Poetry Section Contents
Suheir Hammad, "a prayer band"
Thomas Sayers Ellis, "Groovallegiance"
Lorraine Healy, "Where They Were"
Stephen Paul Miller, from "I’m Trying to Get My Phony
Baloney Ideas about Metamodernism into a Poem"
SUHEIR HAMMAD
a prayer band
every thing
you ever paid for
you ever worked on
you ever received
every thing
you ever gave away
you ever held on to
you ever forgot about
every single thing is one
of every single thing and all
things are gone
every thing i can think to do
to say i feel
is buoyant
every thing is below water
every thing is eroding
every thing is hungry
there is no thing to eat
there is water every where
and there is no thing clean to drink
the children aren’t talking
the nurses have stopped believing
anyone is coming for us
the parish fire chief will never again tell anyone that help
is coming
now is the time of rags
now is the indigo of loss
now is the need for cavalry
new orleans
i fell in love with your fine ass poor boys sweating
frying catfish blackened life thick women glossy
seasoning bourbon indians beads grit history of
races
and losers who still won
new orleans
i dreamt of living lush within your shuttered
eyes
a closet of yellow dresses a breeze on my neck
writing poems for do right men and a daughter of
refugees
i have known of displacement
and the tides pulling every thing
that could not be carried within
and some of that too
a jamaican man sings
those who can afford to run will run
what about those who can’t
they will have to stay
end of the month tropical depression turned storm
someone whose beloved has drowned
knows what water can do
what water will do to once animated things
a new orleans man pleads
we have to steal from each other to eat
another gun in hand says we will protect what we have
what belongs to us
i have known of fleeing desperate
with children on hips in arms on backs
of house keys strung on necks
of water weighed shoes
disintegrated official papers
leases certificates births deaths taxes
i have known of high ways which lead nowhere
of aches in teeth in heads in hands tied
i have known of women raped by strangers by neighbors
of a hunger in human
i have known of promises to return
to where you come from
but first any bus going any where
tonight the tigris and the mississippi moan
for each other as sisters
full of unnatural things
flooded with predators and prayers
all language bankrupt
how long before hope begins to eat itself?
how many flags must be waved?
when does a man let go of his wife’s hand in order to hold his
child?
who says this is not the america they know?
what america do they know?
were the poor people so poor they could not be seen?
were the black people so many they could not be counted?
this is not a charge
this is a conviction
if death levels us all
then life plays favorites
and life it seems is constructed
of budgets contracts deployments of wards
and automobiles of superstition and tourism
and gasoline but mostly insurance
and insurance it seems is only bought
and only with what cannot be carried within
and some of that too
a city of slave bricked streets
a city of chapel rooms
a city of haints
a crescent city
where will the jazz funeral be held?
when will the children talk?
tonight it is the dead
and dying who are left
and those who would rather not
promise themselves they will return
they will be there
after everything is gone
and when the saints come
marching like spring
to save us all
Suheir Hammad is the author of several books, including her
latest
collection of poems, ZaatarDiva by Cypher (http://www.CypherBooks.com).
She
is an original cast member and writer of
Russell Simmons Presents Def Poetry Jam on Broadway. Her
website is
http://www.SuheirHammad.com.
THOMAS SAYERS ELLIS
Groovallegiance
for Michael Veal
A dream. A democracy. A savage liberty.
And yet another anthem and yet another heaven
and yet another party wants you.
Wants you wants you wants you.
Wants you to funk-a-pen funkapuss.
Wants you to anthologize then re-troop your group.
Wants you to recruit prune juice.
My peeps.
My poetics.
My feet.
All one.
All one.
All one, heel and toe.
My peeps.
My poetics.
My feet.
All one.
All one.
All one, lowly heel and toe.
Br'er feet and br'er beat repeatedly beaten.
Repeatedly beaten repeatedly beaten.
Br'er feet and br'er beat repeatedly beaten.
Repeatedly beaten repeatedly beaten repeatedly beaten.
Br'er feet and br'er beat repeatedly beaten.
Feet feet feet.
Every feet a foot and free, every
feet a foot and free,
every feet a foot and free.
A foot and free.
Agony and defeat, a foot and free.
A foot and free.
Every feet a foot and free, every feet a foot and free,
every feet a foot and free.
A foot and free.
Agony and defeat, a foot and free.
Feet feet feet
Reverend feet, a foot and free. Reverend feet,
Repeatedly beaten
Feet feet feet.
A million marchers.
Two parties.
One Washington.
One Washington.
Two parties.
A million marchers.
An afterparty.
An afterparty after marching.
The aftermarch.
An aftermarch-afterparty after
marching
all the way to Washington.
Another march another party.
Another aftermarch after another
afterparty.
After another afterparty after
marching.
After another march afterpartying
and after marching
all the way to Washington.
Always Washington always
Washington.
Uncle Jam, enjambed
all the way to Washington.
After all that marching after all
that partying.
Uncle Jam, enjambed.
Always Washington.
A million marchers.
Two parties.
One Washington.
