CRY OF A HEART IN DISTRESS

by Roodly Laurore & Bichini Laurore

“Spirits / Loas” by Payas Augustin Pierre Sylvain, 2012

Generations follow one another.

Same causes, same effects.

Chained hearts, slaves to hatred.

 

The wind of fear contaminates thought,

turns it into violence, sows mourning.

 

Anguished souls, thirsty for peace,

In the middle of a barren desert.

cry for the end of a painful pilgrimage.

 

Exhausted body, dejected mind 

find their peace

in a journey of no return.  

Roodly Laurore was born and raised in Haiti. He is an engineer and poet. His poems, widely published, are included in: Spirit Fire Review; Welter University of Baltimore; Taos Journal of Poetry; Kosmos Journal; Autism Parenting Magazine; Solstice Literary Magazine; Synchronized Chaos; The New Verse News; Jerry Jazz Musician and others.

 

Bichini Laurore, born in Haiti, is the son of Roodly Laurore. He is a lover of accounting and poetry with a passion for writing poetry in English & French. He has recently collaborated with his father Roodly Laurore in Taos Journal of Poetry. Bichini was 3rd place winner of an interschool competition in Port-au-Prince in 2020.

WRITTEN ON THE FOURTH OF JULY

by Richard Garcia

Image source: The Navage Patch

On this day I say Happy birthday Mom. She died a long time ago. But she was always dying. You'd say Good morning Mom, how are you? I'm dying. she would say. What's for dinner? You'd ask. I'm dying, she would answer. She died so much that when she did die we hardly noticed. Of course, she had a long life since she was born a long time ago. She was the cleaning lady at The Continental Congress in Philly in 1776. She did such a good job cleaning up, all the dirt and dust and ashes and spittoons and bathrooms, that the founding fathers gave all their slaves that were working the concessions and greeting the carriages and grooming the horses and cleaning up, their freedom. My mother was from Mexico and much cheaper than the slaves, and all they had to do was feed her pancakes, which she thought were Yankee tortillas. The founding fathers were so happy with my mother's work that they named Independence Day for her birthday, the Fourth of July. The slaves that had been freed that day were really spies for the English. They were happy too and went back to England and became butlers and grooms and were paid for their work, not a lot but the English had good pancakes and lodging and the workers had insurance and a retirement plan.

Richard Garcia is the author of The Other Odyssey from Dream Horse Press, The Chair from BOA, and Porridge from Press 53. His poems appear in many journals, including The Georgia Review, Poetry and Ploughshares. 

HANDING DOWN TRADITIONS

by Rebecca Evans

Image source: Olde Colony Bakery

Olde Colony Bakery, “home of the original Charleston
benne wafer,” boasts a website where you can buy
benne wafers online. “Our 3oz Benne Wafer
Standup Pack is our medium-sized gift option!”
                    Early 18th century slaves brought benne seeds
                    from Africa to the Carolina sea islands,
                    cultivated them in hidden, forbidden gardens,
                    a staple food seed for rice cookery.
                    Their rice was the bread of life.

At Charleston City Market and Edisto Island
beautiful, costly sweetgrass baskets are sold.
“Our baskets bring African flair into your home!”
Works of art crafted by gifted black hands, a skill
handed down from Sierra Leone slave ancestors.
                    Large, flat, utilitarian marsh grass baskets were
                    coiled tight enough to hold water, fanners woven
                    by slaves to winnow the rice they harvested
                    on swampy, low country plantations.

Mother Emanuel church stands less than a mile
from the Old Slave Mart, where, around the corner
the old Huguenot Church honors my ancestor
on a bronze plaque, his dates, 1720 – 1774.
                    Rev. Francis Pelot, Baptist minister, was very rich,
                    owner of three islands, thousands of mainland
                    Carolina acres, plantations, “a great number
                    of slaves and stock in abundance.” Owned
                    a valuable library, devoted time to books.

