Life in Print

The poetry of Asani Charles

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  • Nine Lines

    Speak softly lover secret and shy
    do not call my name as the last
    but second only to God.
    take my hand in a crowded room,
    and braid our arms as we walk into a busy avenue.
    Husband love me in the morning to
    dream of my kisses in the afternoon and
    fall in love with me again in the evening
    knowing all along that I hasten to do the same.

    Nueve líneas

    Amante hableme en voz baja secreto y tímido
    No me llame mi nombre como es el último
    pero en segundo lugar solamente a Dios.
    toma mi mano en una habitación llena de gente,
    y trenza nuestros brazos mientras caminamos en una avenida animada.
    Marido amame de la mañana para
    soñar de mis besos en la tarde y la
    enamorarse de mí otra vez en la noche
    sabiendo todo el tiempo que me apresuro a hacer lo mismo.

    Asani Charles 2/7/2010

  • Port Au Prince

    Ironic that an island thirsts for water and
    tragic is the question pondering if anyone cares.

    Oh we care. Scores of us
    rush to give, love, ameliorate others
    rush to judgment, sifting hearts, pontificating
    lies on behalf of a true God. Yele.

    Woe, woe kacks the frigate atop a branch in a withered mangrove.
    Behind her weep sores and flesh. Her north horizon swells with the
    wayward chacks of mocking birds while some of us scurry
    to bring gourds to the chafed. Some of us watch. Yele.

    Licorice black faces caked white with ash, but perhaps
    not white enough to stay the sermons of the self-righteous,
    spewing venom in place of mercy, in place of love. Yet somehow
    the captive voices are heard through crevices of light and sound. Yele.

    How can a cry spring the least to do the most and still snarl
    posturing tongues? It is all a test of morals and fiber and such.
    A decathlon of exercises challenging resiliency and id behaviours.
    Humanity is only human when we respond to inhumane situations.

    © Asani Charles 1/14/10

  • The Legend of the Might Could People

    The mothers call sons into warm kitchens
    and then wrangling leathered hands, they speak,
    softly in timid whispers,
    “Maybe if you could go and see,
    see if they might could
    put you on…”
    With hope and prayers
    mothers bless their sons.

    The sons nod out of respect, both for mothers and notions
    and then they smile slightly
    not mimicking, not grunting, not challenging
    but harvesting all their mothers’ dreams
    in sulky back pockets, empty like the fronts.
    The sons share only morning morsels of
    buttered toast and wishful hugs with the
    women who bore them then and continue still.

    And what of these mothers
    whose eyes scan laboriously
    about the papers and trades,
    whose ears avoid catty gossip
    but remain glued to calls
    for hands, apprentices and couriers,
    and all for the sake of
    carving a man out of a son.

    And what of those sons
    whose eyes see past scanning
    and land on larger blaring shingles;
    no vacancies, no applications, discharges soon to come?
    What comfort do they have, their only
    security unsound in mothers’ prayer cloths.
    Their consolation is unspoken among the brethren
    but in barbershops and on street corners is certainly understood.

    These are the mornings of The
    Might Could People, whose
    dreams shy in the presence of reality
    whose tongues are faithful to the conditional
    whose clutch on the might have been
    remains persistent even in the worst situations.
    These are the ones whose voices are unheard
    whose marginal villages unseen.

    © Asani Charles 7/8/2008

  • I come out de river

    Shilombish holitopa ma!
    Ishmminti pulla cha
    Hatak ilbusha pia ha
    Is pi yukpalashke
    -Amazing Grace
    I was born of man and woman
    but came out of the river
    Daddy said I was fiery,
    called me homalosa , but
    the soldiers just called me nigger.

    They told us they were federal escorts
    for safe passage with assured provisions
    but rancid swine quivering in larvae
    bloated bleached flour fit only
    for the condemned
    was what was delivered.

