“Cookbook” and Other Poems Published in spring 2016

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“Cookbook” and Other Poems Published in Spring 2016

XX International Poetry Festival, Medellin, Colombia

It is uplifting and a blessing to see my work in print. My long apprenticeship in the art of poetry writing is finally paying off.  It is a journey that began in the early 1970 as a student at the University of the Virgin Islands

 Writing is a continuous process of learning. The more I write, the more I realize I have to learn. I try to be a better writer than the last time I wrote, and so it is a never ending challenge.  

I am competing against myself and other poets/ writers whose work I admire, whose work encourages me to push myself.

Writers' Works' Bern

I belong to a group, fellow writers and friends with whom I meet monthly and who help to make my purpose as a person and writers clearer. They come from all over the world and, like me, have settled in Switzerland. They have picked up where my mentor, Dr. Gershator, left off. We teach each other, learn from each other and break boundaries together. Without them I will not be the writer that I am today. Honest feedbacks on each other’s work, though sometimes painful, cannot be measured in gold.

I share the pages of this volume with many writers. Two of them I personally know. One is Dr. Patricia Jabbeh Wesley, a former student at the University of Liberia, where I taught English between 1976-1990, and who is now a Professor of Creative Writing at Penn State University. According to a PSU website she “is a writer, poet, scholar, public speaker and human rights activist who has used her writing talent to bring visibility to Liberian and other social issues. She is the author of four books of poetry, one children’s book, and numerous scholarly articles; her work has been translated into various languages across the world (https://wpsu.psu.edu/tv/programs/conversations/patricia-jabbeh-wesley/.”

The other writer is Irene Kaesermann who is a member of Writers’ Works Bern to which I belong. We have both been a member of this writers’ group since 1992.  Irene writes in German, her mother tongue, and English. In addition to being published in Dove Tales: An International Journal of the Arts, she is published in JIGSAW, our writers’ group anthology, KRITYA ,World Literature Today IV, Antiques and Roses and in German publications.

The third person, who I am familiar with, but have never met, is Geoffrey Philp, an established Caribbean writer from Jamaica whose work can also be found in the Oxford Books of Caribbean Short Stories and the Oxford Book of Caribbean Verse. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geoffrey_Philp

DoveTalesFamilyandCultural Identity was released on May 1, 2016.  The“Family and Cultural Identity” edition features 456 pages of poetry, essays, and short stories from our 2015 Young Contest Winners, as well as our advisers, established, and emerging writers, as well as strikingly beautiful art and photography.

Contributors: Pilar Rodríguez Aranda, Cara Baker, Gary Beck, Gayle Bell, Elena Botts, Katarina Boudreaux, Jo Burns, Lorraine Caputo, Mary Carroll-Hackett, William Cass, Stephanie Cheng, Cody Conklin, Joe Cottonwood, Chella Courington, Edward D. Currelley, Lorraine Currelley, Maija Rhee Devine, Andrea W. Doray, Milton Ehrlich, Juleus Ghunta, Veronica Golos, Gabor G. Gyukics, Sam Hamill, Melissa Hassard, Yuliya Ilchuk, Shokoofeh Jabbari, Dan Jacoby, Joseph Johnson, Lyla June Johnston, Julianne Jones, Rio Jones, Irène Kaesermann, Amal Kassir, Sasha Kasoff, Debra Kaufman, Antonia Alexandra Klimenko, Ross Knapp, Robert Kostuck, Richard Krawiec, Page Lambert, Tom Larsen, Vicki Lindner, Shannon Lockhart, Djelloul Marbrook, Kathleen McGuire, Sandra McGarry, Dean Metcalf, Oleg G. Mikhailovsky, Mark Mitchell, Dean K. Miller, Chuma Mmeka, Malaka Mohammed, AH Muir, Lee Nash, Nikhil Nath, Roseville Nidea, Pattie PalmerBaker, Adriana Páramo, Rachel Pater, Jared Pearce, Simon Perchik, Richard King Perkins II, Geoffrey Philp, Thomas Piekarski, Wang Ping, David S. Pointer, Meg Pokrass, Stephen Poleskie, Laura Pritchett, Janelle Rainer, Shirani Rajapakse, Stephen Regan, Jude Rittenhouse, Althea Romeo-Mark, Matt Saleh, Terry Sanville, Howard Stein, Samantha Peters Terrell, Kelly Thompson, E. J. Tivona, Mercy L. Tullis-Bukhari, Patricia Jabbeh Wesley, Georgia Wilder

 Art and Photography by:

Elena Botts, Allen Forrest, Pd Lietz, Roseville Nidea, Daniel Rhodes

Editor-in-Chief: Carmel Mawle

Associate Editors: Craig Mawle, Phillip M. Richards, Melody Rautenstraus, and Willean Denton Hornbeck

Sponsored by Colgate University Research Council.

Copyright © 2016 Writing for Peace. All rights reserved.

http://writingforpeace.org/1180-2/family-and-cultural-identity/

My poems featured in Dove Tales 

include "Rope," "Cookbook," and 

"Liberian Country Devil Comes to 

Town at Christmas."

Rope

The tug-of-war,

the pulling of  knotted rope,

the stretching ends,

the fraying ends,

fingers red and burning

from holding on,

from waiting to see

who is first to cave.

Who will lose their grip?

Mother or daughter?

It is not a matter

of winning or losing.

