These poems are part of a special section of the Mid-Atlantic Review, Celebrating Black History, and selected by editors Khadijah Ali-Coleman, Carolivia Herron, and Rebecca Bishophall. To learn more about this series read a blog post on the Day Eight website here.
  

Active Well

I am the crude oil
from the wells
my ancestors dug

how dare I
shun the memory
of those calloused hands?
 

Summit

Blackness is my Kilimanjaro.
It’s not just some summit.
It’s a frigid and breathless climb.

Let the muffled and toothless
shout escape me.

This hike is not a race.
Have you heard of altitude sickness?

Blackness is a star so celestial
we walked the moon or
we invented the moonwalk

Blackness is as supreme
as the moon with
it’s fullness and
eclipses of light.

Deaundra Jackson is a 2023 MFA in Writing graduate of Sarah Lawrence College. Her work centers marginalized voices of the past. She was a 2023 Diversities and Diasporas Fellow of the Global Diversity Foundation. She has been published in The Raven’s Perch, Aunt Chloe Literary Magazine, Rising Phoenix Review, and Beyond the Sea: An Eber & Wein Anthology. She lives in Atlanta, Georgia and enjoys hummingbird watching and music festivals.

Featured image in this post is: “Mount_Kilimanjaro, Tanzania (51904885703)” by Ray in Manila, Creative Commons, via Wikimedia Commons