Poems Published in
October 2015: Seeing through my Microscope.
Like Mami Wata in Hiding
You are a volcano.
Scalding words flow.
Your taunts, a barrage
of molten threats
hardening like lava
in memory.
I have become
an island unto myself,
the latest born
of your rancor.
There is already
an archipelago—
trails of your spewing
you lay claim to.
It ashes our sky,
blots the beauty of our moon.
Will the fire in you ever die?
I hear you grumble,
hear your distant rumble.
Who is the new object of
your sulfuric spilling?
I hide like Mami Water*
in the bowels of the sea.
© Althea Romeo-Mark 24.05.15
*Mami Water- water spirits
venerated in west, central and southern Africa, and in the African diaspora in
the Caribbean and parts of North and South America. They are usually female,
but are sometimes male mermaids in West African folklore
Poem published in October,
2015. Kaleidoscope, Writers Abroad.
Great Britain. Available at www.amazon.uk,
and www.lulu.com
We perceive light as a positive force: dispelling evil,
revealing the unexpected, warming and illuminating. It is sunlight and
firelight, a kaleidoscope of colours and forms, integral to celebration and
mourning, and synonymous with discovery and revelation.
From one country to the other, it becomes the glow of the Artic summer night, the rainbow-tint of an Irish spring evening, the brilliance of a Mediterranean afternoon.
From one country to the other, it becomes the glow of the Artic summer night, the rainbow-tint of an Irish spring evening, the brilliance of a Mediterranean afternoon.
Kaleidoscope is the fifth anthology published by Writers Abroad. A
dazzling collection of fiction and poetry on the theme of light as 2015 is the
International year of Light and Light-based Technologies.
New World Bouillon
You need a curious man
called Columbus who carries
a large portion of courage in his bowels.
Add men of similar mind,
men who have nothing to lose.
They are the salt and pepper of adventure.
This is only the beginning
of the melting pot now known
across the Atlantic as the New World.
Add the smell of stories
of roads paved with gold
and battles with blood-thirsty
Caribs, Tainos and Arawaks
that catch the noses of restless
Spaniards, Portuguese and
scions of Vikings, Saxons and Celts,
tired of the tasteless broth of Old World
life.
Ravenous for change, they throw themselves
into this stew and, still dissatisfied with
the taste,
they add strange ingredients—black slaves,
indentured servants, Chinese and
Indians from the East.
This is not a North American soup,
but a South and Central American boiling pot,
a spicy pot filled with temperament hot as
chilies.
It has been simmering for centuries
and is the gourmet dish of the world.
© Althea Romeo-Mark 2014, publishes in The Caribbean Writer, vol.29, 2015
Now Massa Loved Some Hunting.
(Thoughts on visiting a Georgian Plantation)
I.
Visiting a Georgian plantation I am told by the guide that
husbands and wives slept in separate rooms
so husbands, as they made ready to go hunting,
would not have to wake wives at five in the morning.
I am thinking, massa may not be out hunting at all.
The bed is narrow and high.
You needed a ladder to get onto it.
Massa would have
rather sneaked
into the
slaves’ quarters, dragged a female slave
to the barn or
bush and “ had his way with her.”
That is the story of many of our
great-great grandmothers who
brought colored babies into the world.
II
Caribbean “Bokrahs,” too, said
they were hunting mongoose
or inspecting plantations fences.
There weren’t many trapped vermin to show
and the number of mulatto babies spiraled.
Bokrahs’ wives knew their husbands weren’t out hunting
and took revenge on the “baby-mamas.”
Slave-women were countless times on potty-duty.
They counted chamber pots in their sleep instead of
sheep—
if they slept at all.
Bokrahs loved to hunt and their wives
dared not interfere with their favorite sport.
III
I am a descendant of hunter and hunted.
There are numerous shades of brown named after us.
We betray each other,
deny our darker brethren their dignity,
define them by menial labor they cannot refuse.
We constrain and imprison them with draconian laws
that give license to hunt in all seasons.
IV.
They are strong like mahogany,
and are weaned on the steeling of backbones.
They are stalks that spring back
after bending to breaking point.
They are the seed carriers of marathon runners.
There is no end-line in their long distance sprint.
There are no barriers to their dreams.
© Althea Romeo-Mark, 2014
“Massa” – Master.
“bokrah, bokra—white land owner in the Colonial
Caribbean.
Poems published in The Caribbean Writer, Vol 29, 2015
www.caribbeanwriter.org
The theme of this
volume: ambiguities and contradictions in the Caribbean space. The reader will
experience the effects of migration; the contradictions in race, class and
gender relations; the ambiguities inherent in nationality constructs; the power
of religion; the allure of the supernatural; the many permutations of love and
relationships; parenting amid the subtleties of childhood sensibilities and an
urgent sense of community—all set in the context of Caribbean diversity.
I write because I have to.
Althea Romeo-Mark
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