JAKI SHELTON GREEN: APRIL AGAIN

I'm happy to feature my friend Jaki Shelton Green as the first poet in my celebration of National Poetry Month.


Please go to Carolina Wren Press to order Jaki's books.

Jaki says, "Yes Ma'am, those apple blossoms would look real good on my Mama's hat come Easter morning!

The bees are buzzing all around the apple tree.  The birds are singing.  Wish Jaki could sit under the tree with me and sing along.

Jaki's publications include Dead on Arrival, Masks, Conjure Blues, and breath of the song, which was cited as one of two Best Poetry Books of the Year by the Independent Weekly. Her poems have appeared in numerous magazines and journals, including Ms. Magazine, Essence, The Crucible, and Obsidian and she has performed her poetry and taught writing workshops throughout the United States, Caribbean, Europe, Central and South America. Her poetry has also been choreographed by groups such as African American Dance Ensemble, Two Near the Edge, and the ChoreoCollective, and awards include the North Carolina Award for Literature in 2003, 2006 Artist in Residence at the Taller Portobelo Artist Colony, and the 2007 recipient of the Sam Ragan Award.

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who will be the messenger of this land


by Jaki Shelton Green

who will be the messenger of this land
count its veins
speak through the veins
translate the language of water
navigate the heels of lineage
who will carry this land in parcels
paper, linen, burlap
who will weep when it bleeds
and hardens
forgets to birth itself

who will be the messenger of this land
wrapping its stories carefully
in patois of creole, irish,
gullah, twe, tuscarora
stripping its trees for tea
and pleasure
who will help this land to
remember its birthdays, baptisms
weddings, funerals, its rituals
denials, disappointments,
and sacrifices

who will be the messengers
of this land
harvesting its truths
bearing unleavened bread
burying mutilated crops beneath
its breasts

who will remember
to unbury the unborn seeds
that arrived
in captivity
shackled, folded,
bent, layered in its
bowels

we are their messengers
with singing hoes
and dancing plows
with fingers that snap
beans, arms that
raise corn, feet that
cover the dew falling from
okra, beans, tomatoes

we are these messengers
whose ears alone choose
which spices
whose eyes alone name
basil, nutmeg, fennel, ginger,
cardamom, sassafras
whose tongues alone carry
hemlock, blood root, valerian,
damiana, st. john's wort
these roots that contain
its pleasures its languages its secrets

we are the messengers
new messengers
arriving as mutations of ourselves
we are these messengers
blue breath
red hands
singing a tree into dance

© Jaki Shelton Green




wishing

razor blades did not
slash rainbows
hands did not
steal light from the dawn
prayers spoken in tongues did not
dissolve into silk pocket linings
air could be bartered
for fire
war could reinvent itself
as a prayer of silence



paper dolls

for darnell arnoult

perhaps
it is the joy of tomato sandwiches
the smell of jergens and jean nate
at thirteen
or our love still for grandmothers aunts
who enter rooms
largely sideways
hips broad enough
to use as sideboards
maybe it is the value
we place on duke's mayonnaise
the sandwich spread for queens . . .

whatever wherever and for ever more
we are little girls
revisiting space
rebuilding houses
renaming mothers . . .

perhaps it is the secret
knotted inside the pleats of skirt hems
sewn along scarf edges
fringed secret whispers
that whisper a familiar smell . . .

whatever we become
sisters
stealing a moment
to cast word spells
undress our mothers
repaint their lips with anything red anything italian
drench their heads with ancient clairol wisdom
anoint their hands with herstorical bronze
queen of the nile henna . . .

we reembrace
lace
full petticoats
white linen skirts
sailor dresses
patent leather

for the pretty pirates
swans
ballerinas
we will become . . ..

perfumed necks
wrists adorned
in vintage memory
cut carefully
along the edges
of this madness
this magic . . .

we lie down
and wait for the moon
to trace us.



