resilient spirit. “I’m healed in Jesus name, no need for any bed rest. That doctor thinks I’m going to return to that hospital. God forbid!”she says each time I beg her to take it easy on herself. Then, my father calls to complain about his sight failing him, perhaps cataract, and he wants to go under the knife. I don’t tell him that I hope he doesn’t have the surgery, that I’m scared of losing him. Instead, I pray for him to be healed so he doesn’t have to go under the knife.

Nowadays, I know I have no control over anything: my parents’ complaints, the fear of losing them to the cold grip of death before I finally find my balance in this shifting world.

In “The Slipping Away,”Chinonso Nzeh concludes his essay on a brighter note, stating his resolution to live in the moment that includes his parents.“I want to enjoy the now with them. Every moment with them holds meaning for me. I count one to ten when they provoke me; it cools the burning fury in me. I ask them if they need water or food. I call them to check up on them.”

Just like Chinonso, I do my best to live in the moment with my parents. I don’t wait for birthdays or any such precious occasions in their lives to gift them presents; I do it before, when the means unfurl. I strive to make them laugh while I continue to fill my head with the possibility of having them alive for many years. I choose to bask in the euphoria of their joy, laughter and tears.


Ewa Gerald Onyebuchi is an Igbo storyteller from Nigeria. He writes short stories, essays and poems with deep interest in feminism, sexuality, queerness and religion. His works have been published in Isele, Afritondo, Uncanny, Brittle Paper, and elsewhere. He was long listed for the Abubakar Gimba Prize for Creative Nonfiction 2023 and the Brigitte Poirson Short Story Prize 2023 amongst others. 

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fabienne josaphat poetry january 2024

Four a.m. My father is out looking for gasoline.

Night at this hour is a tangle of hair,

a bush only the gifted seers can navigate.

This is also where I was radicalized.

On my television screen, I watch Bill Clinton

introduce my people to rations. I watch him

change our rice to another kind.

We begin to import democracy and then,

We are all wandering the night,

Searching for one drop of petrol,

And those lucky to find it will be rewarded

with a day of schooling.

Maybe we can after all resist brain drain.


Four a.m. Another day of tires

and cars charred at the crossroads.

The charcoal sings in the gaping

Mouth of a hot iron, and the steam

Kills everything but the linen.

We learn to live like this.

To make fire from the slivered bark of pinewood.

To slaughter and use all of the animal.

To drink its blood or fry its curdles

So that the weak can be saved

From anemia. We turn to cassava bread

And coffee. We find ways. We survive.

They must not know us.


Four a.m. A child was kidnapped

For ransom and never seen again.

The sun seems to have lost its luster.

The children are not safe and therefore

no one is safe. Nothing is sacred.

Not the holy water nor the frankincense,

not the songs nor the processions,

not the libations poured too late for spirits

we have neglected for so long to feed.

There is always plenty of time

Until there isn’t. We’ve forgotten the time.

We rest our bones for tomorrow,

We wake up and start all over again,

Roaming the streets for petrol at four a.m.


Fires Burning

Too many fires burning at once.

Every commentary on T.V. does nothing

more than stoke the flames.

Paper ignites right around 451 degrees.

Water boils at 212. Do we know

the exact temperature at which

to rescue a man from a burning tire?

Rescue a monk from self-combustion?

Rescue a people from self-immolation?

We who have lost faith

And land and voice and agency,

We who have chained ourselves to olive trees

We who have seen our lakes

Burn up in black smoke and breathed

The air to die, we

Who were told to chop down our trees

And bury our elders with our teeth,

We who heeded the command

and felled our own memories:

We who continue to burn demand only

The kindness of sipped water.

Everywhere, a fire burns.

Every single one of us

is running out of blame.


The Way You Are Loved

You know, the way you enter the house

And the pot had been simmering in wait,

And your mother holds your face in both hands

And you can inhale all the powder fresh scent,

That honeysuckle from her bosom, and you want to live there.

The way your grandfather wraps you in

The cotton of his voice, warms you up in earthy breath,

And feeds you pulp and nectar from the fruits of his labor,

And sits you on his lap to spin you a tale

From a motherland country so far and far away it sounds fantastical,

invented, imagined, a myth like all the others,

a fairytale built out of sea salt and constellations,

The breath of Gods who crossed the oceans.

You know the way this place keeps you bound,

tied to the umbilical cord so you’re never too far away.

In Guinea There is where it all started, where this love was born.

In Guinea Where your parents sit by the fire and send you

Signals in the smoke, and a man to love, a woman to hold,

a child or three or eight and keep that fire burning for all of them

To keep going and find their way back home.


Fabienne Josaphat is winner of the 2023 PEN Bellwether Prize for Socially Engaged Fiction, and the author of the forthcoming novel Kingdom of No Tomorrow (Algonquin). Her first novel, Dancing in the Baron’s Shadow, was published by Unnamed Press. Her publications include poems in Kitchen Table Quarterly, Grist Journal, Hinchas de Poesia, and Eight Miami Poets, as well as essays in The Washington Post and Teen Vogue. She is currently at work on a third novel. Find her at @fabyjosaphat and on both instagram and X/twitter.

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gorleku sampson tetteh epistolary december 2023
Image by Gorleku Sampson Tetteh

Dear Mr. President,

I am a photographer with huge concerns for the environment. Please allow me to tell you a story about my Mama’s village.

You see, once upon a time, in the middle of the village, there existed a huge forest called Python-Forest. The forest seemed to bother the people in the village because it was home to many animals including some enormous African pythons. From time to time the pythons came and stole livestock, poultry, and the like belonging to the people of the village. One day they agreed to get rid of the pythons.

In doing so, they cleared the whole forest. It was a good bounty – trees were to be used as firewood, forest game as food, and extra land was acquired for agricultural purposes. In the end, everyone thought it was needed and mostly for the best. Decades later, somebody thought and realized that it did not rain like it used to. Years later, someone else thought and realized that when the pythons were around, it rained heavily. And in the rainwater, the pythons came from the forest for their livestock and poultry. Ah! The python-forest was no more! Nor was the rain.

