Archives of Tuesday Poem

In the beginning, it was innocent. Just play. Let’s mess with Mrs. Flowers’ mailbox! Fisher and Price asked me to spy on an old witch they believed lived alone in the woods. Is her husband dead? Or does she just hate men? I wondered. I wondered if she would ever come out of her shack. They tried everything to catch a glimpse of her. Sometimes they fisted worms and mud inside the black hole of it, then pushed the hard red flag up in high salute. Special delivery. Sometimes they didn’t erect it at all. Instead I took long walks with those two leading me through the woods in the heavy heat of curiosities. We built camps. We arranged rocks. We smoked cigarette butts. We lit twigs on fire. We lit trash on fire. We broke brown beer bottles against old trees. We pretended to be married. In a navy blue cotton shirt with a loose ruffle along the bottom edge, I was the bride, marching toward them. In the warm August air, my veil lifted off so easily. 

Tammy Robacker is our Poet in Residence for June. Previously: Hymen.

Previously published in Pittsburgh Poetry Review, June 2016, Issue 3; and Villain Songs (ELJ Editions 2017).

The tulle veil

was bone china

white and thin.

A breakable wisp.
It was fleeting.

Mother snapped

shots of it

on Sundays. 
I sat in the family

rocking chair

in the unused room

with ankles crossed.
Swirl feel

under the skirt

of my church dress.

It lived there.
A lace sash

tied off

access to

the pure me.
My holiness

sewn

delicate
 
as an eyelet.
Tammy Robacker is our Poet in Residence for June.

Previously published in Chiron Review, Winter 2015; and Villain Songs (ELJ Editions 2017).

The workers hum to wile away

the afternoon and tenants chide

their sons to sweep from room to room

last night's dust motes — stirred dreams

entangled in wide streaks of light 
that, in the daytime, bloom,

unsparing, bright — like operatic

high notes. Pierced and round,

the clouds of sleep fill us with

sound. A loss. A tune so deep within 
the brain we cannot help but weep

as sons push brushes past door after door

locked tight like eyes and tombs.

Our quiet. Our heavy score.
Oliver de la Paz is our Poet in Residence for May. Previously: Diaspora Sonnet I, Prince Credo, Story Problem #2, and Story Problem #3. See, also, our interview with Oliver.

A cart carrying a metric ton of apples leaves the city at four meters per second. Another cart leaves the city carrying a boy, in love with an idea. Consider the swirl of laughter and personal tragedy at 6 meters per second. Say the idea does not love him back. Say he will lose his life in a maze of regrets. What can be said about the dust caked on the wheel spokes and the precarious sway of the chasse crossing over ruts and the staggered pavers knuckled together side by side. At four meters per second is there enough time to sample what is carried? Say the apples find their way into the basket of a family a dozen miles away before the boy gets there. Where did he stop? Did he consider the essence of the problem? If the distance of love is coupled by the weight of an apple cart bound for the markets or bazaars of a city as far away as autumn, then what can be said about the horses who will never taste their burden? Where will his cart pass the adenoidal fruits along the road? Where will he know the plurality of his blood?

There is 100 yards of string laid out in a straight line and every ten yards a flower sprouts from stone. The flowers are A. Red. B. Fuschia. C. Yellow. D. White. E. None of the Above. If a boy walks down this path and it is summer and he hums a song from childhood will he pick A, B, C, D or choose E? Will he smell D's metallic hook and think of how gardenias are loudest in the heat? If the string were to tie back the scent could it? Could the string hold back whatever fire rises from A? The split hearts of B? Would there be enough string left to get the boy from X to Y to Z which are not flowers but points like pinpricks on a map. And would someone be waiting for him at Z with a bouquet of gardenias and marigolds? Is there a field at the end of the street, wild with flowers and vines? And what of the map with names like forgotten flowers? What about E and how these are all bad choices? How the names in front of us are never right?

I believe in the dearly beloveds,

        in the temple of the power chord, and

        for years in the early 80's,

        that Prince was Filipino.

