un-mute.com

AWP | The Association for Writers and Writing Programs

30 Jan 2008 - 2 Feb 2008

The Association for Writers and Writing Programs (AWP) was founded
over 40 years ago to support the growing presence of literary writers in
higher education, according to the website.

This year’s conference, in New York City, kicks off in nine days with a
series of readings and panel discussions. Among those reading throughout
the city are five wonderful women in poetry. These Sister Poets are part
of my extended family (Cave Canem) of awesome writers I admire for
their consistency in creating work that resonates on many levels without
compromising their artistic integrity.

In her mission statement, Myisha V. Cherry (founder), states that it’s the
intent of this publication to provide a means for interaction between
readers and writers and the writing process while exposing everyone to
“literary based” opportunities and events around the world.

“We also endeavor to make Un-Mute.com an environment where writers
are the rock stars,” she adds, “and readers have a space to rock and roll
in good ol’ literature.”

With that said, here’s DeLana Dameron, Ashaki Jackson, Amanda Johnston,
Natasha Marin, and Khadijah Queen. (Click on their names to be taken to
their blogs or myspace pages to see what else they’re doing.)

DeLana Dameron

Shudder-release
after A.R. Ammons

I told you when we began it would end.
Now, I sense closure will be:
this last losing myself to the weight
of your pectorals and compartmental abdomen,
of your lips latching onto my shoulders, slick
flesh we cannot see.

It is dwindling, this lust. To know it
is to succumb to its apocalypse:
the trembling flash and shudder-release –
as if it weren’t the last time,
as if summer were not also dying.

Background music comes
down a gentle fog over the first finished sigh:
mouth open and heaven-facing,
my back an arched bridge you must cross.

I look and search, but the room
is blackest black. I see with my hands.

No use in making metaphors here:
I push you off into the darkness,
into the chasm of our separation:
six states and twelve years our distance.
It never mattered until now: faced with leaving
and turning strangers. Lover,
forget me when you walk out of my house.

Aubade

I am not
some residue,
discarded.

Do not wipe
me clean
with towel
at your side.

I want
to be the stain
left behind.

Please,
do not wash
me away.

Stay.
Let us marinate
in this mess
we’ve made
all morning.

DeLana Dameron lives in New Jersey. A native of Columbia, SC she spends her days translating the world around her, forever trying to marry the historical and the literary. She is a Cave Canem fellow and a member of the Carolina African American Writer’s Collective. She adores letters and can be reached at delanadameron@yahoo.com.

Ashaki Jackson

1,000 Origami Cranes

are labyrinths of pleats and tucks,
a rush of rice paper vaginas.
Their vivid wings open like women.

This is how healing is delivered to the sick –
a rescue of paper folded
into the hushed glide of birds. The tedious gift
of the concerned who restlessly fold into the night.

Salvation is slipped between 1,000 labial folds.
Allow them their warm regions for the winter.

E is for Edifice:

this structure of bones. Pelvic curves and vertebrae, requisite arches of its entrance.
Imagine lovers dripping off warm beds. Slack-jawed.

Estuary: mouths spilling into the tide, hosanna swelling the waters with pace –
a Sunday saunter.

E is for gathering: sharing one’s skin to the follicle. A meeting in the altar.

Excrement, collecting on itself meat and grain, patient for benediction.

Ear: a stooped man, limbs drawn into himself. A collection plate. A device to
fashion verse into prayer: hammer, anvil, stirrup.

E is for conversion between living and stillness. Eulogy, dirge, exhumation.
Trinity.

Ashaki M. Jackson is a social psychologist and poet who currently resides in Southern California. She received her MFA from Antioch University and has workshopped in residence with Voices of Our Nation’s Arts (VONA), Idyllwild, and Cave Canem communities. She has been featured at such venues as Poetry Television (San Francisco, CA), Rhapsodomancy (Los Angeles, CA), LouderARTS (New York, NY), and The Athenaeum ( Claremont, CA). Her work spans audio and print anthologies, and Black Goat Press (an imprint of Akashic Books) will publish her first manuscript, Thus Are Our Bodies, in 2009.

Amanda Johnston

FIRST SONG
For Ahyana

She wailed and my heart stood still
as the doctor dangled her
head down and bloody like a fish
caught between the muck and pull
of my churning water and vine
creeping awkwardly up to this
blurry life of tears and loose soil.
The delivery room held fast
while her silence echoed off
defibrillators, nursing hands
and her father tending my
hollow earthbound body waiting
for his daughter’s first solo
in a chorus of furrowed brows.
We wanted to hear her wail
with a quick slap on the ass
desperate breath then sound
at least a whimper of newness
breaching our anticipation
not this eternal pause of her
wide eyes questioning yes or no
to this world of uncertainties.
She wailed and my heart stood still
in that resounding yes, yes she would
stay in this imperfect place
with all of its cobwebs and stars
here, in the shit and pain of birth,
she wailed and her song began.