You see Mr. President, the fruits and rewards of nature’s existence are enjoyed together by all. The rain falls upon every land where we then have sunshine for all and clean air for all to breathe. But when we convert resources of nature into economic resources, not everybody benefits. You would agree that the distribution of our nation’s wealth is unfair and unequal. You should agree because the masses agree, and agreement amongst the masses is the most powerful, more powerful than the office you occupy. It is my prayer that the masses know this.

Mr. President, I would like to bring to your attention the quarrying activities going on in Shai Hills. The activities going on in Shai Hills is a crime against nature punishable by death. Judging according to “an eye for an eye”, the activities are killing the people and destroying the beauty of our land along with it — the land our forefathers fought to protect, only to be destroyed by selfish individuals and for profit.

Mr. President, I am a photographer who has fallen in love with the beauty of our landscape. Have you seen the magnificent inselbergs at Shai Hills? To look upon them when they appear silhouetted in front of an enchanting sunset sky is truly magical. Please, pause for a moment and try to picture that. You will be left in absolute awe of our God. It really is a magical place to be.

Here is the problem: the quarry dust is clogging the lungs of men, women, and children in these communities. The quarries are too close to the people. Have these humble citizens been condemned to death? Must they rise up against you like their forefathers did against the colonial masters before the quarries stop?

The quarries are leaving big holes in the earth. How would you feel if you were living with a big hole in your tummy? The earth is alive, Mr. President, and right now it is dying with all her beauty.

You see Mr. President, though you should, we do not think you know of everything that is happening on our land. Given that countries have suffered the effects of quarrying and now have to invest billions into restoring the land, your experts will tell you this is true. Why then are we going the same way? Please tell us how it benefits our country and her people to allow those historical inselbergs in Shai Hills to be reduced to rubble? Tell us with every shred of honesty in you, Sir. If it’s the money, then I can tell you there’s always another way, as one would tell a criminal. And the way we are going as a country is an unpardonable crime against nature. Shai Hills holds unearthed history; lives have been lived atop the inselbergs; discoveries are yet to be made; the professors are out overseas seeking more wealth. Money seems to be ruling the world, and we have become the weapons of destruction of this earth.

By executive order you can end this. Declare the Shai Hills resource reserve a national park. That will expand the reserve’s land space and then the quarry licenses will be rendered invalid. Just like that. That should be the end of the wicked who destroy the land. It is what the people want. Your experts will tell you it is the right thing to do. You would then go on to plant trees to replace the quarries because trees protect the land, as the hair protects the head and its contents. The trees will heal the earth and clean the filthy air in the city, which is only 45 minutes away. You see, a huge, concentrated number of trees in a national park at Shai, just 45 minutes from the capital, is bound to attract a lot of our shit called co2 away from the city. The trees need the co2, hence they will attract it. They go for it, kind of like we also go in search for food. That is what trees do.

Let’s face it Sir, the capital stinks! If it didn’t, once in a while you’d find yourself turning off your a/c and rolling down your windows to inhale the fresh air (if any). Let us not leave the stench to only the windowless troskies. And outside of the cities, God knows there are limitless untarred road networks, even in Shai where the historical inselbergs are destroyed for construction purposes.

I have asked my fellow citizens what is up with the fighting in parliament? Have we elected a babbling, bumbling, band of baboons? Shouldn’t they be united in building our nation?

Mr. President, as Ansel Adams once said, “It is indeed horrifying that we have to fight our own government to save our environment”. This means the governed are fighting amongst themselves, and Christ the Savior of the Christians as the “Christians” in this country love to put it, said that “a nation that fights against itself shall not stand”. We want to stand tall, Mr. President, and we believe you do too.

Mr. President, if you really care about being a true son of the land, start acting in benefit of the environment. Make that executive order now! Stop the activities that are destroying the historical inselbergs at Shai Hills.

Our youth shall be employed to plant trees to heal the land. Hell, if they won’t, the world will send volunteers to do so if need be. God knows they want to come!

The quarrying will eventually bring down the Shai Hills resource reserve. I have witnessed the rocks atop the inselbergs cracking over time. It is just a matter of time before they come rolling down. People from all walks of life come to climb them all year round, people from countries where they are immensely cared about. We need to start caring, Mr. President, in order to prevent a disaster from happening. Better safe than sorry. It will ruin our reputation as one of the tourist hotspots. Tourism is the new gold anyway. Stop the quarrying and turn to it. That will yield more money since that is what we want. And it will protect the earth in the process.

 Abandoning a well-paying job to photograph our landscape has taught me that money for daily bread is essential. I believe the same for my country. Destruction isn’t the way; doing the right thing is. By doing the right thing, we are brought face to face with the help we need. Photographing landscapes is the right thing for me, just as protecting the land from vampires is the right thing for you to do.

Mr. President, I hang on to hope that you shall act to stop the mindless quarrying at Shai Hills. Always know that three things will last forever: faith, hope and love. Love is the greatest. Move for love, Mr. President. God loves all, he is more favorable to one who loves.


Tetteh Unity

Afterword

My photographs convey the simple yet wonderful beauty of nature that nature gifts us season after season. In the rainy season, trees blossom and bear fruit; the fields turn green; wildflowers bloom bringing with them beautiful insects like bees and butterflies; the sky is blue and snow-white clouds appear, travelling across the sky from east to west.

The trees shed their leaves in the dry season, teaching us that we have to change with the season. Bare naked trees become beautiful portrait subjects with a background of an enchanting December sunset sky.

We tend to miss nature’s gift of beauty due to our now busy lives, or worse because of urban and industrial development. In a hundred years, man has changed the face and beauty of the earth more than nature has changed herself. Entire forests destroyed; whole mountains brought down. We have polluted bodies of water killing the life in them, made filthy our shores, and the list continues.