I believe in acting my age and not

        my shoe size. In never being

        a weekend lover, and in the hard work

        of a voice stretched into a silk bag

        filling fast with silt.

I believe in paisley and purple.

        That a kerchief is manly.

        That sexy is in the word and

        in the way that every guitar

        has its own ghosts to love.

Believe that the interval between

        the chorus and the solo is holy

        and that darling Nikki would happen

        one day in the ethereal dance of adolescence.

Forgive me if I go astray.

        Forgive me, but I believe

        in Apollonia, Apollonia,

        and Apollonia.
That the fastest way to heaven

        was across a Graffiti covered Bridge

        into the neck of a Stratocaster.

Believe in the litany of amplifier.

        In the hiss of feedback.

        In the bite of the lower lip. Beloveds,

        I believe in eyeliner.

        In androgyny and in the sylph-like tease

        of an upturned collar.

I believe in frills and crop tops.

        In the hard jab of a note

        between shoulder blades. I believe

        in smoke and the cherry red

        of the moon and trying

        to be quiet when the parents are home.

I believe in the gospel of summer

        and in the car parked sideways.

        And goddamn, I believe in the party,

        and that it was meant to last.

I walk the narrow pedestrian passage

illumined so its girdered ribs show

like names on a ledger. Every step

sudden and trochaic — the beginning

of facts. Of being here.
I look up and see the moon

is brandishing its ghosts. What is

here and not here. What is

a face in the sky. What breaks

the shape of the known and obvious.
If I could say it, I would say

"I was broken and I took him in."

I would ask, "Do you trust me?"

I would point to the landscape. 

The poet who was my teacher said we must rewrite.

It was a warm afternoon. Sun dabbled in the greenhouse.

So now I revise and revise until I think the real writing

is rewriting. First drafts are small forays into the hills

from which I bring back a pail half full of unripe

blueberries that may, on closer look, be

some other kind of fruit entirely. I remember

he leaned back in the chair and waved his hand

and said my poem describing salmon was really about sex.


We stood facing the faded paint of Parrington’s walls

each Friday, memorizing lines of a poem we chose to recite —

to learn the sound of the words together and the little spaces

between the sounds. Each of us quaked.

Inside the classroom he turned to the ravishing co-ed on his right,

the one with the throaty voice and said,

Play that for us on your bazooka, will you, honey?

She nearly fainted but she spoke the lines.

No one has ever made Louise Bogan sound like that.


He brought a straw hand basket belonging to his wife.

It was stuffed with books. “She’ll kill me,“ he said,

heaving it down on the table, the one who taught him

Turn and Counter-Turn and Stand, who taught him Touch,

that undulant white skin. We leaned to see what rivers

might pour forth, what three-beat lines, what metaphysical

poets hidden between the spines, what rose, what sorrow.

Later, in my car beneath the flagpole, he said to kiss him on his cheek just once. In the rearview mirror, there she was.


Who, sitting in the tea house, doesn’t know he died too soon?

Beyond the posts and beams, a roof of glass.

the swimming pool is sculptured sand. Five rocks

(the five-beat line?) mark where his breath last sighed

to any bird: the anniversary of his death day.

The last thing he said to me was,

There’s going to be a special graduate class next fall

and you’re in it. Years passed and one by one

we learned he said that to all of us.
Joan Swift died on March 13, at age 90. In arrangement with Cave Moon Press, we've named her our April Poet in Residence, and are running four poems from her this month, all from the upcoming book The Body that Follows Us.

Previously: "Listening to My Bones", "Shin-Ichi’s Tricycle", and "Technology". See, also, this rememberence: "One month since her passing, Seattle’s literary community still mourns Joan Swift".

All the cell phone towers are pagodas

from the top floor through my near-sighted eyes—

blue, white, red shimmering houses

for ancient gods among the fir trees and dogwood.

