These poems are published connected to the partnership between the Mid-Atlantic Review and Howard University and a recent event for the Howard community.

The Guide (the flowers)

First, you’ll need to be sightless
Completely
Blind to all that they tell you there is to see
Home to countless combative
Weary Black souls
Pitiful withered plants
They lose the plumpness of their petals
In the light
And can only grow in the dark
All that you are
An infirm flower planted only to wilt
Inevitably
Don’t subscribe to their vision
See all that’s full and alive
In the place you were made to blossom

Then, you’ll need a safe space
To flourish of course
The dense backgrounds that have kept their shape through
the changing years
It holds a spacious garage
that the stray cats and dogs
drag their starving bodies at night
to force their beings to accept
a new form of home
That feeds them
The fences that surround it
make faces behind
the many Cadillacs, trucks, and Chevys
that have backed into them
It holds them in place
A bedroom
that seems to recognize you
more than you
It contains a singular closet
that you used to hide from the sun
to keep the monsters from creeping in
The fabricated ones from fairytale storybooks
And the real ones from family photos

Your base
The neighborhoods
Within the city
The City
The soil
Aged trees that carry the strength of a herd of bulls
It towers over your stalk
Made you strong
The digestible downtown
They built around you
Made it look like you were never made to fit in it
Yet you push through the concrete
The crystal water lakes that they pollute
Still love to soak in the pores
of your black stem
This is where we raise our kin
Grow our field
Your safe haven
Your city
Our city
No matter how hard they try it’ll always be
Our city
They’ll never stop trying
To change it for them
Stealing the soil
Digging you out of your home
That feeds you
Covers you
And keeps you in place

Because of that
Finally, you’ll have to love it
Take your broken sepals and pick your petals off the ground to see
What you’re grown to see
Look around at the rough wind that keeps the air in your lungs
It’ll never hurt you
It’ll always give you
The nutrients you need
So love it
And keep loving
And keep loving
And keep loving
And keep loving
Adore it all
And all you are
That’s the only way to preserve
The only way to keep what’s yours
To kiss every flaw of the rigid concretes
We arose from
Reassure the staggered buildings
That stand with self-pity
And abandonment
We shall light and fill
Hug every seed that can’t sprout in public institutes
Water the flowers that be
Love them first and most
See only this
To keep the magic from them
To make it better for us

Canopy Birds: Self Portrait

I repeatedly fidgeted behind her desk
As she asked me the million-dollar question
The one any therapist would ask in an intro meeting
Her request was for me to describe who I am
Who I believed myself to be

As someone who’s been a patient all their life
I saw it coming
Yet I was still terribly unprepared to answer
The problem was every time I thought I had an accurate answer to this question
Others’ perception of me redirected my self-image
Towards another direction
I believed I was a mature and stable individual
TI thought with my head instead of my heart
Till one day in the kitchen along with many other vulnerable conversations
My brother told me my heavy heart was filled with
Too much love

So much love that it caused an imbalance in my brain
Which leads to my impulsivity
My foolish tolerance
My hopeless romantic fantasies
My overthinking and anxiety
These are the same flaws my mother often criticizes
So I’m not the brave, secure person I thought I was either
Even my dreams show me something different
Who I really am
A bird of the wildest canopy
That’s the picture that my thoughts paint
With great discernment
No matter how much praise I receive
About the uniqueness of my underwings
Or the sight of my charming crown
I don’t see the beauty
I don’t feel that I’m worthy enough
To soar alongside the conquering, clear clouds
Made to witness me and who I wish to be
All I know how to do is to gawk at the world below
Never truly living in it

I wasn’t there for you when your grandfather died
I watched from afar as you let your wounds bleed out
Through your open, soggy eyes
I guess I couldn’t bring myself to fly far enough to you
Ironically, sometimes I fly too far to the other side
Like when I speak the lie “I love you” to many
Knowing my body is never ready
To push those words out into the forefront for them to hear

I’m sorry I pushed you too
To no longer wanting to be close to me
I guess they were right about who I am
I guess I’ll always be someone in over their head
Making decisions too big compared to my actual capabilities
Relying on fat to fuel my unsteady, extensive flights
Led by my anchor of a heart
Making waste of my hollow bones
To be able to glide

Only to crash into what I thought was the perfect destination
I am not who I thought I was
Who I always begin to think I am
So for now
I’ll remain on top of the tallest tree
Hiding in my safe habitat of comfortability
Never making it down to the surface
With the rest of the world

Alana McDonald is a freshman at Howard University from Detroit, Michigan. Always a writer in various forms, her first heartbreak inspired her first poem. She has since emerged herself in poetry through performance poetry, and hosting and attending poetry workshops.

