un-mute.com

To: Coretta

“I’ve been stripped.”
Actress Cicely Tyson at the funeral of Coretta Scott King.

Walk beside me, Corrie,
in your heels and pearls.
Go ‘head, put some pretty
in this movement.

And as you march,
sing me your secrets.

What happened that day?

When you wept over your man?
Before we were all Martin;

After we knew you could
do more than have babies.

You buried yourself on that Memphis balcony.
Bullet lodged in him, splintered in you, shattered in us.

What made you continue?

Feel the wedding ring go hard against your skin,
remind you of vows made to a smooth Boston student,

Promises made to us legacy carriers,
us baton grabbers, us lovers of us.

Ring hot, metal against your pinky and bird,
strains against foul-mouth youth, who die early, too.

Their tongues and unmet futures handcuff
themselves to you.

What you require to speak
is what they require to live.

What is the truth? What is patience?
What is life that never has the chance to wrinkle?

When was the moment you knew his would crease slightly?
Like turning a page’s edge down in a book. You want to remember where
you left off. You want to remember where to start again.

How still familiar you are now, friend—
the bend of your nose, upturned
eyebrows, haughty,
your face a momentous occasion.

I saw
a photograph of you once. The nose petitions
itself to Martin’s waiting cheek; the eyebrows don’t wait for a response.

He swoons, girl, but his eyes read different.

Something more like love saving
itself for the moment
its host’s cell divides
for the last time.

Love drenches his cheek
slides into your gloved hand, replenishes
itself in all of us.

You understand don’t you?

Cells dividing and dividing.

Me behind my sunglasses
You ‘neath your lace shroud,
black like we now name ourselves.

That veil couldn’t hide you from me then
the way your casket does now.

Cartography

Where my sister’s road and my daughter’s rivers meet.
Next to a mountain carved into a valley.
They said gold formed underneath its peaks.

Gerrymandering folk.
They made it into a district.
A map told them so.

Paths wend through countries and continents,
whose names I dare not say,
whose names were never real.

Only created with dots dashed by people,
who make maps the same way they make war—
with a pen, a cross, a handshake.

How do we rewrite this history?
A mapping of our sister’s stories;
the tale of a daughter’s geography.

Welcome to feminist economics,
where bell curves plot the shape of
a woman’s work.

How to quantify a debt?

In a pound of coffee.
An unfinished dam.

In the cotton she picks,
or the cotton you stuff in your ears.

The 12 children she conceived
or the 5 who lived.

In the fistula she dragged 12 miles
or the barrenness she carried home.

In her rape
or the rape she watched her daughters endure.

In shoes she lined with blood of her countrymen.
In stomachs she starved.
In the denial she planted in history’s pages.
In memories she hides between a book and a machete.
In the grave of her husband.

This is a daughter’s geography.

Have you ever seen it look so green?

Their skin runs from an oil pipeline to an almost highway.
From a diamond mine to a bank.

Over there,
in Brazil or Zaire.

This is a daughter’s geography.
To rest even as she toils.

To fight even as she is bound
To speak her native tongue and have mastered yours.

To decipher your maps coded to extract and oppress,
and navigate them all.
Redrawing as she walks.

Pay what you owe me.

Know that centuries spent in fields
bring us this day
muscles taut
eyes keen
take my cotton out of your ears
because you’ll want to hear this voice

Pay what you owe me.

Take a risk.
Mistake its sweetness for friendship.
Answer questions with platitudes.

Pay what you owe me.

And you will miss my sisters
climbing over your walls
chanting words you said
you could not hear

Pay what you owe me.

When your boots rested on our shores,
I am the woman you marveled.

When you walked through my market,
I am the woman who made your robe.

When you loved,
I am the woman you touched.

When you went to war,
I am the woman you fought.

When you asked for your life,
I am the one who spared it.

Pay what you owe me.

This is a daughter’s geography.

Call me woman
if you must.

I am the cartographer.

I have been known
to take a map
and turn history
on its head
at the lean
of my
pen.

Jive

you there, on the couch.
let me kiss you quick
before my lips change
their mind.

Birth

Stretches against her mother’s womb.
Where does this bigness come from?

Your mouth juxtaposed against his lips.
That voice slinging song against those teeth.
That tongue hitting notes against that brain.
Those irises jumping mad against your eyelashes.

Birth stretches against her mother’s womb.

A universe descends on this land.
Our histories tethered against the moment
you peel a mandarin, taste slices your mouth.
Stare, stare at America across that violent Middle Passage,
and bring us home.