Swimsuit

Orange with white flowers, bikini,
mesh skirt - a see-through cover.

Her brown legs bake poolside until
she breaks free and runs

into the arms of a girlfriend, sweet
and innocent like braids swinging

to the butterfly music of barrettes
clicking in time, a symphony

in her ears to screen out bystanders
and their adult politics, afraid of

two little girls raising their wet shirts
to see the brilliant colors beneath.

Cave Canem Fellow and Affrilachian Poet, Amanda Johnston has performed across the country for various causes and events. Honors include a 2003 and 2004 Artist Enrichment grant from the Kentucky Foundation for Women and the 2005 Austin International Poetry Festival’s Christina Sergeyevna Award. She has served on the board of directors for the Kentucky Women Writers Conference, the National Women’s Alliance and the African-American Arts Technical Resource Center of Austin. She is an ensemble member of The Austin Project Performance Company (TAPPco) and is the founding editor of Torch: poetry, prose, and short stories by African American Women, www.tochpoetry.org.

On the Web: www.amandajohnston.blogspot.com

Natasha Marin

Alchemy: Memory Box

It smells like summer like a woman spreading her legs It
doesn’t matter how many or who, a man will lay you
down: in a field in the dark in a bed in a car, on a bus, in
a rush … just as sweet as he can be when cherry-picking
and berry-picking with you. I like mine twisted
like his own mother’s lips stretched fruit-wine red and
just juicing with secrets kept in shoeboxes kept folded
kept hidden kept still kept close enough to feel them
hanging folds in the air holding folds in your throat

her quiet hands
or noisy ones
wrists and ankles too

this air will turn to breath
this air that turns to sound
this air will turn to dust
if you let it.

Poèmes Barbares [1]

Zagabo, July 5, 2007

If this were a postcard, it would be of Cuzco.
I would send you a scribbled smile
and wish you were here.

You come to me through dust.

The other day, I was in the office
cleaning, and there you were
again, slid surreptitiously
between carefully folded pages.

How are you, stranger?
Who are you now?

Zagabo, August 24, 2007

If this were a song, it would be a long one
played on a piano by a man who can summon
ocean waves with just his fingers.

Do you remember when you told me
that I was a convincing God?

I believed you.

Fire is too orange to be red
and I too believe that women
are witches

(when they burn
the smell stains your throat,
you can scratch your name
in curls of carbon you’ll scrape
away from your fingernails
with slim bits of metal or wood).

My sister says she saw you with another woman
and a baby.

Maybe you forgot me?

[1] A painting by Paul Gauguin, 1896.

Natasha Marin is a conceptual artist and poet working in text, video, installation, and sound. After receiving her master’s degree in 2003 from the University of Texas, she became a Cave Canem fellow and an Affrilachian Poet. Currently, she is a cultural arts contract artist for the City of Austin. Her work has appeared in several publications including the Feminist Studies Journal and the Caribbean Writer, and the South Carolina Review. Find her on the web at: www.blackenese.com and www.myspace.com/monkeyparadox.

Khadijah Queen

LA KATRINA

Unravel your hurts at night.
Unfurl them, sacred flags,
And hoist them
Above your body, of course

You are alone.
Even when another’s breath
Guides yours, glides
Airily into you, you are alone.

Believe there is only one.
Accept it as the most
Forgotten of all truths.
Even in the arms

Of marigolds, one. Of course
You are alone. Unravel
Your hurts at night.
Hoist them, little postcards

Against a blooming sky.
Count them
As they float back down,
Cover you,

Fold them and tuck them
Like kisses under your skin
Like masks of afternoon,
Tender as the leaves of limes.

Of course you are alone.
There is no mercy
Except that which you grant yourself.
Even alone, even at night,

Your body covered in cempoalxochitl,
In the thriving pain
That has unpacked you,
Tricked you, turned you

Inside out, there is no mercy
Except that which you grant
Yourself. Unravel your hurts at night,
Your body singing black corridos.

COUNTING THE DEAD

Is there one alive
Among the gnarled bones of trees
Refusing dirt’s sift,

Wet blooms flowering
From stems of leaf-like gashes,
Silent and moving –

A sliver of flesh
Healing as the dead lie fish-eyed
In a full brook,

Skimming cracked mountain
Surfaces as minerals
Catch to skin like scales

“La Katrina” appears in Conduit (New York, NY: Black Goat/Akashic Books, 2008).

“Counting the Dead” first appeared in Pierian Springs (Fall 2002).

Khadijah Queen’s first collection of poems, Conduit, will be published in June 2008. Her chapbook, No Isla Encanta, is available from dancing girl press. Work appears or is forthcoming in numerous journals and anthologies, including new ohio review and Poemmemoirstory, and has twice been nominated for the Pushcart Prize. She currently studies visual art and new media at Georgia State University. Please visit her website: www.imagesound.tk.