Cave Canem Research Articles

What Are We Not For, and The Black Umbrella

What Are We Not For, and The Black Umbrella Tommye Blount (bio) What Are We Not For but to be brokenlike the deer resting on the side of the highway,in a bed made of its insides? Isn’t the scenealways the same—the rump and legsfrozen in one last kick? I, too, have lost my gaze,the grip of the wheel—like the one that plowed into the deer. Wheel, will—it’s all the same.And the ear does fail me at times,as it must have the deer that should have listened better.Francine, on the other end of the line,tells me I’m not listening; to listen to my body or I won’t last long. We neverlast long, do we? It all breaks—the line pulsing forward, the line pause, the long bone of it all. After all,I am a broken animal. I am brokeredin the name of the wheel. [End Page 18] The Black Umbrella Left in the car, the rain caught mewithout a prayer. Faith? Whereis faith’s shelter when one is beaten by rain, as if he is up to no good?I am up to no good. A liar,I left the umbrella in the car. It broke. The spokespointed the blameeverywhere else. The rain is revelation, I heard someone say once.What did I learn? I’m still a liar. There was no umbrellain the car, but it rained something awful out. From inside,I could see out the window. It was a small window—I mean time was short. The window was larger than I thought,big as a car. I don’t knowhow long the rain stayed in my mouth before I swallowed it. I tried to swallow,but there was no one there. I know the windowwas the size of a car because I crashed into it. It was rainingso bad that I couldn’t see. The umbrellawas black, good as new. Cell phone, I was reaching for the cell phone. It’s bad this time, the voicesaid before the call went dead. I didn’t see her,the one with the black umbrella. She was crossing the road. [End Page 19] There was a body in the road—collapsed like a broken umbrella. No, I was outsideon the ground. It was my body. The window was inside of me. Pieces of it. I swallowed rain and blooduntil help arrived. A womanbeneath a hole full of stars hovered over me. She called my name—or prayed? No, I couldn’t see a thing. [End Page 20] Tommye Blount Tommye Blount grew up in Detroit and is a graduate of Michigan State University’s advertising program. A Cave Canem fellowship recipient, he has published work in Collagist, Upstreet, Another & Another: An Anthology from the Grind Daily Writing Series, and Cave Canem Anthology XII. He is currently working on two manuscripts. Copyright © 2014 Middlebury College Publications

Meditation

Meditation Camille Dungy (bio) Sit quietly long enough and the river I hear will be the courseof my own blood. Everything I know I have to forget: the champ of lichenchewing down boulder and the unsustainable thrill of the spectrumat magenta and lapis, those and air’s heft, the oppression of fluorescence. Marrow,proximity, its loss: the world gives us too much, truly, to bear. Science says everythingmust quiet so we can continue. Rather, we must quiet everything. I hardly feel the cords I’ve worn so oftenI don’t notice anymore the stain from the time when my uncle swiveled from sinkto cupboard as he’d done daily seven decades, and failedto see me standing with a full cup. Forget it. It’s fine, I said. Distracted by the heat of surprise, practicallydancing, I reached around what I now rememberwas the heart and lung part of his body. I am remembering the muscles that built his body, but not what he said, not the texture of the towel I must have needed.I remember everyone laughing, evenMother, the sound of whose approaching steps I can’t recall. Mother chose maple for her brother’s coffin and, because she did not want us [End Page 495] to have to think about it, for her own. These things are true, but I don’t let them vex me most of the time. Let me bemore specific. The maple floorboards of that old house, their vibrancyprotected by a nearly impenetrable finish: I never thought about that floor. [End Page 496] Camille Dungy CAMILLE DUNGY is Professor of English at Colorado State University. She is author of three volumes of poems, Smith Blue, Suck on the Marrow (winner of the American Book Award in 2011), and What to Eat, What to Drink, What to Leave for Poison. She has edited three anthologies, Black Nature: Four Centuries of African American Nature Poetry, From the Fishouse: An Anthology of Poems That Sing, Rhyme, Resound, Syncopate, Alliterate, and Just Plain Sound Great, and Gathering Ground: A Reader Celebrating Cave Canem’s First Decade. Copyright © 2014 The Johns Hopkins University Press