Nature is our best chance at emotional and physical survival, yet we destroy her. Are we not harming ourselves? Poisoning ourselves by our own thoughtlessness and greed?

Ansel Adams (God bless his soul) once wrote, “Since all life and it’s continuity are dependent upon the earth, our ultimate security must rely upon wisdom, compassion, determination and the awareness of the unity of man and nature.” I agree.


Gorleku Sampson Tetteh is a Ghanaian and a landscape photographer from the Kingdom of Kasunya who is deeply in love with nature’s beauty. Through his lens, he captures the soul-stirring moments that connect us to the earth and fill our hearts with joy and wonder. He acknowledges how every sunrise kisses the land with warmth and color, and every sunset paints the sky with dreams. In the arms of untouched landscapes, he finds peace and purpose—a feeling he strives to share with all through his photographs. The images are a reminder of the magic that surrounds us and a call to protect the precious gift that is our planet.

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sean murphy poetry december 2023

Would-be angels, rejected or returned

to earth, ever eager to share their secrets—

which, suspiciously, all sound the same—

tend to talk about that white light

we’ll all stride toward, transitioning

from here to there, the strangeness

of dead lovers and famous names

(now friends) guiding them forward,

into some impossibly bright beacon.


And why does it always have to be white?

A white god with a white beard dressed

in white (never mind the poor souls

taught to run the other way whenever

they saw men in white robes), looking

like a slick car salesman saying No way

I can make a better deal on this trade-in.


Or consider the revelation of Malcolm X,

reading the dictionary from start to finish

as he bided time in the purgatory of prison,

unlearning what it takes to stay on the right

side of iron bars, figuring out as he did why

they say those who win write our history,

and why white makes right and the wrong

people get blackballed—according to a code

baked into words by the white pie in the sky:

a place where all will be revealed, baptizing

non-believers with the light of white, hot fire.


What did Albert Ayler see when he wept

into the East River, that night he disappeared

forever, having been driven more than halfway

to distraction by the voices that wouldn’t stop,

and why didn’t the Lamb of God put bread inside

his basket when he played the ecstasy of saints

marching in? Did he see a reflection—of himself

or the absent savior who died for his sins—or else

the void of all color & sound as a weary moon hid

behind the clouds, unwilling to witness one more

force majeure (holy ghosts keeping off the record)

amongst martyrs, the Devil, and the deep blue sea?


(*Avant-garde saxophonist Albert Ayler made albums at once decidedly—even provocatively—non-commercial, yet deeply spiritual and ecstatic, and like many other jazz musicians, despite being critically acclaimed, he ceaselessly struggled to make a living. In 1969 he wrote an open letter describing his apocalyptic visions and, after being asked why he was wearing a fur coat with his face covered in Vaseline in the summer heat, replied “Got to protect myself.” Ayler was found dead in New York City’s East River on November 25, 1970, a presumed suicide.)


Sean Murphy is founder of the non-profit 1455 Lit Arts, and directs the Story Center at Shenandoah University. His chapbook, The Blackened Blues, was published by Finishing Line Press in 2021. His second collection of poems, Rhapsodies in Blue was published by Kelsay Books in 2023. His third collection, Kinds of Blue, and This Kind of Man, his first collection of short fiction, are forthcoming in 2024. He’s been nominated four times for the Pushcart Prize, twice for Best of Net, and his book Please Talk about Me When I’m Gone was winner of Memoir Magazine’s 2022 Memoir Prize. Visit seanmurphy.net

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joel savishinsky poetry december 2023

The knack of reading history lies

not in the texts, but in the tokens

people leave: the broken pots,

courses of bricks, footprints in mud,

thumbprints in clay, the body parts

in wheel-wells. We learn, very late

in the game of learning, words may

matter less than the matter the wordless

have lost or abandoned. What would

you want to ask of Vesuvian ash, of

the shadows on Asian rooftops,

the wake left by feet fleeing down tarmac,

of the bones beneath the plow?


The shards of memory that will never come

to rest in anyone’s memoir cannot be cleansed

or catalogued because they cannot be grasped

by hand or mind, not heard, imagined or imaged.

They are as pale as punctuation on rain-soaked paper,

as silent as the sailors whose mouths have closed

on a watery cry deep below the waves.


Today perhaps you breathed in the DNA of Nagasaki,

washed off from dust from Dachau with Soweto’s tears,

 picked up echoes from a dark corner of Santiago.

Where else, who else, lives inside your body,

when every place is also someplace else?

These fates only seem mysterious, their reasons

lost in claims of complexity, in the overdetermined

testimony diluting the clues that follow the money.

You know it is foolish to watch and listen because

everything of moment happens out of sight and hearing,

yet you cannot stop yourself from believing in

the urgency of the latest news. In the end, as in

every beginning, there are always explanations from

those who know what they do not want us to know.


Joel Savishinsky is a retired anthropologist and gerontologist. His Breaking the Watch: The Meanings of Retirement in America, won the Gerontological Society of America’s book-of-the-year prize. A Pushcart Prize nominee, and California State Poetry Society award winner, his poetry, fiction and essays have appeared in Beyond Words, Blue Collar Review, California Quarterly, The New York Times, Passager, SLANT, and Windfall. In 2023, The Poetry Box published his collection Our Aching Bones, Our Breaking Hearts: Poems on Aging. He lives in Seattle, helping to raise five grandchildren, and considers himself a recovering academic and unrepentant activist. You can find him at ithaca.edu and Poets & Writers

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alan abrams poetry december 2023

Every place that the sole of your foot shall tread upon,
                      that have I given unto you
                                    ~Joshua 1:3


who will sort the bodies

    from the silent rubble;

who will push the barrow,

    who will wield the shovel

to dig the graves

    in this blood soaked ground—

blood of foe mixed

    with blood of friend,

who once had lived

    in hatred bound—

someone tell me please:

    what will Gaza look like

       when the killing ends?


