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rosario patricio martinez & kim jensen poetry october 2023

They couldn’t do it with firearms.

Later they came disguised

as kind-hearted people.

We bring word of a merciful God, they said.

Little by little they imposed their cross.


The cross they brought from the one true god,

brought the death of ours.

If we refused to believe in their god

the edge of the sword gleamed

to destroy our teachings.


To rip out our roots

they learned our language

exchanged our deities

for saints and the images of virgins.

Out of fear for the scorching flames of the pyre

we turned ourselves into seeds

to germinate at the appointed time.


Germinar en el tiempo

No pudieron con armas de fuego.

Más tarde llegaron con engaño,

como gente de buen corazón.

Traemos palabra de Dios bondadoso, dijeron.

Poco a poco impusieron su cruz.


La cruz que trajeron del único dios,

trajo la muerte de lo nuestro.

Si no queríamos creer en su dios 

brillaba el filo de la espada

para derrumbar nuestros saberes.


Para arrancar nuestras raíces,

aprendieron nuestra lengua,

cambiaron nuestras divinidades

por santos e imágenes de vírgenes.

Por temor al fuego de la hoguera 

nos convertimos en semilla

para germinar en el tiempo señalado.


Muxp mää tyemp d’ukpääty

Kä’t ojts jëën tujn tamädä’kt.

Janëm jadëjk ojts jyä’ät jënë’np,

tamëgueexy tyaxy’oy jä’äyë’nt.

Yos kyajpxy ëëts nakmentëp, nëm ojts wyä’nt.

atyä’äky ojts ja’ kyrus jakmëpëkn.


Ja krus mëde’p dakmend ojts,

o’jkë’n tëko’oyën ja’ yakjä’tëp.

Ku kä’t ja’ tyios pën tjajanchawëyä’ny,

nejt jakxon pujx y’äntä’äky

jëts adom ja’ nja’ dakutëgoy’änt.


Ku äätseptpy tyimtyonä’änt,

jabety adom n’ayuujk ojts dakyujt,

ojts adom ja’ ntsämääx yakkontëkätst

ta syänt ojts tpëktä’äkt.

Ja’ yaktsë’ëkëp ku jä’äy xakto’yën,

taa ojts ntëmt jëmpijtyë’m

jëts nmujxë’n mää tyemp d’ukpääty.


Mixe Boy

Every time the Mixe boy

made a few words bloom

martyrdom arrived in form of the teacher.

At times, only silence protected him.

Other times, a simple yes or no

saved him from punishment.


Whenever he caught sight

of an eraser, a ruler, or a rod

an icy tremor seized his body.

Every word in Spanish 

was a piercing thorn, a wound. For him

school days were an unbearable torment.


Niño Mixe

Cada vez que el niño mixe

hacía florecer unas palabras,

llegaba el martirio hecho profesor.

A veces, sólo el silencio lo abrigaba

y otras veces, un sí o un no

lo rescataba del castigo.


Cada vez que sus ojos descubrían

una vara, una regla o un borrador,

un temblor frío invadía su cuerpo.

Cada palabra en español eran espinas

que lo herían en los días de clases.

Para él, la escuela era un tormento.


Mutsk mixy ayuujk jä’äy

Ku mutsk mixy tu’k’oojk tu’koojk

ijty kyajpxy myatyä’äky ayuujk,

jaa yak’ëxpëjkp tyëk tëtyunp.

Ja’y junety amëny y’ity

jëts junety wyä’ny sí uk no

jëts kedee yaktëtyu’nt.


Ku ijty mää t’ejxpääty

tu’uk mä’ts, tu’uk kejpxk uk tu’uk jo’ots,

timyubejp maxu’unk nye’ekx kyojpk.

Ku jä’äy tmëdey amaxän kyajpxy

kujp djaw timykuujmëp ku y’ës’ëxpiky.

Kajanaxy ëxpëk tmë’ayëy.


They Only Looked at Us

When they looked at us with night-ridden eyes

they thought we were senseless creatures

and didn’t believe we had a soul

because our words didn’t move to the rhythm of theirs.


Looking at us through clouded eyes

they didn’t see the universe that blesses us,

nor the stars that protect us day and night,

nor could they see that the sun and moon

gathering between mountains and hillsides

gave us the color of baked clay.


.

We are little quails.

On the watch for danger

we turn ourselves into fallen leaves

or sometimes into rock or stone

while the universe protects us

from any pest that wants to stamp us out.


Sólo nos miraron

Cuando nos miraron con ojos de noche

nos creyeron seres sin sentido y

nos imaginaron ausentes de alma

porque nuestras palabras no marchan al ritmo de las suyas.


Al mirarnos con ojos turbios,

no vieron el universo que nos bendice,

ni estrellas que nos protegen día y noche,

tampoco pudieron ver que el sol y la luna

nos coloreó de barro cocido,

entre las montañas y laderas.


Somos pequeños codornices

que al acecho de algún peligro

nos convertimos en hojarasca, 

en otras ocasiones en roca

mientras nos protege el universo

para evitar que algún bicho nos extermine.


Ja’y ojts xjën’ixyë’m

Ja’y ojts xnë’ijxyë’m,

Kä’t ojts nak’ixyë’m tam jä’äyën

Kä’t ojts t’odät ku jajp n’änmëjä’n

Ja’ ku nayde’n nkakäjpxtääjkyë’m.


Ku ojts nakjën’ixyë’m,

Kä’t ojts t’ejxt ku et näxwiiny adom xpëdëjkyë’m,

Ku matsä’ xkuno’okyë’m ja xëëjny ja koots,

ni tka’ejxt ojts ku xëë ku po’o

adom xakaxë’kyë’m nääjxte’kn,

ku tun kojpk mëëd njuujky’äjtyë’m.


Muskte’nety adom,

pën jaa tee ka’oypy xnëjä’tyë’m

Ääy ujts natyapëdejkyë’m,

Junety napyëjktääjkyë’m tam tsääjë’n,

Ku Et Näxwiiny xnëkë’yëm xnëxäjyë’m

Jëts kedee tee xak’ojkë’n xaktëko’yë’n.


This poem was previously published by IHRAF/IHRAM.


The Essence of Corn

When we learned about wheat bread

our tortillas of corn

became food for the poor

who don’t know any better.

Bread makes you smart,

they told her again and again.


She longed to be smart.

With her baby on her chest

and on her back, a basket of corn and beans,

raised by her own chapped hands,

she traced her footprints from sunup to sundown

to reach the village of baffling language

to trade her grains for yellow bread. 


“Bread makes you smart,” she repeated.

She was trapped in the deception.

She forgot the essence of corn,

lost the path of the elders,

the wisdom of the corn could no longer be heard,

the offerings and hymns for the earth vanished.


One day she was visited by an owl,

the messenger of the lords of the night,

delivering his news with a song.

At dawn, her feet did not move.


It was a wijy jä’äy[i] who interpreted the meaning

and helped her to heal.

It was the essence of the corn

that gave her strength to go on.

[i] The one who can read supernatural messages by consulting with kernels of corn. Sometimes called a curandero or a healer.


Esencia de Maíz

Cuando supimos del pan de trigo

la tortilla de maíz se convirtió

en alimento para los pobres,

quienes carecen de sabiduría.                    

El pan te hace inteligente

le pintaron a ella una y otra vez.


Ella ambicionó la inteligencia.

Con su bebé en el pecho y,

en la espalda, un canasto de maíz y frijol,

cultivados con sus cuarteadas manos,                

dibujó sus huellas durante todo un sol

para llegar a la aldea de confusa lengua

y canjear sus granos con pan amarillo. 


“El pan da inteligencia”, repetía ella,

la había atrapado el engaño.

Olvidó la esencia del maíz, 

extravió el camino de los sabedores,

las palabras del maíz dejaron de oírse,

el brindis por la tierra se desvaneció.