Where does this bigness come from?
History’s seeds blooming ripe against this august day.

monét cooper is the author of Slow Riot: Works In Progress (2007), a chapbook of new and revised poems, a follow up to The Silence We Hear (2006). She has studied poetry under A. Van Jordan at the Hurston-Wright Writer’s Workshop and is currently an American Poetry Museum poet-in-residence at the Washington Middle School For Girls, where she teaches poetry to middle school students on Monday afternoons. She also works as the communications and development coordinator for Jubilee USA Network, a non-profit organization that works to alleviate the debts of impoverished countries without harmful economic policy conditions. monét has a master’s degree in African American Studies from Boston University. Born and raised in Decatur, GA, she currently lives in Silver Spring, MD.

are just as comforting
with my brothers, Chai waffles
and chicken sandwiches

our server’s busy with a table
of guys laughing as they stick
fries up their noses

she works at 2 a.m. around
scrambling busboys and change
ringing as the register draw
opens while a cashier stuffs
bills into tiny envelopes

Fred speaks of a friend who
caught her old flame and ex-
best friend holding hands
as they strolled U street

Derrick fingers a charm on
his dreadlock, remembering
that night he talked her out
of fighting the other woman

the streets are seal-skin
slick with rain, and I think
of her hours away, who
I held on nights like this

(originally published in The Amistad)

For you, Reader, that name might immediately conjure up the actor-later-turned-poet who starred in a score of gangster films. But instead I’m referring to the Oakland-based wordsmith who blew me away with his performance of Breakbeat Jesus. I can still see a screaming crowd of poets going on as if the first few lines of his poem were to a favorite jam from back in the day; that jam that once moved them in indescribable ways.

Since then the original has been recorded and posted on Youtube, along with its remix Breakbeat Jesus ft. Joshua Walters on beat box. But his range goes way beyond this powerhouse poem. So instead of trying to explain how much I’ll do what us poets do best, which is let the work speak for itself!

Cathedral

Keeping monks hours, I rise
at midnight to a false dawn
where the sun pauses at the horizon
to creep sideways like a crab.

Our crew chief materializes at the door
salmon roe dripping from his palms
large as prayer beads. Midair, he draws
the sign of the dollar. Then, I am Lazarus
summoned. Baptized in fish blood,
a rain slicker my shroud and am clumsy
as any thing newly risen from the dead.

Men in ripped rain gear lay stretched
along the hallway floor in obscene shivering
parodies of their former mainland selves

We pray over the burning incense
of a marlboro and return to the sanctuary
of our ice steeple. We chant
beneath a malevolent god—a huge metal tank
furiously hiccupping fish and drooling arctic water.

It stands, at the altar, a cross.
Like good apostles, we bow our heads
having already taken vows of debt, poverty
believing our lives prior to this
was a vision had between shifts.

We use herring for our communion.
They represent our sins and spewed
before us every 15 seconds are a new
assortment of reasons to repent.

Here’s a herring for every time I cursed my father
Here’s one for every time I wished someone
dead or reached into my pants whispering a girls name.

Here’s one for jealousy, for laziness, for blasphemy,
for idolatry, for rudeness, for selfishness, for vanity
for stealing, for cruelty, for lying, for boasting, for
anger, for envy, for greed, for sex
for chrissakes, make it stop!

MAKE IT STOP!!!

After eight hours, I spend breakfast
on deck surrounded by the quarantining ocean
so barren and desolate it is
even islands cannot grow here.

Suddenly, there appears on the surface
of water a severed stalk of kelp. I blink
twice before convincing myself it is not
a dead woman
floating, forgotten
her hair spread in a black web.
It’s just… uprooted seaweed
that, until now,
has only known sunlight
in its prayers

anyway, this apparition frightens me
because
this is the first time
I’ve ever seen a dead body
and was
envious

This Past Saturday At The Farmer’s Market

An African brother shoves a basket of boysenberries
at us as if paying a debt. They bleed
on our fingertips, plead sweet mercy on our tongues
Asked his name, the man smiles proper, his hand a gift,
says: “Too Complicated.”

We buy nine dollars in cherries
off him, all white and red and spotted
and sweet and sour, too. Flavors
turning in our mouths anxious as police lights.
We – no, I—nearly trip over this sister pushing a baby carriage
We know her, but couldn’t pull her name for nothing!
Her new daughter asleep in turtle shell carriage
her cheeks soft as rain soaked petals.
Her three year old son standing sentry
digs into our kettle korn sack only after momma
stamps approval with a glance.

Later: fish tacos for me, Himalayan
curried chicken for her, us both lunching
watching children bounce in the fountain–
hot pepper toes pickled cool in water. Giggles
going off like Chinese firecrackers!
Dimples in bloom! Tiny teeth at separate corners
of the mouth grudge matching! Thighs
you’d want to fried chicken bite so golden brown!
Pity another poor momma, her daughter catfish
writhing on her lap– mango shake shook
everywhere! The little girl on a straw
never blinks, channeling opium addict ancestors
thru the unique ecstasy of fruit sugar.

