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A simple piece of cloth by Mahasin D. Shamsid-Deen

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A simple piece of cloth by Mahasin D. Shamsid-Deen

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.

A simple piece of cloth

by Mahasin D. Shamsid-Deen

On a simple piece of cloth
strong as history
unconscionable injustice weaved pain

Stiff muslin dyed a deep red (1)
align dirt pathways
proclaimed the sale of human flesh

strong black cotton nylon on a pole (2)
stark white lettering
condemned murder of a man hung

seven stars crisscrossed on red (3)
willful in audacity
glorifies America’s shame upon a people

a past fused in a horror imposed
offer tenuous mend
besides what only the Deity can provide

forehead to floor in supplication
sincere prayer murmured
swaddles the soul in peace

Mahasin D. Shamsid-Deen is an author, poet and published playwright with plays staged, and/or read in the US, Europe, and the Middle East. Her play “One God” was translated into Arabic, Spanish and Malay; filmed for a local PBS station and presented in private audience to the late King Fahd of Saudi Arabia. Her plays have been presented at the Richmond Acts of Faith Festival for several years. Her 10-minute play Infinite Awareness of the Present won the 2017 Rockford New play Festival. Her play “Carrying the Load, the life and times of Sister Clara Muhammad” was part of the Richmond Acts of Faith Festival and was performed before an overflowing crowd at the Anacostia Playhouse for the American Islamic Heritage Museum in Washington, DC. Her play “African Musk on my Forehead Unwrapping my pink shroud” an examination of older African American women and their experiences, won awards from theater companies in Illinois and Richmond, Virginia. Mahasin is a retired High School Language Arts and ESL teacher and retired college writing tutor. She has been a long time member of the International Centre of Women Playwrights and African Women Playwrights. Besides playwriting she has written newspaper articles, magazine articles, books and is a staff writer for Sound Vision and MNTV. Her article in the Journal of Islamic History and Culture featured a detailed look at the history of mosque development in the United States in the African American community.

1 Slave auction flag: https://www.virginiamemory.com/online-exhibitions/exhibits/show/to-be-sold/item/399
2 NAACP “A man was lynched yesterday”: https://naacp.org/find-resources/history-explained/history-lynching-
america#:~:text=Among%20the%20campaign’s%20other%20efforts,was%20damaging%20the%20South’s%20economic
3 Confederate flag>/p>

The featured image in this post is: “Raf Simons black cotton cape for a man, Autumn-Winter 1999-2000 02.jpg”, Staff photographer, Rhode Island School of Design Museum of Art, Creative Commons, via Wikimedia Commons

Four Poems by Kathryn C. Bratt-Pfotenhauer

Serena Agusto-Cox
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Four Poems by Kathryn C. Bratt-Pfotenhauer 
Reading Mayakovsky in Brooklyn

It’s past one at the Bad Luck Bar. On the corner, a couple
pressed up against an iron fence. The neon light
of the convenience store windows haloes their heads.
Their mouths are frantic, their lust hungry and clean.
For once, I’m not ashamed of myself for looking—
a man, passing by, croons I know that’s right! into 
the cold April air; allegedly, it’s spring. They break apart, laughing,
this couple learning each other for perhaps the first time. 
I miss knowing someone—I don’t think that’s wrong to admit,
wanting to be wanted. But so often the dissipation—I love you,
and now I don’t. So no more of that, no more of love’s boat
taking on water. No more the crumpled bedsheets in a Bushwick
walk-up, and no waiting until 3, until 5 a.m. waiting for someone,
to tell me I deserve to be held and to say they’re not ashamed
of loving me. No waiting for the man that hungers me; I am done fighting 
sleep because I have to be. There is no world large enough to disappear
and have no one notice. I’ve tried. But tonight I must admit 
a certain kind of gentleness. The couple peels away from the corner.
They hold hands and stroll out of sight. And tonight, 
there are no stars in Brooklyn, but people still kiss in the dark.

Becoming Your Mama
	after John Murillo and Elizabeth Bishop

Throw out
the scale, then buy another.

Eat. Don’t eat. Feel bad
about your eating. 

