These poems are published connected to the partnership between the Mid-Atlantic Review and Howard University and a recent event for the Howard community.
Broke Tin Pan Alley
Hitchcock made it
So that you couldn’t
Take a shower
Without the curtain
Drawn
Then you couldn’t
Go out for fear
Pigeons would
Pluck your eyes
Out like Oedipus
But I don’t want
To fuss
Nor show disgust
On my sourpuss
Because I have
No shower
Or the proper
Place
To put it in
I’d sooner
Be found
In this here bin
My dull shadow
Making hand
Puppets on the wall
Haiku for Sonia
My house has lions
Sonia words roar from each shelf
Spine tingling poems
Your blue words bloom bold
Laugh in the drum of your tongue
African violet
Pristine poems sing
Castanets clap and clatter
Love strummed from your tongue
Poems are prayers
Bread broken for everyone
Multiplying peace
Your poems are psalms
Balm in our Gilead
We wear them as salve
This homegirl has hand
Grenades beneath her sharp tongue
Her lips a bouquet
Poems Orishas
Yemaya Obatala
Africa calling
Her breath is married to
An ocean of words
The page brought her here
Border Crossing
The blood of Jesus
Dangles from a crown of thorns
Razor-wired hope
Bobbles in water
Body of Jesús denied
A river’s safe grace
Torn flesh blood Rio runs—O
How Christians love their neighbors
Tony Medina, Associate Chair and Director of Creative Writing in the Department of Literature & Writing at Howard University, is a multi-genre author and editor of 24 books for adults and young people. His most recent poetry collection, Because the Sky (Sable Books, 2024), is an homage to the Palestinian people. His work appears in over one 160 publications. Among his honors, he is the recipient of the first African Voices Literary Award (2013) and the 2025 National Black Writers Nikki Giovanni Award for Middle Grade and Young Adult Literature.
Featured image in this post is, “Alfred Hitchcock promo still for The Birds (1963).” Photographer: Bob Willoughby. Public domain via Wikimedia Commons.