They climb the hills to the cemetery, carrying

the voices of the living far above the lost

chatter of those already gone before us.
The words are like raindrops in a summer storm

here then gone, sadness borne away

over the continents. And love

or the failure of love, wounds and caresses.

The seas wander underneath.

Somewhere in this forest of voices

a pen is writing in blue ink.
Joan Swift died on March 13, at age 90. In arrangement with Cave Moon Press, we've named her our April Poet in Residence, and are running four poems from her this month, all from the upcoming book The Body that Follows Us.

Previously: "Listening to My Bones", and "Shin-Ichi’s Tricycle".

I stepped down from the trolley that day in Hiroshima

and walked by the river where the children had floated in flames,

but I could not hear their cries of misu, misu. Lost.
I saw the rowboats tied to the shore waiting for the living,

and the Prefecture building as the autumn wind

blew through the skeletal dome and every leaf lay scattered.
I passed by heaps of flowers and burning candles

to the doors that let me in to where the lights were dim,

so many shadows, each display lit only by a row of flashlights.
Power outage, someone said and so I need not pay my yen

but paid another way past fingers dripping skin,

a lunch box full of barley ash, the twisted tricycle
Shin-Ichi’s mother dug from severed earth. She gave it

so the boy would live in memory:

sculptured handlebars and pedals burned to black
all buried by the father who found him lying dead.

I thought of myself at five,

pedaling my tricycle down the middle
of Wilsonia Road, the rainbow shine of oil,

the sun, my father’s call

as he came swooping down to pull me back,
shouting, Don’t ever do that again.

Although of course I would.

And of course we did.
Joan Swift died on March 13, at age 90. In arrangement with Cave Moon Press, we've named her our April Poet in Residence, and are running four poems from her this month, all from the upcoming book The Body that Follows Us.

Previously: "Listening to My Bones"

When the doctor holds my upper arm in his two hands,

he bows his head and listens as if he were waiting to hear

the song of a rare endemic bird no one has seen for centuries.

I start to speak, but he shakes his head, does not loosen his grip

on my arm, turns his fingers around the curve

of my skin and listens again.

I am afraid to clear my throat. My toes stay still.

He must hear my heart where it beats

but he is listening to the sound of bones

the way NASA turns its telescopes far over our heads on Mauna Kea

and hears the universe move.
Rain falls so hard on the roof, I think it might break through.

Imagine all those luminous drops that had been the backbone

of a cloud shattered and lying above the orthopedic surgeon’s head and mine. Soon a puddle, then a trickle into the Wailuku River.

This will mend well, he says, shows me two x-rays.

In the waiting room is a large salt water tank. A zebra moray eel

folds in one corner its brown and white stripes.

I think how it must have no bones at all

or bones so light this eel can wind

around its heaven all night when everyone has left

and dream the dream of breaking into the world.
Joan Swift died on March 13, at age 90. In arrangement with Cave Moon Press, we've named her our April Poet in Residence, and are running four poems from her this month, all from the upcoming book The Body that Follows Us.

I like a little violence

in my poetry

because I don’t trust

the sweetness

of too-ripe words, like

I don’t trust a man

who says, “you’re wonderful”

too quickly.

What would he say

if I told him the sugar

on his tongue

is only what I allow him

to taste?
I used to preen

when a lover called me

easygoing, as if

being no trouble at all

was some kind of glory,

as if un-troubling

his waters would keep

the current from pulling

me under, kicking

the wind out,

from filling my lungs

with salt water

and sorrow. 
This is how a woman

protects herself,

with yes and sure

and I don’t care,

how she paves every pothole

so others wont need

to remember how much

earth is still root, crack

and resistance,

so others wont feel

the quaking and know

that earth never intended

to be tamed.
But I can’t take all

the blame. You see,

they never looked up.

Not once.

Never saw the sentry
 
in the tree
 
three clicks up the road
 
or the sniper on the rooftop
 
trained to kill
 
any me that didn’t heel

quick enough. Now,
 
when a man calls
 
me easygoing
 
I land mine, 
explode his body

into pieces I salvage

for my tricked-out ride,

cruise down main street.

