AYITI, MA CHÈRIE

by Jerrice J. Baptiste

Le Nègre Marron

A long-simmering crisis over Haiti’s ability to govern itself, particularly after a series of natural disasters and an increasingly dire humanitarian emergency, has come to a head in the Caribbean nation, as its de facto president remains stranded in Puerto Rico and its people starve and live in fear of rampant violence. —NBC News, March 15, 2024

I long for sanctuaries of your forests.
Chirping bird—Hispaniolan Trogon.
Enduring name of long ago
La Perle des Antilles
Shimmering light.

I long for your full peasant skirts
flowing with countryside
breeze, where bare 
feet imprint
sand.

I long to be eating sizzling Fritaille 
griot, fried plantains, and pikliz 
of red & yellow hot bonnet 
peppers dancing 
in my belly.

I long for Krik-Krak from uncles. 
Stories told in backyards.
Laughter of familiar 
voices greeting
moonlight.

I long to bathe your infants 
in tranquil turquoise sea.
Dress your daughters
in white organza 
fabric.

I long for your Taino fathers

wearing red & indigo flags 

during carnival or Rara

dancing to Djembe 

rhythm.

I long for your Taino mothers 
Poto-Mitan, ivory backbone 
of our homes. Selling
clusters of quenepe
at street market.

I long for your white conch shell 
blown by bronze lips  
breaking chains.
Le Nègre 
Marron.

Jerrice J. Baptiste is an author of eight books and a poet in residence at the Prattsville Art Center & Residency in NY.  She is extensively published in journals and magazines such as Artemis Journal, The Yale Review, Mantis, Eco Theo Review, The Caribbean Writer, and many others. Jerrice has been nominated as Best of The Net by Blue Stem. She has been facilitating poetry workshops for eighteen years.

GROUND SUPPORT

by Allison Berry

After Joan Mitchell’s "Little Trip" 1969

In my bed, she explains how her arms
have hardened without her rifle. Her fingers and thumbs
homesick for a place no one ever intended
she call home. Home is pelts strung to drip
from guttering, her sisters
backsplashed by wood paneling,
their voices reaching the back porch as a melody.
No detail of sand or mission will ever make Iraq home
for me. Today, the president asked congress
for authorization, for ground forces.
I’m already homesick for her breasts.
I explain how my chest will empty, how the red pulse
will turn and drip. Congress goes on considering.
I take all her longing as a command.


Editor's Note: The proposed legislation Mr. Obama sent to Capitol Hill would impose a three-year limit on American action that has been conducted largely from the air and, while allowing Special Operations commandos and other limited missions, would rule out sustained, large-scale ground combat. It would also finally repeal the expansive 2002 congressional measure that authorized President George W. Bush’s war in Iraq. --New York Times, February 11, 2015


Allison Berry is working on her MFA at Queens University of Charlotte and is a Lecturer for the Women's Studies department at Pittsburg State University and the English department at Missouri Southern State University. Her poetry has appeared in or is forthcoming in such journals as The Minnesota Review, Sinister Wisdom, and Green Hills Literary Lantern. She is also a contributor to the anthologies To The Stars, Through Difficulties and Begin Again: 150 Kansas Poems. She lives in Joplin, Missouri, with her two children.