sewn shut (a poem)

every beautiful black sewn-shut woman
in bitter black history
i
lose control
lose my mind
love like this for you

come curve on top of him
& we will free madagascar
through the tropic of capricorn

sisters with my
eyes ears airs anger
stare down at this man in wonder
lose control
lose your mind
break circum-curse taboo

every beautiful black sewn-shut woman
in bitter black history
i
make love like this
make love like this
make love like this
for you

drift gently
through the mozambique channel girl
tanzania uganda sudan

let nile wet thumb-tips tremble dark thighs
come follow my blood-scent through chad

for every beautiful black sewn-shut woman
in bitter black history
i
will love this man
like mad

(published in my chapbook Original Skin, 2008, available at Picaro Press)

Spoken Word Interview

For those of you in Melbourne, I will be interviewed tomorrow from 9-9.30am on 3CR radio's (855am on your dial) show Spoken Word. The show was pre-recorded one rainy evening several weeks ago at 3CR's threadbare but funky studios in Fitzroy Melbourne. Host Santo Cazzati (one of four hosts of the show) was superhumanly prepared and infinitely more eloquent than I can ever hope to be. That might just have something to do with the fact that he's one of the best spoken wordsters in Melbourne.

Santo got me talking about writing the African descendant experience in the 'new world', female hip-hop artists, the Spoken Word scene in Melbourne and much more. You will also catch Santo performing one of his own works on the show (I think you Queenslanders had the privilege of having him over there for the poetry festival several weekends ago), and I also read three of my own works live: 'Banane Femme' (a section from a longer poem about French/African-American dancehall legend Josephine Baker, 'Mali' (a two minute slam poem I wrote for my son), and 'Shapeshifters', which you can read here in text.

Happy listening. And for all of you not in Melbourne, I will try and upload an audio of the half hour show sometime soon. Or you could try streaming it from the 3CR site if you're on AUStime...and you're not as technologically challenged as yours truly.

armageddon: a poem

i / refused somebody a dollar
today bt now i think he
mighta really needed it
wz there armageddon in
the way / my head shook
knowing yeah / i had no coins
bt there wz five dollars curled
right up there in my pocket / he
didn’t smell so good / i
wz reading some paper that
mighta cost more than he
even asked me for / i can’t
remember / and besides
i / don’t even really want to
think about what i did / he
wore thread-bare converse
& fingernails black
like mushroom undersides
he mighta been asking / for
the only meal in two days / or
a bus fare home / to his daughter
i / didn’t think about how hard
it woulda been for him to ask
in the first place / it wz the tail
end of a rough day / i just
wanted him to move on but he
had already approached everybody
on the station / was i his final
chance at a bed tonight / the
weathercast says it might
get down to zero / out there
& me / i just mighta been / an
armageddon / for somebody

ramblings

1. spinning the room

As I was flicking through new poems to read for my poetry feature at The Spinning Room on High Street (Prahran, Melbourne) on Tuesday night, I realised that the usual anxiety about reading new poems wasn’t there. Partly because of my readers here, I think. Not surprisingly, the poems I’ve posted over the last two months that you guys liked the best (Obama, Delilah, H1n1, Little Michael) also went down the best performance-wise. What can I say? Your feedback is honing my craft, pity I can’t pay you all for it.

So, I walk in to the Spinning Room, and there are black people there. Black people other than myself and I.Q (aka Memphis-turned-Melbourne poetry slam king Benjamin Theolonius Sanders). Black people. At a poetry reading. In Australia. Ladies and Gentlemen, times are a-changing. Although perhaps I shouldn’t have run toward the two of them screaming “Oh my God, black people.” Note to self: that was seriously uncool. The four of us meant that ten percent of the audience was black. Wha—? (For the internationals that read this blog, you have to know the Australian poetry scene to realise why I am freaking out about this). So I want to say a heartfelt thanks my new Croation-Namibian (oh yeah, what a story she has to tell!) friend Laura, who whooped and cheered me on like a true sister, and Clement Deng, who hails from Sudan via Kenya, and also had quite a tale to tell (which I hope to speak to him about further) about the media portrayal of Sudanese migrants in Australia. You two made my night.


2. the basement or the streets

Last weekend, I was part of Overland Literary Journal’s Progressive Writers Masterclass, which has already been blogged about by several of the other participants. Nine of us, along with Overland’s Rjurik Davidson, were shut away in a sub-zero basement of the Trades Hall building in Melbourne, to workshop each other’s short stories and discuss political writing. Although the former was done with much vigour, I did feel there could have been more philosophical discussion about ‘political writing’ (or lack thereof) in Australian fiction, why this is, and what might be done to better encourage a community of progressive writers. And I did note that over the weekend, while we were in the basement theorising, not 500 metres away, thousands were marching through the streets of Melbourne on the Harmony march. But as one of my fellow writers, A.S. Patric pointed out, somebody’s gotta be chained to the desk writing the propaganda for these events, right?

Australian writers Cate Kennedy, Lucy Sussex and Tony Birch visited on the three respective days to speak about the craft of short story writing, and each of them gave different energy and inspiration in different ways. Though let me just say, with renewed revulsion, that I absolutely detest hot-house writing exercises...though I did them politely anyway, cringing all the while.

trespassing (a poem)

i / am not
a natural gardener:
that dawn-dark crunch of
snail shell beneath the heel
uneases down my spine
this rocquet plot is not designed
& will not stretch
to feed / some family
of five / trespassers
this earth / is mine

just relax my dear / it
won’t take a moment / the
doctor says / i
hold my breath
& she’s right

Speechless: a journal page

hush (a poem)

mama / don’t go out to say
poems / without me tonight
he leaks at me / with those
drooping chocolate eyes / two
& half a years / is too little time
to have known the word
sacrifice / so i try hush
knowing hush won’t stop
the crying / little stricken chest
draws rasping breath at
hush / i will be back soon
we both know hush can’t read
the bedtime story /

hush
won’t twirl that afrocurl
to sleep / or let him dip
licked peter rabbit spoon
deep down in the milo tin / hush
can’t snuggle warm in bed
& smell like me / still i say
hush / pretending maybe
that he will / but
every mother knows / when
her child’s heart is breaking
& i felt the weight of his / hanging
chubby off my ankle
okay / hush
hush / okay
okay / pumpkin
i will stay

two years & some
is too little time
to have known the word
sacrifice / so i try i’ll stay
& arms flung around my neck
he says / no silly
take me with you
on the stage

Photo (c) Michael Reynolds, 2008.