Un día tuvo la visita de un búho,

mensajero de los señores de la noche,

entregando con su canto la noticia.

Al amanecer, sus pies no respondieron.


Sólo un wijy jä’äy[i] interpretó el significado

y le ayudó a encontrar su energía.

La esencia del maíz le brindó fortaleza.

[i] El que puede leer los mensajes de los sobrenatural, al consultar con los granos de maíz. Otros lo nomrarían como el curandero.


Moojk myëjk’äjtë’n

Ku tsäpkaagy ojts yak’ex’aty.

Ayoob jä’äy mojk kaagy daktundëp,

pën ka jënmä’nmyëëdëdëp,

jëts tsäpkaagy yë’ den tii yakwëjp yë’

nëm ojts jä’äy ejtp nyi’mxy.


Kajaa ja’ wijy’äjtë’n timcho’km.

chimy myaxu’ung jyëntuujy jets,

jyëxkixpy, tu’uk kach moojk xëjk,

tëë tunk kyë’ë tniaktsa’pxkëxn,

tu’kxëë ja’ tmëyo’oy

ku agätsetpy nyijkxy

jëts tsäpkaagy t’ëstakukonä’ny.


“Yakwejp yë’ tsapkaaky”, nëm ijty ejtp wyä’äny.

Tëë näjty yakjën’ëëny.

Ojts tjatyëgoy ku moojk de’n timchopätp,

taa tyu’tëgööny, kä’t wijy jä’äy t’uknënëjkxn,

Kä’t moojk ayuujk t’ukyäjkn,

taa kä’t nääjx y’ukakjëntsë’ëkën.


Ja’ xëëb ojts këxexpuuj jyä’äty,

tsuuj koots ojts nyaskax,

ojts ja ayuujk t’ësyaky.

Ku ojts xyëntyä’äky, kä’ t tyeky y’ukmadäkn.


Wijy jä’äynëm ojts tnëgajpxy tii tunäm jätäm

jaanëm ojts jyotkuk.

Kaagy moojknëm ojts tamëjkpiky.


Rosario Patricio Martínez is an Ayuujk ja’ay (Mixe) poet, lawyer, interpreter, and cultural worker, originally from the community of El Duraznal, Ayutla, Oaxaca, Mexico. She is the current president of the Indigenous Plurality cultural association and was the coordinator and translator of the National Anthem into the Ayuujk language. A promotor and teacher of the Mixe language, Rosario has published in various print and electronic media, as well as national and international poetry anthologies.

Kim Jensen is a Baltimore-based writer, poet, educator, and translator whose books include the novel, The Woman I Left Behind, and two collections of poems, Bread Alone and The Only Thing that Matters. Active in transnational social justice movements for decades, Kim’s writings have been featured in many journals and magazines. In 2001, she won the Raymond Carver Award for short fiction. Kim is currently professor of English and Creative Writing at the Community College of Baltimore County, where she co-founded an interdisciplinary literacy initiative that demonstrates the vital connection between classroom learning and social justice in the broader community.

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ayokunle falomo personal essay october 2023

There is no place like home. So, the idiom goes. And generally, it is agreed upon as true. Or, as containing some element of truth at the very least. Not every idiom about home is as literal as this one though. To say a man’s home is his castle doesn’t mean exactly that. To say, in a patriarchal sense, that it is the responsibility of a man to bring home the bacon doesn’t exactly mean that either. If it did, one might ask, jokingly, where that leaves the vegetarian or vegan family.

In a recent PSA by PETA, the animal rights organization appealed to people to stop using anti-animal language. I agree, words matter, but I disagree that using an idiom like “bring home the bacon,” is comparable to using language that would be considered racist, homophobic, or ableist. I’m sure this would likely have me tagged as a proponent of speciesism, which PETA insists is part of our daily conversations. Much like idioms are. Besides “bringing home the bacon” other examples noted by the PSA include “beating a dead horse,” “killing two birds with one stone,” and “taking the bull by the horns.” PETA, of course, provided alternatives for what we might say instead. For “bring home the bacon,” it suggests “bring home the bagels.” For “beat a dead horse,” “feed a fed horse.” For “take the bull by the horns,” “take the flowers by the thorns.”

I love the fact that things mean more than what they purport to mean. It’s why idioms fascinate me. More often than not, I incorporate them in my work. However, I deploy them in a literal sense, usually to emphasize the absurd, but also to find what new thing might show up. Consider, as an example, “beating a dead horse.” In a poem that is a meditation on Coltrane about joy, I wrote:

—born running from lord-knows-what… 

            No. Let allusion find no stable in this song.

No room for measurements, or compromise.

            It’s dead, I know, the horse is dead—

                                    but what to do with the music


trapped under its hide?

In an earlier draft of the poem, which invokes the idiom even more directly, I wrote: “Yes, I know the horse is dead and I want to stop beating it / like a percussion instrument, but what about the music / that’ll stay hidden under its hide if no one lets it out?” I hate to think about what would be lost if I were to follow PETA’s recommendation. The poem is, as I wrote earlier, a meditation on joy. To be more specific, it is about the reality of joy as something one must fight for, especially when there seems to be so much that seeks to rob one of it. By virtue of my name, which translated means joy fills the house, joy should be natural for me, to me, and in some ways, it is. However, it is a difficult thing to think about joy when the reality of death is always at the foreground, especially in this country where one isn’t able to escape the constancy of news about the killings of unarmed Black people. To be sure, the question of home is political. As is the body. And really, what in this country (or anywhere else for that matter) isn’t?

Last year, I couldn’t stop obsessing about death. About the reality that I could be next to have my name included in the long list of names — known and unknown — of people who have been victims of police brutality. It is a terrifying thing. I wrote feverishly. As if my death were near. I could not escape, as my mother pointed out, metaphors about being swallowed. Every poem was essentially about death or dying. As has been the case for me since I started writing, writing was a way for me to figure out all the questions I had. Why is this happening? What can I do to make sure I am not next? Is this even possible? And so, poem after poem after poem, I sought to explore what it means to live inside my body. With this constant fear of death. How exhausting it was. How exhausting it is. The poem above came at a period when I was indeed tired. I wanted to write about something other than death, but it almost seemed impossible.

According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, to beat a dead horse is:

  1. to keep talking about a subject that has already been discussed or decided
  2. to waste time and effort trying to do something that is impossible

In a way, I became the horse. I couldn’t stop beating myself up for my inability to come up with a solution for systemic issues that are, essentially, the foundation and the building blocks of this country, if we are to think of it as a house. My poems didn’t mean shit. In another poem I ask: “What good is a poem? What good is a poem if it can’t stop a bullet?” In yet another, I ask, “What is a Black body if not an unending question?” I have no answers.

For this poem, I was curious what it means to literally beat a dead horse. It isn’t too far a leap to consider how once, at a point in history, Black people were subjected to burden in the way mules are. Still are. One only needs to consider, for instance, how mass incarceration is just a modern iteration of slavery. It turns out that we are nowhere past the reality of Du Bois’s treatise about  striving in The Souls of Black Folk. Even then, I was curious if there was music to be found in the beaten hide, something akin to joy. My name, as I mentioned above, means joy fills the house. And though a house is not exactly a home (that distinction matters), the body too is, in some ways, a house. Or a home. Can be at least. Whatever language we decide on, however, we can agree that not everyone feels at home in their body. I don’t always.

I don’t always feel at home in most places. Born in Nigeria, in Ilesa, Osun State, I have lived in the United States since I was seventeen. First, in Cypress, TX. Then, Houston, TX. Huntsville, TX. Kingwood, TX. Humble, TX. I have also travelled a bit across the United States. A few years ago, in 2016, I took my first and only trip thus far outside the U.S., to Costa Rica which reminded me so much of home — the gravel road, the hills and mountains on the way to Monteverde were reminiscent of the trips to Imesi-Ile, where my grandparents lived, where my dad was born.