Featured image in this post is: Pattanaik, Indian Bulbul at the top of a canopy. MET DP-401-001 license via creative commons, via Wikimedia Commons

These poems are published connected to the partnership between the Mid-Atlantic Review and Howard University and a recent event for the Howard community.

Wright is why I write

Richard Wright made Bigger Thomas
kill to know he had arrived.

Showed America
what happens when
blackness is twisted
beyond bending,
broken beyond
mending.

And then, he wrote the
most beautiful haikus before
he crossed over to the other side.

18 months, right before he died
he wrote in 5-7-5:

It was so silent
That the silence protested
With one lone bird cry
 

I’m not from, where I’m from

And when you find me there
I will not be there.

I’ll be in the curry goat and ginger tea
or oyster shells and cornmeal cakes
browning in the cast-iron.

You’ll have to turn the rocks over
and pull the roots up
you’ll need to follow the lengths

stretched beyond the first town,
past the insurance capital
down to the dirty riverbed
that holds native names
and the recent dead.

but I’m not there,
sometimes, I’m a glimmer
a reflection of the mother tongue
twisted in the current times,

a bright light that blind us
a blare of sound that mutes us
from what we’ve said
when all is wanted is a song,

a beat
a melody
that reminds us
of home

but what happens when home
was burnt down
the nape of the neck
with the permed-out curls of r’s
that dropped from the end of words
ciga’, lobsta’ and sista’

Cause history repeats like sounds
Of waves clashing with the shore,
Wind rattling windows
until it is rinsed and repeated
rinse and repeat
the cycle that displaced me
from where I’m from
cause, it’s not one place
not a place

not a single story
that runs through my veins
cause I bleed the names
of many places,
many faces
that all root back
to my memories—

of a place I’m not from
from a place I’m far from
places that lead back to me.

Summer Tate is a poet and educator focusing on American and African American Literature. She is published in Meat for Tea: The Valley Review, Here Poetry Journal, Eastern Connecticut State University, and Connecticut Literary Anthology, Woodhall Press. She teaches English in Hartford, Connecticut, and has been an adjunct professor at Springfield College, Fairfield University, and in the Second Chance Pell Program with Asnuntuck College. Summer holds a BA from Bay Path University and a Masters in English Education from UConn and received her MFA in Creative Writing from Fairfield University. She is an English PhD candidate at Howard University.

Featured image this post is “Portrait of Richard Wright”, MET DP-401-001, by Carl Van Vechten, license creative commons via Wikimedia Commons

These poems are published here connected to the partnership between the Mid-Atlantic Review and Howard University and a recent event for the Howard community.

Where I’m From

The smell of baked bread
from the local Hispanics
overwhelm me. Every street
has a bodega, each waiting
to welcome you inside, gifting
a bacon egg and cheese.
Art speaks bold and bright
along the streets, elders
by the precinct, telling
their stories to one another,
children running home, or
running for the train, while
you can hear it rumble away.
Graffiti-stained walls tell
thousands of tales—a fusion
of cultures—every block claims
its story.

Life is Often Like This

A little boy holds a baguette. It makes him happy.
A man plays a flute. Cows follow his music.
Two ladies and a man dance.
A man drives. A bent lamppost appears.
An alien meets an astronaut.
A woman wears high heels. One heel has a wheel.
A sign reads Dream. A car is stuck in the bushes.
A monkey with glasses reads Origin of Species.
A man with super-human strength lifts a car.
A group of black men in white cloaks prepare.
A white man on a bike drinks from a bottle.
A man dressed in a suit sits on a yellow couch with a bee.
A dog pushes books off a shelf and lies there.
A girl sits by a firepit with her parents on Christmas morning.
A man offers a pizza to a woman and her daughter.
Male office workers in suits fly like fish.
The Statue of Liberty is submerged in water.
Native Americans point off into the distance.
A body floats in the Hudson River.

Adriana M. Moore is an undeclared freshman at Howard University from Bronx, New York. Her career goal is to graduate with a nursing degree and become a pediatric travel nurse who travels the world and creates a sustainable life while helping others in need. Her interest in poetry blossomed when she attended the Howard/Day Eight workshop, which helped her realize writing poetry was not that bad and actually was quite fun.

Featured image this post is, “Upstate Bodega in Downtown Troy” by Tyler McNeil, license via creative commons, wikimedia commons.