On Some Lines by Mahmoud Darwish

      “On the day when my

          words were stones…”

                  ~from “Psalm Three”


Why do his words catch in my throat,

as though they were spiders in my soup?

They do not crawl or build a web,

they only lie on a page, line upon line,

like layers of sediment revealed by a road cut.


They are his voice turned to stone,

coursed like those ashlar temple walls.

They pave the road the poet had traveled,

and will linger long past his departure—

each flag, another line of his poem,

written as though the very ink

was squeezed from rock.



Alan Abrams dropped out of college—one semester shy of a degree—to work in motorcycle shops and construction sites. Later in life, he owned a design-build firm that specialized in green building. Nowadays, he tinkers with his collection of road bikes, and scribbles an occasional story or poem. His writing has been published in numerous literary journals and anthologies. His poem “Aleinu,” published by Bourgeon [now the Mid Atlantic Review] is nominated for the 2023 Pushcart Prize. You can find him at alanabramswriter.com

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adrian fleur flash fiction december 2023

In school we learnt History, but it was sanitised history about the British, the Dutch, the colonisers with their ships and riches, about how they came down south and did their business. And that was all it was: business, war and conquest—no mention of systemic sexual assault as a tool of war, no mention of the brutality women and children suffered at the hands of men. Even then.

In school we learnt about sex in Moral Education or Life Orientation or whatever they ended up calling that class so its name wouldn’t offend. (That’s the problem, isn’t it? How we cower at the idea of things, the mere mentioning of them.) So we learnt about penetration but not about bodily autonomy or consent, and when they showed us slides about menstruation or breasts the boys went Ewwwww! And the teachers never said Grow up! The teachers never said that one in three girls would be abused before eighteen, and one in six boys, and told us to look around the room and start counting.

In school we learnt Public Speaking, but when we should have been debating things like wind power versus solar, or legalising marijuana, we were arguing for the death penalty. We stood up in front of our peers at thirteen telling each other lies and our teachers never stopped us. We didn’t learn Philosophy, Sociology, or Statistics, we didn’t study any cases or watch any documentaries. We stood up in front of our classes playing Devil’s advocate and our teachers never told us that the Devil doesn’t need any more friends.

In school we learnt that boys could flash you, snap your bra straps or try and trip you. We learnt they could shout at you for blowjobs in front of their friends, they could corner you in empty corridors or backstage or behind the bins, they could spread explicit rumours about you, they could brand you a slut at fourteen, at twelve, at ten, they could call you misogynistic names and then years later they’d ask you out for a drink. And when you told them to go to Hell they’d be confused, because while we were learning how to defend ourselves they were learning rape culture.

In school we learnt a great deal about Voortrekkers and spear formations, but we never learnt about what black men went through during Apartheid, and how they left behind women who raised children in poverty and despair—alone. And they watched their mothers infantilized and their fathers worked to death in the mines, and they watched the government strip them of their humanity before they were grown. And then South Africans always want to know: who are these violent monsters? These ones who follow in the footsteps of our violent forefathers, in a country built and plagued by violence, in a violent story too familiar to us all? And then the decent folk always want to say: no, we don’t know them. No, they couldn’t be our fathers or our brothers or our friends, or the boys we went to school with who were learning how to hurt us, while we were learning how to make it out of school alive. And then we want to hang them, shock them, strap them up and inject them, we call for their death in the streets while we protest the blood that every woman in our country bleeds. We want to repeat history because it’s all we ever learnt, even though it never did us any good, it never healed our wounds, it never made us safe from the violence in our streets and in our sheets and in our homes.

In school, most of all, we learnt how to be good girls. Our gogos and oumas learnt how to be good to the men who constructed Apartheid, and our mothers and aunties learnt how to be good to the men who were traumatised by it. So we fell in line, us born-free babies, us sisis and meisies, we learnt how to be good women who raise good girls to continue this cycle. We never said no, and then when we did we were ignored, and then when we began to scream we were pushed aside for the next good girl who would shoulder the burden of damaged men. We just kept teaching that tired old history: the Zulus, the Xhosas, how they lost to the guns, how the land was won. We never said how our country was stolen by greedy men, our riches were sucked dry, our futures shaped by their sins—that being a good girl won’t save you from them. We never taught our girls that bigotry is deadly. We never said, You’re going to burn. If you don’t learn the things that school never taught you.

Girl, you’re going to burn. You’re going to burn in this fire, in this Hell, in this man’s country.


Adrian Fleur is a writer from South Africa. Her novel Zithande is a work-in-progress that explores themes of grief, joy, and the resilience of women across class and racial lines. She lives in Minneapolis with her husband, two young children, and chow-shepherd mix Ruby. You can find out more about her at her website www.adrianfleur.com.

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david agyei-yeboah flash fiction november 2023

Rain splattered across the window pane. It thwacked hard as a sheen shrouded the glass. Mensa peered across, at the dense foliage dripping outside with August globules, leaf blades ripe with gossamer as lightning flashed; at the lurid plumage trailing as birds flocked away. A big drum collected stray fluid from the roof. As his eyes dipped into the barrel, he closed the shutters. Chest heaving, he walked to another window and continued staring aloof into space, then closed the shutters. Jane walked up to him, curling her arms around his shoulders; her thick perfume that had teased him earlier, now strangling.

‘Today’s been absolutely the worst. Don’t know why I just can’t seem to get a job. I’m broke as hell. I’m shit. I’m –’ Mensa said.

‘Rest, Desi. Tomorrow is another day to hunt. Today, just rest in my arms.’

He loved when she called him Desi – shortform of Desire. She always said that he had wound his way into her heart, upended it, and set it on fire. Her warmth had always comforted him. But today, it felt like his inner demons quenched her fiery embrace.

‘Jane, what does that make me? A deadbeat lover, son, brother? I don’t even have enough money to cater to my needs. I’m still depending on daddy’s money and I’m 30.’

