Lisa Suhair Majaj
I’ve owned it forever, a dark seed,
one of those possessions you know
you’ll need one day, but till then
shove to the back of your mind,
ignore. It permeated my being
from the moment I pushed down the birth canal
into life-light, and before, from that first eruption
of synchronicity, cells multiplying madly
deep in my mother’s womb-nest
where I swam, nine months, practicing for life.
Once born, there was so much to do.
I learned how to breathe, how to suckle—
my mothers’ chest a savannah, her nipple
an oasis – and from there the whole world
waited. Oh, the busyness of life!
But that death-knowledge
slumbers, imprinted in my bones
like a birthright:
original, indelible,
the one thing in life
I won’t have to earn.
Lisa Suhair Majaj is the author of Geographies of Light, winner of the Del Sol Press Poetry Prize. Her poems and essays have appeared in over fifty journals and anthologies worldwide. She is also co-editor of three collections of critical essays: Going Global: The Transnational Reception of Third World Women Writers; Intersections: Gender, Nation and Community in Arab Women’s Novels, and Etel Adnan: Critical Essays on the Arab-American Writer and Artist. She lives in Nicosia, Cyprus.
Gustav
Ishmael Reed
A scientist says that
Crows can recognize
Human faces
After
He released those
He’d tested in labs
They’d harass him
Whenever he took
A walk
I guess that’s why crows
Don’t talk to
Me any more
Strolling along the path
Of the Emeryville Marina
We used
To be good buddies
They’d do three caws
And I would
answer with three
And then they
Would do four caws and
I’d respond with four
But now they’re silent
I must have said the
Wrong thing
I guess they’re on to me
I guess they’re saying among
Themselves
There goes that fellow
Who thinks he’s one of
Us
I never got as close to
A crow as Marlyse
Her mother bought
Gustav for five Swiss francs
He used to follow her
To school,
And would perch on a
Tree outside her
Classroom
He’d stand on her
Shoulder when she
Went horseback riding
Her step father
And brothers hated Gustav
When he flew into their
Bedroom window, the
Brothers smothered him with
Linen and laughed as he
Struggled
After that, the brothers
Were objects of his furious
Pecking
He’d tear out their hair
He crow-sacked the kitchen
Broke dishes
Covered himself with
Flour
When Marlyse returned from
Catholic school
She found that the step father
Had shot the crow
She never forgave him
ISHMAEL REED
Ishmael Reed- Author of twenty-seven published books to date, Ishmael Reed is a novelist, poet, playwright, and essayist. He is also a publisher, editor of thirteen anthologies and numerous magazines, blogger for the San Francisco Chronicle, television producer, media commentator, teacher and lecturer. A 1972 manifesto inspired a major visual art exhibit and book, “NeoHooDoo: Art for a Forgotten Faith,” curated by Franklin Sirmans for The Menil Collection in Houston, where it opened June 27, 2008, and , through 2009, subsequently traveled to P.S. 1 Contemporary Art Center in New York City, and the Miami Art Museum . Reed’s forthcoming book is titled, JUICE!