The IX Hairdressers and Afro-hairdos contest, "Knitting Hopes" took place last weekend, (May 11-12, 2013) in Cali, Colombia, sponsored by the Programa Nacional de Concertación del Ministerio de Cultura.
In its ninth iteration, scheduled during African Heritage Month, the contests seeks to celebrate African-style hairdos as a distinctive elements of black neighborhoods and to reaffirm African identity through the practice of hairdressing.
of a bed that’s unsleepable
until egyptian cotton sheets are removed
balled together in a bamboo hamper
to be fumigated
by the washing process
the time-worn couch
is untenable as well
until I remove the sheets
covering what was twice
his resting place
and replace them with
freshly washed ones.
then I can curl myself into it
until the knowledge
that a bicycle isn’t the only thing
a woman can never forget how to ride
is put into its proper place
like the sheets
Back then, moans
manifested through walls
like copulating ghosts
making morning after
sightings problematic.
I bound myself to my room
until the sounds and subjects
dissipated into the mist
of a Monday morning.
Now, when I hear sounds
through the walls
I remember my own moans
and how they climaxed
into this life
where I am a mother
listening to my child
read himself to sleep.
a generation of violets
spreads into english gardens
formerly manicured
with the precision
of the queen’s english.
exigent circumstances
leads to a silence
which tries but fails
to silence desperate
desires for cassava
and groundnut
in love (secretly) with sister killjoy’s
black-eyed squint
they spread not
their language to their seeds
who travel far
on diasporic planes
and who, when they return,
need the rosetta stone
to decipher their source
In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.
God did many wondrous and mysterious things
Blessing a people to bless others
Delivering them from slavery to a Promised Land.
Rescuing them from self-destruction
Showing them mercy from everlasting to everlasting.
Then, some time ago, God died.
It might have been by the pen of Frederich Nietzsche,
Or in the ovens of Aushwitz.
Why do you write horror? How can horror fiction be escapism?
That familiar query from readers pops to mind as I’m riding with my father from Atlanta down to northern Florida to visit the site where the notorious Dozier School for Boys once stood as a real-life boogeyman to juvenile offenders from around the state of my birth.
Some former prisoners say boys were beaten, tortured, sexually assaulted.
wild is the wind
which torments screen
shields.
i am witness
to the anomaly
of april snow showers
which, while not rain,
will still bring
may flowers.
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I buzz into your head
