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Jack conway poetry jan 2021

Nothing could be,

more off key,

than the lack of sympathy

we receive in this symphony.

But, you mustn’t miss a beat

because, although you may be

on the horns of a dilemma,

you have been instrumental

in this rhapsody.

I don’t mean to string you along,

but please note: Compose yourself.

Conduct yourself with vigilance;

play your own instrument;

and toot your own horn,

before the coda’s come

and gone.


Jack Conway’s poems have appeared in Poetry, The Antioch Review, The Hiram Poetry Review, The Columbia Review, “The Norton Book of Light Verse,” and other poetry journals and anthologies. His book, “Outside Providence: Selected Poems,” was published in 2016. He is also the author of seventeen nonfiction books and teaches English at a community college in Massachusetts.

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Matt Moment Poetry Jan 2021

Jazz was discovered by Black musicians,

but it was invented by light passing through outer space.


Look up at the sky, notice the moon during daytime,

like a scoop of vanilla lopped onto an invisible cone;


know that you are seeing not the moon of now,

but of 1.3 seconds ago. See through the night sky


and see the past, different pasts,

all shooting through the Universe’s cold blackness


like racing hands reaching to the human iris.

A billion light years here and there, a solo from Sirius.


Most people don’t know that when John Coltrane

wrote “A Love Supreme,” all he had to do was stargaze.


Matt Moment (he/they) is a writer and performer based in New York. He will be graduating from SUNY New Paltz this spring. Find him at https://www.instagram.com/matt_moment/

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Diliza madikiza Poetry

A Biko manifesto for the ages:

Black man you are on your own

In your own unmarked unknown grave

In your own land you do not own

With your own hands you own but lend to owners

With a job only to own bread

With the yield of your hand being owned

Forbid them to own your Black mind too


Black Token


Black man you died on your own

Only the Black skeleton is left

Your skin:

Baton-beaten,

Rope-ringfenced,

Gun-gashed,

Dog bite-dug,

Torture-torn,

Whip-whittled,

By slavery, coloniality, Apartheid, and continued oppression

Your skin skinned by old and new cacophonies of violence

Your skeleton — a witness to timeless tragedies befalling your skin


Sunny Africa


Rising in the Eastern Cape,

to awaken Biko’s consciousness

Setting in West Africa’s Ghana,

where Nkrumah settles for African unity

It heats the ripe red soil,

That warmly blankets sleeping souls,

Of Lumumba, Mandela and Nyerere

The Sun is African


Diliza L. Madikiza lives in Johannesburg, South Africa. He has published his work in various literary journals in South Africa and the UK. He has worked in the media and communications professions and, more recently, has been a lecturer at the University of South Africa in Communication Studies.

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Selma Haitembu

Black was a color of a nation

It was unity against separation

It was us when we understood struggle.

Black was deemed evil and unfit to associate with.

It was duct-tape on the mouths of those with an opinion.

It wasn’t freedom to roam and wander about.

It was a trap in the smallest of places like animals.

Now, black is a color not a nation

Black has lost what made them Black.

Black shuns not in the respect of one another

It forgot the struggles of the previous generations.

It isn’t unity anymore, everyone for yourself.

Safe to say, once we were Black.


My March for Africa


People here are scared and they should be

Presidents hold high to their titles

Africans leading Africa back to its roots

The roots that were weeded out before

From the soil, ripped out from around

They wish to remind them of exploitation

Once again, the people with loans and phones

Emerged since they with-held their earnings

Drew taxes and chewed them thin with whim

Thought they were smart and corrupt like no other

Doing nothing for a 30-year developing country

How much more time do they need

Move from suffering and jobless futures

Evictions for urban, hunger for rural

Where do they face and on whose shoulders

The people here are scared and they should be

Government holds peace in their hands

gripped tight without light in a fist

Spoon feed a little to those who threaten

Their secrets that hurt mother nature herself

The people who march and shout in anger

Do little to scratch the itch forever

The same leaders impeached re-emerge

in a new face who brings water to the thirsty

Who makes believe he understands their pain

Gets up on the title and does it all over again

All Africans who lead are greedy and misleading,

not for good-will, like all others he leads

My hope for them with mine is forsaken

I march in anger with words on a poster

‘Cause the hopeless are driven to damage themselves

And we are hopeless, imagine the pain we will herd.


Selma Haitembu is a high school teacher in Windhoek, the capital city of Namibia. Her writing was published earlier this year in the online journal Fleas on the Dog. She describes her love for any written genre as hypnotic.

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Rava Chapman Poetry

We are women of the wild

Skin like the soil and mountains at night

We drank from the rivers

And feed on the moon

We hold hands with our grandmothers

We talk in traces of holy footsteps


Can you see them

Those wide women

Wide like the earth

Dressed always in white

Ready soldiers of love


They breathe blessed texts

And sing in tones of the soul

You can feel them in your bones


Have you seen them?

They collect in the kitchen

Laughing recipes for survival

While keeping warm the fire


Holding the universe

They cultivate love

In swamps and deserts


She whispers: The forests and friends can both kill or heal you.

                     Walking in the curative realm



Returning to Freedom: Land Back


And Then there are those who are magical and hunted

She who lives on the intersecting edge of oppression

Carving out a reality

Wings unaccustomed to wind

Learning the sky

With ropes pulling at her throat

What’s it like to breathe in a loose noose 

Careful not to lose her footing 

Standing on the borderline of death and liberation

Holding a shot gun with a baby in her belly

Surrounded with bitter poison 

Yet, guided by her grandmother’s song for the moon 

Finding the forest

Deciphers its fragrances


And then back in the city they’ll say. . .

                          This the tea…

                          She resigned to live the old way

                          Living with her family’s land down in Texas

 

 

The mission of Rava Chapman is to create and maintain healing spaces. She is invested in the traditions and legacies of Africana Indigenous people.  Her work centers around developing healthy relations with the self, one’s kin and community, natural ecology, and with the Great Spirit. She is a copper-colored, Africana Indigenous woman and both a descendant of the Maroon people and those who were enslaved. She is an Afro Chicana and Pan Africanist.  She was raised in Black Folk culture and the Black Church.