i know the grandmother one had hands

i know the grandmother one had hands
but they were always in bowls
folding, pinching, rolling the dough
making the bread
i know the grandmother one had hands
but they were always under water
sifting rice
blueing clothes
starching lives
i know the grandmother one had hands
but they were always in the earth
planting seeds
removing weeds
growing knives
burying sons
i know the grandmother one had hands
but they were always under
the cloth
pushing it along
helping it birth into
skirt
dress
curtains to lock out
night
i know the grandmother one had hands
but they were always inside
the hair
parting
plaiting
twisting it into rainbows
i know the grandmother one had hands
but they were always inside
pockets
holding the knots
counting the twisted veins
holding onto herself
lest her hands disappear
into sky
i know the grandmother one had hands
but they were always inside the clouds
poking holes for the
rain to fall.



eva/jaki/ivory/imani/eva

in the season of rising up in the morning
granddaughters give new meaning
to great day in the sky
sky with small
fists, pinching clouds
reshaping stars
into skirts
wearing moon shadows like capes
we turn raindrops into buttons
stitch hair balls along the hems of
dresses
fire dresses
new granddaughters
wear new earth clothes
spell their name sistuh
prepare new warriors
to prepare new earths
check skirts for hems lined with hail dust
never admitting to treason

POET OF THE WEEK: ANDREA SELCH

Only one week into May, and I'm missing April. Not the busy schedule of National Poetry Month--the literary festivals, the readings, the travel. I'm missing the way that month nudges the green up, everything promising ascendance, if not transcendence. I want April back again, so as we head into the second week of May, dogwoods already done for, redbuds gone, daffodils shriveled, I offer some poems by Andrea Selch, several of them set in April. They are love poems, as spring poems should be, and in their emotional and lyric movement, they remind me of one of my favorite of Robert Frost's line, "Nature's first green is gold"; like that first green, they seem to tremble as they reach out into the sensuous promise of new love. New life. They call back to my ears my first reading of Carol Ann Duffy's Rapture, a book that brilliantly renders the pleasures and uncertainties of falling in love. Andrea's poems are no less passionate and memorable than the more famous ones by Duffy, the UK's first woman Poet Laureate. Their craft and emotional intensity place them among the best love poems being written right now.

Andrea holds an MFA from UNC-Greensboro, and a PhD from Duke University, where she taught creative writing from 1999 until 2003. Her dissertation was a history of poetry on commercial radio in the United States from 1922 until 1945. Her poems have been published in Calyx, Equinox, The Greensboro Review, Oyster Boy Review, Luna, The MacGuffin, and Prairie Schooner. Her poetry chapbook, Succory, was published by Carolina Wren Press in 2000. Her full-length collection of poetry,Startling, was runner-up in the 2003 Turning Point competition and was published by Turning Point Press in October, 2004. [Startling was re-issued by Cockeyed Press in 2009.] Her most recent small collection, Boy Returning Water to the Sea: Koans for Kelly Fearing, was published in 2009 by Cockeyed Press. She is the winner of 2008 Hippo Award from The Monti for her spoken story, "Replacement Child." In 2001, she joined the board of Carolina Wren Press and is now President and Executive Director. She lives in rural Hillsborough, North Carolina, with her partner and their two children.

All of Selch's books may be ordered through the Carolina Wren Press website or Amazon.

Thinking of Robert Frost’s “To Earthward”

As I remember them, our first attempts

at love were superhuman—how many

waking hours, how few of sleep!

Back then we didn’t bother with a clock,

but let our bodies’ hungers beat out time.

Mere mortals now, we manage

maybe once a week to catch each other

lying down. Yet—I reason—

through such breaks flows love’s finest grain.

Good Friday at Another Academic Conference (2002)

Once, when each new morning brought her only

abstract dread and desperation, she loved

the trips away—the anxious packing, up

until all hours, gathering tiny padlocks,

teabags, nailclippers... and then the plane ride’s

private sadness, the solace of squirreling

so many packets of non-dairy creamer away,

and, later still, the passionate sameness

of the hotel room she couldn’t bring herself

to leave, when the conference finally ended.

Now, her heart unlocked, she hates them—even though

these days she hasn’t half an hour

to steep herself in joy’s real cream and cool,

or nail the final sentence in her speech.

How things came together she couldn’t have known,

but she accepts them, and dies to get back home.

Second Anniversary - At RDU International (1996)

Again along the airport road

the dogwood trees are blossoming.

Between the green pines, this year’s petals

snow and shiver, bringing winter into spring.

And though I know a week from now the clusters

will have flown, I love them all the same,

the same as I love you who’s always

going, going, or gone.