Mosaic in Nine Lives

Mosaic in Nine Lives Ife-Chudeni A. Oputa (bio) I The pearl-sized hole in my sister’s arm is all that remains of our messy ritualafter she cuts and drains the perpetual blackhead that swelled in abscessto the size of a golf ball. The muck that oozes out reeks, has been buildingup beneath her skin for years, only a hint of it sputtering onto my thumbseach time I tried to push the puss out like a sigh, my fingers not nimble enoughto coax the body of its secrets. II When we are still young enough to find the same things wondrous, she teaches me to play dead. This is a drill we run: one of us going limp midsentence while the other runs for help or screamsuntil the dead one says Stop. III the neck bone’s connected to the head bonethe head bone’s connected to the jaw bonethe jaw bone knows to lock downwhen too much truth starts scratching. [End Page 320] IV I am 23 and it is spring, so I break open a new silence and pull queer out like hair from the throat— She is not surprised, says:as a girl, I had a dream where wewere lovers; what else could that mean? V A cocktail or twoand my sister is loose-lippedand earnest, pouts out storiesshe’s forgotten not to tell, will forgetshe’s told in the morning. VI We are women. We land in New York for New Year’s Eve.We walk down the airplane aisle andmy sister goes limp. VII My sister does not want to goto the emergency room,although she cannot zip her own shoes,she cannot walk, she cannot stand. We have not trained for this,so I recite the blackout backto her slumps in seat / eyes roll back / bottom lip slack / hrrrr [End Page 321] then to a flight attendant, two EMTs, our motherslumps in seat / eyes roll back / bottom lip slack / hrrrr a nurse, another nurse, a doctor, our fatherslumps in seat / eyes roll back / bottom lip slack / hrrrr hrrrr hrrrr The specialist shows us the blood clotseffloresced across her lungs like so manydandelion seeds, so many unspoken things. VIII The funny bone, though connected to the arm bone, is not a bone at all. It isthe nerve that after days sleeping upright beside my sister’s bed—head heavyatop my right fist, elbow compressed onto the corner of the armrest—radiates awarning down my forearm to my pinky and ring fingers to go numb, so that Icannot hold a pen or bend my arm or write at all. IX The body wants to be a private thing, this I understand:there are things I still won’t tell, even when she asks. [End Page 322] Click for larger view View full resolution Ife-Chudeni A. Oputa A. H. Jerriod Avant © 2013 [End Page 323] Ife-Chudeni A. Oputa Ife-Chudeni A. Oputa is currently pursuing an MFA in poetry and an MA in African American and African Diaspora Studies at Indiana University, Bloomington. She is a Cave Canem Fellow who has also attended the Callaloo Creative Writing Workshop. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in [PANK] online, Muzzle, and Kinfolks Quarterly. She is a native of Fresno, CA. Copyright © 2014 The Johns Hopkins University Press

Fifteen

Fifteen Lauren K. Alleyne (bio) I am writing from 29 to tell youwe live. I remember our dreams,the long white halls with no end,and how when we tried to imaginelife after high school, it was blankand solid as a grave. We thoughtthat meant there was no futurefor us, and practiced acceptingour absence from our own lives—no more best friendships, schooldances, no more yearning for boysto whom we were already invisible.Now, we are almost twice your age.The face we couldn’t envisage is yoursbut leaner, with shadows of momin its profile. In two years, we willstep on our first plane, and fallin love with flight. We will movelike wind across the world: weconjugate French class verbs in Parisand Nice; we follow Jesus to Bethlehemand Galilee; we have lived in placesyou do not yet know exist. I see nowthat it will all begin with you—the path away from home markedwith nothing, who could walk itbut the girl who has already made peace [End Page 120] with her own end? 15, looking back,I understand our quiet death-wait,the surprise of our persistent, daily waking:We never could have imagined this. [End Page 121] Lauren K. Alleyne Lauren K. Alleyne is a native of Trinidad and Tobago. She is a Cave Canem graduate and is currently the poet-in-residence and assistant professor of English at the University of Dubuque. Her work has appeared in several journals and anthologies, including Crab Orchard Review, Cimarron Review, Black Arts Quarterly, The Caribbean Writer, and elsewhere. She is the co-editor of From the Heart of Brooklyn, and her first collection of poems, Difficult Fruit (Peepal Tree P), is forthcoming. Copyright © 2013 University of Nebraska Press

