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emma ofosua donkor poetry february 2024

Standing…


Beneath the shadows, within the walls of Elmina’s halls,

Lies a gory tale of histories long forgotten.

it calls-

It calls us to weave new stories

To reclaim with grace, the perils buried in these spaces.


The Atlantic waves whisper a chorus of strength, 

Its horizon reveals a shared sunrise.

With each gleam, colonial echoes fade away.

Leaving locals room to recover a rightful sway.


For the local, recalling the intricacy of a colonial past

is a powerfully underutilized tool.

A promise to the future, that when each soul sails,

It will be a merry sail, cheering on their mates to harvest seals.

No longer will they mourn over a ship’s sail.


The water remembers,

when the boats first moved from the coast.

Our history seems anchored to this past.

Where do we exist outside of colonial blues?

Right here, at the water’s shore, we remember;

We are more than what broke us, remolded us.


When I think of the Elmina Castle,

I sense a shift in the tides

I see where stories intertwine

I hear of freedom’s anthem, a melody so rare,

as the waves wash away the weary symbol of pain.

Leaving in its wake a fresh fragrance of fear metamorphosed.

Tell me what hope tastes like,

what would you give as a canvas for galvanizing hopeful dreams for gain?


“Be free” they say, we want to be free, this they say with fervent might

And with each layer of rust that falls off, history’s chains begin to unbind

Elmina will no longer be home for tales of slaves chained

But a sanctuary where hope will reign.

Reclaiming agency, a shared decree

It’s our space they say with pride – it’s home.

No longer bound by the past’s embrace.


Mpanyin se, akyer3kyer3 ma akwankyer3, nti


Teach our young, that ours is a history of pride


Our names, a compass to where our people reside

Our foods the sound of a fontomfrom to voyagers from hours of sailing

Let this tale be retold never to fade.

Let it sounds keep our feet nimble,

Let the next shared sunrise, catch us in regal steps, unafraid,

Reclaiming these spaces loong, long after the raid!


Emma Ofosua Donkor is author of the poetry collection titled I wish You Courage in the Night Season. A freestyle poet, she finds expression through writing and performing spoken word poetry. She is the board chair of the Poetry Association of Ghana, founder of the AAWPFestival, and editor-in-chief of the literary magazine Hadithi. In her role as creative entrepreneur, Emma is founder of Tuniq Africa Ltd — a project management company focusing on creative art events and concerts. She is also an active auntie to many nieces and nephews — a role she loves and takes seriously. You can find her on instagram at EmmaOfosua or aawpfestival and on twitter at aawpfestival.

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christinah chauke poetry february 2024

My spirit burst into a dance.

I did not forget my spear, sharpened on the rocky violence of Winterveld,

Held low,

A machete used in shambas is clung to my waist

It is on this ships pass horizon

A jicksaw

Life seemingly on a doze

That my spirit burst into perceiving

The twinkles of the black sky

sat with Yemaya

Not a rape victim

Not a fearful,

called upon all the women in me

The courageous Goatherds

The divine healers

The fearless matriarchs who waged silent wars, survived lightning strikes, fought and killed snakes of the jungles

The barefooted who danced with the gods

The free women with unstrapped dangling breasts

We danced for all the paths crossed

We danced to the full moonlight until we were ready to set forth again…


Christinah Chauke has loved stories since childhood and first engaged literature from her grandmother’s novels. She was born in Winterveld, in the far north of Pretoria, South Africa. She studied international communications and psychological counselling. Her passion for social justice and mental health awareness inspires her writing. She is a humanitarian who actively advocates for equality, sustainability and biodiversity conservation. She writes poetry, creative nonfiction, and fiction. You can find her on instagram and facebook.

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khayelihle benghu poetry february 2024

A burnt offering, or should it be fasting of gold and plenty?

In these hours, last days of hardship

What should we do to keep children out of harm’s way?

Maybe redeem ourselves and prove ourselves crusaders and not instigators of ruin.

Last night I heard the earth cry, tears of rain that flooded skyscrapers and eroded the toughest bridges.

Mouth so wide it swallowed homes whole, schools and roads.

Look now, Holy Father, we are turned foreigners in our own land.

Which blood would be enough sacrifice in this den we call earth?

Disarm a ticking bomb and gun held on our head.

Climate change is a hot coal in each and everyone’s back.