Hydraulics at my fingertips.

My fingers itch

when I hear the engine growl,

“I would have loved you

anyway. I would have

loved you more.”
Jamaica Baldwin is our Poet in Residence for March. Previously: "Father/less", "Vigilant", and "Discarded".

Just because I can now trap a spider

between cup and paper and set it free

doesn’t mean I’m no longer afraid.

Just because I sometimes believe

in the divine doesn’t mean I don’t see 

emptiness every time I close my eyes.

The man down the street

has made a home out of things

I’ve thrown out:
used retail bags, duck-taped and stretched, 

keep the rain at bay, old clothes

insulate his walls and my empty wine bottles

make wind chimes that echo through the night.
I call him homeless

but the only difference between us

is his walls aren’t built to code.
Just because I can spin a seductive line

or two doesn’t mean I know

how to talk to love. 
I can chatter all day,

but what do I say when love

stands naked in front of me
all hardness and need?

What combination of letters

could say anything other than
Thank You?
The man I call homeless,

he talks to love. I hear him
 
when I walk to the bus stop in the mornings.
Sometimes they argue,

but mostly I hear him cooing to love,

wrapping love in my discarded wool sweater.
Jamaica Baldwin is our Poet in Residence for March. Previously: "Father/less", and "Vigilant".

It’s hard to remain human

on a day when mercy is a frozen river,

when the news informs me tomorrow’s

as bleak as it was yesterday, tells me

yesterday couldn't have left love

lingering listlessly on my bed all eager

hands and doe-eyed, says

there’s no room for beauty in this fight.

Liberals tell me, we must remain

vigilant. We can’t rest, relax,

let down our guard, but

don’t they know I’ve been vigilant

all my life? Yielding to white spaces

like ocean to keel.
I was vigilant when,

in high school, white friends

proclaimed, I don’t see

color, then painted their bodies

with sun, as if skin were a lipstick
 
they could apply to the perfect shade of
 
not too dark. These days

it’s disguised in praise, like

“what a beautiful mix you are, as if to say,

be grateful you’re not as black

as you could have been. 
I’ve vigilantly guarded my mind

around men who only valued my body.
 
Guarded my body from men

who think permission is for “pussies,”

who think a fistful is a proper unit

of measurement. When the cab driver

told me I must have a white parent
 
because I don’t “sound” black,
 
I vigilantly wrapped myself in my arms,

tried to imagine the sounds he’d make

without vocal cord or tongue
 
or his privilege.
Each time someone cracks a joke.

about a black man’s disproportionate
 
prowess, about a black man’s "laziness",
 
about a black boy’s "good for nothing father"

I want to vigilantly cradle my grown
 
brother in my arms and sing him
 
something soft and sweet to keep
 
his fists steady and his mind right, but
 
what right do I have keeping him in check
 
when they don’t take the time

to check their ignorance? 
We try our best not to

but sometimes a woman must walk

down a dark street alone, must count

the number of parked vans, must keep
 
to the middle of the road, must stay out

of reach, must keep her eyes peeled, must

walk with wide steps, grab her crotch

like a man, spit like a man
 
(things they teach teen girls in self-defense),
 
must turn herself into something
 
a man would never desire, must be
 
masculine, be careful, be vigilant. 
So when liberals say,

this is how we fight back, this is how
 
we’ll win, I want to tear my clothes off,

walk naked into rush hour traffic,
 
cut my feet on broken glass and car fragments,

breathe in exhaust fumes, let the poison

sink into my skin, grow an extra limb,
 
heart, head, become something
 
un-neutered, volatile, dangerous,

become something able to withstand

the next four years. 

My father was de-boned as a child.

The trick was to use a sharp knife,

steady hands and always begin at the neck. 

With luck, my grandparents

were able to remove his spine intact.
But all-muscle can’t hold love upright.

You see strength needs something

to settle itself around. Boneless men

can only stay where they are bent to.