What I Know about Blues and: The Museum

What I Know about Blues and: The Museum Cynthia Manick (bio) What I Know about Blues Yes.Yes I know butterflies can tastewith their feet.Blackberry vinegar or applewater can break a fever. Do you hear the sharp lengthof my mother’s tongue?Use every part of the fruitand stem, she’d say, don’t leaveanything behind. I know the skin of fish mackerelis softer than an eyelidand salt—the way it siftsthrough tips, it pileson a wife’s lap like gold. I know the aloe plant can fadeor fix any scar—chicken pox,a hand half open, a closed fistif the touch is light enough. I know how to hold a breath insideuse my body to sayI can be your ClementineI can be your sweet baby. And yes, I know how to name things.I’ve been called little lady, pickaninny,gel, mamacita, the black one,the big one, the dark one, woman,each name makes a map of me. The Museum People come here to be dazzled.To be swept into carefully labeledhistory of high yellow and dark skin,like the slow roll of hands steepedin trumpets, ivory keys or the bramblethorns of cotton. Loud speakers trailall visitors—did you know this oneinvented peanut butter? part of thelight bulb? oh and that lotionthat makes those old kinky strandscut straight from the root. [End Page 756] Some exhibits are more popularthan others. Novelty items likeAunt Jemima’s head scarf, yellowedslave bills of sale, basketball jerseys,mammy saltshakers, and Obamabobbleheads are high-volume areas.On the second floor timed to lightsand a smoke machine, a trio ofanimatronic colored girls singdoo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo, with plasticmulatto skin covering their nuts andbolts. Bobbed hairstyles and silkchiffon completes the Motownlook, but somehow they seemsolemn in the lights. Then there’s me—here she is,here is our last little darkie.You see the pigmentation here?We don’t let them get that darkthese days. If pain had a shapeit would be one giant muscle,it would be the sound the humanmind makes when you realizeyou don’t own a body anymore.I’ve been here for years now.I can’t remember the last timeI saw the sun or felt a taprootnext to my feet, or being in love,picking juniper berries so thick itstains my nails like blood comingclean. I often ask what God wantsfrom my face and empty body. When the crowds and tour groupsdisperse, my bones ache toslide side-by-side in the dark.Like the bison, dinosaurs, and ourblood brothers the Indians, you’ll findmy carcass in this museum—strings around my pelvis, and thinclear wires making my fluted bonesdance, say hi, in the last greatAfrican mammal display. [End Page 757] Cynthia Manick Cynthia Manick is a Pushcart-nominated poet and a Cave Canem Fellow. She holds an MFA in creative writing from the New School and her work has appeared in Callaloo, DMQ Review, Gemini Magazine, Kweli Journal, Muzzle Magazine, Sou’wester, Spillway, and elsewhere. Copyright © 2014 Cynthia Manick

RENEGADE POETICS, SOUTHSCAPES, AND THE POETRY OF HISTORY IN NATASHA TRETHEWEY'S THRALL

Previous articleNext article No AccessRENEGADE POETICS, SOUTHSCAPES, AND THE POETRY OF HISTORY IN NATASHA TRETHEWEY'S THRALL Evie Shockley, Renegade Poetics: Black Aesthetics and Formal Innovation in African American Poetry. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2011. Pp. 260. Paper $39.95. Thadious Davis, Southscapes: Geographies of Race, Region, and Literature. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2011. Pp. 438. Cloth $39.95. Natasha Trethewey, Thrall: Poems. New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2012. Cloth $23.00.Olga DuganOlga DuganOlga Dugan is a Cave Canem Fellow in Poetry and Lindback Professor of English at the Community College of Philadelphia, PA. Search for more articles by this author Olga Dugan is a Cave Canem Fellow in Poetry and Lindback Professor of English at the Community College of Philadelphia, PA.PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by The Journal of African American History Volume 98, Number 2Spring 2013African Americans, Police Brutality, and the U.S. Criminal Justice System: Historical Perspectives A journal of the Association for the Study of African American Life and History Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.5323/jafriamerhist.98.2.0304 Views: 42Total views on this site Copyright 2013 The Association for the Study of African American Life and HistoryPDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

Mule

Research Article| March 01 2013 Mule Glenis Redmond Glenis Redmond Glenis Redmond is a native of Greenville, South Carolina. She graduated from Erskine College and completed an MFA in Poetry at Warren Wilson College. She is a Cave Canem Fellow and an NC Literary Fellowship Recipient from the North Carolina Arts Council and a Kennedy Center Teaching Artist. Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Meridians (2013) 11 (2): 25–26. https://doi.org/10.2979/meridians.11.2.25 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Twitter Permissions Search Site Citation Glenis Redmond; Mule. Meridians 1 March 2013; 11 (2): 25–26. doi: https://doi.org/10.2979/meridians.11.2.25 Download citation file: Zotero Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search nav search search input Search input auto suggest search filter Books & JournalsAll JournalsMeridians Search Advanced Search The text of this article is only available as a PDF. Copyright © 2013 by Smith College2013 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal Issue Section: POETRY You do not currently have access to this content.