Or, I should say I love you more;

since unlike the flowers you needn’t reappear,

but contrive to do so—Oh and here you are!—

again, almost the same.

Easter Sunday (1987)

It was one of those green days

when there is no sun

or shadow.

At dinner

you were coy—

ochre-eyed—

circling me

like a cat.

Without speaking, we ate,

then scattered.

I went for a walk

and seesawed

in the kiddie park

with strangers

and came back.

You came back

about the same time

and we went for a drive.

On a highway

that was blue-black,

empty, and smooth

as a train track,

we talked the scarred talk

of lonesome ex-lovers,

and the car warmed up.

At your house,

my lips pressed you down

by the mouth; the bed

was rumpled, cool.

You said, “Don’t think,”

but I didn’t mind

thinking about it—

it was fevered and trembly,

like traveling unfamiliar territory,

yellow as no sun ever was.

Then you slept

curled fetal

and I went next door

to make sense of things.

And after this poem,

I can only remember I dreamt

of making a huge pot of white rice

and Monday dawned

colorless,

but filled with the noise

of a thousand birds.

THE GIFT OF POETRY FOR THE HOLIDAYS: Nancy Simpson's "Living Above the Frost Line"

December first and time to begin to think seriously about holiday gift-giving! Over the next two weeks I will be making recommendations for poetry lovers--and for those who think they don't like poetry but will change their minds once they read these books.

I will begin with my longtime friend and sister in the art, Nancy Simpson, whose Living Above the Frost Line: New and Selected Poems was published this fall by Carolina Wren Press. It's a beautiful, elegant book, with French flaps (a shawl-like dust jacket/cover) and cover image that is gorgeous. Just click on the image above to enlarge and see what I mean.

What's inside is even more beautiful, the better part of a poet's lifetime of work, illuminating in its passion for place and, yes, peace in the midst of so much ongoing war. I have known Nancy's work for over 3 decades, and my regard for her work shows, I hope, in the introduction I wrote for this book, a portion of which follows.

Nancy Simpson has enriched the literary community of North Carolina for over thirty years. Her work was first heralded by the late Richard Hugo when he read and celebrated her poems at the Callanwolde Literary Festival in Atlanta, shortly after she began to show her poetry around to friends and readers in the far reaches of western North Carolina. He praised her rich inner life and her ability to give expression to it as it manifested itself in her everyday life. Whether driving over the Nantahala Gorge in “Night Student,” expressing the complexity of self in “Driven into the interior,” or documenting the carnage of the first Gulf War in “Voices from the Fringe,” she brings the inner and outer worlds of her experience into a harmony that resonates like the current giving voice and shape to the mountain creeks she loves. Living Above the Frost Line: Selected and New Poems traces the growth of a poet determined to survive despite the obstacles raised by age, mortality, and the inevitable losses that come from being alive in this world. Through her poetry she greets that half-drowned woman, harking from her Florida girlhood, who appears as her muse in “Bridge On the River Kwai, “ bearing gifts of memory and sustaining images. In return the poet gives her “a mountain, the safest place to be.” Rarely has the relationship between poet and muse been so beautifully expressed.

Nancy, on the porch of her Cherry Mountain home.

I'm delighted to be able to offer several of my favorite poems.

Tanfastic

At 12:17 this Sunday

he is uninhibited

in front of God and

everybody traveling

I-75 South, a man

lounging in the bed

of his red pickup truck.

He is getting his tan

the fast way, 80 mph

stretched out

on his chaise lounge,

his black bikini

drawing the sun down.

He is holding a blue

tumbler in his hand.

I can only guess

what he is drinking.

I want to make a pass,

I mean, get past him

in this god-awful traffic.

I want to see

the face of the woman

at the steering wheel

who is taking him for a ride.

The Gleaners

In the last days of the age

word went out that women

therefore must be allowed

to participate in creation.

And there came forth an artist

calling to us, Come hither!

In the center of a cornfield

in Brasstown Valley,

she sculpted an assembly

of corn women. She fashioned

husk bodies, worked six days

making in her image. She dressed

the corn women in gauze gowns

and entwined eglantine in their

cornsilk hair. Come hither!

We entered the cornfield,

our capes waving

in the evening breeze. We

circled the corn women,

lit a circle of small fires

and danced in firelight.

