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.
107.
You could stare without being slapped for staring
in Ebony, where you would learn how weeping
looked without tears. Reading the sight
of seers, you turned every page. Their pictures
pitched you into some nameless road’s haunted
edge, that Pettus bridge, the torn throat of a staircase.
Finding the flash, you leaned into eyes like yours.
Eyes that expected breath to push them open,
squinting, stumbling wayward, hungry, fractious.
Onward to another hour. An obedient next
day. You almost caught their damp windbreakers,
their faint cologne under cigarettes crushed
on rocks, their sweat. Medgar and Myrlie Evers
lived in a neat, modern home that made the South
look as if they got a better deal: a split-level
on a Jackson city street that seemed suburban, except
that blood—thick as engine oil, too much for paper
towels—soaked a whole block of that driveway, steps
from the house. He almost kissed his kids. He almost
let the screen door bang. Did he grope for the rifle?
Or murmur his evening joke? You traveled. In places
that could not invent to satisfy, or sugar over. On pages
filling the shatter, written with light.
[Ebony Magazine: To the photographers]
by M. Nzadi Keita, from Migration Letters
205.
Breaking news, Grandma’s little t.v. blurted
out. Three names. A choke knot shrunk the dining
room. The grownups froze. And you kids
noticed. “We interrupt–” It said. You blinked
away the first two names to better hear. Again
your grandfather’s name in Walter Cronkite’s
mouth: ”James Chaney…” came, strong
as concrete. He jerked up from the table, straight
— as if a rope had yanked his length
of life. “Civil rights workers, missing since…”
The birthday cake began to sag,
a sickly yellow sponge.
“Beaten to death…” No, you saw him
stand. Right there, unswollen. Alive
but “Shallow graves…’” got the best
of your stung eyes, no matter what.
Cronkite slow-shook his head. As if
no one saw it coming, days before. As
if no one ever heard of such. As if three
missing men, killers “uncertain,” was all
a mystery ” to launch a probe into—”. Could
he mean your city? Could that dead man be your
cool young Uncle Jimmy— where was he? No,
not Mississippi. You saw him leave. Smoking
and laughing, his candle-eyed friends
had come to beep the horn and call Yo, Chaney!
through the screen: And that Mississippi
soul. A lost cousin? No. Someone
else’s people stood round a table now, holding
open cuts. All of You, related. Chained to a room
by names. Twisted throats. Mouths closed. Mouths
hung dark, like that James, full of shapes
he can never outrun.
[Not your Philadelphia: August, 1964]
by M. Nzadi Keita, from Migration Letters
M. Nzadi Keita’s third poetry collection, Migration Letters, published by Beacon Press in April, 2024, centers her upbringing in Black working-class Philadelphia. Her second book, Brief Evidence of Heaven, shed light on free-born, illiterate abolitionist, Anna Murray Douglass, Frederick Douglass’s first wife. Publications including Poet Lore and anthologies such as The Ringing Ear: Black Poets Lean South, have featured Keita’s poems. Her prose publications include the journal About Place, and the volume, Women, Culture, and The Sixties. Keita served as a Professor of English at Ursinus College for 25 years, an adviser to the award-winning film, “BadddDDD Sonia Sanchez,” and a consultant with the Geraldine R. Dodge Poetry Foundation and Mural Arts Philadelphia. She is a member of the Black poetry collective, Cave Canem, and a recipient of grants, awards, and fellowships from the Leeway Foundation and the Pew Center for Arts and Heritage, among others. Keita has presented poetry and scholarship in varied settings, including the Modern Language Association International Conference and the National Caucus of African-American Librarians.
Featured image in this post is: “Goodman, Cheney, and Schwerner Murder site marker” by Alaska4Me2, creativie commons, via Wikimedia Commons