The Caretaker

Research Article| March 01 2013 The Caretaker Phillip B. Williams Phillip B. Williams Phillip B. Williams is a Chicago, Illinois native. Recently, he won Bloom's inaugural chapbook competition in poetry for his manuscript “Bruised Gospels.” He is a Cave Canem graduate and received a Bread Loaf work-study scholarship in 2011. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Callaloo, The Southern Review, Painted Bride Quarterly, Blackbird and others. Phillip is currently poetry editor of the online journal Vinyl Poetry. Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Meridians (2013) 11 (2): 205. https://doi.org/10.2979/meridians.11.2.205 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Permissions Search Site Citation Phillip B. Williams; The Caretaker. Meridians 1 March 2013; 11 (2): 205. doi: https://doi.org/10.2979/meridians.11.2.205 Download citation file: Zotero Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search Books & JournalsAll JournalsMeridians Search Advanced Search The text of this article is only available as a PDF. Copyright © 2013 by Smith College2013 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

If I am of rib marrow, boil me thin

Research Article| March 01 2013 [If I am of rib marrow, boil me thin] Phillip B. Williams Phillip B. Williams Phillip B. Williams is a Chicago, Illinois native. Recently, he won Bloom's inaugural chapbook competition in poetry for his manuscript “Bruised Gospels.” He is a Cave Canem graduate and received a Bread Loaf work-study scholarship in 2011. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Callaloo, The Southern Review, Painted Bride Quarterly, Blackbird and others. Phillip is currently poetry editor of the online journal Vinyl Poetry. Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Meridians (2013) 11 (2): 241. https://doi.org/10.2979/meridians.11.2.241 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Twitter Permissions Search Site Citation Phillip B. Williams; [If I am of rib marrow, boil me thin]. Meridians 1 March 2013; 11 (2): 241. doi: https://doi.org/10.2979/meridians.11.2.241 Download citation file: Zotero Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search Books & JournalsAll JournalsMeridians Search Advanced Search The text of this article is only available as a PDF. Copyright © 2013 by Smith College2013 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal Issue Section: POETRY You do not currently have access to this content.

Lynching Postcard

Lynching Postcard, and: Beyond the Bridge: A Lynched Woman Speaks Bianca Spriggs (bio) Lynching Postcard I want to imagine there is no rope hankeringfor a brown woman's throat—the asterismthat was her voice. Next, that her arches reston something as firm yet giving as loam.There is no faceless mob. No ambivalenttree line. No sepia stream below. No proverbs.No promised land—My God—what is leftfor her but an absence of light? Whose ancestorcould she possibly be now? I want to reachfor her ring-finger hand. I want to tidy her hair.Button her sleeves. Smooth the wrinkles fromher dress. Set the angle of her head back to whereher spine has not yet given way to the pressureof hand-rolled hemp and gravity's blurred desire.I want to open her eyes. Tell her one-hundredyears later that she should have been born a gustof cobalt, a blue ember against the graniteswathe of sky, that she hangs on still as morethan a souvenir. [End Page 137] Beyond the Bridge: A Lynched Woman Speaks You wait in line alongwith everyone else,and what a body woreas flesh when they was alivedon't matter in the line.Take me—a black galfrom Kentucky with bare feetand somethin strung aroundher neck that won't falloff, not even in death,could be ahead of someoneimportant like a general.Dead folks don't talk much.Only thing on our mindis the last thoughtwe had before we died:our kinfolk, the windowwe left open on accident,our favorite color of sky,how we never imaginedwe'd die in the dirt.No matter what you askus to make conversation,we'd just say somethinthat don't match, like—I coulda given Miriamthat extra spoonfulof molasses last weekon her biscuit.And that's the main thoughtthat stays with us always.But mostly we just standinin line tryna rememberother little details like howone kinda fabric feel differentfrom another.You know, that it's burlap,not silk that's rough.At the front of the line,everyone get handedthey own piece of luggage. [End Page 138] Inside little objectsfrom over your whole lifeadd up to cluesto wherever youposteda go next:Piece of patchworkfrom your mama's quilt.Spray of flowersfrom your beau.Coupla bobby pins.Framed portraitwith the cracked glass.Mother a pearl cufflinkyou thought you'd lost.Letter you never mailedto your sister.If you can piece itall together, all them littleshards you neverthought to pay muchmind to or forgot to notice,if you can figurewhat the worldwas tryna tell you all along,you get to move on towhatever come next.Only problem is,you been waitin in lineforgettin just about everythingyou ever did know.So you gotta head backthe way you come,start nosin aroundfor clues from the livin.But it mighta been fiveyears or five hundredsince you been back.Things move around so fastwhen you get outta line.Kinfolk gone,moved on,or dead.House soldor knocked downfor somethin new.Streets change. [End Page 139] Land dipswhere it usedta dive.Even the stars'll burnout if you wait.Sometimes,when you get a little shiverfor no real reason,a rash of goosefleshlike someone run a new leafbetween your shoulder blades,don't worry none.It's just one of uswayfarin haints,shufflin around, waitinfor somethin that'll leadus to whatever bridgewill let us cross to anywherebut from wherewe already been. [End Page 140] Bianca Spriggs Affrilachian Poet and Cave Canem Fellow, Bianca Spriggs is a multidisciplinary artist who lives and works in Lexington, Kentucky. Bianca is a recipient of the 2013 Al Smith Individual Artist Fellowship in Poetry and multiple grants from the Kentucky Foundation for Women, and has been a Pushcart Prize Nominee. In partnership with the Kentucky Domestic Violence Association...