In a recent interview, the question of home came up. “Tell me about home,” the interviewer says. In response, I say:


My relationship with home is kind of a complicated one. For the most part, I believe it is nowhere or rather, everywhere we make ours. I believe we find it, or sometimes, it finds us. In the geographical sense, Nigeria is home. I was born and lived there till I was 17. It was home then. In some ways, it still is though it doesn’t quite feel like home anymore. For the most part, I’ve lived in Houston since 2007. That means it’s been home for that long. In some ways, it too doesn’t feel like home anymore. I still live in Houston, or at least around its perimeters — I currently live in Humble. So, in some other ways, it still very much is home. Home for me isn’t really a fixed place. However, both places have equally been home in the way I understand home — anywhere you belong, where you’re known and always welcome and, where you can return to if you ever leave it.


In the scientific sense of the word, displacement is quite simply a change in position. In a sense, it can be argued that the word displaced is an accurate descriptor for everyone who leaves — either by choice, or otherwise – the place they’ve historically known as home. This, I think is what it means to be in diaspora. No matter how settled one might be in a new home, I think it’s impossible to escape the feeling of homelessness. Of restlessness, which is, for me, a default.

As with my poems, this essay was prompted by a question: Is there still no place like home? The straightforward answer to the question is either a yes or no, but I think it’s more complicated than that. It has something to do with the word ‘still’ which was, in 2018, my word for the year. I don’t remember when I first started deciding on a word for a new year, but the earliest documentation I have of this practice is 2012. The word for that year was “run.”.

I love that a word can have more than one meaning. Still. Still. Still. By definition, being without motion, the continuance of an action or condition, or a static photograph (specifically one obtained from a motion picture). In retrospect, I think the word ‘still’ was important to me in 2018 because the year before that, I was everywhere. I was hardly home. Even when I was home, I spent the majority of my time away from my apartment – a residence I really had so I could have somewhere to sleep when I returned. I almost didn’t do anything else there. In 2017, touring for a book took me to 11 cities outside Houston, across 3 states. Texas: College Station, Laredo, San Antonio, Austin, Galveston, Huntsville, San Marcos. Louisiana: New Orleans, Baton Rouge, Lafayette. Missouri: Kansas City.

To return to the idiom, I found out that its origins trace back to a time in Europe, “before the 14th century when the institution of family started taking precedence over other factors. Society, environment and family life all came into being and also the realization that the person is truly at ease when at home” (theidioms.com). In so many ways, the family we grow up with (or without) shapes our understanding of home. The world outside isn’t always a safe place, and the family, home, in the most ideal circumstance, provides a sense of safety, a sense of refuge.

True as that may be, a question remains for some of us. How can one, how does one, feel at home in a country that wants one dead? I have no answers. Still.


Ayokunle Falomo is Nigerian, American, and the author of Autobiomythography of (Alice James Books, 2024), AFRICANAMERICAN’T (FlowerSong Press, 2022), two self-published collections and African, American (New Delta Review, 2019; selected by Selah Saterstrom as the winner of the New Delta Review‘s eighth annual chapbook contest). A recipient of fellowships from Vermont Studio Center, MacDowell, and the University of Michigan’s Helen Zell Writers’ Program, where he obtained his MFA in Creative Writing–Poetry, his work has been anthologized and published widely.

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A,M. Palmer personal essay october 2023

It takes a reminder, a compelling moment, to bring the scope of sorrow and beauty back into focus. As I entered an RV park in Payson, Arizona, a mountain town favored by locals for its mild summer months, I had such an experience.  Often, in the light of something truly magnificent and inspiring, equal measures of sorrow and beauty mingle. We might know it as poignance, wherein joy and sadness combine to become a sweet fermentation of experiences. This is generally reserved for later years of life. And yet, despite its power, this condition often goes unnoticed.  

Upon arriving, I immediately noticed towering cottonwood trees, their leaves gently agitated by the wind. Safely away from the Phoenix sun, I felt a sense of freedom; no scorching heat would triumph against the breeze or bear with us into the evening. With that thought in mind, I felt refreshed. However, as I drove my motorhome over the winding path to my site, I took note of other things, situations contrary to the beauty of trees and sunlight.

Although called a “resort,” the place is really a trailer park in a small town, pleasantly overshadowed by mountains. Those of us with modest means either vacation here or live in “park model” homes year-round. And, with that, a sense of sorrow prevails, despite the sheltering cottonwoods that resist summer heat. I spoke to a few residents who were older and very concerned about skyrocketing rent. In a mobile home park, you must purchase your unit and then continue to lease the land—until you either sell or vacate the structure. For some residents, the latter option might be their only choice. Few people consider this as they enter such communities. Park owners present new units, ready for purchase, and emphasize the conveniences and amenities of the arrangement. Most people forget that the homes are very costly to move, and they devalue quickly. Moreover, the rent will increase annually—without fail, rent control being very much a thing of the past. Even with this in mind, I am still intrigued by the contrasts of the place.  

A tour of the park reveals a large, well-maintained clubhouse, a handful of newer Class-A motorhomes, and the shiny “park models” awaiting their new owners. Also in evidence are dilapidated structures, dreary with the neglect and desperation of older people who simply cannot afford to move. I spoke to one woman who cares for her 96-year-old husband. After he passes, she plans to walk away from their mobile home and live in a renovated van. And there are other stories, as well.

My nearest neighbor to the west had a number of drunken arguments with her son, when he came to visit and brought his little dog. Hailing from Tennessee, the family has been devastated by opioid addiction and the tragic death of a daughter and sister. Across the road and just to the north, a frail woman in her forties smiles in the mornings, attempting to be cordial as she hurries to work. She was ostracized when her pedophile boyfriend arrived to share her trailer. Although it’s nearly July, they keep Christmas lights blinking in the yard, draped around stone cherubs and pots of wilted flowers. With such occurrences, tragedy feels like the prevailing aspect of life here in the “RV resort.”  However, there is still the soft beauty of nature to enjoy, a power that abides throughout the seasons. And the place is not without a bit of charming irony.

As the only African American in the park, I was greeted in an interesting manner by a white neighbor. She said, quite sternly, “It’s a nice place, very quiet. We don’t have any riff-raff here.” Right. I tried not to laugh out loud or take offense at her insinuations. After all, I am not the owner of a park model. As a full-time writer and RV nomad, I am free — merely passing through as a seasonal guest. Although I am relieved to be leaving, I feel a strong sense of sympathy for this environment, this place of contrasting themes.

For the moment, mountains and pine trees prevail, as I regard the poignance before me. The glories of nature and a gentle climate are powerful in their role, softening an atmosphere of desperation with a sense of beauty, albeit temporarily. And this is the way of things in so many small towns. Such places embody poignance, demonstrating the scope of sorrow and beauty. I will be grateful to move on in a couple of weeks, as new horizons await.    


A. M. Palmer is a writer, graphic designer, and retired park ranger with work appearing in Belle Ombre, Adelaide Literary Magazine, Dissident Voice, and other publications. Inroads: An Urban Park Anthology is the author’s first book. Palmer holds a master’s degree in history from the University of San Diego and continues to research art and social history with a variety of upcoming projects. The author is a member of the National Association of Independent Writers and Editors.  Read the author’s latest work at A.M. Palmer, Literary Nonfiction.

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joao melo poetry october 2023

                        “We are the eternally forgotten.”

