Like Priceless Treasures Sinking in The Sand

Abstract

Like Priceless Treasures Sinking in The Sand Bernice Mbadugha (bio) After "America" by Claude McKay Like priceless treasures sinking in the sandTender infant in arms. Wide-eyed in schoolBunsen burner, basketball, doo wop bandMale to man. You cast your stakes in earth's poolToe dips, hard hurls, at times a perfect diveYou unlocked granite walls with calm and graceGales raged like giants—love-spurred: you surviveSun eclipsed rain. Rays of joy cleansed your faceTilting like corn or birth, you sculpted plansIn the vale of your mind. Hoisted black arms—Your grit mustered respect from peers and fansYou worked your craft like forebears worked their farmsYet, yet, yet, someone cut you down so cold—We, who live, shall not bolt, sit still, nor fold. [End Page 92] Bernice Mbadugha BERNICE MBADUGHA's poems appeared or are forthcoming in Drumvoices Revue, The Bread Loaf Journal, and several anthologies, most recently It'll Come Like the Rain Fallin'-A Tribute to Sonia Sanchez. Mbadugha earned an MA in English from Middlebury Bread Loaf School of English. Previously, she received a BA in Comparative Culture from University of California, Irvine. She attended Rutgers-New Brunswick Writers' Conferences, Writing in Place in Spartanburg, South Carolina, and the 2018 Bread Loaf Writers' Conference. Mbadugha taught high school English at a Psychiatric and Behavioral Health hospital in New Jersey, where she lives with her Ridgeback Billie. Copyright © 2021 Johns Hopkins University Press