Writing Love: Into a New Correspondence with Ourselves

Writing LoveInto a New Correspondence with Ourselves Lyrae Van Clief-Stefanon (bio) Click for larger view View full resolution Lyrae Van Clief-Stefanon Callaloo © 2012 [End Page 582] I live where it’s grey: Ithaca, NY, “a place full of winters.” Each year—is it always in fall?—I travel to some settled upon black lit space to confer with black people whose minds and bodies I love. I travel with my heart, who calls herself Dagmawi and walks on legs and laughs and encourages all my naughtiness; my heart, himself joy, who in the car asks me why it is again trees change colors in fall, so that I must remind myself the process by which maple leaves blush, spent of chlorophyll, full of sugar after photosynthesis stops. Each year in the between-stillness of fall, love discovers itself. Writing Purchase, writing Coal Tar Colors, I arrive in Princeton to the hover of a published love letter (and Black letters) as though to a vodka-soaked tune, to find myself necessarily and beautifully, masterfully unsettled. (And Billie slurs “There is nothing left for me to save.”) Errant again, because, half-crowing “But that was mine! That was for me!”— the love letter, I mean—slurring toward possession and law— wanting to save them for myself—I rehearse materials: parchment, of which I spoke to my heart; parchment on which I penned a reply. But why wasn’t my first impulse to dance across letters aslant like a flurry of yellow leaves across the empty space above a street? “Yes,” the author of my love letter teases. “You femme girls want everything.” So why not strut too that chagrin? That is, both skins: the one surface roughed to rub, to polish; the other dressed to take ink. If black life is public property, by Purchase, I meant to write myself onto the walls of the house I own. And searching the cure for some other woe, uncover the pink trying to be purple in processed coal. In the black veins biographies of mauve. Each year, I intend not to shame that part of myself that walks apart from me: that is, you [End Page 583] because “our world is full of sound/our world is more lovely than anyone’s.” The love letter began, “How dare I?” Beyond that, to move us, no incantation’s set. How dare we but publicly love each other, like this, home? [End Page 584] Lyrae Van Clief-Stefanon Lyrae Van Clief-Stefanon, an associate professor at Cornell University, is author of two books of poems, Black Swan (winner of 2001 Cave Canem Prize) and Open Interval (a finalist for the 2009 National Book Award); and co-author, with Elizabeth Alexander, of Poems in Conversation and a Conversation. Her poems have also appeared in a number of periodicals and anthologies, including African American Review, Callaloo, Crab Orchard Review, Ploughshares, Rattapallax, Shenandoah, Roll Call, Gathering Ground, The Ringing Ear, and Angles of Ascent. Copyright © 2013 The Johns Hopkins University Press

Notesofasoulfulson

Notesofasoulfulson avery r. young (bio) Click for larger view View full resolution [End Page 248] Click for larger view View full resolution [End Page 249] Click for larger view View full resolution [End Page 250] Click for larger view View full resolution [End Page 251] Click for larger view View full resolution [End Page 252] avery r. young avery r. young, a 2012 3Arts Teaching Artist Awardee and Cave Canem Fellow, is a writer, performer, and visual artist whose work has been appeared in AIMPrint, Coon Bidness, and other anthologies. Recently, as an artist-in-residence at The University of Chicago, young completed a collection of sound designs that will be featured on his first full-length album “booker t. soltreyne:a race rekkid.” Copyright © 2013 Mid-America American Studies Association

For the Sky, in Which You Will One Day, Belong

For the Sky, in Which You Will One Day, Belong Ronaldo V. Wilson (bio) You had it coming surely, Surely, Surely, You had it coming surely. —Gwendolyn Brooks, “Ballad of Pearl May Lee” In this poem, a body is “gotten tomorrow,” snatched, caught up—in these streets, a chimp, firing screams, ripping off a mouth. Where did you get caught, where you got caught? In the face, you thought you had it all. What will come is a door. Open up. In your palm, come eat at my table. What you see is how you burn. Sometimes you have to make up your own map. Sometimes the body has to be told, angle after angle, you are not wanted to recall that when they sit around the tables, your wings, they start to molt. You realize, those birds are dead in the nest. Those birds are dead in their fields. The dark in your corner is in your corner. Say, Convince, Cut. [End Page 244] Ronaldo V. Wilson Ronaldo Wilson is author of two volumes of poems, Narrative of the Life of the Brown Boy and the White Man, winner of the Cave Canem Poetry Prize, and Poems of the Black Object, winner of the Thom Gunn Award and the Asian American Literary Award in Poetry. Co-founder of the Black Took Collective, Wilson is also a visiting assistant professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Copyright © 2013 The Johns Hopkins University Press