Lose a baby. Lose two.
Rebuke your daughter

for the way she slides
into the toilet bowl in shreds

of tissue. She is not skinny enough.
Too much of herself

is in the bleeding. Rebuke
yourself for the bad men

and the worse sex. Remember:
the man who loves you

is years beyond your twenty five. 
Watch him go away. Watch him choose.  

Years later he might call
to say he chose wrong. 

Sit in silence on the other end,
wonder if you should say

you’ve waited your life away
for this. His damaged wife,

your othered woman, slinking 
in the background. 

Watch his house
flood, and do nothing. 

Swallow water. Tread lightly. 
Don’t worry: you’ve done this all your life. 

Blue Traveler

I woke up	            and everything		was blue
	   blue the bomb		gone off by the school         blue		the blackened
windows of the burnt out house			blue like the walls of the dark hospital room	   where 
for the first time I heard the sound	of my ovary, flushed 	    with blood		which
                             was so like  a heartbeat  I thought it must be one
	blue riddle of my body			blue ribbon unraveling		in my womb
I thought 	   my first baby 	    would be a boy		like my brother			I named him
	lucky 		I named him	Felix			I named him even as the dark clots
stained my blue			underwear	russet	I named him even as the blue
                    night faded	into dawn	       I shoved a hand		 between my thighs thinking I
	could keep him		if I kept him		inside me	 a little longer	  it was
blue like the hospital room with clouds painted 		on the off-	center	ceiling tiles
                       and I thought	that’s sad why		 is it so sad  
	    the doctor saw my face 			  bright with		terror	and said
no, honey, 	nothing		like that		you’re not 		while in the room
	across the hall	I heard		laughter	a woman exclaim	             congratulations


                                                                  and suddenly I was no one’s mother

For T, Who Begs Me to Consider the Tragedy
	after Anne Sexton

I wonder what it must feel like, to be that sure
of yourself. To bestow gravitas on what you deem
grave. You see, I am tired of performing grief
so that you may call it grief, tired of prostrating
to the figures of tragic men. Hamlet, with his canopy, 
the roof fretted with golden fire. Lear, haggard on the moor,
and Cordelia, like the good child should, cupping his face 
with her two good hands. It isn’t lost on me: 
you’d deem the tragedy of my wrist circumstantial 
if I decided to split it. Each month is a new tragedy: 
my wound opens again to spit another child 
onto cotton, and no, I am not a mother. And the dramatic
action, you say,  isn’t enough to warrant the articulation: I am not
a mother. The argument of this poem is that grief 
is a series of painful articulations. I am not a mother. The sun 
the day after I climbed out of bed and brushed out my matted
curls was a flat, watery disk and I was not a mother. The room 
where the man touched me was a tomb: gray, cement walls and I
was not a mother. I crept on my knees in the dark 
to the dashed string of lights on the floor, still bleeding 
from the cut place. And you say it isn’t tragic enough, 
the loss of my child. The act of it. 
But I ask you this: did you ever hold
your wife as she bled from that darkest part
of herself? Did you wonder at the syntax
of your shared grief, then? Did you criticize the diction
of a mouth ruined by loss?  You must’ve. 
After all, you know so much about my life.
white woman with brown hair, wearing gray sweater and silver hoop earrings with blue eyes

Kathryn Bratt-Pfotenhauer (they/she) is the author of the poetry collection Bad Animal (Riot in Your Throat, 2023) and the chapbook Small Geometries (Ethel, 2023.) The recipient of a Pushcart Prize, their work has been published in The Missouri Review, The Adroit Journal, and others. They have been nominated for Best of the Net and Best New Poets and have received support from The Seventh Wave and Tin House. They are a graduate of Syracuse University’s MFA program in poetry and will start a PhD in Comparative Literature at NYU in Fall 2024.

Image: “Angel of Grief” from Monument for Jennie Roosevelt Pool, at Cypress Lawn Memorial Park, Colma, CA, from Seattleretro under Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license via Wikimedia Commons.