                                                    Mia Couto

dearest ghosts

of ancient slaves

who are long forgotten

by our memory

dear ones

ghosts from the congo

that

three times

saw the horror

with your own eyes

dearest ghosts from biafra

and ethiopia

dearest ghosts

from the apartheid

dearest ghosts from angola

and mozambique

dearest ghosts from libya

and somalia

dearest ghosts

floating in the mediterranean

until you’re dead for good

you have

to understand:


we’re busy

ocupados occupés beschäftigt

and

we admit

emotionally exhausted

from welcoming these blond-haired

blue-eyed children


as you must know

history ended


(for you)


Translated by G. Holleran


on the uselessness of flags or maybe not

i dreamed with this flag

i fought

by this flag

i helped to settle

this flag

on top of the expectant mountains

bathed

in blood


why

this flag

nothing tells me today

when

i see it defiled

by whom

always saw it

like a simple and useless

piece of cloth

to wrap the coins

accumulated along the journey?


i need to find out

new uses

for this flag


and keep fighting for it


Translated by the author


another poem about rewriting

to rewrite

in the sense of reviewing

established truths

implies losing

all respect

for them

scour

their insides

methodically separate them

expose them

to the opporbrium of crowds

until

no word

about words

is left


Translated by the author


JOÃO MELO, born in 1955 in Luanda, Angola, is an author, journalist, and communication consultant. He is a founder of the Angolan Writer´s Association, and of the Angolan Academy of Literature and Social Sciences. Currently, he divides his time between Luanda, Lisbon and Washington, D.C. His works include poetry, short stories, novels, articles and essays that have been published in Angola, Brazil, Cuba, Italy, Portugal, Spain, UK, and USA. A number of his writings translated into English, French, German, Arabic, and Chinese have also appeared in anthologies, as well as in various international journals and magazines. He was awarded the 2009 Angola Arts and Culture National Prize in literature.

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tajudeen muadh akanbi poetry october 2023

the last time my brother travelled, he told me his body became a mirror where he sees fear as an aftertaste of flying.

He says, ” I’m sick of all the breaths I lost in my lungs, I’m sick of water letting me drown in it. then, I recover how he covers himself in his skin, how he wishes his home, is not a burnt skin.

Now, I learn to call nostalgia as a rejuvenescence, a revival, a poem going back into his body, as memories and as water.

my brother pronounces home, as a poem, dilapidated from the metaphors on his tongue, how he recollects himself into his skin, learning to love his past and how he covers his body with longings for days dead.


My Home, Is Not a Cadaver of Roses

that I write about grief doesn’t mean my body is a steel, I, glass. This poem opens from the footage of a CCTV capturing how a poet was kidnapped. I recite them into my nerves as stanzas dying, as verses learning the language of survival.

Sometimes, I ask if God has a voice, because a poet is God’s way of creating beauty.

a newspaper headline carries the obituary of a boy burrowed with a body bulleted, I wonder if it means my home is a hymn, a symphony. I firefly, I rose, I call this home a baby learning how to crawl from death into breath, how the mothers in this home are poems learning to write off worries that hung in them.

I know my home is not a cadaver of roses, because one day, a poet kidnapped will be freed, and God’s voice heard, a bulleted boy will learn to whole the holes in his body and a mother will one day learn the languages of joy and this home is/will be a garden I learn to tender just as I tender the griefs in this poem.


Breaking

they say you need to break into years of dust before you crawl back into yourself, I burgeon my body into wraps of refrains.

They say a poem is how we look at the sky and pluck stars, I carry myself into fireflies morphing themselves into oxygen, water and everything lucid.

I find no peace and all my wars are done.

I fear and hope, I burn, I freeze. – A poet

I break into wits and into days I run into things clinging to the past, a bildungsroman, a poem, a canvas painting my body into itself, an ode to nostalgia, and a poem resuscitating into a butterfly.


Tajudeen Muadh Akanbi is an 18-year-old young poet from Osun State, Nigeria. His writing has appeared or is forthcoming in different literary magazines and journals including Kalahari Review, Wax Poetry, African Poetry Magazine, Brittle Paper, Meniscus Journal, Icreatives Review, Nanty Greens, Art Lounge, Beneath the Mask, Graveyard Zine, Eboquills, and elsewhere.  He can be found on Twitter @tajudeenmuadh01, Instagram @lightening.pen.

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vincent casaregola poetry october 2023

“The past is never dead. It’s not even past.”

                — William Faulkner

 

Each fall, they appear, along

with all the excessive ornament

of comic death—the plastic

skeletons, the pumpkin-faced

displays of fear and faux horror—

 

while out in the yards, on lawns,

sprout Styrofoam head stones

with cotton-batting webs and

spiders from the party store—

all the fakery in the face of death.

 

But from the trees, the cheap and easy

prop can hang, a white sheet,

head stuffed with cotton, two

black eyes, and rope at the neck—

they move even in a gentle wind.

 

Children playing before and

parents within suburban homes

know not or speak not of history,

but just add more candy to the dish,

more laughter at the hanging ghosts.

 

All too recently, even now

the real “strange fruit” still hangs

on bloody nights, torch-lit for terror,

that echoed once through Meeropol’s

words, through Holiday’s aching tones.

 

Some would die and be left roadside,

some dumped in the local creek,

some buried without mark but

found later, when revolting soil

shoved the evidence to sight.

 

Bravado came from drink and common

hate to the bubba-faced men with

reddened eyes and necks, who growled

in cracker-barrel backrooms, then

donned sheets and rode horses, later pick-ups

 

to break the peaceful night with fire

and rage—the white-clothed “priests”

from the demon cult of torturing death,

who shouted fury, sweated anger, grasping

their sacramental whips and ropes.

 

Mornings after, families anxious,

then anguished found what remained,

and the cries and threnodies rang

across hills and valleys—one more

sacrifice to be taken from a cross.

 

Elsewhere, wives of the angry

washed sweat and bleached blood

from the sacrilegious night robes,

as bubba-men grunted their meals,

returned to work under reddened sun.

 

 

Fathers, mothers, today, you should know

your child’s autumn laughter curses you

before those gagging ghosts, and no

confection can sweeten the guilt, no

bleach cleanse this long legacy of blood.

 

* Note: The original song “Strange Fruit” was written by activist/teacher Abel Meeropol in the 1930s. The Billie Holiday performances and recordings of the song, beginning in 1939, made it famous.

 

8816*

[St. Louis, MO — August 2014 and After]


Merely numbers, four numbers

in sequence, signifying any

number of possible meanings


merely numbers, the address

of a common house,

on an ordinary street where


mostly unknown people

live anonymous lives, strangers

even to those footsteps away—


it was nowhere till elsewhere

the man residing fired his gun,

policing the strangers


of another street of houses

with bricks like these, and

lawns as green as these, and so


a black man died in that street,

died for being young, perhaps

proud, certainly for being


black—and he lay on pavement

in his own cooling blood

in the sun of that hot August day


and the energy that had been

his breath became a storming wind

of shock and grief and fist-raised


angry protests, that some heard

as justice, and others as rage,

till more guns were drawn


and the armored blue waves

opposed and surrounded the storm

but could not silence the wind

                                                                                                                       

and back at 8816, one or two

writers or photographers paused

to see what mysteries hid behind


curtained windows and silent brick,

behind the closed and locked doors

or beneath the still-green grass


and the man packed up and moved,

so his erstwhile neighbors passed

and wondered what next, from where—


their rumors flowed daily, weekly

to flower fears even as the season

turned cold and the leaves fell—


by Halloween, the fire pits came out

and the children tricked for treats

and the parents followed brats


with beers, and stoked more fears—

“they’re coming some day, coming

with fire, and we need be ready,


alert and ready,” and more beers

brought foggy sleep to watchers,

and a couple dumped the embers,


they thought extinguished, into bins

where hours later the embers flared

and fired the house, residents barely


escaping with breath and the clothes

on their backs, and the burnt remnant

stood an epitaph through winter months—


armed and vigilant, they seek protection

from anyone appearing darkly different,

from the brown mower or the black


delivery man, the shadow of difference,

and they believe themselves protected

from those who do not look the same

                                                                                                                       

but who, in the shadowed night, will

protect us from protectors, and who,

God knows, protects them from themselves


* 8816 was the house number address of former police officer Darren Wilson who shot and killed black teenager Michael Brown in Ferguson, MO, on August 9, 2014.