This is us at farmer’s market, circling
back to brother Too Complicated who
offers one arm for her, the other for me. A chain
of chins on his shoulders. “Where you been,”
he says double hugging us. “And why has
it taken you so long to come back?”

Friday the 13th Part 14 L Is For Love

Oh, to be married
yet
not be able to
say the words, ‘I love
you, darling’
–is what Jason has for nightmares.
Jason remembers
standing on the shore
of crystal lake years ago, trying
to make those word-sounds
like the kids,
Yielding a noise from his throat
like gargling
like moaning
like the blues.
This is what led him
to speech therapy.
Working with Dr. Amy
(simple enough to say by week 2)
teaching him
for the first time
the alphabet.
‘A is for axe.’
‘B is for body’.
It took months, this
process of learning–
of feeling words, whole
complex words in his mouth
Say: Library. Say: November
until what was left of his tongue
would lay exhausted against
the crumbs of his teeth.
It was like dating in a way..
He and Dr. Amy,
would have lessons
while walking downtown.
Say: Mailbox. Say: Bus Stop.
And they’d have the best time
sitting drinking tea
Say: Toast. Say: Milk.
Until one day
Jason stands toe to toe
with his wife: “Who
was that whore I saw you with
downtown today?”
And Jason learns
how easy it is
for words to get stuck
in the throat. Say: Stutter
And in his next
lesson he asked Dr. Amy, how
do you pronounce a lie?
How Do You…
Say: Old Friend?
Say: She just asked me the time?
But in marriage,
secrets don’t live very long.
After a while, it was Jason’s
wife who stopped talking.
Until one day, while she
peeled potatoes
in the kitchen, Jason
returned home and
placed Dr. Amy’s
head in the center
of the dinner table,
her hair a potpourri of wild flowers
all easy now to pronounce
–roses, daffodils, irises, daisies–
and, for the first time,
said to his wife,
“I Love You, Daring.”
A is for Always. F is for Forever.

Negro-Geist!

I. Daddy

old crow, jack daniels understood
my father mouthfuls at a time.
Jim Bean and Old Forester
were uncles in hard glass suits
they’d roll up in the knuckle
crack & sign of hennessey
taking its first breath, then hound
dog laughter & dominoes
falling in hail on the grave
yard of the dining room table.
Relatives who existed
through stories would ease
in like zombies on ropes of
blue marlboro & newport & camel smoke
then demand a séance in spades, coon can
& texas hold em

no wonder they call it spirits!

Spirits baited my father with
couvoisier, snatching him out of his body
like a river catfish and he’d vanish! like that
spirits made him burn rubber scream
in the driveway, stand on my bed a sloppy
marionette & speak in tongue
or just toss pans and skillets at midnight

I wouldn’t see his ass again
till the next afternoon looking
like something had chewed
all the sugar out of him
and spit the gray pulp on the couch

II. Johnny

My cousin Johnny volunteered
for possession every week.
Spirits lit that nigga up like vesuvius,
he was certified!
electroshock exorcisms did nothing
empty bottles & cans
were his weekend storm warning
old english, colt 45, crazy horse,
cisco—they’d demand sacrifices
in blood so bottles of
haldol & thorazine
would dice roll under the couch
Friday nights, then doors
slam to splinters, tables
get flipped, walls
kicked until strait
jackets lay waiting on
the lawn. Momma
would site visions of gang
boys with tire iron erections
& johnny’s convertible skull
with its metal vent as if
it explained anything.
it didn’t.

‘tween dusk Friday and dawn Saturday
he’d still be ready to
blow this muthafucka up.
You want some of this?
Do You Want Some Of This?!
oh no oh yes oh no oh yes
I’ll be damn I’ll be
damn I’ll be
damned!

James Cagney is a writer, poet and performer from
Oakland, Ca. He’s appeared as a featured artist at
venues such as The Starry Plough, La Pena Cultural
Center, Above Paradise Lounge, Spasso’s Cafe, The Java
House, Mahogany Restaurant, OK Hotel among others. He
has also appeared on stage in the Afro-Solo
Performance series, Four Brothers with Will Power,
Ritual Theater 2000, and Celebration of the Word with
Maya Angelou and Quincy Troupe. He is the author of
four volumes of poetry including Transmitting The
Disease and Hot Death and the forthcoming Blood
Strangers. His work has been published in Asili
Journal, Cake, Drumvoices and Sussurrus.

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.

we watched our city grey-
scale under aerial bodies, U street
was a silver-gelatin memory
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