As a child of generations of immigrants and a victim of
a civil war, I am always fascinated by the mitigating causes of the journey immigrants
make, whether, driven by war, natural catastrophes or whether driven by the
desire to improve their economic lot.
The poems below reflect my attempt to get into the
marrow of their ordeals
http://www.ifonlythedustwouldsettle.com/
We Do Not Cry For Meat
Yesterday we ate rice and
palm oil.
Today we are eating rice and
palm oil.
Tomorrow we will eat rice
and palm oil.
We eye our bloated bellies
in the shadow of the kitchen
fire,
and though not old enough
pretend we are with child,
pretend our fallen teeth
will grow,
pretend our limbs are fat
can bear our large tummies
but we wobble when we walk
and do not cry for meat
for the dry land has
snatched
our cattle and left us only
bones.
© 29.03.10 Althea Mark-Romeo
From dirtcakes (www.dirtcakes.org)
Uninvited
She can’t say no
to armed hitchhikers
in military uniforms
when they wave her down.
She could speed up
and feel the hail of bullets
slicing through the car
frame,
piercing her body.
She wouldn’t live to tell
the story.
So she stops and smiles,
pretends to be polite,
even though she could be one
minute away from becoming a
ghost.
All four climb in.
Guns, pointing perilously
out windows,
gape at fleeting scenery.
Stone-faced soldiers stare
straight ahead as if on a
special mission.
She feels her knees
wobble under her skirt.
Her mind in overdrive,
she sees her body
like a large rice sack
lying on the roadside
next to firewood,
raped, mutilated, lifeless.
The voice beside her
cracks the silence,
interrupts her deathly
vision.
“Stop, we getting down here,
ma.”
From Check Points and
Curfews © Althea Mark-Romeo 11.06. 2009
www.liberiaseabreezejournal.com
Play-mamas
I Dreamers
Beaten down by drought and hurricane,
driven by dreams of colonial promised lands,
our mothers and fathers left us in play-mamas’ laps
when white men scoured Caribbean Iles
in search of cotton and orange-pickers,
cane cutters and construction workers.
Our parents, scattered in Panama,
Santo Domingo and Cuba,
in Georgia and Florida,
left play-mamas to hold
the fort at home while they
went off to toil in fields and on roads
to become builders of nations.
Money, salted away and remitted,
held our flesh to our bones,
but we shared the fear of marooned
Crusoe and Gulliver.
The sunshine in our own Lilliput were
the “aunties” who wrapped us
in reassuring words as they listened
to our hearts beating to suspicions
of desertion.
Play-mamas became permanent mothers,
when our parents, their dreams deflated,
refused to walk the plank of shame
and spared themselves their villages’ disdain.
To be published in WomanSpeak:
A Journal of Writing and Art by Caribbean Women, ed. Lynn Sweeting, 2014,
Bahamas
At the Mercy of Gods
(http://www.stsomewherejournal.com/)
We come in waves.
Our boats, tiny specks
on dark, fathomless oceans.
Driven away by devouring
drought,
scattered by quakes,
typhoons, cyclones, wars,
we flee, fish in a storm.
Propelled by dreams,
we would walk on water
if miracles could be bought.
We are swallowed
by sea gods demanding
sacrifices.
Our dreams are coveted
by
Agwé, Osiris, Poseidon
who wish to conquer man and
land.
Do the gods conspire?
Jealous Wind and Sea pillage
our crops
withhold rain, wake Vulcan,
fan his flames.
Belligerent Mars whispers in
man’s ear,
demands he bathes in his
brother’s blood.
Gods cackle at fleeing men.
Ants in their eyes,
they set howling death upon
us.
Our exhausted Creator
sleeps.
Streetsweeper
In this haven I clean paths
in parks, sweep streets.
Red stains splatter the
ground
where berries fell after
last night’s storm.
They are not the blood
smears
of brothers accused of
betrayal.
Hear-say alone is enough
to crush bones back home.
I joyfully sweep up berry
seeds.
They are not broken fingers,
or toes.
I wash the walkway, breathe
in unpolluted air.
It is free of gasoline fumes
spewed
by military trucks heading
to frontier towns
to crush the voices of
discontent.
My heart dances with joy
at the sight of red stains,
not blood.
© Althea Romeo-Mark 11.10.
10
Off the Coast, Winter, 2011 www.off-the-coast.com
The Nakedness of New
In this place there are
no monuments to my history,
no familiar signs
that give me bearings,
no corner shops
where food can take me
on a journey home.
Fresh-faced
in an old country,
the new lingo
is a gurgle in throats.
Strange words assault my
ears,
throw me off balance.
I seek refuge in mother-tongue
wherever I find or hear it.
Hunger for my people’s
voices
has forged odd friendships.
