Writing
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Back then, moans manifested through walls like copulating ghosts making morning after sightings problematic. I bound myself to my room until the sounds and subjects dissipated into the mist of a Monday morning. Now, when I hear sounds through the walls I remember my own moans and how they climaxed into this life where I…
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a generation of violets spreads into english gardens formerly manicured with the precision of the queen’s english. exigent circumstances leads to a silence which tries but fails to silence desperate desires for cassava and groundnut in love (secretly) with sister killjoy’s black-eyed squint they spread not their language to their seeds who travel far on…
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Some time in the last two years, I decided to undertake a reading of epics (The Odyssey), verse novels (Omeros and Prophets, by Derek Walcott and Kwame Dawes, respectively). I called myself doing research for my own verse novel. Well. I got about more than half way through The Odyssey before I gave up the…
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I am against terror in any of its manifestations. Any of its manifestations? How many manifestations can terror have? Isn’t it strictly Islamic fundamentalist? Growing up as a black immigrant girl child in Boston during the late 70’s and 80’s, I have to say no. In fact, I have to say more than no. I…
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Dear Martin, Great God, what a morning, Martin! The sun is rolling in from faraway places. I watch it reaching out, circling these bare trees like some reverent lover. I have been standing still listening to the morning, and I hear your voice crouched near hills, rising from the mountain tops, breaking the circle of…
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The poet can make a barren woman pregnant; can give her, known for her pretty smile, a pair of pirate eyes; yet cannot write in a land blighted by drought unless he puts his instrument down picks up the vase, places it square on his head, leaves his house and walks with the millions seeking…
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the winged thang built her dream palace amid the fine green eyes of a sheltering bough she did not know it was urban turf disguised as serenely delusional rural nor did she know the neighborhood was rife with slant-mawed felines and those long-taloned swoopers of prey, she was ignorant of the acidity & oil that…
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He is not the one and yet I love him inordinately. His virginity was mine and so is his oldest child. He is America and I vacillate between love and a frustration that wants to lodge in hate but can’t because I grew up in him. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs…
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Poetically speaking, growing up is mediocrity – Ned Rorem Neither rosy nor prim not cousin to the cowslip nor the extravagant fuchsia- I doubt anyone has ever picked one for show, though the woods must be fringed with their lemony effusions. Sun blathers its baronial endorsement, but they refuse to join the ranks. Summer brings…
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Then after Eden, was there one surprise? O yes, the awe of Adam at the first bead of sweat. Thenceforth, all flesh had to be sown with salt, to feel the edge of seasons, fear and harvest joy that was difficult, but was, at least, his own. The snake? It would not trust on its…
Tichaona Chinyelu 