Three Poems Read at Poetry and Prose Open Mic Mother’s Day 10.05.26
Three poems in honor
of Mother’s Day 2026
Poems are taken from The
Nakedness of New collections published in 2017, Althea Romeo Mark
Hanging Hearts on Clothes Lines
I Wounds
I said I was moving to West Africa.
“Gyal done gone
lose she sense,
goin’ to de dark
continent,”
spat grandmother at my announcement.
Speechless, stern-faced mother
penned a letter of scalding words,
questions my motive for moving to
“ dat godforsaken
place.”
When I put the Atlantic ocean between us,
I didn’t know that doing what I wanted
was launching spears at their hearts.
II True Grit
I get married and bear three children
“in dat
godforsaken place.”
After knock-down bouts with malaria,
I am a broomstick, collar-bone sunken.
I relive, thrive in grandmother’s by-gone days—
learn to start a fire, cook and grill on a coal pot,
draw well-water, kneel into the dirt of living.
I rub shoulders with peril—
make my own road through the bush
when it is swallowed by flood,
stare down the barrel of soldiers’ guns,
witness the hunt and capture of a pregnant python,
listen to men talk about the potency of its head,
the richness of its large eggs,
escape the jaws of driver ants and
a trap set by “heart-men.”
I drive pass my neighbor,
mother of a Bassa chief
and a condemned witch.
She pays penance daily for her deeds,
sits in mud on the roadside
and sustains her bags of bones
with boiled peanuts.
The Caribbean lore about men
gouging out hearts to make sacrifices
becomes real and I learn of new ones—
the danger of lightning throwers, and Nigi
river-people
who drag victims down into their underwater world.
III Life-lines
Mother’s monthly letters
are smudged with her tears.
she wonders,“Wha’
ah go do if me chile dead?”*
A new letter from mother says
“Granny dead three
months ago,
didn’ wan’ burden
you wid worry,
throw cocobey ‘pon
yaws.”*
I wallow in the thought
she needs to spare me
from the news of lost loved ones.
IV No Time-warp
Anger floods me
when I see mother again.
She is a greying, bent woman.
Who am I angry with? Time?
At seventy-two she abandons me,
leaves me an orphan just when
I am beginning to fit womanhood’s cloak.
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
Runners in the Marathon of Time
To my granddaughters
You were the gifts
we awaited,
seeds nurtured in
love,
brought to us
through
the strength of
our daughters.
Your lives, sung
to us by our foremothers,
prayed for in
their boundless world,
are the answer to
our prayers, their prayers.
You come from
women who are neither
willing victims
nor victimizers.
Our words, passed
on through time,
were never weapons
of destruction,
but wise
pronouncements
steeling minds and
backbones.
You will witness
the majesty, misery,
and mysteries of
this world.
We will watch you
stumble over obstacles,
observe you slip
and slide while scaling walls
put up to hinder
your dreams.
We, your
guardians,
will let you find
your way,
oversee the road
you take,
allow you to
become you.
Your lives are our
continuum.
You are the
torch-bearers of the new generation.
We pass the baton
on,
blood of our
blood.
© Althea
Romeo-Mark
First Published in
WomanSpeak: A Journal of Writing and Art by Caribbean Women, ed. Lynn
Sweeting, Vol. 8, 2016
Althea Romeo-Mark, an educator and writer, was born in Antigua, West Indies, and grew up in St. Thomas, US Virgin Islands. She has lived and taught in St. Thomas, Virgin Islands, Connecticut, and Ohio, USA, Liberia, West Africa, London, England, and Switzerland since 1991. Althea Romeo Mark, who writes poetry, short stories, and personal essays, is the author of two full-length poetry collections, The Nakedness of New and If Only the Dust Would Settle, (English-German), and four chapbooks, On the Borders of Belonging, Beyond Dreams: The Ritual Dancer, Two Faces, Two Phases, Palaver, and Shu-Shu Moko Jumbi: The Silent Dancing Spirit.
Althea was nominated for the Eric Hoffer Book Award in 2024 for her On the Borders of
Belonging poetry
collection by Kelsay Books publishers 2023. https://www.hofferaward.com/
She was awarded the Vincent Cooper Literary
Prize in 2023 for her short story,” Saving
Papa Rojas from the Deathbed Flirt.” It
goes to a Caribbean author for exemplary writing in Caribbean
Nation Language (a term used by celebrated post-colonial Caribbean author Kamau
Brathwaite to describe vernacular language born in the Caribbean).
I feel your Liberian experience in “Wounds” and “True Grit” Congratulations, Professor Aroma. 👍🏾💯%
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