Child, Do Not Be Sad

[For the Parents Afraid of History]


Child, do not be sad, do not

feel the weight of the past, of

the history of fault and moral failure.


Do not be sad at the fact

of ancestors, long ago, who seized

dark strangers on darker nights


and transported them, wave

by wave, through oceans of hell

and high water nightmares.


Do not be sad, child, at the

record of crimes that made fortunes

we can now enjoy, because we


stole lands and lives, committing

genocides on peoples seeming so different

they were not people to us.


No, child, do not mourn for suffering

souls, chained in ship holds

and sold at auctions, do not fret


at the thought of those shackled

wrists and ankles, where red-rusting

iron left its mark with redder blood.


Child, do not be sad that even now,

we live well and others do not—the poor

are with us always, says the book,


so poverty is the necessary evil

suffered by those, you and I know,

are less deserving of our god’s grace.


No, child, do not be troubled in dreams

of young, dark girls, raped in the night

or in the broad daylight, by haughty masters.


Child, be not sad, do not listen to

the histories, told sotto voce, by those

who rarely have had a voice, a place.


Child, be glad to have your desires

met tenfold when others long fruitlessly

for the merest scraps of hope.


Child, you are the one blessed, anointed

in the white light of the white mind,

that reveals your chosen path above


and beyond the many who lost or lose,

the many humbled by the weight of chains

and lash, the many who remain in terror


of a night filled with shadow men, once horsed,

but now in pick-ups and vans, guns raised,

saluting their raging race of white pride.


Child, do not be sad, for we will keep you

warmly held in the arms of ignorance,

innocent of knowledge, free of truth.


Vincent Casaregola teaches American literature and film, creative writing and rhetorical studies at Saint Louis University. He has published poetry in a number of journals, as well as creative nonfiction, short fiction, and flash fiction. He has recently completed a book-length manuscript of poetry dealing with issues of medicine, illness, and loss (Vital Signs) for which he is seeking a publisher.

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Decolonial Passage is honored to announce the 2023 nominations for the Best of the Net Anthology.  This list includes writing published between July 1, 2022 and June 30, 2023.  Congratulations to the nominees!

Poetry

“Read the Receipts” by Nancy L. Meyer

“The Food of Our Ancestors” by Oliver Sopulu Odo

“I’ve Kept You Alive” by Mildred Kiconco Barya

“Blight” by Catherine Harnett

“We Were Always Hungry” by Leslie B. Neustadt

“Losing the Zero” by Aubrianna Snow

Short Stories

“Zain” by Sophia Khan

“Number Ninety-Four” by Mehreen Ahmed

Creative Nonfiction

“Searching for Aina in Hawaii” by Kathy Watson

“The Butterfly Harvesters” by Cheryl Atim Alexander

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Abdulmueed balogun adewale poetry september 2023

You stare into the future your eyebrows

Lined with the eyeliner of hope. You are in dire need

 

Of a miracle, like everyone in this burning city. You want

Every scent, every ounce of your past to be scratched off

 

With the claws of extinction from the chambers of your aching skull.

Once, you saw a Black lanky boy riding his jaunty bicycle down

 

The gut of this people-mourning street— a fragment of your past encroached

From behind like a thief repainting on the canvas of your mind the image

 

Of the day you almost cursed God— when on this same people-bereaved street

A cluster of wayward egret-white boys like scavengers lessened you into an item of ridicule

 

Because God— the most wise, most just— painted you Black. You are in need,

Like someone suffering from hyperglycemia, of insulins concocted with fierce reasons to live,

 

But even love— the universal lord and saviour— can’t suffice in your case,

For your figures on the scoreboard of compassion ranks you first in the file of love’s infidels.

 

All you want is the morbid rhythm of your past to be forgotten

On the wanton lips of history, you pine for going to bed every night

 

Without having your street of thoughts flooded with the bones, ashes

& the cold faces of everything you’ve buried but failed to remain dead.

 

On Rejections

Of course, I want my poems out there

In the so called big journals, first class magazines…

In between the jaws of those big literary pitbulls.


But lately, even the so called small dogs: struggling to bark, fledgling stars:

About to make their first twinkle:  aren’t even proud, willing to offer my refined truths

And well cooked lies altars to propagate their gospel.


I’ve just completed my debut chapbook manuscript, I know I am supposed

To say the title next and maybe describe the intricacies of her entrails a  little,

Say for example It’s a book of poems about so and so…, before trudging on

On the slippery road of story telling. But I won’t!


I will have you know, she’s suffered a handful of rejections

From both crude and refined surgeons and I am sure those brazen jabs

Won’t be the last to her delicate throat.


I am not complaining, neither am I calling you to book for my woes.

So don’t feel sore for me.  Shouldering my woes is my responsibility.


Of course, it’s sad to admit this, but I have to,

I am afraid of sending her to another literary surgeon, another hospital,

Another press in this city and offshore for diagnosis.


I don’t want to be shredded by another :

“Thank you for giving us the opportunity to diagnose your precious daughter,

We are sorry, saddened to inform you she doesn’t stand a chance of survival out there,

In the vast world of literature.”


Troubling! This may sound, but one day, when I am done redressing the gashes

On her delicate throat,  I shall offer that delicate throat of my only daughter again to the scalpels

Of other literary surgeons manning the decision-making  theaters

In various literary hospitals and presses.


It’s a free world, of course, you can place under scrutiny the quality of my fatherhood.

Say what kind of father keeps sending his one and only daughter to the mouth of sharks.

I will tell you, a great one. Who wants only the best for his daughter.


And as always, after dropping her off at the glassy emergency door of the hospital,

I shall be waiting outside, under the shed of a towering tree or in the back seat

Of my Mercedes Benz GLE 450 in a nearby car park, sipping patience from a blue mug,

Expecting the usual and with a glint of hope the not-so-usual response.


Abdulmueed Balogun Adewale is a Black poet and winner of the 2021 Kreative Diadem Annual Poetry Contest. He has been a nominee for the Pushcart Prize and the BOTN and a finalist in the 2021 Wingless Dreamer Book of Black Poetry Contest. He is a poetry editor at The Global Youth Review and a 2021 HUES Foundation Scholar. He prays silently in his heart, that his verses outlive him. His poems have been published in: Brittle Paper, Soundings East Magazine, Hawaii Pacific Review, ROOM, Watershed Review, Poetry Column-NND, The Westchester Review, The Oakland Arts Review, The Night Heron Barks Review, Subnivean Magazine, Short Vine and elsewhere. He tweets from: AbdmueedA

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robbie gamble poetry september 2023

His White girlfriend at the time passed the word

that the Gambles     of THE Procter & Gambles

who lived not far from her in Belmont

were away     on an extended trip to Hawaii

so Malcolm dressed up as a salesman

to check it out     According to the biography

they got away clean     with a pile of bed linens

and a case of Johnny Walker     It was 1945


My Dad was fourteen then      I asked if he knew

any Gamble relatives in Belmont      He squinted

said     maybe a cousin on the Sidney Gamble side

couldn’t say for sure     When I was a teen

I came home one night to find our back door

pried open     drawers strewn on the floor

My parents were away     vacationing in Maine

They said    call the police     I wielded a bat

to probe dark basement corners


When I went up to bed     the back door

still swinging     I found I wasn’t afraid     just

acutely aware    that the air in the house

had been altered      by the presence

of another     trailing through it


And what if Malcolm instead 

had looted my grandfather’s mansion

in Milton         A different Gamble    

no scotch     but plenty of silver    

and my grandmother’s jewelry

What if he had rifled his study

found the boxes      of eugenicist pamphlets

You Wouldn’t Let a Moron Drive a Train!!

or his correspondence      with Margaret Sanger


We do not want word to go out

that we want to exterminate

the Negro population 

and the minister is the man

who can straighten out

that idea if it ever occurs

to any of their more

rebellious members


How would Detroit Red have taken

to such blue-eyed devil talk


I can’t recall     what was gone

from our house that night    

and what is precious anyway   

when those possessions     don’t have the heft    

to build a home within our memory


and what are possessions anyway   

when his father died      crushed by a streetcar

and he was convinced the Klan was involved

somehow     and his mother languished

in a state asylum    and he juggled hustles

just to eat


Robbie Gamble (he/him) is the author of A Can of Pinto Beans (Lily Poetry Review Press, 2022). His poems have appeared in the Carve, Lunch Ticket, RHINO, Salamander, and The Sun. He is the poetry editor for Solstice: A Magazine of Diverse Voices. He divides his time between Boston and Vermont, and he can be found at robbiegamble.com

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mehreen ahmed short story september 2023

Part I

Her pale face radiant under an August setting sun, she sits on a bench at bus stop 94. There is a rusty covering above. The bench below has pastel green paint peeling off — hard, grim dour. Waiting for bus no 94; it is late. Instead of searching for an alternative route, she walks her quarter of a mile and waits. Day in and day out. Year in and year out, until one day she turns ninety-four herself.

