Life in Print

The poetry of Asani Charles

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Category: Poetry

  • Ichor and Paper

    by

    Like ankle flesh torn from the burn of a rusty 

    bilboe

    I am born by blood and receipt.

    Like the stream of fermented bile, snot, and 

    urine

    I am born by blood and receipt.

    Like Kossola became Cudjoe and Ishtimonvbbi1 became

    Brown

    I am born by blood and receipt.

    Like rice water stains, hymen mucus, and 

    mass production

    I am born by blood and receipt.

    Like Reconstruction, Black Codes, and 

    Jim Crow

    I am born by blood and receipt.

    Like good hair and brown paper bag

    tests

    I am born by blood and receipt.

    Like axe for ask, des for desk, and tes for

    test

    I am born by blood and receipt.

    Like DNA results and unmatched speeding

    tickets

    I am born by blood and receipt.

    Like sista, comadre, cuzzin, and 

    mispronounced Asani-Yaphei

    I am born by blood and receipt,

    sanguine and fibrous yet only a few recognize, fewer acknowledge, and no one

    apologizes.

    White Winfreys interred in Tsalagi ground, 

    flagged with an oxidized family crested lichgate,

    and fifty miles away, their mulatto, Melungeon, mixed,

    part this and part that progeny sleep together in a

    pristine pasture on the side of a country road.

    Still, born by blood and receipt.

    © Asani Charles

    1. Chikasha, “He killed the one who came for him.” ↩︎

  • “History of the United States”

    by

    , , ,

    YMR“History of the United States”

    from Yellow Medicine Review, The Racism Issue

  • “The Legend of The Might Could People” and other poems

    by

    ,

    Three Poems for Virtual Cutting Edge Summit

    It is an honor to share my work at Dr. Candice Lucas-Bledsoe’s

    Virtual Cutting Edge Youth Summit. Thank you for having me.

  • haiku

    by

    ,

    Then: stressed at work, slip

    or fall to get paid leave. Now:

    some shoot black men dead.

  • Her name is Billie Jean

    by

      Eleven years ago, right around mid morning, my maternal grandmother left this place while her pain ridden body lay motionless in her bed. That adage that time heals all wounds is false, at least for those of us with perfect elephant memories. I still hurt and I still miss her walloppy laugh and I still turn to dial a number I can never erase, 323-757-5508, she had it for 32 years and felt slightly perturbed about changing her area code, just to tell this monarch what madness my kids have done today, just to see if she’d like me to recreate them for her listening or viewing pleasure.
     I never thought it would hurt like this. I never realized the significance of who was there with us, my mom and me, as we served BB her last day in the home she bought in what used to be a “Good Neighborhood”, in almost Hawthorne. My dad’s mom arrived twenty minutes before goodbye, “just checking in on my friend,” she smiled as I sat Grandma Clark down with a cool drink to nurse the last of her memories before she lost them and her days a few years later. I’ll never forget coming out of Grandma’s chamber in tears only to be solaced by the little Indian lady whose eyes danced when she smiled.
       So forgive me for this essay of a status but surveys show that my kids are two thirds grown and my ornery, secretive and goofy best friend who taught me the ropes of fighting, saw only a portion of these three unthinkable people. Yes, I know she can see us all but it’s just not the same. I need the walloppy laugh when Daniel tells a joke, when Zach cruelly denies another kid’s shot, or when Karlie robs a batter’s hope by throwing her out at first. If you’re reading this BB, wallop a good one and make Heaven shake, rattle and roll. I love you❤️.

  • 2016 AP Reading Poetry Reading

    by

    I am quite blessed and honored to serve as an AP Reader for College Board’s AP English Literature Exam now five summers in a row, and to celebrate our last reading in Louisville, Kentucky, I read two pieces from Love You Madly: Poetry about Jazz, edited by Lisa Alvarado. Here is one of the three pieces I wrote for Love You Madly Poetry, inspired by the legendary Hugh Masekela, who gave me a most perfect gift, my name.

    Mahlalela (Lazy Bones)

    There is no laziness in those bones.

    Music is the symbiotic marriage of math and science

    to passion and sound, birthing life, melody and drum

    but no work of art is that simple.

    Exile a man because he protests with a flugelhorn and prod him out at gun’s barrel,

    amidst an ebullition of homestead and singeing flesh, and thwart him westward,

    much like the fathers before him. He does not respond in kind,

    but riffs on his clarion, “Mahlalela,” lazy bones, as Letta rubs their noses in it.

    Rob a country of her griots and the callers will muster like Malcolm and MacDuff,

    amassing millions, nations even, firing lyric and melody, chanting “Amandla!,[1]”

    while Makeba, Masekela, Mbulu and Semenya, turn the studio into the war room

    and dismantle the Boer bear from distant waters rallying, “Idlozi livukile! Masibuyel’ emakhaya![2]”

    No lazy bones in this anthem and victory march song.