Three Poems by DeMisty D. Bellinger

Gregory Luce
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Three Poems by DeMisty D. Bellinger

Geomancy

follow the flow of your forehead
how it hovers above each eyebrow
how it anchors all that brain

line up the line of your nose
how it extends down from
between your two outsized eyes

glean from the cut of each cheek
bone as they reflect light
and the bow of your lips

shoulders slope
back dips
and the size of you—each angle

tells me that you are worthy
tells me that openness happens
because of so many closures

that make you.

Hydromancy

Spilt coffee covers the tabletop and stops before flowing onto the floor. See how the pool of brown liquid curves in arcs here and here. See how the edges suggest shores, suggest life, suggest growth. Smell from these waters ancient rites of steeping beans harvested from hills on high, nearer to the skies, waters between the stars, brewed darker than any skin that holds the bean, darker than the night waters. See how the waters collect here denote past lives and future selves, descrying what it means to sit by shores created by a chance meeting of mug’s edge with tabletop. What were the shores like where you grew, or were there shores, or did you, like so many spilled cups of possibilities, make your own shores—

Conduct Unbecoming

Brush up against her
Keep pace with her
Watch the sweat spill from her
Eat mounds of mash potatoes and salad across from her
Share stories of home with her
Change names of lovers with her
Cry when her lover writes their last letter with her
Hold her
Hair when she drinks from the bubbler. Hold her
Hair when she pukes during leave. Hold her
Hair when she wants to see how it would look up. Hold her
Hair when you hug her
Because she’s scared. Hold her
Hand when she’s lonely. Hold her
Hold her
behind combat ready tents
her hand at USO, hidden
her hair, in her cot
She holds you back

DeMisty D. Bellinger is the author of the novel New to Liberty and of the poetry collection Peculiar Heritage, and the forthcoming short story collection All Daughters Are Awesome Everywhere. Her work can be found in various journals and anthologies, in print and online. DeMisty is a creative writing professor in the middle of Massachusetts. She lives at demistybellinger.com.

Image: shixugang, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons

Three poems by Hakim Bellamy

Editor
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Three poems by Hakim Bellamy

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.

Corona
“But if a woman have long hair, it is a glory to her: for her hair is given her for a covering. But if
any man seem to be contentious, we have no such custom, neither the churches of God.” – 1 Corinthians 15-16

Either way
it is your birthright

Whether matrilocal
or matrilineal.
By gender.
By God.

Manifest destiny claims your kingdom,
and acts like we are doing you “a solid”
by calling you queen.

By calling that “a crown”
without understanding the proper rules of engagements.

That Sundays aren’t just the Lord’s Day.
It was a feather in the cap of the slave,
the couple dollars you could squeeze out of being overworked
and underpaid to bless yo’self to something nice,
to the the only place you could afford to wear it, no cover.
Sunday is also the Pageant of Christ.

1.Don’t wear a hat wider than your shoulders.
2.Don’t wear a hat that is darker than your shoes.
3.If your hat has feathers, make sure they are never bent nor broken
4.No sequins in the daytime.

5.No borrowing under absolutely any circumstances (if you give it, YOU GIVE IT!
as an heirloom, as a gift).

6.You should never look lost in it.
7.Attitude. You have to have one in order to wear a hat well, dahling.
8.Easter hats should be white, cream or pastel — even if it’s still cold outside.
9.When they sacrifice your son, find one as big as his smile

to wear to his funeral.

Keep them in boxes too.

A brand new one for every such occasion,
Mother’s Days and Resurrection Sundays included.
Sadly and gladly
by the time you are a grandmother
you will have enough to go around…

as reminders.

Remember, veils render them convertible, all purpose,
any occasion, just like Big Mama’s little black dress.

As you recount the parable of Jesus washing the disciples feet,
I learn from watching you
to interpret that
as God never wanting me to set foot in a church without looking clean.

A sign of prosperity
because in the hood and the holla
God smiles upon our people in church hats and sneaker heads.

But I refuse to call that “a crown”
because you are not who you are
simply because of who you married.

Because man confers kings and queens, not God.
God’s in the business of putting wings on the backs of moms.

I prefer to think of it as a halo,
because unlike a crown
it never comes off
not even when you are at work
bussing beer bottles on the night shift.