My father was made to cut 
his own beatings off a tree,

like pentimenti I sometimes see through

his scars, a perfect whole. But you can’t

dream the broken out of a person

no matter how hard you try.

"Emancipate us from mental slavery..."

— Bob Marley (Redemtion Song)

The Discovery of America by Christopher Columbus

You

Salvador Dali

see our history's golden man

Christopher Columbus

in your Andalusia way

as robust young boy

perhaps teenaged

as one who pulls his big bellied ship

toward us from ocean's edge

masts      banners      swords      clouds

crucifixes      shadows      sails

monks      trapeze artists
Your

huge canvas wall-sized

brings home to Florida

in this museum created

in your name for you

the wishes of those monarchs

the youngish Ferdinand

his lovely Isabella

your own country

the infant Spain
He

Columbus not old

enough to shave

barefoot and shirtless

not yet Great Admiral

of the Ocean

now drags ashore

the Old World's wettest dreams

of church

of colony

of empire

that bid us marvel

at our own demise


Blue Note Belly Blues — A Call and Response Poem

You came

halfway

round

the world

in the belly

of a ship

in the belly

of a slave

in the belly

of the ocean
                        Think About It
in the belly

of a drum

in the belly

of a calabash

in the belly

of a dance

in the belly

of a shout

bathed in

palm oil
                        Think About It
in the belly

of a shuffle

in the belly

of a moan

in the belly

of a grin

in the belly

of a storm
                        Think About It
in the belly

of a savanna

in the belly

of the wind

in the belly

of the tides
                        Think About It
Say Baby

let's you & me

bust free

ride

this blue blue note

into Freedom's belly

                        Think About It
This blue note

North Star

gotta get outah here blue note

this Black Bottom blue note

this moaning low speaking low

blue note

this jazz back juke joint

saxophone blue note
                        Think About It
This high stepping 2nd line

blue      blue      blue note

this high flying Take me

to the Moon

blue note
                        Think About It
This Baby Baby Baby

what have I done

to be so black & blue

blue blue note

let's kick back

three ways to Sunday

blue note

blue note

blue note
                        Think About It
Baby

let's turn ourselves inside out

ride Freedom's blue
 
blue note

and fly away

fly away Baby
                        Think About It

                        Think About It


Ancestors

She drew her first basket

on its side she made a mask

w/ eyes and nose

on its top she made a mouth

slightly open

she thought
She invited some friends

to see the basket
Inside its curved belly

they saw

a flag w/ zebra marks

the curved teeth of a lion

gold      elegant      huge

rows of elephant tusks

a crocodile napping
They heard a spirit voice

calling all their names
They struggled to breathe

they tried to speak

they wanted to dance
(for Nisi)
JT Stewart is the Seattle Review of Books Poet in Residence for February. Previously: "Invocation", "FOLKS: 'Many Rivers to Cross'", and "SISTAHS — How We Got Ovah"


    Citations & notes. All poems originally Published in JT Stewart's Promised Lands: Poems from the sovereign of dishpan sonnets (Lamaya Press, 2010 (3rd edition).




    "The Discovery of America by Christopher Columbus" — I had seen lots of Salvador work in New York City but nothing like this oil-on-canvas that takes up an entire wall in the Salvador Dali Museum in St. Petersburg, FL. The poem took ten years to write. Why? Let's call the reasons: interviews with painter friends / research - and brooding!


    "Blue Note Belly Blues — A Call & Call and Response - an integral part of African-                America oral traditions. Performed March 2013 at Hugo House (Seattle) - 100 Thousand Poets for Change: A Global Event Bringing Poets Together in 115 Countries. 


    "Ancestors" — This poem dedicated to Nisi Shawl (the amazing writer / scholar} who introduced me to the worlds of border crossing poetry & feminism via Rose Lemberg.

"If Black English isn't a language,

then tell me what it is."