But they have begun to fray
and I cling to shreds.
Cold stares gouge an open
wound.
Winter’s icy fangs bite deep
down.
A “foreigner” is dust in the
eye
and many believe I have come
to plunder their treasures.
Come, hug the cold away,
rock me in your arms,
clothe me in your warmth,
tell me everything will be
okay
Pull me back from the
cliff’s edge.
© Althea Romeo-Mark 05.06.10
The Antigua and Barbuda
Review of Books, 2012
CASTAWAY
Brown woman in red dress
lounges under gaze of sun god
legs stretch across green bench
during fickle spring.
Her hair is a neglected garden—
the locks of a woman
who mourns the dead,
the locks of a marooned soul,
culture starved, battle scarred.
Is she a lost youth in search of independence?
Is she a souvenir of tropical holiday heat?
Is she a mail-order bride?
A refugee? An escaped domestic slave?
I pray sun god does not blink
for she, lost in a sea of pale faces,
will drown in the cold.
Yellow Cedars Blooming: An
Anthology of Virgin Islands Writings, ed. Marvin E Williams. Virgin Islands Humanities
Council,1998.
The Nation Builders
Brown men crowd an island
hilltop,
voice French-Creole and
Spanish,
not the English patois of
generations
assembled there before them.
Belittled by nicknames,
lynched by contemptuous
stares,
condemned as job snatchers,
pounced on by immigration,
they are herded into vans,
shackled like cattle.
Shrouded in life’s hardness,
they shrug off morning’s
crispness,
ignore the later sun’s
searing sting.
Hungry eyes, straining
downhill,
scout for trucks crawling
up.
Like mongoose out to kill,
they charge the first that
slows down.
The man, his engine still
running,
shouts, “Two days wuk for
four.”
Men scramble, shove,
become acrobats, settle into
place
speed to hard work and low
pay.
The disappointed
remain on the look-out,
wait their turn.
They are builder of island
nations.
They are fathers of leaders
who see
with the eyes of the
disenfranchised.
© Althea
Romeo-Mark 05.09. 2009
The Antigua and Barbuda
Review of Books, Volume 5, Number 1, 2012
Buried in a Bunker
(for children who are war victims )
My mother’s arms
are not enough
when bombs thunder
and missiles, like
lightning,
strike from drones above.
My father’s hugs
are not enough
when shelled buildings
rain upon the ground.
My world lies in rubble.
Souvenirs of war
cover the streets
of my present.
Memory is shrapnel-pierced.
Love is not enough
to drag me out
of this bunker.
© Althea Romeo-Mark
17.02.2013
If Only The Dust Would Settle
(Liberian Civil War 1989 -2003:
For Liberians in the Diaspora)
This spring day sings of summer.
A short-sleeved throng of exiles
has gathered to soak up sun,
and create an air of home.
African spices bait our noses.
Chicken and ribs sizzle on a grill.
A table’s laid with beer and punch,
Jollof rice and cassava salad.
Chatter, laughter camouflage pain
drudged up by their tales.
They speak of pounding down
Embassy gates, clambering to be let in
and of beatings and death threats
by drugged soldiers chasing the ghost
of their conscience.
They stumbled over the dead
fleeing to safety. Marched long
across borders, battling searing sun
and battering rain, skirted dogs
devouring the flesh of swollen corpses.
Some ate grass, watched family and
friends succumb to hunger, malaria, cholera.
Despite the horrors, that drove them
from their land, some crave home
where they were masters, would
surrender beautiful houses for huts
in their villages.
Unsettled, they cling to scraps of hope,
another coup, the presidents demise
at the hand of man or God.
They exist in private purgatories,
stigmatized, forced to yield to
the bidding of others, swallow pride
in the face of racism, survive on Prozac,
attend the funerals of suicide victims.
Adrift in their haven, some have died from loss
and loneliness in a land where
no one understands the way their hearts speak,
where no one understands their duty to dig up
the bones of their dead when it is time to return.
Ancestors await the arrival of their children
scattered from American to China,
confined in camps in Nigeria,
Sierra Leone,
Ghana.
If only the dust would settle,
they’d see the end of the cycle
of war and death.
If only the dust would settle.
Dust World
The heat is on.
The earth caked.
Our throats
parching, dry.
The grass,
golden brown,
lies down
defeated.
The wind blows
dust
and we wear
handkerchiefs
around our
mouths and noses.
Red eyes burn as
if
we had cried all
night.
We cough but
have no colds.
Our black bodies
are coated
rusty-brown.
We have trudged
across
a barren land in
search
of a new home.
(@) Althea Romeo-Mark 1989
"If only the dust would settle" still resonates today for us in the diaspora and I believe for those at home too. The dust is still settling...
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