How was life in ancient times when earth was formed and culled from nothing?

Adam lived in Eden, it was life before science and machine

What if we had held back progress and maintained the olden ways?

Simplicity in every form,

from caveman to stone pot.

Would destiny be the same if no civilization ever transpired?

I wonder which road led us here to this fate.

That we became bearer of this hefty cross.

Yesterday I survived the earthquake, today it is a flood and I hear it will be much worse tomorrow.

What of civilization? Should I give up all and return to write on stones?

Today as I reflect on this life, I see that civilization was no work of saints.

My life, what will become of you in reverse times if civilization is done away with?

What sacrifice should we give for this den of dragons where we now have to live?


Khayelihle Benghu is a nurse and a freelancer. She resides in Soweto, South Africa. Her hobbies include drawing and gardening — mostly culinary herbs. She has been writing since 2008, and this is the first time her work has been published. You can find her on Facebook.

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sibani sen poetry february 2024

“To be rooted is perhaps the most important and least recognized need of the human soul”

and after a long journey, after experiencing the worst others are capable of

after being flung back only

I, exile, find myself waiting at some foreign transit station

waiting to be, long, belong, grow, rooted

I, continent: my hands, eyes, feet, shoulders, knees, mouth

waiting to be held, seen, grounded, spread

I, body, wear, what I pull over my head at night to sleep under

waiting for a roof, blanket, dream to call my own

my child’s hands trace the dirt that remains

some speak of dirt to name soil that has been displaced

my palms the paths I knew

its lines also contain my futures,

my eyes the family I will not see again

a pile of bodies in between the land and me.


‘scape

the rift is a dream-hoard

ghost presences shimmer in the air

desire gutters over

the lip of the border


they want –who are the they

property, payback, collateral

I long for a waking that remembers

a name, a life


my shadow grows

long with tomorrows

whose oath to stanch the tears

the dead shed only yesterday


death the only truth of the living

the silent stations of the stars

cross over me, shelter is the promise

of the sun in my eye again


my head is not a stone

my words are not bars

“we do not inherit the landscape from our ancestors

but borrow it from our children”


a ticking within and in the distance

sun drifts, grass splits muteness doubles the mind

another shot on the road remnants’ trail

without eyes and tongue, without hands


the earth a cart of limbs

only a shoe remains.

in the quiet of the night the wind

rips holes for me to walk through


Water Writ

Across the sea vowels appear and disappear.

The susurrus of waves lives in your throat of truth.

Your cloud messenger makes a ceaseless passage.

I must listen with iron in my mouth.

I must read the blood gathering at the shore.

Why did you swaddle me in this liquid shroud?

Here is where my inheritance drowns.

I will fill up my heart with what’s lost.


Sibani Sen teaches creative writing and South Asian history. Her poetry has appeared in a variety of publications including Saranac Review, Off the Coast, J Journal, Rogue Agent, and SWWIM. She has done collaborative projects with the History Design Studio at the Harvard Hutchins Center, the Concord Museum, the Beacon Street Arts Studios in Somerville, the former Green Street Studio in Cambridge, and the pop-up New Rasa Initiative group at the Public Theater in NYC. Her current projects based on migration and feminism include forthcoming poetry and a monograph on the Indian pre-modern poet Bharatchandra. You can find her at SibaniSen.com.

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christopher rubio-goldsmith poetry january 2024

I just want to invent some new words

because the words I have now do not work.

They just crash around into walls and

sleeping dogs. When I say them in a dark room

it remains that way and outside the wind blows

them down the alley. I want new words that

bring the sky to the shore. Words that bring

one edge to the other edge and create

a surface everyone can walk over and find

that one big daring whatever. That una cosa que es lleno

and stays lleno. These new words will fix any

cracks and allow mysteries that help compose

songs and paintings that hang and remind us all


of all of us and our future as us. A new dance

at a shore or in a canyon under the lush.


I want these new words to string out

in the sky; rainbows of letters, comets

of meaning, stars that shape the way we

attend rituals. A new type of security

blanket. A new way to swim in a rushing

river or navigate a trail through a selva.

These words that will guide us all

when we discover our fate

piling up against our will.


