(K 0976-514X)
K
Six Poems published in KRITYA Poetry Journal, Fall
2012 (www.kritya.in)
Bend Down Boutique
Fur hats a rage among rag-tag soldiers
who have watched “Daniel Boone,”
or Soviet soldiers trudging knee-deep in snow,
valiantly hunting down fiends.
Child soldiers proudly pose,
swelter fierce faces for cameras,
“ushanka” muffs covering ears,
guns on shoulders pointed at the sun,
poster boys for “bend-down boutiques.”
Brand names
on old newspapers
spread across the ground
cover sidewalks.
Blouses, pants, shirts,
bras, underwear,
winter coats and hats
piled in heaps are faded,
have seen many wash cycles,
but are not frayed.
Winter hats worn,
despite African heat,
lend an air of sophisticated travel,
an aloofness bought at a bargain.
Who’s to say, the man sporting
a squirrel’s tail on his crown
hasn’t been abroad.
His stand offers nails,
hinges and screws,
cigarettes and kola nuts,
but he has leafed through tattered pages
torn from discarded travel books
used to wrap roasted corn, cassava,
a pair of second-hand underpants
shipped from a European land
and bought in the “bend-down boutique.”
He, too, can dare to dream
in his furry trapper’s hat
of winters never seen.
*Bend down boutique is the Liberian colloquial
name for a sidewalk market stall.
When Cooling Fails to Calm
(Liberia)
We rattle and rumble
along.
For once there is no choking
dust,
no brown clouds into which
we disappear among
the haze of grinding
traffic
spitting dirt and
gravel.
Outside the bus window
spreading, green, rice
fields,
race us to the blue horizon.
Tall rubber trees soon
canopy the roads,
welcome us into the hinterland.
Sun’s searing sting
gives way to coolness.
Our hearts race too,
fight to keep down
fear
mirrored on our faces.
Checkpoint’s down the
road,
where death is meted
out
by a misinterpreted
glance,
where armed men in
sunglasses
make decisions fueled
by cane juice.
And so, though far
from the war front,
we are touched by the
war-mongering virus
are touched by its
senseless raging,
by its snatching of the
innocent
by its turning life to
dust.
Grass will sprout from
blood after the rains,
no matter whose.
Burdened
Everything is on her
head.
She trudges forward.
A straw mat tops the
aluminum basin
filled with rescued essentials.
Her face, veiled in
dust,
masks the fear beating
her breast.
Her feet, swollen from
endless trooping,
take her where others
go.
Carrying memories of
death,
she follows a long
trek to nowhere,
and pauses only to
suckle the child
strapped to her back.
Night’s Cloak
Sadness cakes his
face,
layers so thick, the
kindness of others
barely softens the
surface.
Tonight he flees warm,
suffocating shelters,
escapes the worn
visage
that mirrors his
thorny past.
Night offers decaying
dinners
tossed take-a-ways
shared with vagrants
and rodents.
He seeks the
fathomless spread
of night’s cloak.
Eyes roaming the
roofless roof,
he journeys through
the universe.
The unspeakable speaks
to him,
deadens the craving
for mortal needs.
This Place
This place has held me for twenty-one years,
though at first, I felt I had fallen into a dark hole
felt I was falling apart, until I learned
I was not the only free-faller,
my story not unusual to those who flailed
in unknown depths before me.
Stories plaster the memory walls
of blindsided people flung into the same pit,
of people who burned in fiery misery.
It is a slow crawl up.
Walls crumble with time.
Chunks fall to our feet.
Mental chalkboards are not only scribbled
with unpleasant tales but are also
scribbled with accounts of new friendships
and the arrival of light.
Unfettered, we run with new life.
God’s
Harvest of Mangoes
(for Deoba, Barbara
and Bertica, fellow writers who passed in 2011-12)
God is picking green
mangoes,
mangoes still hard,
skin sticking tight to
flesh and seed.
I used to think God
was finicky,
did not like “forced
ripe” mangoes,
waited until they
soft, juicy under yellow peel.
God did not have to
lift a hand to pluck,
mangoes fell down.
Just the thought of
ripeness was enough.
God has become
ravenous though,
has caused a reckless
raining down—
like a flock falling
dead from the sky.
It is so mysterious,
we worry about the end
of time,
coming much too soon.
These days, there is
an imbalance
to blossoming,
budding, bearing.
Our trees have lost
too many leaves
before yellowing and
drying.
And too many green
fruit
have been stolen
before harvest.
Maybe this has always
been so,
but now the Celestial
one
has our attention and
we listen for the next
thud
upon the ground.
© Althea Romeo-Mark
2012
No comments:
Post a Comment