What kind of wealthy master he was, we’ll never know,
A Baptist intimate friend deemed him “a worthy man,”
“in his family, a bright example of true piety.” But
Frederick Douglass writes that religious slaveholders
“are the worst,” describes the cruelty of an evangelical Methodist.
my ancestor in Maryland, the Rev. Rigby Hopkins
                    who boasted of his whipping slaves "with
                    what wonderful ease . . . to alarm their fears.
                    And yet there was not a man any where round . . .
                    that prayed earlier, later, louder
                    than this same reverend slave-driver."

When television broke the news from Charleston
last June, I joined the nation’s shocked mourners,
grieved the loss of the massacred nine, cut down
while heavenward bound in forgiving prayer, and
pitied the white boy dreaming a race war dream
to spread conflict sown by slaveholders like my ancestors
and handed down the line to sons, along with their slaves
and slave gifts of benne seeds and beautiful basketry.

Rebecca Evans, a retired journalist and editor who helped aspiring writers get published, has taken up poetry reading and writing and finds inspiration in Peggy Rozga’s class at UW-Waukesha. Rebecca now hosts a regular gathering of poet friends to share their writing at her dining table in Greenfield, Wisconsin.

BY ANY STANDARD

by Kenneth Salzmann

The Confederate flag represents Southern culture, Anna Robb said. In an interview with the News-Leader on Monday, she said the flag represents faith, family and freedom — not slavery, racism or white supremacy. On Thursday, the News-Leader was alerted by readers that Robb’s husband Nathan, co-owner of the store, once tried to adopt a highway in Arkansas on behalf of the Ku Klux Klan, and that Nathan Robb’s father is Thomas Robb, the national director of the KKK. (Photo: Valerie Mosley/News-Leader) —Springfield News-Leader, June 26, 2015

Far be it from me to rag on
the beloved flag that yet waves
not (as some say) to celebrate
the keeping of slaves but (as you
assure me) to pay all due tribute
to your valorous ancestors
who waged brave war against
the relentless arc of history even as
they carved your glorious home
land out of stubborn red
clay and soft lacerated flesh.

All praise be to those
who came before you bearing
whips and shackles ax handles
at the doors of shabby
roadside restaurants christly
crosses fierce fires
of redemption and the proud
blood that even now
flows freely in your veins.


Kenneth Salzmann is a writer and poet whose work has appeared in numerous newspapers, magazines, literary journals and anthologies, including The New Verse News, Rattle, Comstock Review, Child of My Child: Poems and Stories for Grandparents (Gelles-Cole Literary Enterprises), Beloved on the Earth: 150 Poems of Grief and Gratitude (Holy Cow! Press), Riverine: An Anthology of Hudson Valley Writers (Codhill Press), The Heart of All That Is: Reflections on Home (Holy Cow! Press).

FUGITIVES

by Philip C. Kolin

Drawing of fugitives running from the Eastern Shore of Maryland. Image source:  A Guide to the History of Slavery in Maryland (The Maryland State Archives, Annapolis MD and the University of Maryland College Park, MD)

Black blood rushes from city
after city; running is now a crime,
guilty or not, the verdict is the same
and so is the punishment; backs
broken, heads smashed,
necks choked, chests exploded,
organs silenced; hope ended.
There is no escape, no plea, no trial.

Every black man is now afraid he wears an invisible
target only dashboard cameras can capture.
Hanging-noose ropes are strung around
the killing scene; black sons set in  buckled asphalt.
The community  fears that American history has
reversed itself, the  Fugitive Slave Acts
reenacted.


Philip C. Kolin, University Distinguished Professor in the College of Arts and Letters at the University of Southern Mississippi, is the editor of The Southern Quarterly and has published more than 30 scholarly books on African American playwrights, Shakespeare, Tennessee Williams, and Edward Albee. Also a poet, Kolin has published five books of poems, the most recent being Reading God's Handwriting: Poems (Kaufmann, 2012), as well as hundreds of poems in such journals as the Michigan Quarterly Review, Louisiana Literature, South Carolina Review, Christian Century, Spiritus, Seminary Ridge Review, America, and has co-edited Hurricane Blues: Poems about Katrina and Rita (Southwest Missouri UP, 2006) with Susan Swartwout.