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Selected poems from Althea Romeo-Mark’s Palaver, 1978

Palaver, my second poetry collection, was published by Downtown Poet’s Co-op, in 1978 New York. Dr. David Gershator, my mentor and head of the Creative Writing Program at the University of the Virgin Islands, contacted me about publishing a collection of poems. I was teaching at the University of Liberi, Liberia, West Africa then and was elated about this opportunity being offered to me so far away from home, St. Thomas, US Virgin Islands. I was out of sight but not out of mind. It was Dr. Gershator who discovered I was a poet when I didn't know I was one. The discovery was made when his students were given the assignment to write a poem about what it meant to be a "West Indian." Several poets were born with this challenge. Several poems from the collection were selected for this blog.

The poem below, "The Sande Bush Graduate, " from Palaver (1978), inspired the title of my fourth poetry collection, Beyond Dreams, the Ritual Dancer, published in Liberia, by Sabanoh Press in 1989. The cover was designed by a Liberian artist, Wantue Major.

It features a traditional dancer, perhaps one who had just completed her schooling in the "Sande Bush"

The Sande Bush Graduate

A Sande bush graduate dances,

raises up dust with feet that move

with speed, magic.

Raffia skirt swirls, floats in the air,

follows the dancer’s motion

in the dying sunlight.

Her face painted white,

legs, arms

dotted, striped.

She knows the one she marries

will not be her choice,

will not be left to chance.

Does she leap for joy?

Does she disguise defeat?

She leaves her mother’s home

and its protection to start her own,

carry her children on her back,

make a farm, please a husband

shared with other wives.

Is that perpetual smile

truly the joy of a woman?

I watch the mother of a prospective bride

cheer on her daughter with a look of pride.

*Sande Bush Graduate – a girl who has completed the traditional bush school.

Delta BluesWrinkled Skin Painting.

Caribbean folklore is filled with many superstitions and mysterious characters brought over from West Africa by slaves who survived the trans-Atlantic slave trade. I imagine that these tales helped many to survive the brutal conditions they were forced to travel and live in. The poem, "Sukanah" is titled after one such character. She is also known as the Soucouyant.

Sukanah(Soucouyant)

I

I’ve come in away from
the singing of shoe-shine men,
pounding mortars in backyards,
cricket screams, glaring moon- eyes.
Silence in my house speaks of peace.

The man I keep, sleeps,
head hanging over a cot’s rim.
He grunts, breath dressed in rum,
in a restless dream.

I’ve come in away from smothering scenes,
shed my coat, dropped my pants.
I rip my shirt, peel off underwear,
shed my skin. It lies empty of me.
My spirit breathes free of man’s life once more.

II
Climbing out the window,
shadowless in moonlight,
I touch the ground, run elastic
in my freedom which ends at sunlight.

III

I catch fish under reefs
and cannot eat,
have no pockets or body to hold it.
I dream hours.

IV

I must return to skin-prison
in a dim house.

V

The man sits on the edge of his cot
and laughs like a demon.
He speaks of evil.
I see evil, hear evil.

VI

The man has salted my skin
knowing I cannot go back into it
dried, brittle, dead breaking into nothing.

He knows I will die as man,
as spirit without body.
I must have body and spirit
or wander in the night,
fly away from the voices of men at day.

VII

He believes me evil
for I am woman who sheds her skin
after day’s death.

©) Althea Romeo-Mark, PALAVER, Downtown Poet Co-op, New York, 1978
ISBN:0-917404-10-3

Nager Man

Bokrah man

lashing whip ‘pon back.

Nager man

lashing whip ‘pon back.

when slavery

done gone long time.

Colonialism,

independence,

cultural identity.

nager man

lashing whip ‘pon back.

*Borah man-white landowner

Poverty

De sun come idlin’

over de hills,

removin’ de shadows

from de tree limbs,

revealin’ de pickinagers

playin’ in mud

an’ eatin’ dirt

like tis dukanah an’ saltfish,

an’ dey wishin’

de dirt stains

wuz grease stains.

*Pickinagers: children

*Dukanah: a dish made of plantain or sweet potato and boiled in a fig leaf.

This photo is taken from the Palaver poetry collection.

No Teeth Nana

Ol’ no-teeth Nana

suckin’ sugar cane

an’ lickin’ stray juice

off the side of ‘er mouth

knows everything.

You can see it

in ‘er eyes.

They’re heavy an’ grey

an’ deep set,

threatenin’.

See seen me girl, Geraldine,

climbin’ out me window every mornin’.

She be peepin’ through dem cracks

in ‘er splintered door

while stoopin’ on de floor.

She stares at me real hard.

Her eyes are double-knotted ropes

teasin’ me neck when

I turn de corner on de street

where she sits and spits tobacco juice

between ‘er cane chewin’.

Nana be chewin’ some hard thoughts.

One day she goin’ tell

‘cause ‘er eyes getting’ harder,

cold as blue marble.

She goin’ spill ‘er guts out.

Every word she speaks

is gospel truth.

Frenchtown, St. Thomas, Virgin Islands, is the inspiration for the poem below.

A photo from Vintage Virgin Islands, Vakeriesims.com

Frenchtown, where we were sent by our school, St. Peter and Paul's Catholic School, to buy our school bags, was settled by immigrants from the French Caribbean island of St. Barthelemy in the late 1800s through mid-1900s. The area downtown, Charlotte Amalie, became a fishing village.

Photo from French Museum, St. Thomas, V.I.

The French community has preserved a high degree of cultural identity including their fishing traditions. The women were famous for the basket-weaving and straw hats. The French settlement on the north side of St. Thomas, Virgin Islands, is well known for farming.

French Town’s Blackbird

She wears a long, black dress,

black stockings, black shoes

and a black straw hat

she plaited in the old French tradition.

When we buy her bags in Cha-cha town,

she greets us with a shy smile.

It breaks away from her wrinkles,

widens the corners of her line-thin mouth.

Her one-room wood house

sits in a yard cluttered with

children and chickens.

Afternoons,

almost hidden between straw piles.

she swings in her hammock

that fits the length of her room.

An unfinished straw bag

rides her heaving chest.

Her mouth gapes like fish,

and emits a satisfied snore

after a meal of bread and smoke-fish.

“Moushay blackbird,” we call her

in our garbled French,

misunderstanding

her peasant wear and ways

in the midst of our

black, West Indian World.

(@) Althea Romeo-Mark, 1978

This photo is taken from the Daily News. On one of my visits to St. Thomas, Virgin Islands in the 1980s

, I was interview by Treganza Roach, then a young journal. He is now the lieutenant governor of the US Virgin Islands. In this photo, I am reading from Beyond Dreams, The Ritual Dancer.

Althea Romeo Mark Brief Biography

Born in Antigua, West Indies, Althea Romeo Mark is an educator and writer who grew up in St. Thomas, US Virgin Islands. She has lived and taught in the Virgin Islands, USA, Liberia, England, and Switzerland since 1991. She writes poetry and short stories and has been internationally published. in the Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico, Antigua and Barbuda, The Bahamas, Barbados, USA, England, Germany, Norway, Portugal, Colombia, India, U.K., Kenya, Liberia, Romania and Switzerland. Her last poetry collection, The Nakedness of New, was published in 2018. She has participated in International Poetry Festivals in Romania, Kenya and in Colombia.

Saturday, November 9, 2019