Dear Nina Simone

Dear Nina Simone Lenard D. Moore (bio) Your alto lifts me,flutters the wildness out,sends me flying upstairsto my lady this rainy night."Wild Is the Wind" whipsaws;your voice sails.I know how you blast.I press the same track,listen again, again, again,as if this lunar houris the feather I lost. [End Page 163] Lenard D. Moore Lenard D. Moore is the author of A Temple Looming (WordTech Editions) and other books. He has received fellowships from Cave Canem and Soul Mountain Retreat, and is a recipient of the Margaret Walker Creative Writing Award. He is the founder and executive director of the Carolina African American Writers' Collective. His poems, essays, reviews, and fiction have appeared in more than four hundred publications, including AGNI, Callaloo, Colorado Review, and North Dakota Quarterly. His poetry has appeared in more than fifty anthologies, including The Bedford Introduction to Literature (Bedford/St. Martin's). He teaches at Mount Olive College. Copyright © 2012 University of Nebraska Press

Civil Rights Cold Case #8 (Or a Christmas Premonition)

Civil Rights Cold Case #8 (Or a Christmas Premonition) Lolita Stewart-White (bio) I In the photo on the FBI reward poster Mrs. Moore’s hair is pulled away from her face like a curtain, revealing her suspicions. Her mouth is held as firmly as when she teaches her colored pupils their ABCs. Shifted to the right, her eyes look past the shimmer of Christmas gifts. Past the sparkle of ornaments that decorate a freshly cut spruce. Past the glare of a camera’s flash; past the moment when she is beckoned to smile though she knows death is coming. II Early Christmas morning, a bomb ticks beneath floorboards of the home her husband built. She stirs and looks at Harry once more. Death wraps around them, a quilt exploding like sunrise in a darkened sky. [End Page 896] Lolita Stewart-White Lolita Stewart-White, a Cave Canem fellow, is a winner of the Fred Shaw Poetry Contest of the Academy of American Poets, as well as a semi-finalist in the Boston Review Discovery Poetry Competition. She has published poems in Rattle, African Voices, and Iowa Review. Her films have been exhibited at the Los Angeles Pan African Film and Arts Festival and the Seattle Langston Hughes’s African-American Film Festival. Most recently she was named the winner of “Pitch Miami” sponsored by the Women’s International Film Festival. Footnotes * For Harriette and Harry Moore, Civil Rights Activists of Mims, Florida, 1951. Copyright © 2013 The Johns Hopkins University Press

I'll Tell You about Speaking in Tongues, and: A Shaker Speaks to the Invisible, and: Octoroon, and: Her