Because Monday through Saturday you are a walking miracle.

But on Sundays,
you are a walking museum.

Bombingham

In school today,
the concept of suffering
was introduced.

Suffering
as a path to freedom,
to liberation,

to happiness.

Our own war,
six years in the making,
was my entire high school career
to date.

The year after the first mortar fell,
school was canceled.

An entire year of middle school,
up in smoke.

Schoolhouse turned
Red Cross
turned rubble.

But when
the same flag caping
that first shell casing
rebuilds you a school

you put on your best manners.
Pretend you asked for it.
Take their history books and lessons
because it is better than being drafted.

In world history class
today
we learned that Birmingham, Alabama
came to be known as Bombingham,

for a summer.

Our very own summer
is six

going on seven.

Towards a Common Utopia
(after Margaret Walker & Amiri Baraka)

“History is always dangerous, the world of history is a risky world; but it is up to us at
any given moment to establish and readjust the hierarchy of dangers.” -Aimé Césaire, Martinique Poet, Statesman and Godfather of the Negritude Movement

For my people building families with heart, and transplanting those same families
on their backs; seeking village as refuge from violence; went from sit-ins to cook-
outs; Jim Crow to James Byrd Jr., Jubilee to Juneteenth, yet with all this
modernity somehow still can’t revolutionize a way to put all this history between
us…behind us. Past as prologue but not prophecy. Not meant to retard us but
rather to remind us…maybe even repair us, in time.

For my people birthing businesses from scratch; only thing worse than being
orphaned from the system is being orphaned from the family… the warzone is
Warbucks, and starting a “start-up” is no joke and no cap. Like trying to strike
water from a rock, to put Black names on the Google maps. X marks the spot for a
people who used to BE contracts, so we John Coltrane instead of John Hancock on
dotted lines. Black cards and Black dollars. When we gon’ sovereign Black-
onomics like McDowell’s? Reminding one another that we are the wealth that we
are looking for, taking pride in the fact that there is no Wall Street without
us…just look down…even the asphalt is Black.

For my people who make pride out of prejudice look as easy as making meringue
pie out of lemons…and look good doing it! Who, if you catch’em on the wrong
day, turn micro aggressions into massive contusions. My people who don’t play
that but do play Tonk, Pinochle, Dominoes, Spades, Bidwhist and Horseshoes…
because this native language of laughter and love is the only tongue that wasn’t
severed as we were shipped across the Atlantic. So we’ve perfected non-verbal
communication, elaborate handshakes, high fives and hugs… cakewalk and do the
Dougie, Harlem Shake and cold shoulders… truth be told, sometimes we ain’t
warmin’ up to one another… and we can feel it.

For my people pushing pedagogy and policy, pulpit poetry and property responsibly.
Responsible to the generation on deck. Modern day Jackie Robinsons showing this
sandlot of second and third gens how to hit, pitch and catch. Unafraid for your
records to be broken…because just like those ceilings and barriers you battered,
that’s what records are meant for…to be broken. So that we can be whole. So my
people can grow old in praise and at peace knowing that their legacies live on
through us … long after the record stops spinning.

For my people humble enough to know that not knee-checking our egos is almost
akin to a knee on the neck. That kneeling to pray is powerful, but kneeling in
solidarity is a superpower too. That the best way to show love is to show up…like
so many of you have done today. Because time is our most precious resource and
our life expectancy already has us at a disadvantage.

For my people who know that one of us in the room, can be all of us in the
room…if we play our cards right. For my people that know that our impression on
one another is indelible. For my people that know that our impression of one
another is incredible. For my people who can’t help but see promise in every
single Black baby’s face. For my people who know no covenant more beautiful
than another Black smile. For my people still recovering from the past and its
traumas, for my people enlisted in a revolution of resolution, my people rooted in
the resolve to resurrect ourselves and all my people still engaged in the
Reconstruction within.

In a world that is lonely enough, let us be more continent than island…and
eradicate aloneness…together.

For I
am nobody

…but for my people.