— James Baldwin (1934 - 1989)

Sunday Morning

Sun's up

they say it's Sunday

come to us again
Bacon and egg smells

float over from Master's House

somebody's smoking cigars

maybe two somebodies
Cigars they come here

by big riverboats

breakfast china dishes

they come too

and ice for fancy get-togethers
Cost lots of money
Last Sunday

they traded Jubilee

my grownup cousin

and Vashti my little sister

to pay for all the cigars

and all the breakfast china

but not for all the ice
They said too much

had melted on the way
(for Octavia Butler)


Fingers

I want to see fingers/ fingers flying across piano

keys/ fingers strolling over black notes & blue

notes & sharp notes & flat notes & get up in

the morning notes/ fingers/ I want to see

BB King fingers hitting Lucille's guitar strings
UM ain't that some stuff/ Nina Simone Queen

of Soul fingers backing up The King of Love/

Martin Luther King fingers & hands pounding

on America's pulpit/ yesterday & now I Have
 
A Dream fingers/ fingers/ my great grandfather's 

CC Rider fingers taking the Bible to Black folks

using their fingers to read/ my grandfather's

chef fingers shaping fancy pastry & roasting

duck & making people lick their fingers
UM ain't that some stuff/ fingers/ my mother's

fingers/ my father's fingers/ all theses fingers

pushing me into circles of light/ my fingers/

this poem


Mirror Woman

Mirror, mirror on the wall,

who is the fairest of them all?

— Brothers Grimm, "Snow White"

Let me tell you something.

I'm a woman of African descent

and that isn't just something.

You hear me.

It is some thing.

Yes! I am a woman of African descent.
In a public library restroom

caught a sistah standing behind me

staring in the mirror at me.

"Are you mixed?" she says

at the back of my head.
I say to the mirror "What!"

as in — What's wrong with you, Sistah!

"Are you mixed?" she says

one more time

giving me the once-over

as though she'd paid admission

and was entitled.
Now I shake my hands dry.

I say to the sistah in the mirror,

"What!" as in

What manners did yo Mama

not teach you.
She blinks hard like I'm some

kind of puzzle. "Mixed," she says,

"You know, as in mixed!"

"No No No!" I say.
"I am not mixed. I am nobody's

mixed anything!" I hear my voice

rising . "I am a woman of African
 
descent. Just like you!"
"Passing," she says interrupting.

"Do you ever think of passing?"

"Why?" I say without thinking. "Why would

a woman of African descent want to pass?"
"Easier," she says. "Life would be easier,"

she says. "Easier for what?" I almost say.

"The Price of the ticket," I say. "That's

what James Baldwin would say."
"Who's he?" she says.

"Pass. You could do it." 
I want to hug her. Yes. Maybe I

even want to give her my skin.
I move away

leaving her free to talk with that

other woman in the mirror.


Say My Name

Say my name please.

Please say my name. Look at me when you say

my name. My name. You put it in a bag and

tied it with wires at the top where the paper, the

parchment was peeling in little threads. Threads

like my mother used when she hemmed my

dress. Gauze. Gauze. Strips of gauze covered

with mericrome and witchhazel and in the 

medicine cabinet with all those little bottles —

amber, blue-cobalt blue — where she put my

name before she closed the door, the mirror.
Wiped it clean.

I wrote my name in the steam on the mirror. She

wiped it clean, took my name away, this mirror

woman who polished what was left of the

light, the long could-be-singing nights with my

name. Here in the twilight of the sighs and long

meter hymns and someone breathing long and

low and heavy in the dark of my name. I hear it

low and sweet so sweet and hear, yes, the carry-

me-back-words of my name riding in a boat

with the gold leaf of its name Muerte — Muerte.
And on its sides,

this ship with its polished wooden sides, this

wooden carved maiden leading it in its name,

this wooden carving with its long green hair,

green sea waves... carry-me-back-waves/ carry
 
me back... Its rough lips wooden and pouting

and half open, taking in the blue-green ocean

waves and the foam, lips parted/ bared to the

blue wind as if to say my name, to sing it into

the blue-black wind.
Amazing Grace.