Christopher Rubio-Goldsmith was born in Merida, Yucatan, grew up in Tucson, Arizona and taught English at Tucson High School for 27 years. Much of his work explores growing up near the border, being raised biracial/bilingual and teaching in a large urban school where 70% of the students are American/Mexican. A Pushcart nominee, his writings will appear in Drunk Monkeys, Inverted Syntax and have been publishedin Sky Island Journal, Muse, Discretionary Love and other places too. His wife, Kelly, sometimes edits his work, and their two cats seem happy.

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Matthew E. Henry poetry january 2024

she could be my sister. this face

I recognize from every elementary

memory. a face I see in the mirror

beneath the hair, the scars, the slowly

etching wrinkles. the mischievous brow

and open forehead. the nose and cheeks

and smile. the eyes. all ours. but when

I read the title of this gelatin silver print

of a 1950s photograph, the “West Africa”

triggers memories even more somatic.


I ponder the possibilities within this face

from Ghana. not a doppelganger, family

separated by generations and oceans and

chains and ship holds and molasses and

rum and ackee and saltfish and tilapia and

plantain and fufu and bammy and rice &

peas and jollof rice and that same mouth

unable to say so much to so many gone.


After James Barnor’s Self-Portrait with a Store Assistant at the West African Drug Company, 1952


Black Men and Women in a Tavern

oil on wood, 1650

workshop of David Teniers the Younger


they are not worthy to be painted

because they are unusual, or

because they are free

to sit pensively over bread. free

to drink, to smoke a pipe

without assumptions about

what they contain. free—

in clothes colorful

as their given names,

shades of blue, red,

and white—to talk

shit, raise voices and

exaggerated hands

over a story

without being perceived

as a threat to police

or white women. no.

this is not a suburban starbucks,

a cookout in a public park,

deck chairs beside the pool.

this is Antwerp. 1650.

they are worthy

simply because

they are.


casually and casualty share a Latin root

      “You don’t build your whole life around brutality by mistake.

      You have to want that. You have to plan that.”

              ~ Fairview, Jackie Sibblies-Drury


we all know the story. Stella Liebeck, age 79,

spilled a hot cup of McDonald’s coffee. it soaked

her cotton sweatpants and burned away 3 degrees

of muscle and fatty tissue. after 8 days of skin grafts—

reconstruction of inner thigh, labia, perineum—

she begged for $20k to cover the lost 16% of skin.

McDonald’s—of course—refused. having settled

over 700 similar claims, they had to take a stand.

make an example.


no one wants to be seen as the bad guy, the villain.

even the super-rich in those slasher films, with their

killing-people-fetishes and fucking-people-up-fetishes.

when they cut off fingers with chainsaws, or lock

co-eds in basements with hammers and bleach to fight

for their lives, they have justifications for keeping

their victims dirty and screaming and crying and scared—

brown and bleeding. it seems we enjoy them—the movies

keep being made. are acceptable as something that happens.


court proceedings reveled the corporate strategy:

franchises ordered to serve drive-thru coffee

at 200 degrees. their lawyers argued the benefit

for commuting customers. after bites of Egg McMuffin

and hash brown, their black slurry would be hot,

but not tongue-scalding, by the time they arrive

at work. the system worked as designed.


Chomsky said it’s impossible to knee-crush a neck

while calling yourself a true son of a bitch. villains

always have their rationalizations.  they argue

there are no “victims”—not really. we seem to agree.

the Dred Scott decision. the Indian Removal Act.

the Greaser Act. the Chinese Exclusion Act. the black codes.

the Insular Cases. redlining. the New Deal exclusions.

Korrematsu. the southern strategy. the war on drugs.

the Clinton crime bill. gerrymandering. redistricting. trump

v. Hawaii. SFFA v Harvard. we seem content knowing

it just keeps happening—in different ways—as designed.


Matthew E. Henry (MEH) is the author of six poetry collections, editor-in-chief of The Weight Journal, and associate poetry editor at Pidgeonholes and Rise Up Review. The 2023 winner of the Solstice Literary Magazine Stephen Dunn Prize, MEH is published in Massachusetts Review, Ninth Letter, Ploughshares, Shenandoah, and The Worcester Review among others. MEH is an educator who received his MFA yet continued to spend money he didn’t have completing an MA in theology and a PhD in education. You can find him at www.MEHPoeting.com writing about education, race, religion, and burning oppressive systems to the ground. On twitter/X find him at @MEHPoeting.

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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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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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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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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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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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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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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.