In the morning we came forth

to sculpt, to paint, and to write

the story that is left to tell.

Looking For the Sons of My House

I am looking for the sons of my house,

grown from babies into boys,

three of them with dark brown eyes.

Where are they now? The one

who brought a snake down the hall

into my room. The one who

had to fall off the porch, to test every rule?

The young one who flew half-way

around the world to be my son?

Their bikes are wrecked, tossed

in the landfill with their outgrown shoes.

One day I saw they were no longer boys but men,

the one who drove me to night class in Asheville

when he was a teen, the same one

I stood with as mother of the groom.

Where are they now?

One whistles on a hillside, feeds his dogs.

One is stuck in rush-hour traffic, stuck

in a marriage I blessed. The young one

climbs today on a mountain in Switzerland.

All of them far from the mother house.

Skin Underwater

1.

From the top of the mountain we see

Town Valley submerged in clouds.

You say the word ‘ocean’ and a gull

flies from the branch of an oak,

squawks his squawk.

I know a lie when I see one.

Seagulls do not live in the mountains.

It is the woodpecker men call extinct,

alive, soaring above oaktops.

Now driving through fog in the valley

you show me things not seen before.

Men are swimming on the courthouse lawn.

Women stare fish-eyed from their gardens,

their mouths turned up.

2.

Barnacles collect on the pier.

Count one for every life you were young:

the schoolgirl, mute,

who spoke only underwater

hoping no one could decipher.

In water memories converge.

Shell is sharp to touch.

Seaweed is soft as hair, and skin

is the large sensor. Skin

keeps its own record of the day

you slit your forearm, diving

into green ocean at South Beach.

Look how barnacles bashed by waves

hold on. Some are encased in stone.

They could cut you bloody, Girl.

3.

Looking back I see my mother

was misinformed, promised an abortion

though it was illegal, five doctors

dead sure I was damaged, and certain

she would die if she gave birth.

She did sort of die, seeing me hideous

in her dream, seeing a ball of hair

bouncing in the room, in the afternoon

when she tried to rest.

I heard from her lips

how she fell down praying.

My mother was devout. I knew

she could not kill. Don’t you see?

I was in the best possible position.

A voice from a dream

Sleep again.

Dream yourself

on the north bank of the river

inconspicuous as deadwood.

Drift ashore

where grass glows at sunrise,

where light is found all day.

Dream a new body.

a blue robe, and you

walking home.

We stand over the carcass of a jellyfish.

It has given up the ghost, grown opaque.

Moon Jelly, I say, we knew you when

you lit the sky of the underworld.

And we count out loud the lines on its body

as if in counting we might learn

how long it lived in the ocean.

Gulls show interest in our arithmetic.

They circle. They fly down

to the sound of our voices.

Are we going to reach the end

of the island? Are we moving in a circle?

Light-headed we walk.

6.

It interests me seeing

the hermit scuttle away

with a moon shell for a new house.

Look how furrows of silt create

a frontal lobe. We are walking,

don’t you think, on gray matter?

I will always say yes

to almost everything you ask. Yes,

it is possible to imagine

intelligence beneath our feet.

7.

Evening turns out just as imagined.

We walk the length of the beach

and lie on the sand. We enter

the surf, our bodies submerging.

In hearing distance of a wave’s yes,

earth is a woman with plans.

What She Saw and What She Heard

On the mountain a woman saw

the road bank caved in

from winter’s freeze-thaw

and April rain erosion.

Trees leaned over the road the way

strands of hair hung on her forehead.

She gaped, her face as tortured

as the face she saw engraved in dirt.

Roots growing sideways shaped brows,

two eyes. Humus washed

down the bank like a nose.

Lower down, where a rock

was shoved out by weathering,

a hole formed the shape of a mouth.

The woman groaned, Agh!

Her spirit toppled

to the ground, slithered

under the roots of an oak.

She stood there asking

What? Who?

Back to reason, back home

she finished her questions:

What can one make of the vision, that face

on the north side of the mountain?

Reckoning comes, a thought:

It is not the image of a witch nor a god,

but Earth’s face, mouth open saying,

Save me.