Hakim Bellamy served as the Inaugural Poet Laureate for the City of Albuquerque (2012-2014) and recently completed a four year Mayoral appointment as the Deputy Director for the Department of Arts & Culture at the City of Albuquerque. Bellamy is a W. K. Kellogg Foundation Community Leadership Network Fellow, a Kennedy Center Citizen Artist Fellow, an Academy for the Love of Learning Fellow, Western States Arts Alliance Launchpad Fellow, Santa Fe Arts Institute Food Justice Fellow, New Mexico Strategic Leadership Institute alum and Citizen University Civic Seminary Fellow. In 2012 he published his first collection of poetry, SWEAR (West End Press/University of New Mexico Press), and it landed him the Working Class Studies Tillie Olsen Award for Literature in 2012. In 2019 his book We Are Neighbors (co-created with photographer and book designer Justin Thor Simenson) was shortlisted for the New Mexico-Arizona Book Awards. His latest title Commissions y Corridos (UNM Press) published in 2022 is his seventh book. With an M.A. in Communications from the University of New Mexico (UNM), Bellamy has held adjunct faculty positions at UNM and the Institute of American Indian Arts. A National Poetry Slam Champion, Bellamy has performed his work in at least seven countries and continues to leverage his art to transform his communities. www.beyondpoetryink.com

Featured image in this post is: “Art outside the Alabama Criminal Justice Center, Birminingham, Alabama”, by Carol M. Highsmith, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Black Cowboy Stew by Q.R. Williams

Editor
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Black Cowboy Stew by Q.R. Williams

This poem is 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.

Black Cowboy Stew
by Q.R. Williams

One bowl is enough, but two bowls are better,
A mixture of Heaven in one pot.
Angus ground beef from our own purebred livestock.
Sun-kissed tomatoes, dripping juicy for added in flavor,
Precisely diced from the cutting board of Noirs de France.
Rough hands on the ranch are the same hands motioned to be gentle over a hot kettle.
Corn shaved straight from the cob,
Every kernel bursting with crunch.
Mixture of beans and peas packed with protein,
Fresh cut onions without shedding a tear,
Sliced fat from the hog,
Peeled potatoes cubed and tossed in,
Smoked sausage deprived from what remained after the pluck from the chicken coop,
Peppers crushed to wake the spice,
And the aroma covers the camp as smoke cascade upward towards the night sky.
Ingredients just as calming as the fresh air.
Herbs and a blend of seasoning that resembles flair from the Ivory Coast,
This is home so far away from home.
Andouille! Let’s come together and eat.
Smacking goodness stirred with a wooden spoon,
Sat on the pharaoh’s meal prep table to being hung in the master’s kitchen,
Traveling and whipped around right along with us.
Stew harmonized with hot-water cornbread, topped with butter, and drizzled with honey;
Music to my ears.
Recipes that cover celebration, contentment, survival and sorrow.
Mouthwatering from the un-sinful pleasures and locked in steam,
Truly food for the mahogany soul.

Q.R. Williams is a certified notary public, creative writer and co-author of the books– ‘After We Parted: Rebuilding Our Lives After Divorce’, ‘It’s a Matron of Honor: Journey to Womanhood’, ‘Because I Am More than Just My Skin’, ‘The Power of… What is Love??’, ‘The Other Side of Through’ and ‘My First Love’. She is also a featured contributor in ‘Black Family Magazine’ & ‘Spoken Black Girl Magazine’. During her career, she has mainly served within Healthcare and Customer Service. Q.R. previously held the professional titles of: Care Navigator Supervisor, Senior Administrative Assistant and Client Service Professional. She is certified as an Etiquette Decorum Instructor, Community Health Worker, Mental Health First Aid Advocate, and Reflective Conversation Facilitator. She is also certified in Restorative Justice 101. Q.R. was a featured digital photography artist within the ‘When Homeward You Turn’ Exhibition at Dittmar Gallery (Northwestern University). Recently, she completed the Women’s Entrepreneurship Program at Cornell University. Q.R. is married to husband, Joshua & the mother of John and Jalani.

Featured image in this post is: “Black Cowboys”, Texas State Historical Association, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

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