    Its cadence proud and contagious, its timbre too bright and confident,

    fully assured of the perfect, long suffering truth that neither life nor land

    has been lost in vain,

    and that freedom yet comes.
    © Asani Charles

    [1] Power

    [2] The spirits of our ancestors have awakened! Let’s return home!

     

  • A Paisley Tale

    by

    , , ,

    Once upon a time in my girlhood, I changed my name to Paisley and wholeheartedly believed my Prince Charming would find me bearing roses and my raspberry beret. We’d marry and make melodies in a purple mansion and grow wise and beautiful as Mr. and Mrs. Nelson. That was a long time ago but still the tears run deep without ceasing. I will not say good night but instead, sleep well with your beloved.

    Prince Rogers Nelson June 7, 1958- April 21, 2016

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  • Sirius

    by

    ,

    Watery waves above seared asphalt,

    I wonder how long we’re to bare this

    inferno, this burden. How did we get here?

     

    Summers of long ago were built for mindless

    laughter, and the splashing of dirty tiny feet.

    We ventured out at 8 am and surveyed the wild

    hills behind us, be they made of concrete or granite.

    Under the paramount of 80 degree palm trees

    We dined on the likes of Pop Rocks, Coke, pickles and

    America’s Best, Project Kool-Aid. Why did we leave?

     

    Roads warped and lawns parched, we huddle now

    in vacant spaces, too hot to touch, leemealone. The

    tile is cool and the AC struggles to hum, but for how long?

     

    One August I fell in love with Leonard. That was me,

    hair feathered and free, body stuffed in a flat tank top

    and daisy dukes. I only watered the grass every day at

    2 o’clock; the time he came home from hoopin’ at the park.

    He was enamored with my 12 year-old frame I’m certain.

     

    Four grandmas fell in thirty days due to century heat

    beating their ages. Budget cuts closed one city pool but

    dilapidated, who’d walk barefoot to its watering hole anyway?

     

    June ’91 sparked the summer of free beginnings.

    Boyz N the Hood made Crenshaw a tourist spot and

    we were okay with it; we were 20, dreams aplenty, and

    days of the week spawned one long water filled weekend.

    Newly on the verge of making count, we believed we

    were invincible. In a year we’d elect a sax-playing President.

     

    104° in Dallas and kids remain house hostages ransacking our nerves.

    Senators ransom both college funds and Grandmas’ prescriptions.

    My how we’ve changed over this 21st Century Summer.

     

    ©Asani Charles 8/1/2011

  • April’s Roundy

    by

    ,

    March to November moves clockwise to the

    prairie songs of eight cowboy-hatted men.

    Dancers circle about in a kaleidoscope of hues,

    bells and sparkly rhinestones.  Among this

    concert of colors, one girl, wearing her grandma’s

    simple jingle dress, closes her eyes on honor beats,

    dancing church as the tin cones make medicine.

    She thinks no one sees her.

     

    Every Saturday he dons his father’s roach and single bustle,

    moving counter clockwise because that is tradition.

    He dances for grandpa who cannot. He never takes a

    number because the drum is not a lottery.

    His vest doesn’t glisten so he rarely catches the judges’ eye.

    Still a handful of young hopefuls watch his

    every step, coup and stop.

    He thinks no one sees him.

     

    When the round dance sings it way between

    contest and cake walk, they make their way,

    slide stepping with the head lady, slide stepping

    with the head man. Then like kismet, at the eclipse

    of the men and women’s lines, she notices his old-style

    bead work with the fat, chubby beads in muted colors.

    He marvels at her lone braid and scarlet scarf

    en lieu of a fan. He wonders what her family name is.

     

    © Asani Charles 4/2/13

  • On hearts and trinkets

    by

    One heart that beats for me

    each day is far more

    sweet, chocolate, velvet

    courting, loving, knowing

    and deserving of mine

    than any other fashioned

    out of paper and red dye.

     

    I will meet this heart

    in places warm and soft

    cozy, comfortable, familiar

    and giggle, maybe even chortle

    at kindergarten jokes

    and welcome what should be

    awkward, but in love is real.

     

    I will have ears to listen as I

    also find audience in this heart.

    I will give words that edify

    and seek forgiveness when they sear.

    I will remember tender small things

    When aught sneaks in,

    to begin again, rekindle, I pray.

     

    And when fire is rekindled something

    new always burns while the old

    crumbles into ashes. So let bitterness wither,

    remaining only old lovers with

    new love, retrofit for new days,

    two hearts, ever beating always

    for each other —daily.

     

     

    © Asani Charles 2/11/09