One Washington.
Two parties.
A million marchers.
Footwork.
If feet work for page shouldn't
feet work
for stage, run-on.
Run-on platform.
Run-on floor,
run-on.
If feet work abroad shouldn't feet
work
at home, run-on.
Run blood, run-off.
From run flag.
From run bag,
run-on.
Run and tell it.
Run tell tag run tell toe, run
tell, tell it.
De-decorate intelligence.
If so also de-decorate form. If so
also de-decorate war,
run home.
In every war bloods leave and
bloods bleed
and don't come home. What for in every
war,
what for, and don't come home.
For war for war for war.
In every war bloods leave and
bloods bleed
and don't come home. What for in every
war,
what for, and don't come home.
For more for more for more.
That for, in every war.
That for, for every drug.
The war on drugs is a war on
bloods,
run tell it.
A line is played. A section plays.
All up, into it, and involved,
into it into it
and involved, all up into it and
involved.
Footnote.
Take joke.
Take note to toes.
Clip note.
Go home.
Take note to foot.
Race note.
Footnote to feet.
Foot hurt.
Footnote to note.
Cite hurt.
Toe note to foot.
Bottoms up.
Sore foot to church.
Stop running.
If office, if oath.
Broken votes.
A line is played. A section plays.
A protest you press to test
repeating itself.
A section plays. A line is played.
A protest you press to test
repeating itself.
My peeps.
My poetics.
My feet.
Some ally.
Some enemy.
Mostly tradition.
The jive end.
Br'er rear.
Br'er rear end isms.
Pass out the words.
The kitty is not a toy.
Pass out the words.
The kitty is not a toy.
I owe roots and books to
groundwork's underground crosstalk
of African Telephone Churches.
All one all one all one,
star-spangled funky.
An associate professor of English at Case Western Reserve
University (Cleveland, Ohio), Thomas Sayers Ellis
is a coeditor of On the Verge: Emerging Poets and
Artists (1993), and a contributing editor of the
journal, Callaloo. His poem, "Groovallegiance,"
appears in his recent book The Maverick Room (Graywolf
Press, 2005,
www.graywolfpress.org), and is reprinted here
by permission of the author. He is currently compiling and
editing Quotes Community: Notes for Black Poets.
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Lorraine Healy
Where They Were
For Anne Marie Macari
They were in Sweden, in Paris.
In Mexico City. In Venezuela.
The thirty thousand, the however
many had not answered
the latest roll call.
So said the general. The colonels.
Some lieutenants. Even the few
cadets of the Army School I knew.
Gone to Denmark. To Barcelona.
Zipping through Rome in little
scooters. Sending postcards. Asking
their poor mothers for more money.
Who were the mothers in the Plaza?
Covering up for the gone.
Making a wretched, wretched noise.
I went from thirteen to eighteen
eating the white sour bread of lie,
and the way we sang bland rock ‘n roll
quieted the whispers, kept us
light-blue and innocent.
They were in Lima, crowding Madrid,
smoking la frula of Amsterdam,
on the long solitary walk of exile;
alive but skinless with nostalgia,
alive and breathing the rare foreign air.
So said the majors. And the beautiful,
immaculate Navy cadets on deck,
and the police. The news anchormen
tut-tutting the rumors, patting their gilded
hair. Were they homesick, the gone?
And we awoke and were so heavy
with the black-green years. So much mud
to go through, sifting for little things,
an earring, one of the wrist bones, a name.
We had been celibate for the motherland.
There was such a roar instead of singing.
The news came from abroad in empty envelopes.
The full things were the ditches where
the gone were entwined and known only
to themselves and each tangled other.
The cadets wore royal blue crossed
with red silk sashes. They could dance.
Nobody knew how we had come to own
so much hatred. Nobody knew. Nobody.
Nunca supimos nada.
Lorraine Healy is an Argentinean poet
and photographer living on Whidbey Island, Washington. She is
the author of The Farthest South (New American Press,
2003,
www.mainstreetrag.com/LHealy.html) and The
Archipelago (Finishing Line Press, 2005).
STEPHEN PAUL MILLER
From "I’m Trying to Get
My Phony Baloney
Ideas about
Metamodernism
into a Poem"
I forget
our SeaWorld
discounts.
“We save
30 or 40 dollars.”
“So
what?”
objects
my 7-yr.-old son,
Noah.
“Money’s
a stupid little man
who makes you
buy things.”
Post-17th
century
modernism
pushes what follows
like a vacuum cleaner
salesman
selling
one
more part,
says Bruno
Latour.
We
turn and
Noah calls
the highway—
a thin
valley between two
South
Californian hills—
“a
lowway.”
At the Delmar
Hilton, we run into a new doctors’
convention
and I enjoy coffee in a china cup
“Can
there be
an
invention convention?” asks Noah from
the back seat on the way to
SeaWorld.
Greeks say “postmodern.”
to describe
a style
after one
“of the moment,”
—as
modern means—
but now
the postmodern
follows
World War II,
so say “post-World War
II/modernism.”
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