And who was that woman! Say it. Spit it Out.

Weave if from long colored banners from soft —

as spring wool, from cotton, yes cotton. Cotton

mouth. Poison. sssssssssssss. Please. Please say

my name. Please.
Look at me.
JT Stewart is the Seattle Review of Books Poet in Residence for February. Previously: "Invocation" and "FOLKS: 'Many Rivers to Cross'"


    Citations & notes:




    "Sunday Morning" — Published in Strange Matings: Science Fiction, Feminism, African American Voices, and Octavia E. Butler (Aqueduct Press, 2014)


    "Fingers" — Reprinted as a broadside (2011 - designed by Graphic Artist John D. Berry from JT Stewart's chapbook Promised Lands: Poems from the sovereign of dishpan sonnets (Lamaya Press, 2010 (3rd edition).


    "Mirror Woman" — Published in Stone Telling 5 — The Magazine of Boundary Crossing Poetry (2011, with an accompanying MP3 from Jack Straw Productions).


    "Say My Name" — Published in The Moment of Change: An Anthology of Feminist Speculative Poetry (Aqueduct Press, 2010), also from Promised Lands: Poems from the sovereign of dishpan sonnets (Lamaya Press, 2010 (3rd edition).

Somewhere the sky

touches the earth — and

the name of that place is

the end — in between

is the journey.

— African Saying

History Lesson: Diaspora

They love Africans in museum cases,

so they left African cultures intact.

— Ezekiel Mphahlele

"Remarks on Negritude"

First they stacked us

in the holds of their dark ships
Then they feasted on our mothers

our names      our blood      our shadows
They routed and captured our masks

our thrones      our bronze carved doors
Now in museums we discover our masks

their ancient eyes track us
We shiver
Discrete signs announce our origins

other signs caution us      Do not touch
Do not touch      Alarms will sound
Something shakes our memory

we encounter our shadows
Something crosses and recrosses

the danger water
We recall Praise Songs

Our ancestors touch us
Our names come home
for Pam McClusky (Seattle Art Museum)


Horn Men

hey

you ever wonder

how they survive

these quote unquote black

men jazz jiving they tenor

saxes

in the up-to-date badlands

of South Africa

Johannesburg to be

precise
some

say they be bad

they be up from the bush

long time out of the

bush these brothers be

watch they

pull music from spots

of leopards

from deep river beds

some say they music be

ancestor masks carved

from water trees
these bad brothers

what they know

be awesome

our essence

uh huh
what they make

be true as rain

see how they sweeten

this parched earth

welcome these brothers

hear them

move us into freedom
and beyond


Song

1.

fresh off the

boat

they break you

in barbados
they split for you

you tounge

they slice for you

you ear
they dig for you

a hole of dirt

for you big child 

belly
they whip you

make you belly

lie down
they put on you

you neck

the ring of

iron
they say no

to no eat the

sugar cane
they put on you

you mouth

the mask of

tin
they tie you

man to

four green tree
    
they make you

man fly to

all four wind
they say you

you sing

2.

sing calypso sky

sing soka wind

they ship you

to they home
all ways

they break you

in barbados
3.

salt

all ways

salt
4.

our bones be

ocean floors
our bones be

masts of ships
our bones be

coral reefs
our bones sing

of salt


Alien Dance Hall

Here a glittered stocking shimmers

here a severed pair of eyes

jams the blues
Everywhere

desire flaps its tentlike arms
Legs slow drag in the pockmarked dust

embrace suns blackened by ancient storms

clawed birds scream

perform a rag      a cakewalk      a stomp

a tango
Observe

this needle wind delivers

imported fragrances of old blood

and fetal bones
Stay here if you wish

Settle here if you wish
Remember while you can

somebody called

my ancestors cannibals
Dance with me

Dance with me
JT Stewart is the Seattle Review of Books Poet in Residence for February. Previously: "Invocation"


    Citations & notes:




    "Many Rivers to Cross" — Song made popular by Reggae musician Jimmy Cliff.


