Afrobeat Journal Issue 2 : Spring 2011

by Jacqueline Johnson

African Angel Goddess

No ethereal illuminations for her.
She was always earthbound,
attracted to nightlife, music,
places where folks were
dancing so hard,
bodies rain sweat.

African angel mother of humanity,
Lucy definitely isn’t her name.
See her wearing silver,
kicking ass, alligator boots.
Get right in my face shouting,
“girl, get the hell up!”

She wears her halo glinting
across her delta wide forehead.
The harp and horn thing she left
in heaven, but she’ll walk you
through any adversity knowing
all pathways in and out of hell.

She can visit wearing many disguises,
rags so dense
only the gold of her face is visible.
She speaks Mandarin,
Bantu, and Twi, same
sweet mother tongue to her.

Will meet you at the river Styx,
bored with crossing over
in that riggedy ass boat.
Might even give you a second chance,
cause its rebirth
and life that interests her.

She’s in the smoke where
women gather bearing arms,
refusing to be raped, murdered
and refugeed from their homes.
Women of war in Liberia,
Rwanda, Sierre Leone.

Women in Abuja,
Capetown, Harlem, Arusha.
New women everywhere,
gather to give birth to
a future we can inhabit.

Sene-Gambia Blues Triolets

1.

The Crossing
On river Gambia slate and turtleback green,
men and women stand fifty strong in pirogues.
Big bags, mothers and children all lean,
on river Gambia slate and turtleback green.
Each wave is a prayer sung to the shoreline.
No room to sit, they are one communal breath.
On river Gambia slate and turtleback green,
men and women stand fifty strong in pirogues.

2.

Kaolack Crossroads
Bush taxi, goats, medallion cabs all tread
same dusty road in downtown Kaolack.
Islamic holy men wearing talismans and dreads.
Bush taxi, goats, medallion cabs all tread
this street where Senghor still lives.
Street children selling milk and old compacts.
Bush taxi, goats, medallion cabs all tread
same dusty road in downtown Kaolack.

3.

Catholic Church- Goree Island

We stand in clusters, tourists among sacred few.
Black saints and angels watching over us.
Priests prayed over slavers in African pews.
We stand in clusters, tourists among sacred few.
Our prayers almost pagan desiring the new.
Light no candles, claim no victory. Songless.
We stand in clusters, tourists among sacred few.
Black saints and angels watching over us.

The Return

naked tree branches
spray of fifty bullets
a groom returns home
without breath,
without wife

another marvels
eleven extra holes
in his body
revealing a light
no man should ever know

Deluge

They arrive eyes wide
bewildered
hosts of many hungers,
in groups or alone.
Children,
elders,
teenagers
asking what happened?
Are they dead?

They arrive in a deluge of water;
coffins sitting on front lawns,
crests of spontaneous lakes.
Newly dead bereft of kin and clan.
Bodhisattva and angels alike
hasten to this quickening.

Rescue Mission

Utterer, how does your brilliance shine
on an ocean of cowries?
Truth splitting your lips forcing you
to be more than was longed for,
through a funnel into a life,
where once again you are blind, deaf, new.

Wall eyed, husky woman how do I
rescue you from the Empire’s specter,
where we are a darker nation;
bound and mutant still.
Desperate you seek out
any black facts.
So hungry calling ourselves okute, osun, orumilla,
as if we are the gods ourselves.
We got it so backwards, so mixed up
juju doesn’t even know itself.
Where is scythe of humility
we knew so well?

Chant a litany for all who suffered,
un-natural, premature deaths.
Black nationalist seeking source.
To be useful? Serving? Good?

Met you a thousand times,
in many forms.
What if your eyes were centered,
obsidian, leading us to ourselves.
What if your fatness was not the point
or the edge used against you.
Your body as freedom –
map to new and different world.

Green Symphony

I am the water’s daughter
longing to know her hidden ways.
Always curious I swim uncharted waters.
Ancient mirror reflects my truth.

Thin bands of God’s green, dried leaves
mixed with loam of several generations.
Wild fields of corn, white sage and lavender.
A flock of blue jays, arcs of bird wing.

Angels in the midst, incessant
cacophony more urban each second.
Silence then sound of the open road.
All around bivouacs, tributaries

a wild, rushing thing. For miles
green symphony fills my eyes.
Yet the water rules here,
her muddy residue coats my feet.

Unpredictable mingling of wind and water
Her rhythm slow, rippling silver, mischievous.
At the water’s edge I hesitate almost fearful.
In up to my shoulders, hair glistening.

I am the water’s daughter unable to deny
pull of ivory half moons, seasons; to resist
music and currents of waves centuries old.
Her unruly, imperfect, many sided child.

Here I know exactly who I am,
fecund, stubborn and always in trouble.
Out of bounds at last,
I kick into the deep brown waters.

Bruised Fruit

We are tossed aside bruised fruit,
bitter, angry flowers of a generation of men.
Blackened banana, brown exposed apple core.
Who would not know us or our beauty?

Flowers of a generation of men.
Scream of a million sway-back brown women.
Who would not know us or our beauty?
Desires chastened by abysmal hunger.

Scream of a million sway-back brown women.
Daughters of moonlight carry love’s calabash.
Desires chastened by abysmal hunger.
Life pulses in us like the knowing in Sula’s eye.

Daughters of moonlight carry love’s calabash.
Some settle for being second and third wives.
Yet life pulses in us like the knowing in Sula’s eye.
What love can quench a drought four centuries long?

Some settle for being second and third wives.
Daughters, sisters, keepers of moonlight.
What love can quench a drought four centuries long?
Wise women, gather from Palmeres to Charleston.

Daughters, sisters, owners of moonlight.
Seeds our men sow in other villages undo us.
Wise women, gather from Palmeres to Charleston.
Forgotten, yet open fields of our future billow.

Seeds our men sow in other tribes undo us.
We who own power of plums beckon.
Forgotten, yet open fields of our future billow.
Sounds of getupandkkeepthis planet together women.

We who own power of plums beckon.
Blackened banana, brown exposed apple core.
Sounds of getupandkkeepthis planet together women.
Some say we are tossed aside bruised fruit.

Who is Jacqueline Johnson?

Jacqueline Johnson is a mutli-disciplined artist in both writing and fiber arts. She is the author of A Gathering of Mother Tongues published by White Pine Press and is the winner of the Third Annual White Pine Press Poetry Award. She is also the author of Stokely Carmichael: The Story of Black Power, Simon & Shuster Books.
Ms. Johnson has received awards from the New York Foundation of the Arts, the MidAtlantic Writers Association’s Creative Writing Award in poetry, McDowell Colony for the Arts and is a Cave Canem fellow. Ms. Johnson has taught poetry at Pine Manor College, Poets House, Very Special Arts, and the Frederick Douglass Creative Arts Center in New York City. She is widely published in books and anthologies.

Ms. Johnson has served on the Brooklyn Arts Council and has judged poetry contests for Poet’s House, NAACP ActSo Awards and Bronx Council of the Arts.

Ms. Johnson is at work on several new projects: a novel “The Privilege of Memory” and a poetry book “A Woman’s Season.” She is a graduate of New York University and the City University of New York. A native of Philadelphia, PA she currently resides in Brooklyn, New York.