I'll Tell You about Speaking in Tongues, and: A Shaker Speaks to the Invisible, and: Octoroon, and: Her Roxane Beth Johnson (bio) I'll Tell You about Speaking in Tongues I faked it. Spoke some gibberish. Hated the preacher, who was my grandmother, how she made me stay down on my knees, say thank you, Jesus until I was delirious, clap my hands to the beat. Having more than one tongue scared me, for that was how I saw it—not the Holy Ghost speaking through me but moving me like an animal to slay me, putting an invisible tongue inside me. Mine felt too big already—an enormous egg in my mouth: always saying things I got hit for, things my mother said she oughta cut my tongue out for. So, at church I turned some words inside out, made them negative, reverse. My father knew it, told it like he saw it: your mouth is the Lord's, girl! I could see Jesus' hand holding that frightened blackbird that was my tongue, but I knew He didn't need it. Mary washed His feet with her hair and spoke not a single word. When I kiss you, sometimes you hold my tongue between your teeth as if you are the one who really needs it. Soft as a psalm yours is and mine, just that old bird now bright with flecks of fire. You are the only one I've ever let have it. A Shaker Speaks to the Invisible My box and broom are not finer than my faith; my prayers unmade are better than the slender seams of my clock. I know wood's moan and ring all day. I dream myself as a tambourine in hand. My friend, there is no morning lacking a tonic loveliness; no night without its apocalypse. Monotony's drumbeat I play out with what I've got: pith, thistle, and knife. What I build has the [End Page 103] beauty of sparrows pecking frozen ground. It is my salvation, my cross, my song. I once loved the daughters; longed to lick my salty deeds. These chairs I make are my repentance. The spirit in them is revelation, the coming harvest, my need. The evening silence is the only god I know. Like dust occupying sun, He settles. Let the daughters sing. Their voices sand my heart down to a seed. Octoroon Called also an octoroon. As a girl, thought that was some bird. Purple-feathered lyrebird with a parrot-hard beak. I became the bird in the backyard, behind mother's gladioli where tiny frogs scattered over mud. Wings spouted from shoulders like a backwards beard. Some bearded iris. Toes hardened, curved into claws. Could I fly? Was I for show like a dumb grouse? Took years to uncover. Meantime, I molted. Colored myself in. As an octoroon, by nature nested far from home but longed for it always hence my terrible song. Getting older, adapt to the air and become like other birds, but odd. The tips of my feathers incendiary. When I finally fly toward home, I'll set that old city on fire. [End Page 104] Her She came in one night, hours after you'd left. An owl in my room, stones in my chest. I thought the heavy houseplant was her flowering head but was just a wing. She had swallowed you whole as an owl does, then spat your bones at my feet. Coiled and precious, strange funereal thing. [End Page 105] Roxane Beth Johnson Roxane Beth Johnson is the recipient of a Pushcart Prize as well as fellowships from the MacDowell Colony, Cave Canem, and the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference. Her first book of poetry is Jubilee (Anhinga). Her work has also appeared in The Pushcart Prize Anthology, Georgia Review, Image, Callaloo, and elsewhere. Copyright © 2011 University of Nebraska Press

Bonfire Monument

Bonfire Monument Carlo Paul (bio) Over the years, Texas A&M bonfires rounded up Aggies in town like a home-cooked Thanksgiving. Around Novembers, it was their birthright to create another golden Mona Lisa from scratch and stack it 4 stories tall, in a breathless spiraling cake of timber that drew awe-struck crowds like moths towards a flame; a triumph that towered a radius of 25 miles for 90 years. But, it is far more compelling to exhibit an art that cries for young lives lost in tragedy. I paid my respects, left money to rest among the other coins laid on top of a gray marker fixed squarely on their heartache. And I felt like a part of the maroon inner-circle, swallowed by a somber round of 12 perfect standing rectangles that loomed like open doorways, marking each of the victim’s lives, all gone; yet all leaving behind distinct caskets of long afternoon shadows over the grass. [End Page 714] Carlo Paul Carlo Paul is a graduate of the University of Maryland, College Park, where his work first appeared in campus periodicals Stylus and Eclipse. His work also appears in Cave Canem’s anthologies, including Gathering Ground: A Reader Celebrating Cave Canem’s 10th Anniversary. Copyright © 2011 The Johns Hopkins University Press

Confessions of a Pseudo-Nature Writer

Confessions of a Pseudo-Nature Writer Amber Flora Thomas (bio) I am standing at the corner of 30th and Madison Avenue in New York City in October 2006. I hold a cup of hot coffee to my nose and inhale deeply, a yawn escaping before I can press a polite hand over my gaping mouth. I left my wintery home in Fairbanks, Alaska, only yesterday, a seventeen hour journey from which I have not recovered, though I am pleased to be a guest reader at the 10th Anniversary Celebration for the Cave Canem Foundation. I have been thinking about the poems I will read tonight, when my attention is drawn toward a drainage grill at the curb, a graceful piece of orange and black trash floating up and forward easily. Someone next to me says, “Oh, a butterfly,” and then I see the detailed lining of black which masks each wing in an eye: a monarch. It is hard for me to believe in the middle of rushing traffic this butterfly finds something of interest worth lingering for, the fraud of some woman’s flowery perfume, perhaps? I start across 30th and the monarch, too, is headed for the west side of the street; he rises and falls between legs, purses, and shopping bags; other people gaze with admiration at the novelty of this creature in an otherwise human-congested intersection. Coffee sloshes out of the plastic lid and I suck at the foam and milky brown richness. Luck permeates my being; the butterfly must be a sign of good things to come. He makes his way to the window of a Starbuck’s café and hovers for a moment, before turning away. In the updraft of a man tucking earphones into a pocket, he is almost struck by a skateboard under a teenager’s arm. I follow him for half a block and decide I don’t want to see him done in by a shoe or flung haphazardly against a taxi’s windshield. Hoping he will find his way to Central Park or some haven of trees and less human chaos, I head back towards my room at the Gershwin Hotel on East 27th to call home and check on my house and pets. I have made my mind up to read all new poems at the celebration tonight. I hope my friends and colleagues will not be disappointed with another series of poems primarily focused in nature, specifically a series of poems about watching my father butcher rabbits as a child. I hope no one will be disappointed that yet again my poems do not deal explicitly with race and ethnicity. I suddenly feel like a cheat among so many poets making important new advances in the African American literature. These are the poets and writers defining black experience for a new generation of readers and critics. I am still conflicted and angry about my mixed heritage; the constant questions I ask myself about which part of me belongs to which history and race. I will at least read a poem about watching a swarm of bees attack two white men in the woods when I was sixteen. This is an important poem I finished over the summer at the Cave Canem retreat while sitting under a gazebo and watching two cardinals tussle in a tree. I have wanted to write about growing up in rural northern California as a black [End Page 778] person of mixed heritage. Maybe this poem says enough about how I feel about my race: my father African American Ojibwa and Jewish, and my mother Irish German. I was lonely in the confusion of my skin color. I felt the world was dangerous, and the woods were no place for a girl like me, though I went into the woods each chance I got and found some magic worth the risk. Yes, I will read this poem to show that I do know how to talk about my experience from the context of racial identity. I am not really a nature writer, merely a child of rural landscapes, farm animals, and an endless parade of pets. The human infiltrates my poems of...