Her tired eyes stare into oblivion, and notice a solitary, restless daisy through a lonely crack in the cemented road. It is across the bus stop, bobbing its breezy yellow head, anxious, to fly away, had it not been for its root spiralling down through the gaping, jagged cranny. She lets out a sigh; her eyes light up. All she is left with is desires nestled within the cozy warmth of her heart — a place gone cold from the wait.

Where is he? The man? Her one true love? He asks her to pick him up from this very bus stop — the last bus at 94. She wears a pink, floral sari which wraps around her young, smooth body. The bus never comes. She waits hours until the day is gone, afternoon and evening. Still, no sign of buses here. An empty, abandoned stop.

She continues to look at the empty road ahead, in case the bus arrives. The daisies are in full bloom of spring. She hears someone call her name. “Ayesha, Ayasha.” Then, “Look, look, I’m here.” She turns her head, and a shiver runs through her. She views a bare tree by the river, leaves growing out of it, disproportionately, insanely psychedelic. “Where are you, I don’t see you, I don’t see you anywhere, Mohabbat, Mohabbat. Where are you, my love? Do you see me?” Ayesha asks. Her heart is swelling. With shallow breaths of excitement, she inhales his faint hair oil dispersed in the air. Anytime, anytime he will be here and pick her up and hold her against his chest. His soft lips pressing down on her lips — ruby red; melding into rich hot chocolate cake.

Part II

At Fajr, Mohabbat Ali Khan wakes up to the sound of the azaan. It drifts through the minaret of a local mosque of his neighbourhood. He descends the narrow stairs and steps outside into a mosaic courtyard and through a floral, inlaid, arched architrave. This mosaic square is fenced in on two sides by stucco brick walls. He nearly sleepwalks toward a tap near the western wall and turns it on to do ablution, wazu, before the namaaz. He begins to wash his hands, elbows, face and ankles three times. Rinses his mouth three times, and three splashes into the nostrils — three splashes for each of the body extremities.

During the partition at the time of independence from the British, his parents opted to stay in India. After they passed, he continued to reside in the old capital of Delhi — in the same house too, the ancestral property. A blue arched house, beautifully antique. Accustomed to communal riots, love-hate relationships are common with Hindus and Christians, as well as with his Parsi friends. He grew up in a complex social system through a lot of political turmoil and was not alien to volatile situations.

From the other side of these thick walls, he hears the water trickle, as the neighbours, the Dilliwallas, are waking up.  Hot tea brews in a shack restaurant. The deep-frying smells of samosas, daal puri, parathas and omelette swim through the morning air. After prayer, Mohabbat Ali Khan steps outside the gates to go for his customary morning walks. Munshi Giasuddin, the local barber’s salon down the alley is open early, but he already has a client. He is sitting in a wooden, straight-backed chair by the roadside. Munshi is rubbing up soap on his beard and chatting away. He nods at Mohabbat as he walks past.         

Mohabbat walks a mile. His usual rounds are all the way up to the Jama Mosque, and then looping back. He usually performs Fajr at the mosque which takes care of both the namaaz as well as the morning walk. Today, however, he is pressed for time, and prays at home. He looks at the barber through the corners of his eyes and runs a finger absent-mindedly through his thick beard, twisting up his moustache, thinking that his beard also needs a trim. He walks a couple of steps ahead and sits down on a hard bench at the shack restaurant for some hot tea and samosa.

“Salaam Janaab, how are you this morning?” a tea boy asks.

“Walaikummassalam,” Mohabbbat replies over a slight cough. “Yeah, I’m very well.”

“Tea and samosas? Freshly fried,” The tea boy asks.

Mohabbat nods and sees that the tea boy is disappearing around the corner to fetch the order while he sits in the mellow morning light watching the barber’s precision cutting next door. His client spits betel saliva occasionally on the side at which the barber lifts his razor sharply away from his face.

Mohabbat has a date today with his Ayesha in an unkempt mossy garden near her house. His eyes dilute just thinking of her. He must wear her favourite hair oil today. His thought is interrupted as his order of tea and hot samosas arrive. He bites into its crunch carefully, sipping and savouring the white tea at the same time. He wants to pop into the barber shop next door after he finishes here.

Over to the barber shop, he looks at all the hair oil bottles from various brands shelved around a glassed window bay. He picks up Jaba Kushum which is her favourite. He pays up at the front and leaves the shop. The barber smiles at him; he leaves with a polite nod.

Mohabbat walks home. He enters through the gate and climbs up the stairs. He decides to take a shower before he leaves for his date. He puts on a white embroidered kurta and pajamas. He lavishly oils his hair with Jaba Kushum and runs a comb through his beard. He comes downstairs and steps out on the road; he hears howls closing in like the fury of tsunami. He sees a huge mob approaching his house; a sporadic riot is at his gate.

The bus no 94 arrives in time. Mohabbat is lucky to escape the mob’s scourge. He stands almost camouflaged against the wall’s whiteness. People enter his home, and they drag out his possessions, rattling rusty trunks, his books, his charpai bed, his father’s easy chair, hookah, and his violin, hurling them all out on the street in a heap. He says nothing. An innocent bystander, he trudges along the wall with caution until he arrives at the bus stop. He falls a few times before he is able to ascend the bus. He has a sweaty forehead — a few drops fall over his eyelids – and an already wet beard. He wonders if there’s a riot also at Ayesha’s place. He finds a window seat through the crowd. Stumbling, he sits down.

The bus is moving. He lets out a sigh of relief. Thankfully, there’s hope. He is thinking fast to start a new life with Ayesha some place safer, perhaps abroad where there’s peace and stability. As long as the bus is moving, there is some hope. He looks around him and sees panic in the wet frowns of his fellow passengers. This bus will take them away where all can rest in peace. Suddenly, an explosion catapults the bus.

Part III

Young Ayesha’s sweet pink sari comes undone; it is noosed around her neck, strangulated. The pink hue reflects a bluish blush on her silken, smooth skin. This place is eerily deserted. Doctors know better. She lies in a white starched hospital bed. Her skin is decrepit, mottling. Mohabbat is here, coming toward her. She waits; she hears his voice echoing through her comatose brain. She desires to go on a safari with him, maybe not on the unlucky 94 after all. He is smiling … she sniffs the odour … her favourite oil brushed into the strands of his hair. Glib winds whisper into her ears. Ninety-four years of wait cannot atone for this wrong. The bus has changed course. It does not come here anymore.  


        

Mehreen Ahmed is an award-winning Australian novelist born in Bangladesh. She has won multiple contests for her short fiction. Her works have been nominated for Pushcart, botN and James Tait awards. She has authored eight books and has been twice a reader and juror for international awards. Her recent publications include Litro, Otoliths, Alien Buddha, Popshot Quarterly, Metachrosis Literary, and more.