‘I know, love. It sucks. But I believe in you. Something will turn up. Something will change.’

‘Look at Amprofi. He has a penthouse. Four cars! Even Kwabena that I always taught in uni just got a job that’s paying in dollars. And Esi, my small sister oo, this small girl, just got an amazing job in Dubai. She was just sending me pictures of her new home. I – I can’t seem to understand why I’m still struggling when I’m intelligent and diligent.’ His shoulders slumped. ‘How the mighty have fallen!’

Jane squeezed him tighter in her embrace. ‘Hmm. It took me a while. But I realized that in life, it takes more than the conventional things we are fed with to succeed. Growing up, everyone says, ‘Study hard. Make good grades.’ But Desi, sadly, in this world it takes more than that to make it o. Sometimes it doesn’t even take hardwork to make it. Ghana is crappy as hell too. Our system is broken. Just makes everything worse!’

‘Hmmm. I have a tall list of applications whose responses are pending. If something good doesn’t turn up before this year ends, I’ll prolly apply for visa lottery and start life in a foreign land.’

‘And leave me fuckless and miserable?’

‘Jane, be serious.’ A laugh escaped his lips. Her embrace began to feel warm, like many nights before. ‘At least I have you. You’re like the best thing that happened to me since uni.’

‘I love to be wanted. What can I say?’

Their laughter poked through the still night. Raindrops pelted harder against the window pane. Mensa walked to his refrigerator to grab a sachet of water. “Want one?’

‘I want you.’

Mensa giggled. ‘You’re corny, huh?’

‘Desi, I really love you. I’ll never stop letting you know that. Bout the water, make that two. A bitch is thirsty from all that lovemaking. Weird how we can go from ecstasy to sadness in a heartbeat.’

‘Ghana for you. Will literally wreck your soul.’ Mensa dropped the sachets on the bed and lay his head on Jane’s lap. He twirled his fingers across her belly as he gulped. ‘How about we go another round. I need some joy seeping into my life again.’

‘Noo Desi. I’m supposed to be home right now. It’s past my curfew.’

‘Damn. Can’t believe your parents are giving you a curfew. You’re not a child, you know.’

‘But I’m still a college kid. You know how they get.’

‘If only they knew how naughty I make you. Scratch that, how naughty you are beneath that innocent face.’

‘Bro, sex is a need. It’s not a want. I honestly don’t see why people make it seem like it’s some evil thing. I need sex. I’m not ashamed to say that and seek it.’

‘Well, I ain’t complaining. It’s all joy from this side.’

‘Heey.’ Jane tickled his sides, then kissed him. ‘See me off?’

‘Of course. Let me put a hoodie on. You can order the Uber.’

‘And babe, you will beat this bad stroke of luck. Mark my words.’ Jane pursed her lips and shot her right arm in the air. ‘If I be a man of God.….’ her voice intensified.

‘Hahahahaha. I freaking love you Jane.


David Agyei–Yeboah holds an MA in Communication Studies from the University of Ghana. He graduated with first-class honors in English and Theatre Arts for his B.A.  His writing has been published by Deep Overstock Publishing, Freshwater Literary Journal, The Quilled Ink Review, Tampered Press, Lumiere Review, Journal of the Writers Project of Ghana, and elsewhere. He was longlisted for the Totally Free Best of the Bottom Drawer Global Writing Prize in 2021. He enjoys everything art and anticipates an academic career in the future. He tweets at @david_shaddai and sings on instagram at @davidshaddai

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salimah valiani poetry november 2023

out the fifth floor window of her El-Biar flat   from where she had

watched The Algerian People’s Army open fire on students


journalist Josie jumped 


28 years after her partner died alone of leukemia  


16 years before militant Beatriz pulled the trigger[1]


O wretched of the earth


my partner said yesterday Malawi is headed Zim-way

different similar reasons  


all fingers pointing   fast climbing Rwanda  

economychildpregnancyrape  


O beloved Africa


*


a Vietnamese sex worker and mixed race daughter

heading out


the war had been won but little remained of the country

though the hegemon had lost he could still go home


38 years later trailer parks mushrooming

shanties of US America


and shanties of South Africa

inside suburbs   not just edging townships


This I like too the cabbie driving us to Museu do Amanhã

Museum of Tomorrow   But this is not Rio de Janeiro


*


fuel gulping subsidies surpassing $1 trillion in 2022


what a person can do in earthquakes tsunamis tornados forest fires floods

life skills taught to children


BelovedPangeawretchedoftheearth differentsimilarreasons

each piece at its pace  allpiecestogether

ecocide in world time


[1] Josie Dublé, activist and partner of Frantz Fanon. Beatriz Allende, activist and daughter of Salvador Allende.


Salimah Valiani is a poet, activist and researcher. Her poetry
collection, 29 leads to love (Inanna 2021), was the winner of the
International Book Award for Contemporary Poetry in 2022. She has
published four other poetry collections: breathing for breadth (TSAR
2005), Letter Out: Letter In (Inanna 2009) land of the sky (Inanna
2016) and Cradles (Daraja 2017). Her story-poem, “Dear South Africa,”
was selected for Praxis Magazine’s 2019-2020 Online Chapbook Series.
Her audiobook (also in print), Love Pandemic, was released by Daraja
Press in late 2022. Valiani lives in many places and crosses borders regularly.
She can be found at Salimah Valiani – Poet.

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ali motamedi personal essay november 2023

The airport officer opened my passport on his desk and looked at my photo. He put the boarding pass on top of it and held his pen. But he didn’t mark it right away. Instead, he stared at my eyes. I tried to act normal, just being myself. Four and a half seconds passed, and I started to worry. Had I doubted myself? He finally took his eyes off me and drew a half circle on the boarding pass. Then he handed me my passport, and I took it back. I started walking toward the airport inspection point which was crowded. One of the officers was guiding people forward. Behind me, people were waiting. I just wanted to pass through quickly. My passport had been issued less than a year ago. Have I changed so much?

