“Be Free” by Barbara Eikner Thompson; “Phoenix of Fire” by Márcia Maria Tannure; “If I Am” by Rebecca Woolston; and “Legacy” by Elizabeth Best

“Be Free” by Barbara Eikner Thompson

We are all creators …

so if you dance, dance.

If you sing, sing.

If you build, build.

If you cook, cook.

If you carve, carve.

If you weave, weave.

If you write, write.

If you prophesy, prophesy.

You are the child of the creative force of the universe,

stay in the light and

be free.

I am a lover of poetry and books.. I am a mother, grandmother, wife and friend. I live in Tulsa, Oklahoma and have published two books of poetry. I believe in the Ancestors and know that they are always with us , if we give them time and space. – Barbara Eikner Thompson

“Phoenix of Fire” by Márcia Maria Tannure

I am an artist from Rio de Janeiro. This is how I live my joy and artistic purpose. – Márcia Maria Tannure

“If I Am” by Rebecca Woolston

1

This is how I feel:

Put your hands together, with fingers interlaced. Turn the palms up.

Imagine the child gesture of capturing something small. Some magical creature that you also

wanted to share with the people in your life.

This is how you deliver memory.

Tender child you. Fragile and dreamy.

This moment matters.

pink, fringed in jagged ash. I can see these things now that I remember your voice.

I can see these things

now that I remember your eyelashes and the roots of your hair. The smooth skin of the scar

along your bicep. What memories sit tucked beneath the small mound of flesh.

I can say these things now

that I carry you

Grandma’s DNA shifted when that man—a family friend—touched her. She was four, she said

to my mother.

“Four years old. Can you believe it?”

No, I say. I can’t.

But I do.

Sexual assault is often performed by someone the woman (child) knew.

Imagine the egg of my mother, huddled with all the others inside Grandma.

His touch is imprinted in the river-curves of Grandma’s chromosomes.

In the river curves of my mother’s chromosomes. In the river-curves of my chromosomes.

Here’s a filthy sentence:

His touch(es) live inside my body.

I hold an MFA from Mills College, am never sure what category my writing is accepted in, consider writing a workout, and I like to imagine what my dogs are thinking and to wander along shorelines and rivers. – Rebecca Woolston

“Legacy” by Elizabeth Best

In my corner of the world where children bear children,

and fathers abdicate, grandmothers reign,

supported by peddling, planting and handcrafting

and sustained by the cook-up, the cuss-out,

the balm of redemption songs

and a broad faith girding their loins.

Fighting our war on want,

Mama bombarded the courts of Heaven

with peace-seeking prayers fired

from her depression in the grass-filled bed.

Before she blew out the lamp light

and swept fatigue into the Everlasting Arms,

I always slipped into sleep with her hallowed hopes

sprouting soul in the soil of my dreams.

Every night witnessed Mama’s attempts

to exorcise the pain of her orphaned youth

cultured in bitterness on sugar plantations –

those fertile loins of the land,

ploughed to spawn coppers for a miserly Crown.

Every dawn found her bending pride

into each crisp fold of her starched belly-band

and each thoughtful twist of her calico head wrap,

preparing body, mind and spirit for the field.

Nurturing vengeance, quiet and constructive,

against those supping in estate parlors –

seats of plenty perched like ripened nipples

atop my island’s choicest mounds –

this squat colossus carved a viable present

out of a violated past

by cutting, piling, heading, and loading cane

with the aim of transporting me beyond her station.

She cleared sure-footed tracks to envisioned futures

in the wake of each wall of cane that fell to her bill.

Brute tough she raised me for purpose:

Tamarind whips corrected sins hinted and committed.

Sharp glances trimmed experience with a thousand “don’ts.”

No hugs or kisses softened my falls,

but care covered my bruises with harsh verbal salves:

“When you don’t look where you’re going,

you can expect to tumble upside down.”

From education seeping through cracks in her chastisement,

I learned that no matter how hard the fall, I must always rise,

scatter the dust, hug my battered selves,

water effort with tears and dance despite the pain.

With emotions and fortunes see-sawing in time,

we lived in love shown more often than spoken

until the morning she lost herself in mid-sentence

and I, the child, gave up play to became mother

to the woman in her second childhood.

Mama’s Spirit still tugs on reins of regret and loss

as she takes me through corridors of dreams

back to when I had to throw out embarrassment

with her bathwater

and wash pain from bibs that cradled her chin as I fed her.

She takes me back to times when my heart winced

With each dab of liniment I applied

to dime-sized sores on her hips.

Dad found it easier to man-up with the finances

because hands-on caring was “women’s business.”

Back then, inexperience slipped me no clue

that Mama’s turning away to face the partition

was the final step in a farewell dance.

No one primed me for her slipping beyond my ken

to wait behind a veil of closed lids

in her silent, Holy of Holies

for the homing summons of a bugle blast

pitched too high for me to hear.

I have knotted memories of Mama

in the corners of moments

and held them close to my heart

just the way she used to roll bills and coins

in the corners of handkerchiefs

and deposit them in her bosom.

I utter her name from a well of tears

and toast her memory on every field of conquest.

Like Mama, I seek seeds of inspiration

in the ever expanding quagmire of oppression.

Like her, I feed on kernels of tough ancestral truths,

despite pressure to discard them for convenient alternatives.

Daily energized, I fly into the fray of living

with grit and grace overlaying my wings,

reducing drag, insulating spirit, sustaining flight.

I am a Barbadian woman of African descent. I teach students and mentor teachers in Kentucky. Through meditation, prayer, poetry, songs and art, I aim to respond rather than merely react to pervasive negativity, ignorance and injustice in high and low places and live life on my own terms. – Elizabeth Best