ALBANY STATE POETRY FESTIVAL: EVENING POETRY READING

The last evening of Albany State University's Poetry Festival featured Frank X Walker, Shirlette Ammons, doris davenport, and me. This event was held at the new Albany Welcome Center, a fine facility for the arts. I arrived early so that I could sit outside and watch the children and families play in Turtle Park.




Shortly after the sun went down, folks began arriving in the upstairs auditorium.


My friend, artist Cindy Davis, was among them.

Dr. doris davenport, the genius behind the festival-- and its director-- welcomed the audience.

She asked me to read first, and of course I couldn't refuse. Here is one of the poems she liked.

First Presbyterian

Sitting in church every Sunday, I hated the hats
I had to wear. They were small things with net
attached. Or hard plastic fruit. They did not fit
and sometimes they fell into the aisle or my lap
if my mother had not pierced their velveteen
skins with hat pins she wove through my stiff
hair-sprayed hair. There was no way to scratch

my small soul through those hats. No way
I could sit through the sermons if not daydreaming
out of them, using the blank wall beside the piano
as movie-screen, imagining myself hatless, free
of my hair spray and beehive, my hair grown
miraculously long, trailing hat pins across
the small town, heading north toward what soon

would be Interstate. What happened next?
Let us pray, said the preacher and I came awake,
though I shut my eyes dutifully. What was
he saying that I should heed, who was this God
who knew everything? Why should I pull on a girdle
and hose for His sake and sit waiting for Him
to call? Just As I Am, we sang, closing the service.
My soul took a deep breath and walked out

(From Aretha's Hat: Inauguration Day 2006, copyright Kathryn Byer)

Shirlette Ammons entranced the crowd with her poems, among them, one of my favorites, from her collection Matching Skin, from Carolina Wren Press.

What is Grass?

All of it—
the tin roof on Trinity Avenue
where the clouds sit and scheme
a seventy-degree Durham
before the heat peaks

A neither bad nor good morning

The Britneys, the Burmese,
a track champion halved and veined,
criminal attempts at concerned media
scribed by typewriters with filthy keys when

We all have medals we should return

The grass is a mattress for our trampling
whisking us past overdue fines and late fees,
oh shits and honest-to-god forgets
as we beg to get clipped
like a thief preying on sickly screen doors
in the beam of broad daylight

—Courtesy of Carolina Wren Press and Shirlette Ammons

(Photo by Jeremy Lange)


(Shirlette talks with students after the reading. )

Frank X Walker began his reading by asking how many in the audience could sing the first stanza of Amazing Grace.

He chose Chasity to sing, and did she ever sing it!

>



Then Frank read his poem.


Amazing grace! how sweet the sound
That saved a wretch like me!
I once was lost, but now am found
Was blind, but now I see ...

It isn’t negro
but it is spiritual
it do speak to the power
of redemption
to power period
converting lost
to found creating sight
where there was none
but what sound could be
so powerfully sweet
sweet enough
to turn a wretched
slave-ship captain
into england’s most outspoken
abolitionist and songwriter

was it the splash of bodies
dragged kicking and screaming
jettisoned off decks
of ocean coral
was it the crack of the whip
or the popping sound bloody flesh makes
when a sizzling branding iron
breaks the skin

the sound of fear and confusion
below deck
muffled by the sound of rape up above

the sound of 609 beating hearts
sardined into a space for 300

amazing is to be lost and blind
and still the captain
a willing participant
in crimes against humanity

but what was that sound
that liberating release
granting pardons
for penitence undone?
what does forgiveness sound like?

Thro’ many dangers, toils and snares
I have already come ...

now every time you hear amazing grace
listen for john newton’s apology
his silent sobs seeking salvation
listen and hear
what healing sounds like

’Tis grace hath brought me safe thus far,
And grace will lead me home

(Photo by Tracy Hawkins)

(I pose with Chasity after the reading, to congratulate her for doing such a splendid job of singing! You can see doris in the background, looking on, obviously pleased with how successful the evening was.) Later I told Chasity that she could sing anything---blues, jazz, grand opera, gospel, country....etc. She couldn't stop smiling.

( The audience flocks to the book table.)

When the Welcome Center shut down, we headed for Orene Hall on the campus of ASU, where a memorable feast awaited us.

And, not long after, we were treated to a dance extravaganza onstage.



With Professor Davenport joining in!

This is the way to end a great day of poetry, don't you think?