For as long as I can remember, I have always liked the photo on my passport; but that was never true for my driver’s license and ID photo. The picture on my very first driver’s license was a little black-and-white photo attached to a corner of an opaque white card – imagine a guy with black hair and thick brows staring out into the world from a low-res photo wrapped in plastic, featuring a small hole. There is nothing in his eyes that I could say is attractive. He doesn’t seem bold or smart. And why is he so low-spirited? Why does it seem he doesn’t have anything to offer? No, it’s not like me. I don’t like it. I have never liked it.

As the airport officer stared into my eyes, I wanted to help him out. I wanted to say, “Come on, don’t bother, man. I pinky promise that it’s me!”

Like everyone else, I like some of my photos better than others. Perhaps the ones that were taken at a specific angle. Those taken from down and a bit to the left or maybe kitty-cornered or from some special angle! I don’t know. Those photos that reflect Ali. Those that are similar to me. In those moments when you want to be yourself in a photograph, which self do you refer to exactly?

In the photo of my very first passport, I wore a green T-shirt. I was a young pal with a pair of glossy eyes staring out of the frame. It’s like I wanted to get out of that two-by-three quadrangle. You can see the fearlessness, the soul in my eyes. “I want to go . . .” “I fear nothing . . .” It’s like I was whispering something like that to myself. Why not wear more formal clothes? Who takes his passport picture with a T-shirt on? The funny thing is, I used the same picture for my l-20 letter and also for the American Embassy. I didn’t care if the officer asked what kind of picture it was. Maybe that was the reason I could take my visa sooner than others. The photo was taken ten years ago. It’s Ali during those years, those days when I wanted to prove the freedom in life, with that round neck and green T-shirt! With that uncombed gelled hair! Could all of this be compressed into just a few thousand pixels? In those few inches of paper? Maybe that’s what photographs are made for — an attempt to fit all of life into a color or black-and-white image.

I put my shoes, bag, and coat in a plastic basket and left it on the conveyor to pass through the X-ray device. In front of me, there was a huge cylindrical scanner. There was a person before me, standing in the middle of it with his hands up, staring straight, waiting for it to take his nude photo!

I have never taken a nude photo before. A full-body nude picture! Well, I have seen myself in the steamy mirror of my bathroom, of course. Or when I change my clothes at home. But even those images are half-naked in my head. Not fully. Fully naked photos are frightening. Being naked is frightening. It was my turn. I took a few steps forward. I stood inside the big cylinder and put my hands up. The device turned, and a light passed through my eyes rapidly. Electromagnetic waves record your naked picture, whether you have your clothes on or not. It doesn’t matter if you’re smiling or not. If you’re beautiful or . . . I never heard that anyone would ever want to know how his photo in the airport inspection device would actually look.

The officer pointed with his hand, meaning that I could pass. I came out of the big cylinder and stood aside. I was standing with my arms folded, looking as the conveyor was pushing the plastic baskets forward one by one. My coat, bag, passport, and shoes were closing in, inside a big plastic basket.

Why did it take so long? Was it me that had changed so much, or was it the photo that was so different from me? I reasoned that if airport officers worked eight hours a day, and took ten seconds to match a person’s face with their passport photo, it would be three thousand people a day, sixty thousand a month, and more than six hundred thousand people a year. What in the world do they see in people’s faces? Fear of going, doubt of coming. Hope of getting back? If she won’t let me go. If he won’t let me come. Hope she doesn’t notice that I have changed. Is it actually possible to put all of these in a single photo? How much can a photo tell about someone anyway? They say you should not use a photo taken more than six months ago. Six months? No, not even that long, let’s assume six weeks, six days, or even just six minutes ago! Am I the same me, even right after the photographer pushed the shutter button?

I’m thinking about the airport’s scanners. Maybe those huge cylinders might be able to take a beautiful photo of you without even trying to do so. Even without your favorite clothes. Even without a smile on your face. Without shadows and highlights and without fear. That flawless art of nudity.

I like my passport photos best. My ID card and driver’s license are nothing to me but official certificates of identification. But my passports are permits. Permits for leaving! I know this by experience that any permit to leave is a blessing to me. Its photo is closer to the Ali that I know. Whether or not it’s colorful or black-and-white, it’s bright. It’s alive. It has color! And I don’t mean “color” literally, as in a “color photograph.” I mean that it is the perception of the world I create and give in my photos. I have seen black-and-white photos of myself that had more color than the colorful ones and vice versa. My passports have always been colorful, but my certificates of identification . . . not so much.

I took my things from the basket, put on my shoes, and walked to the gate. The hallway was crowded. People were carrying their suitcases. The airport-speaker was announcing the flights one by one. On the way, I was constantly looking around. I wanted to find a mirror.


Ali Motamedi, artist and educator, explores themes of travel, immigration,
and identity. His essays and short stories, published in literary magazines in Farsi and English, intricately weave these themes. Holding a PhD in civil engineering and having studied fine
arts at the City University of New York, he seamlessly combines his
engineering background with artistic vision. Additionally, his photography graces group and solo exhibitions in Iran and the US. Since 2014, he has led students in engineering, critical
thinking, and creativity courses nationally and internationally. He can be found on twitter and instagram.

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Decolonial Passage is honored to announce the nominations for next year’s Pushcart Prize Anthology. This list includes writing published from February to October 2023. Congratulations to the nominees!

