Written in Abita Springs, LA
16 October 1999
Last night I attended a lecture/performance by composer and trumpeter, Hannibal Lokumbe, at Parker Institute in Uptown New Orleans. When I’d read in the paper that fifteen years ago he walked off a job during intermission at a club in New York where people paid $100 to hear him, and then wandered the streets, crying and “asking the Creator to find a way that [he] could be more effective with the gift that [he] was given,” I knew I had to be in his presence. As a visual artist and writer, I have that same prayer. So, despite the fact that my entertainment budget is virtually zero, I went, believing the evening held promise for healing. That proved to be true.…
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Shingles peel from the roof—
just corners at first, then all at once,
like sodden bandages. Nothing heals anything
…………….forever,
…………….or completely.
These storms, they take their toll,
walls of gray blooming over breakwaters—
last light leaking over top, casting yellow on the cove,
just beginning to swell.
A thick branch falls to half-frozen dirt—
new wood showing pale at the cracks—
and rolls to the water. These storms
will wear it smooth, toss it back to a beach later, made special
for a mantle in a city
or some landlocked state very far from here.…
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Desmond pulled the fabric close over his nose. The sunlight streamed in through the window, lighting the tiny dust particles that floated around him, making the sterile living room seem like an enchanted garden. Holding the fabric tight, he reached out and touched the glass window pane with his extended index finger. It felt smooth, cool. When two women walked into his view, he gasped, ducking quickly below the windowsill.
“Desmond!” his mother called from somewhere behind him. Sullenly, Desmond pulled at the fabric of the curtains until the window was completely covered. The living room lost its magic.
“Desmond, you silly boy,” mother said, approaching him. “Peeking out at our neighbors again?” Desmond hung his head.
“No, mama,” he whispered bashfully, a smile tugging at his lips.…
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Just twenty-seven years old, a small-town Midwesterner, I spend the morning teaching English conversation at a language school near Gangnam. The 6 AM class bristles with businessmen, bosses with white hair, suits, and a lingering smell of cigarettes. Rows of brown eyes glare. They regard me defiantly, Confucian notions of age and hierarchy clashing with low-intermediate language skills and a deep need to save face. Each of them has paid good money to practice English, has arisen from bed at least an hour early for it, yet no one will open his mouth.
The 7 AM class is the same.
In the 11 AM class, though, the atmosphere shifts entirely. Brown eyes smile, invite. The students here are rich housewives and retirees, a cohort that’s been together in this class for months or even years, and it feels like a social club.…
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The old man says a child
that loses his home only hangs
his sack of misery around his neck.
This country turns me on my legs
like bats and has bleached me
clean of all the midnight dreams.
The spring flowers here have lost
their early morning grace.
I think of redemption in a foreign
river, to immerse my body in this water
and tell my mother to witness my baptism.
The old man says wherever a snail inches
it carries its home along and sometimes
that is the only song you need to know.
– Salawu Olajide…
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What colors paint
pandemic?
The wood pallette,
streaked with some
dried oils that
stubbornly defied
turpentine, did not
want darkness and
fear hues. Sable
brushes with a
faint odor of linseed
oil stood ready.
Protective mask,
fitted vinyl gloves
seemed out of place
near an easel used
to hold stretched
canvas. Fear, in
twenty-twenty,
would not be
recorded by my
tools. I opened
the tube of cadmium
yellow squeezing
sunlight instead
of anxiety.
– Lois Greene Stone
Note: This poem was first published in May 2020 by Scarlet Leaf Review.…
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Krish Dhar scrunched into his window seat on the cramped Air Canada jet. His business required travel from Southern California to Phoenix eight times a year. The return flight took roughly seventy-five minutes. Easy most trips. A good chance to stare into space and mull over things.
Krish watched attractive women board the plane and manage the slim passageway. A brief juncture of hope, of possibility. For whatever reason, they were never ticketed next to him. No, he consistently endured giant, long-legged fellows as neighbors, or sweaty, glandular men who needed the auxiliary seat belt strap to secure them from careening about the cabin. If a woman ever sat next to Krish, it was a besieged mother wrestling with a mewling infant who smelled of soiled diapers and Gerber’s baby food.…
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