It is the Mother who must let go,

reject the temptation to throw a lasso.

The falling daughter

will rise into her own.

She will carry her mother’s cautions

in memory like a suitcase

filled with clothes,

and take them out to wear,

one by one,

to see how well they fit.

Beneath them all—

her own long cord,

the secret binding,

the thickened string,

the rope she, too, will pull

when the tug-of-war comes.

 © Althea Romeo-Mark

Cookbook

I

My mother never used one,

she learned to cook

the way her mother taught her.

Recipes, like folktales, and

the secrets of garden bush,

carrying cures for colds,

high blood pressure, diabetes,

sleeplessness, nightmares,

and measures against restless spirits,

were passed from mouth to mouth.

Mother shared her knowledge,

the only way she knew.

Summoned to the kitchen,

I stood, watched, listened to instructions,

“Come, see how I tun’ de fungi.”

It seemed like hard work,

all that turning with a wooden stick.

Nobody should have to work so hard to make a meal.

I began to sweat before the process even started.

“Bring de water to a boil. Add salt.

Chop the okras, drop dem in de pot.

cook ‘til tender. Sprinkle in de cornmeal. Slowly!”

I stood round the kerosene stove,

shifting from foot to foot.

“See how I tun’ de fungi?”

Heat alternated with breeze

sneaking in through the kitchen door.

“Stir briskly to prevent lumping.”

Mama’s plump, tanned hand churned,

arms swiftly dispensed of sweat

trickling down her nose from forehead,

threatening to become an ingredient.

It seemed forever, the churning,

and watching  cornmeal’s

sputtering plop, plop,

spitting and spurting

like nature’s hot water geyser.

Once, my eyes strayed out the window

at Mr. Peters straddling his donkey downhill.

A stinging pinch to my ear

brought me back to the lesson on hand.

“See how I tun’ de fungi.”

See how I add de butter? Stir!

Look ‘pon you.

How you goin’ get a husband?

II

I received a cookbook the day I married.

A wedding present from a friend,

it became my kitchen buddy.

Recipes now committed to memory,

cookbooks sit on a shelf with

old English and American classics

I promise to re-read one day.

My daughters watched my cooking in passing,

made quick observations, did some tasting.

On their bookshelves, a book on Caribbean cooking

serves as a bookend to MLA Guide to Writing

and Modern German Literature.

Recipes today are just a mouse-click away.

I have not forgotten to share secrets

of bushes in back gardens,

measures against restless spirits

and things that must remain unwritten.

© Althea Romeo-Mark, 2015

Liberian Devil Comes to Town at Christmas

The long-faced mask frowns.

Its huge O-mouth made for gobbling.

Gigantic eyes gawk at gathering crowd

round its skyscraper legs that leap

backwards and forward under spun out grass skirt.

The child’s piercing screech,

hitting and hovering on the ceiling,

drags everyone away from dinner.

Fufu and soup are left for flies to feast on

The shrieking child waits to be rescued,

while the music of merry musicians

beating drums, singing and dancing

bring Christmas cheer.

“Oh, it the country devil.

Don’t be afraid,” soothing voices say.

But in the hinterland the real country devil threatens

women, children, and the uninitiated,

cower behind closed doors.

Order is restored to the child’s world.

Hands held by ma and pa

she feels the rhythm of their hips and feet,

watches as the devil prances in the front yard.

It splays its legs high and wide

to the pat-tum, bum, pat-tum, bum of drums.

Old Man Beggar joins him, too, in the dance

for a small feast, coins and cane juice.

*Old Man Beggar –Liberian antithesis to Santa Claus. He is accompanied by drummers and doesn’t bring gifts.  But he tells stories and expects some form of a thank you in return.

*Country devil-a person in mask and wearing stilts and who is a part of a secret society that is feared by those not yet a member of it.

© Althea Romeo-Mark,  2015

Poem Published in Moko, "Camp"

Camp

We are thrown together

in this quarter where

yesterday’s news headline,

“Refugee Flung from Window,”

still hangs in the air like a stench.

There is nowhere to go, nothing to do.

Our fate in the hands of authority,

we wait, hang out at the neighborhood park

like autumn leaves gathered by wind.

We read menacing messages in the scowls

of passers-by. Some circle around,

mark the territory with treads of footprints,

count down days to our departure.

They haven’t heard yet what we have been told.

This refugee housing is now official.

They will flee this neighborhood,

as if it was an “infested” place.

© Althea Mark-Romeo, 07.11.2015

 http://mokomagazine.org/wordpress/issue-8-march-2016/

I am grateful that I am featured monthly in Kwee: Liberian Literary Magazine.

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 

 Republished by Kwee 2016

First published by OFF THE COAST, Maine International Literary Journal

www. off-the-coast-com 2011

This month, the magazine features poetry by  Richard Wilson Moss, Hebert Logerie, Cher Antoinette, Josiah Joekai, Mohammed Donzo Dolley, Baltimore C. Verdier, Lml Shaw, Matenneh-rose Dunbar, Varney Gean, Althea Romeo-Mark, Janice Renee Almond, Oppong Clifford Benjamin, and many more.... download your copies at our website. 

The most recent edition of Kwee can be download at the following website:http://fortepublishing.wix.com/llmag

I leave you with one of the last photos I took before I left St. Thomas, Virgin Islands to return to Switzerland last summer.