Short Story

“The Sling” by Mungai Mwangi

Poetry

“crawling toward mirage” by Kathleen Hellen

“The Giraffe Titan” by Brandon Kilbourne

“Homage to My Peruvian Brother” by Alex Anfruns

“Homeless” by Patrice Wilson

“Mammy Does the Morning Chores” by Matthew Johnson

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Jen Soriano’s writing pulls the reader into her memoir in essays starting with a chronological history of medicine and its approaches to the nervous system. Soriano studied the history of science at Harvard; thus, her book has abundant historic detail. Included in her chronology are the Kahun Papyrus medical documents from 1900 B.C. written by women and focusing on women’s health. These documents were later obscured during Europe’s Middle Ages when St. Thomas Aquinas warned that women were weak, those who practiced healing were minions of the devil, and that hysteria was evil. By 1486, two centuries of witch hunts began across Europe. In 1894 Santiago Ramón y Cajal, founder of modern neurosciences, described the nervous system as organic and flexible, like a system of waterways. And it wasn’t until 1980 that the American Psychological Association stopped using the term hysteria and replaced it with stress disorder.

How does this history fit into the life story of Jen Soriano? Soriano describes herself as someone who has always been nervous. From the ages of twenty-eight to forty-three, she had a series of diagnoses connected to her nervous system. Not only has she suffered from nervous disorders, but she has also had a life of chronic physical pain — pain so great that it kept her awake at night and resulted in her being prescribed meds. So chronic that it led to suicidal ideation in her twenties. Yet Soriano didn’t accept her medical and psychological suffering as an individual circumstance related only to her personal life. Because she had experienced violent dreams of her grandparents for three decades, she was left wondering if she was experiencing transgenerational flashbacks from her grandparents’ trauma in the Philippines. She became certain that the war experiences of the Philippines — including her grandfather being tortured and then disappeared as a prisoner of war and her grandmother having to eke out survival while her home was enemy-occupied — lived on inside of her.   

Born in the US, Soriano realizes that not only her personal experiences, but the history of her body is connected to her forebears and the history of the Philippines. The violence that has been inflicted on the Philippines is hidden behind the American myth of Filipinos as simply agricultural and later healthcare migrants. Yet Filipino immigration to the U.S. has been part of the push-and-pull of colonialism and revolutionary resistance that began with three and a half centuries of Spanish domination. The Spanish viewed the island territory as an outpost for trade where they didn’t even bother teaching the indigenous population Spanish as they did in Latin America. In 1896, the Filipino population revolted against Spanish rule, and during the Spanish-American War that began in 1898, Spain sold the Philippines to the U.S. for $20 million. The war lasted until 1913 and resulted in the deaths of more than one million Filipino people. In World War II, after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, they went on to bomb eight targets throughout the Philippines. In the summer of 1942, the U.S. surrendered the country to Japan. And from 1941-45 more than 1.1 million Filipinos were killed, and some as a result of horrid war crimes that included skinning victims alive.

When Soriano’s parents immigrated to the U.S., they left a large portion of that tragic history behind. Her father was a medical doctor and her mother, an industrial pharmacist. Both parents focused on upward mobility in the Chicago home where they raised the writer and her two brothers. Her father viewed his nuclear family – now cut off from the larger extended family in the Philippines — as a sign of progress. And when her parents took their kids back home for vacation, they stayed in hotels instead of staying with family. The effect on a young Soriano was the absence of a sense of secure attachment with her parents. She felt she hardly knew her dad because he was constantly working. Her mom was distant and did not assume the role of a nurturer. Also, during her youth, both of her medically-trained parents dismissed her complaints about body pain – a dismissal which caused her emotional pain greater than her physical aches. In sum, the writer viewed many of the experiences with her parents as emotional neglect.

The writer’s young adult years included both a process of self-discovery and learning to cope with pain. During her studies at Harvard, Soriano felt alienated from the White elites in her environment. After moving to the San Francisco Bay Area in her mid-twenties, she became part of a Filipino population much larger than she had encountered in the Midwest or on the East Coast. The move to the West Coast brought her closer to her ancestral shores and allowed her to immerse herself in political activism as well as ethnic studies. Performing in a protest band not only served as a therapeutic ritual that advanced social transformation, but it also led to her forming lasting relationships with some of the most significant people in her life. She describes hanging out with her Filipino friends as akin to constructing her own nipa hut that sheltered her from pain and isolation.

Jen Soriano sees the connection between our personal lives, our history, our communal experiences, and the natural environment. For this reason, she can draw the conclusion that nature functions like an autonomic nervous system regulator and our human health depends on the health of our natural environment, especially our rivers. She experienced the interconnection between the personal, social, and environmental firsthand while participating in a protest to resist the damning of the Chico River – the largest river in the Philippines. For centuries, the Chico River has sustained the farming, trading, and daily life of the indigenous people who live near its shores and farther afield. For more than five decades, activists have resisted plans for the construction of hydropower dams on the river system. For Jen Soriano, the Chico River symbolizes a critical crossroads between the exploitation of natural resources and a more sustainable way of being that is not reliant on colonialism, exploitation, and trauma. To experience the full force of this crossroads, we must submerge ourselves in the crystalline whirlpool of the narrative that is her memoir in essays — Nervous.

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april L. smith personal essay november 2023

I think about my ancestors often. Specifically, I think about matters like healing, faith, hope, and love.  Currently, my curiosity centers around how enslaved women were denied time for self-care. In historic photos enslaved women donned hair rags and hair wraps; the difference in wrapping could distinguish between a woman who worked in the house and a woman who worked in the field. Under the wrap one might find fine curls or course matted hair.  Mulattos, by no choice of their own, often inherited their enslavers hair. Some head wrappings were cultural, and some were worn as acts of resistance.

I am reflecting on hair wrapping as a result of being denied the right of self-care. Neglect of personal hygiene at the demand of an enslaver. I started thinking about this, trying to connect the lessons of self-care for our hair based on the lessons that have been passed down over generations without questioning if we should do things differently.

For most women our hair is a symbol of beauty and for some, hair can be a symbol of protest and independence.  My curiosity is focused on the emotional and mental trauma that our ancestors experienced in not being able to care for their hair. What was the psychological cost of enslaved women losing their hair because they were denied the personal right to self-care? This is what has been on my mind. The inability to relieve mental pressure by feeling water wash over their heads on a regular basis, having an itch that caused them to scratch until blood was drawn.  In some cases, if they wanted to untie the coverings, they were denied the right to expose their hair.  