    "History Lesson: Diaspora" —
    

        
Epigraph: Ezekiel Mphahlele — South African writer, scholar, anti-Apartheid activist. 
        

            Negritude - 1930's Paris based literary consciousness movement combining Afro-Caribbean and African philosophy.

            Reprinted as a broadside (2011 - designed by Graphic Artist John D, Berry) for a 4 Culture Grant. Also used by Hedgebrook, the private retreat for women writers on Whidbey Island. Originally published in JT Stewart's chapbook Promised Lands: Poems from the sovereign of dishpan sonnets (Lamaya Press 2010 (3rd Edition)).
        
    


    "Horn Men" — Originally published in Raven Chronicles (1992); reprinted in "Praise Poems to Read Aloud" (1992) as a broadside for the Seattle Art Museum. Inspired by the full-length Basinjum Mask and Gown — African Ejagham Nigeria Cameroon in the African Gallery. Also by listening to to a South African tenor sax musician playing "You Think You Know Me." "Horn Men" also reprinted in Promised Lands (Lamaya Press 2010 (3rd edition)).


    "Song" — Published (2014) in Stone Telling: The Magazine of Boundary Crossing Poetry (MP3 from Jack Straw Productions  - Seattle, Washington.) "Song" was a semi-finalist in the Rhysling Science Fiction Poetry Awards.



"Alien Dance Hall" — Published in Promised Lands: Poems from the Sovereign of Dishpan Sonnets (Lamaya Press, Third Edition (2010)).

And God said "… I'm lonely

I'll make me a world."

— James Weldon Johnson

"The Creation"

Tell us your stories

August Wilson
Remind us

of the voices you hear

Boy Willie

Ma Rainey

Aunt Esther's children
Bring forth for us

the visions you hear

King Hedley

Fences

Two Trains Running
Conjure up for us

Langston's words

"Life for me ain't been

no crystal stair, but

I's climbin"
August Wilson

keep dippin' your fingers

in the waters

Tell Freedom

We'z ready

Take our love

with you

Take our love
for Constanza

& all of us
Ths poem was commissioned by August Wilson's widow, and appeared in the memorial program from the tribute held at Seattle's Intiman Theater after Wilson's death in 2005. 

JT Stewart is the Seattle Review of Books Poet in Residence for February.

(After Soujourner Truth’s speech, Ain’t I a woman?)

There is so much turmoil in our country of late, something must be terribly wrong.

There is a man over there, who occupies the highest office in the land, who says immigrants are rapists, criminals, the worst kind of people.

I have never committed a crime, have paid taxes every year of my adult life, and have worked to earn an honest wage! And, am I not an immigrant?

He says, immigrants take away from everyone and for this they should be rounded up by the millions and deported; they should be banned and blacklisted for worshiping in a way that differs from his. I studied hard to obtain an education and worked to educate children in public schools and everyday commit to lead a life worthy of my parent’s sacrifice, who knew this country was by no means perfect, but it offered us refuge and hope! And, am I not an immigrant?

That man over there may well say, “you are an exception,” but let me tell you, all of us in my immigrant family, my immigrant friends, and many immigrant brothers and sisters, none of us lead our lives to cheat, deceit, take advantage of anyone or any system. We love our kin like everyone else and aspire to a fulfilled life. 

The immigrants I know are nurses, teachers, doctors, day laborers, professors. They own businesses, clean school buildings, compose music, make sculptures, write poems. And all are dreamers.

From its dawning where did the majority of this country’s population come from? Where did it come from?

From other places, other countries! The exceptionalism of this country resides in that very fact!  In the respect and wonderment of difference.

Let her, let her who can produce a birth certificate immune to the waves of immigration to this county, speak to the grandeur of this land before it was bound to western laws.

Otherwise the road has been/is made by walking — together. Juntos. Together. Todos Juntos. All together.