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In waters where freedom whispers in ebbs

and the road unyielding,

we seek something in nature’s solitude,

in nature’s tilt, a lisp, delicate.

Bittersweet is the hope that holds

melancholy and turbid dreams patched together

in aging vessels, where our stories lay.

Of dreams and of dreaming, something buried within

where our  lives have unraveled

From what we used to weave, hands together

with threads, pulling apart

the edges from where the sky’s shadow engulfed us.

Before we became the songs we had refused to hear   

Before our blossoms became the diaspora dance, now alien to us

Before our souls finally leave the home we carry,


And hope finds something buried within us.


The Forgotten Dance

 Within the land, we weave

  in the colors our mothers used to weave

The hues they proudly  embedded in

  the paths marked by their song

Each day wounds sought and  found

  solemn journeys guided by footsteps

Testifying for the dance


That still holds posterity, stitched together.


Lind Grant-Oyeye is a poet and literary critic of African descent. She is widely published in literary magazines globally, including New Verse News, Poetry Ireland, Radius magazine, New Orleans Review, and Books Ireland. In her view, poetry is a voice and also a medium for change.

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mira martin-parker poetry august 2023

I’m wondering if you ever reflect on your social position, function, and corresponding duty? I do. I reflect on it all the time, here on the other side of your opinions, peckings, and ideas. I ponder your shadows, try to discern their meaning, try to discern what’s valid, true, and hence sound.

Sometimes down here on this end, it feels like there’s an element of disdain—or is it contempt?—involved in what’s coming from your direction. I sense you don’t particularly care for me. Like me. I suspect you even think I’m kind of trashy, in all the many ways one can be trashy.

But I wonder about you as well. Can you be trashy, too? Or do you feel yourself obligated to be good, obligated to guide, to help others improve their trashy condition?

What are the ethical rules of your occupation? Clearly I’ve broken the social rules governing the place, for I’m definitely kept in place down here below in the cave, I mean the trash can, waiting to be picked up and taken away. Dumped.

How are things up in goodness land? Is your master, your boss, your patron being good to you? Does he love you and pay your rent, put food on your table, buy you pretty things, give you cigarettes and beer, perhaps a pretty dress, a lovely compact to check your reflection in, make sure you look nice and held together? (You’re perfect in his eyes, after all.)

There’s a scene in Dostoyevsky’s Notes From Underground in which Underground Man lectures a poor young prostitute. He helps her see her actual condition, what will happen to her if she doesn’t correct her course. He’s a rotten egg, a real nasty misanthrope, and he only does this guiding for selfish egotistical reasons. He’s ashamed to be caught with his pants down, after all.

But ultimately he was right, and she saw the truth and lit up. He opened her eyes to the light, it was her!She was the light, she was beautiful and good. Once she saw this, she had to leave, run, get away from that awful debt-trap, that meat grinder, that cauldron waiting to consume her.

Underground Man used his skills for good. And it worked. He saved her ass.

What about you? What’s your duty? Are you saving asses?

Or are you leading asses into meat grinders, cauldrons, and dirty beds in dirty places with dirty selfish men?

Do you ever reflect on your duty? I do. I live in the trashcan where you toss your waste.

Mira


Mira Martin-Parker earned a B.A. at The New School for Social Research, and an M.A. in philosophy and an MFA in creative writing at San Francisco State University. Her work has appeared in various publications, including the Istanbul Literary Review, North Dakota Quarterly, great weather for MEDIA, and Zyzzyva.

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kelli green short story august 2023

I wake up at 6:00 am to the sound of my Pa’s alarm clock. He comes into my room and sits on the edge of my bed poking at my feet and telling me to get up. I beg for five more minutes, then he sighs and sings me a song until I crawl out from under the covers hoping to stop him from starting another verse.

I walk on my toes all the way to the bathroom. The floor is cold in the morning, so I have to get used to it. Sometimes I walk on my heels, but that’s harder. And Pa says I’ll fall and crack my head.

Once I fell asleep on the toilet while waiting for the water to heat up so I could wash my face. Next thing I knew, I slipped off the stool and scraped the side of my head good on the sink. Blood dripped down my face and onto the floor, all red and messy like strawberry syrup. I tried to wash the blood away, and it just got everywhere. As soon as Pa saw me, he almost passed out.

It’s a good thing Nilah was there because she’s tougher than Pa. Nilah is Pa’s girlfriend and my buddy. I don’t remember a time when Nilah wasn’t around. She doesn’t live here, but she should. She cleaned up my blood and helped Pa take me to the doctor. They said the cut was very small, and they gave me a bandage. Pa wanted me to have an X-Ray. I wanted to too, so I could see my bones, but the doctor said we didn’t need to get an X-Ray.

Nilah told me that it’s a good thing they didn’t put me in front of the X-Ray machine that day because it would be rude to take pictures of the troll that lives inside of me without warning him first. I told her that was silly, and that I didn’t have an inside troll. She swore that I did and started poking and tickling my tummy to find him.

Anyway, I didn’t crack my head this morning, and when I was done in the bathroom, I changed into my school clothes. Nilah, Pa, and I ate breakfast and talked about our plans. This weekend we’re all going to the beach, and Nilah is going to teach me to swim. She says that six years old is already old, and if I don’t learn now, I’ll never be a mermaid. She’s goofy, but I do want to learn.

After we give each other kisses and hugs, we leave the apartment. When we get to school, I give Pa another hug and run off to find my friends.

When I run, my backpack slaps my back. And I hear my pencil box rattling around. Sometimes when I stand in one place, I still swing my backpack to hear the shaking. I find my friends by the basketball courts. They’re watching the 11th and 12th graders do their morning rap battles. I can’t tell that any of them are doing well, but sometimes a kid will jump up and go “whoaaaaa” like something crazy was just said. I like watching them, and they don’t care that we’re there.

When the bell rings, everyone walks the way they’re supposed to walk. We all split off like the branches on a tree. I’m still little at this school, so my class is on the first floor. I think they do that so we don’t get lost, or maybe it’s because we’re so small that we may get knocked over on the stairs. That’s probably it because that’s exactly what happened to me one time when I had to go to another floor for my advanced reading class. Big kids will just run on your back if you fall down in their way.

I like school, but it’s a Friday so no one wants to be here. We’re all ready for the bell to ring so it can be the weekend. My friend Chloe talks to me while we do our worksheets. She tells me that this weekend her mom and dad are going on a vacation for their anniversary. While they’re gone, she gets to stay with her aunt. And they’re going to eat all the hot chips they want and watch music videos. Chloe’s mom doesn’t like for her to watch music videos with booty shaking, but her aunt doesn’t care. So, she’s excited.

I hope Nilah and Pa get married, too. When they have their anniversary, I’ll go to my Papa’s house. And we’ll play checkers and watch old movies for the weekend.

While I’m playing, I hear a teacher say something about a shooting on the South Side of the city. That’s my side of the town. I try to listen to learn more about what happened, but Mrs. Estes asks me if I need anything. I shake my head no, so she smiles and tells me to go play. I shrug and run to an open swing.

I still want to know about it, but I’ll just ask Pa to watch the news with me tonight. Shootings happen a lot though. One time, someone shot our car; but we weren’t in it. Pa found the bullet hole in his door one morning before school. In the summer it gets really bad. Pa says it’s because people get boiled in the heat like spaghetti noodles; but spaghetti loosens up, while people get hard and break.

We have art class last. I start coloring in the picture I drew of a garden, but then I feel like I need to use the bathroom. I need to use it now! I get up and ask Mr. Long if I may go to the restroom, and he says I can’t. Well, this is a problem because you can’t just say no to urine. Pa says I should use real words like urine and not pee. Nilah agreed and said that it’s easier to make people understand things if you use the right words. So, I ask Mr. Long the question again. This time I tell him I need to urinate because maybe he’ll understand that.