Cus

Cus Kahn Santori Davison (bio) I’m not happy being victorious. I fight my heart out and give it my best, but when it’s over, there’s no Cus to tell me how I did, no mother to show my clippings to. —Mike Tyson The first punch I ever threw was out of fear. When you’re a two hundred pound mamma’s boy with a fondness for pigeons and good night kisses, people tease you. But after that punch, I found myself. I learned that if I could make a man’s jaw buckle, I could make him respect me and give me his wallet. Mamma prayed for me ‘til the blood in her legs clotted and her heart stopped. Then came Cus. He cared the way mamma did. I can still feel his gangly fingers, massaging my back through sweat, and scars that had nothing to do with boxing. He saw my fear, smiled, “Fear is like fire Mike. If you can control it, you can use it to heat your home, but if you can’t, it will destroy you.” He’s gone too. I’m still scared, screaming, like a man doused with sulfur, while I swing, and swing, and swing, hoping one day to set the world a blaze. [End Page 1035] Kahn Santori Davison Kahn Santori Davison, a Cave Canem Fellow, has published in the Baltimore Review, Litchfield Review, and X-Bout (in the UK). He is a freelance journalist for the Michigan Metro Times and a full-time photographer. He lives in Detroit. Copyright © 2011 The Johns Hopkins University Press

"No map or directions"

"No map or directions"* Dawn Lundy Martin (bio) . . . Or forest or company. Or other unchecked situations. As a result, some heretofore unknown architecture in place of our weapons of security? All expertise slips off the ledge. Deception is often a reciprocal activity. When desire is not produced by what you don't have. What happens in the space between the figure and what is cast. When I'm a woman there are all these women saying opening is very transgressive. In any event, the car needed jumper cables and I had some. All pissy and seething on the side of the road it was. It didn't work, in the end. What it must be like wearing a sweatshirt on a deck in the middle of July. Shedding a prescribed melancholy right in front of everyone. I mumbled some names under my breath. Months of not giving into it, and then without warning on full blast.So easy. Moths not giving in, escaping into wingfly like shadows. Of reticence and maybe October. October seems like light years away. We'd be excellent martyrs, you and I. A proximity so close you can touch it. [End Page 20] Everyone's leaning into fist, hard, pressing on it and everyone's saying Like a Kamikaze takes flight!, and we're all sifting down to earth in these small significant bits, hamming it up trying to make ourselves larger, and we're laughing. If I had a father I'd say Dad. My God, every morning before morning we wake and wonder why we're awake. In this kind of purgatorial rage. Roar is an instinct I can't get out of. Right smack in the middle I hear someone say something about love and there are only fleeting attempts at annihilation. I love you says the voice. I don't care how sentimental this all is. [End Page 21] Dawn Lundy Martin Dawn Lundy Martin, Assistant Professor of English at the University of Pittsburgh, is author of DISCIPLINE (2011), A Gathering of Matter/A Matter of Gathering (2007), a chapbook The Morning Hour (2003), and a chaplet The Undress. Nightboat Books Poetry Prize, the Cave Canem Poetry Prize, and May Sarton Prize for Poetry are a few of her awards and recognitions. She is a founding member of the Black Took Collective, a performance group of experimental black poets, and a founder of the Third Wave Foundation in New York. Footnotes * From an email correspondence. Copyright © 2011 The Johns Hopkins University Press