I can’t imagine working in a field among flies, mosquitoes, grasshoppers, and caterpillars and not being able to return home and wash my hair. I cringe at the thought of scratching my scalp infested with lice or creating remedies out of bacon grease, butter, and kerosene while being denied the right to cleanse my scalp.  Imagine hearing a sermon in church about cleanliness being next to Godliness, but being denied the right to bathe.  I am pained by the thought that my ancestors, being treated as property, were made to feel inferior to white women enslavers. White women could flaunt their tresses that enslaved women had to wash, and comb, and care for, while covering their own tresses in a rag. Is there anything more painful than providing the highest level of care to someone that looks at you and calls you property? 

Today we are hyper-focused on our hair because our hair has a history in enslavement, oppression, rejection, and classism. Our hair has a connection to our African ancestors and our white enslavers.

I grew up getting my “hair done” —  meaning washed and pulled into an afro puff, or washed, pressed and curled once every two weeks. Unless it was summer, which meant I went swimming every day. I am grateful that my mother never required me to wear those gawd awful rubber swimming caps. She did, however, demand that I wash and deep condition my hair after my swimming excursions. Water running through my curly, wavy hair felt comforting. For me water is healing, cleansing, a source of renewal and rejuvenation. After immersing myself in water, I feel pretty, clean and shiny, like a new penny. 

My cousin and I celebrated rainy days walking in the rain, no umbrella. We bought Tropical Punch soda pop and walked home slowly. The fun and laughter on those walks still rank as the best days of my youth. Our faces so wet, raindrops hitting the top of our heads; it was magical.

During COVID, I stopped using chemical straightening products in my hair, gaining the pleasure of washing my hair more. I love how water opens my mind, clears my head. Great ideas come to me in the shower. Watering my crown from the top with no protective covering is like watering my garden on a summer’s day. I ache thinking of how the ancestors, after laboring until broken, after being beaten, raped, and forced to produce babies, survived the atrocities of enslavement without being able to wash them away.  What kind of monster was an enslaver to make bathing an option? I mean, water is recovery.

Harriet Jacobs wrote about her life of enslavement; she hid in the attic of a shed for almost seven years to avoid the wrath of her enslaver. She survived summer heat, the cold of winter, fever, and near death. Harriet writes in Incidents of a Slave Girl, “I suffered much more during the second winter than I did during the first period my limbs were benumbed by inaction, and the cold filled them with cramp. I had a very painful sensation of coldness in my head; even my face and tongue suffered, and I lost the power of speech. Of course, it was impossible, under the circumstances, to summon my physician. My brother William came and did all he could for me. Uncle Philip also watched tenderly over me; And poor grandmother crept up and down to inquire whether there were any signs of returning life. I was restored to consciousness by the dashing of cold water in my face.” The mental trauma, emotional toil, and physical hardships are unmeasurable. Thinking about her hair might appear trivial. Yet imagine what she must have felt when her scalp started to itch uncontrollably? Surely, it must have felt like the torture experienced by prisoners of war. I would love to ask her about her journey back to health. I am sure it began with water. Water. I wonder how they made it over, from enslavement to freedom, without the daily ritual of a water dance.

When a mother’s water breaks, she brings life into the world. Water is a representation of all things new. Water is used to dedicate our lives back to the Creator. Water is used to keep the body hydrated, the earth moist, plants, animals, and the universe from overheating and dying. Water is the spiritual renewal of life. When water hits my face in the mornings, I feel renewal. Enslaved women, rising at daybreak with stiff bones, and aching backs, were crippled early in life by the demands of a slave breaker daring them to bring underweight sacks into the storehouse. If working in the field didn’t break you, a whip for not meeting your quota would. I linger in the shower knowing it is a privilege provided me by my ancestors.

I decided to make washing my hair a priority, not for styling, but for connecting to my crown chakra and, in a sense, connecting to my ancestors. The crown chakra gives us access to our intuitive energy and wisdom. The divine feminine is supported innately by the spirit of the Creator through our intuitive understanding. I require connection to creativity, nurturing, maternal connections, and healing support for my self-care. I can be more supportive of others when I am fully centered. The process for spiritual renewal is immersing the whole body, starting at the top of our crown, in water, dedicating ourselves back to life. My water dance feels like that moment after the rain; my body opens like a flower, tired muscles relax, my skin softens, letting the rain roll down my body.

After experiencing macro and micro-aggressions, our crown requires renewal.  I believe our ancestors would consider washing our hair several times a week a privilege. I want to honor them as I work to ensure my own self-care at the highest level of love. Maybe our blood pressure would be lower, maybe our mental health would be better, maybe our thoughts would be clearer. Just like the dew of morning, the mist of water on my brow connects me to something greater than myself.

Black women were not created to be a human resource, a tool for production, an appliance for usage like a machine. We were not created to support everything, everyone, and women of other cultures while neglecting ourselves. We are not made of steel. We can’t carry the anger of the world around us because everyone except us, men included, are immersing their entire bodies in water for renewal daily; meanwhile we wait to refresh our entire body when it is convenient to wash our hair. We are delicate, we are made to be graceful, we are meant to seek our help from the Creator. Ours is a culture of peace.

Our hair is not our crown; it is the ornament of protection decorating our crown. Our hair doesn’t determine how the rest of our body, mind, and soul respond to the issues of life. Yet, great hair is beautiful when topping a nurtured crown. In the end, it is our crown that enables us to radiate from the inside out. When we care for ourselves, we honor our ancestors. 


April L. Smith is a writer, literary agent, and motivational speaker. She is committed to eliminating mindsets that obstruct diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives, especially for African American women. April is a Yale Writers Workshop alumnus. She loves spending time with her two adult children Kinnidy and Zackary. April lives in Raleigh, NC. She can be found at The Kinzac Group Literary Agency and Marketing Company and on instagram and facebook.