Now Mr. Long looks frustrated, and he tells me if I ask him again, he’ll call my father. I ask him if I can go after he calls Pa. He looks at me funny and asks if I’m trying to be smart. Well, of course, I am. I don’t think anyone tries to be stupid on purpose. I ask to go a third time. He says yes and tells me again he will be calling Pa. I say, “Thank you,” I rush to the bathroom, and I make it just in time.

When class is over, Mr. Long lets me know that Pa said he was coming to pick me up right after the last class. Mr. Long tells me he’ll be waiting to talk to him. I say, “Okay” and go back to my coloring. I wonder why Pa is coming early. Is it to make sure I got to the bathroom okay? I still don’t know why calling him made any difference, but maybe it did if he’s coming early.

When the last bell rings, I wait by the globe with Chloe. And we tell stories about where we’ll take our vacations one day. I didn’t know Pa had come in until I heard Mr. Long say my name. Mr. Long told him I kept asking to go to the bathroom even though he said I couldn’t. Chloe makes an “oooh” sound, and now I understand. He must think Pa will be mad at me just like he is, but that’s silly because Pa knows how much I have to use the bathroom. He says I’m bad for road trips.

Pa doesn’t look interested while Mr. Long talks, and soon I hear him say that he doesn’t have time for this. They say some other things I can’t really hear because Chloe talks a lot.  Finally, Pa holds his hand out for me to take and I say, “Goodbye” to Chloe and Mr. Long.

When we get to the car, Pa straps me in. And I ask him why he came early. He looks at me kind of funny and opens his mouth to answer. Then instead of answering me, he swallows his words like sour candy. Then he smiles and says he wanted to start the weekend early. He gets in the car, and we drive for a long time. We listen to the 70’s station which is my favorite.

After a while, we pull into a big parking lot; and I see the words Kidz World. I shout out the name because I’m so happy. I’ve never been here, but I hear it’s super fun. Pa gets me a wristband and I trade my shoes for fun socks. I ask him if he wants to go through the tunnels with me, but he says he wants to sit down for a while. That makes me sad, but it’s okay. I’ll explore for us both. I crawl through the colorful tubes and rush down the slides, pretending I’m a secret agent trying to complete a mission.

I wish Nilah were here to play. They have trampolines, and she’s good at flipping. I want her to teach me that too. I could learn how to do flips like the cool spies I see on TV. I could be a spy a lot easier than I could be a mermaid.

I finally get Pa to jump with me for a while, but I get tired quickly. After we’re done playing, Pa and I go get dinner at our favorite seafood restaurant. I order fried shrimp and a bowl of fruit. We say our dinner prayers and then Pa asks a waitress to sit with me for a second while he runs to the bathroom. He comes back fast but his eyes look weird like he was crying or had allergies. He gives the waitress three dollars for sitting with me.

Pa’s phone keeps buzzing. He finally puts it on silent, but he flips it up so he can see who’s calling or texting. He never answers any of the calls or messages though. I ask Pa again what’s wrong as a tear rolls down his cheek before he could hide it. He tells me there isn’t anything wrong as he puts money on the table. I cross my arms and frown because we aren’t supposed to lie. He nods his head and says he will tell me what’s wrong but not yet. He tries to get me to order a dessert, but I’m not hungry anymore.

In the car, I sit back and watch the lights dance in the window as we drive home. On the radio, I hear a man say something about a shooting and Pa immediately switches it off.

“Pa wait!” I call out. “I think they talked about that at school. It’s on our side of town.”

Pa shakes his head and says he wants to hear something else right now and then changes to the cd player. We drive a little longer, and we get to the street we normally turn down to go home. It’s the street where Nilah’s beauty shop is. And every time we pass by, I wave; even though I know she probably isn’t in the window looking. But instead of turning, we drive right past it. I twist around to make sure I saw the street right, and there it was right there with Jimmy’s Chicken on the corner.

“Pa, you missed your turn.”

Pa shakes his head again and tells me he wanted to go a different way. He’s being so weird tonight, and I don’t like it.

“Is Nilah going to be home before bedtime tonight?” I ask. I need someone normal to talk to. Maybe Nilah can tickle out whatever weird troll has found its way into his stomach. Pa doesn’t answer me. And I know he heard me because he looked in the rearview mirror at me when I asked. I begin to re-ask the question, but I get a bad feeling in my tummy.

“Kayla, we have to talk about something important when we get home.” Pa’s voice sounds weird, and it makes my tummy feel worse. I don’t say anything. I sink into the back of my seat, and I can’t help but tap the side of the door with my foot. I don’t know why I’m doing that, but I can’t stop it.

Pa doesn’t want to hear about the shooting, and he doesn’t want to talk about Nilah. And I’m scared. I once watched a movie with Nilah and Pa. And in the movie, a family heard a gunshot. They all got on the ground so if something came through the window, they wouldn’t get hit. So, if something like that happened near her shop, I know Nilah would know to get down. Right?

So, I try to tell myself that Nilah will be home when we get home, and then Pa will tell us what’s wrong. We finally pull into our parking spot at home. I hold Pa’s hand and look up and down the street hoping I spot Nilah’s car. We get inside, and Pa takes his jacket off and hangs it up. Pa starts to talk and says that this morning something bad happened, and I immediately cover my ears. Pa puts his hand on my back, but I don’t want to take my hands down. I don’t want to know about Nilah’s blood, red and messy like strawberry syrup. I want her to just come home and tickle me. I want her and Pa to have a big wedding and anniversary trips. I want to go swimming and learn how to be a mermaid after all.

I take my hands off my ears and wrap my arms around Pa. I want to stay like this forever. I want us to stay frozen right in this spot, and then, at least, I can’t say for sure that I know anything is wrong. As long as Pa doesn’t say the words, then I can still wait for Nilah to walk in the door. Pa tries to talk to me again, and I squeeze him harder.

“Five more minutes,” I beg.

Pa rubs my back, and I can feel his tears raining on my head. He sings me a song, and I pray for a million verses.


Kelli Green is a writer, creator, and lifelong learner.  Green is from Chicago but has lived in Pensacola, Florida for most of their life. The author of three books, May, Elizabeth, and Cool and a host of poems, Green loves writing and storytelling and has always been intrigued by the creative world. The story, “Kayla’s Day,” is a narrative mixed with fictional and non-fictional events. You can find Kelli Green at @kelligreenivy on twitter, instagram, and tiktok.

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dibyasree nandy poetry august 2023

The floating white fire in the night sky dims

An outline looms, is golden-hewn

Across the crag, beyond the clouds

Our home seen in the horizon.

 

It’s no mere delf, a realm at the hilly toe

Halls of diamond, a silver grotto from days of old

Far down below, rills of jewels

Fall and tumble, fountains still flow.

 

At the cliff’s edge, we gaze and smile

Happy faces once weather-beaten

We traipsed for miles, our heads covered

To hide the shame that we lost our abode.

 

In rain and storms of hail, we bled

Our eyes focussed on the end

Where the thrush and eagles will fly

Oak and pine will welcome us soon

The scent of air, guide and chaperone.

 

We murmur notes of fog and snow

Passing by rocks of jagged stone

Through towns of wealth and lakes distrait

Inching closer, waiting domicile.

 

The quarters always gleamed bright

Seats of silks, burnished floors, a crystal sight

Our looks of hope, well-pleased, content

Even before we tapped on the door.

 

For those asleep, we play a song

For those missing, we sound the bell

We walk past fields and stacks of hay

The vales recounting the number of days.

 

If we falter, our brothers will support

If we are wounded, our mates will heal

A family knit, red-threaded unit

To stand beside in dire need.

 

The floating white fire in the night sky dims

An outline looms, is golden-hewn

Across the crag, beyond the clouds

The mountains call, a lullaby for home.

 

 

Dibyasree Nandy began writing in 2020, after completing M.Sc and M.Tech. She has authored poetry and short-story collections, as well as full-length fiction. Her works have appeared in more than 60 anthologies and literary journals.