    Papa searched the wagon for the ware
    fit to bribe the ferryman, for he too was a
    soldier, now. Mama feared he’d find no tribute worthy
    to shield their eyes from her glory that
    was her curse; onyx eyes to match her brow,
    aniline lips to match coffee bean skin.
    He implored them and they took his mother’s
    candelabra and basket purse.

    Like feeble oxen we were prodded to the rear.
    Mama didn’t look back to the wagon, Papa was
    all she ever had. But Papa dared, and his eyes
    lured the others to horde our lifethings on the shore.
    I clung to Mama’s dress, and hid behind Papa’s shoulder.
    At sixteen I was fit to be taken by the uniforms aboard.

    We thought the ferry would get us there sooner
    and safer, too many to count where they stood
    in the snow. But as we numbered still too many
    mothers silent prayed that the boat would keep afloat.

    And then one rich man was ushered on. Many acres
    in marriage he’d acquired. He sent his beautiful wife ahead of
    him, to prove we were civilized Indians.
    She left bedizened with lace, diamonds,
    and almond shaped eyes with freckled light skin.
    He used to laugh, saying only her eyes were savage, but her
    land was noble.
    To our surprise, room was made for his wagon.

    And then, before we knew it, I saw them
    come for my parents. Papa looked up
    like we do to elders. Mama leaned in,
    I think she saw her father.
    The ferry shook and moaned as she
    ruptured from within.

    My selfish eyes wanted to look about, but my soul was not
    foreign to this. Still, I could hear the wails
    of blanketed women, ashore, on board.
    My heart paced, suddenly hearing the prayers
    of men, and seeing boney nails behind them.

    Dreamlike, all being stopped. I heard nothing.
    I saw nothing. I felt nothing, but Papa. He undid the rope
    that tied us together to keep me to him,
    away from uniformed savagery.

    In my ear he spoke my mother’s language, in
    the other she spoke his. He said, “she has come too far
    to me to lose her, I go now with her.” She said, I have come
    so long losing everything but us, we go for you.” He said,
    “she came to me by the water, you go the same way. Live and
    know our names.”

    and in a violent water vacuum, they were gone.

    So, in the midst of ice and snow, my drenched
    body labored to breathe ashore. A grandmother snuck behind
    and cloaked me in her best quilt, leaving her shoulders
    naked to the prickly army issued blue throw.
    She pulled me close, but I had to catch up,
    keep walking, find our place and reclaim what was ours.

    As I parted, I fell. My legs were waterborne and frozen.
    A soldier picked me up by my sleeve, gathered in his hand.
    “Who are you nigger girl? You a half-breed? An Injun Nigger?
    You an Injun slave? What good is an Injun slave? Like a dog having fleas!”
    He laughed at me as my parents’ words resounded like trumpets within.
    “Where’d you come from? Where do you belong?” He shoved me along.

    Finally my heart found its beat, my lungs air, my voice words
    “I come out de river.
    A long way here and much furder to go.
    No papers for me because I belong to no one.
    I come out de river.”

    Copyright Asani Charles 2008

    Audio file of I come out de river

  • Manifesto

    At the corner of Riot & Protest
    we were born. Born to the nappy heads
    and long hairs who spread love and revolution
    with peace signs and war cries for “NO MORE WAR!”
    They carried us on their hips marching, swaying to and fro, to and
    fro with conviction while Marvin, Dylan and Kuti sang preludes to
    Redemption Song. Yes, protest was our receiving blanket
    and uprising our bassinet and still they wonder,
    why we Occupy.

    At the crossroads of Broadway & Main we road the bus.
    Hurled onto the coattails of Montgomery. We left the Southsides of America,
    past chickenchurchliquorstores and granddaddy’s barbershop into the sprawling
    green pastures of Uppercrust Suburbia where Sally and Tom play canasta
    and everyone gets into college and no one gets a divorce. They didn’t call us
    Nigger there, but like Daisy and the Magnificent Nine, we were hated just the same.
    They blanched our names; Candace for Khadijah, Mel for Malik, stuffed us in a basketball uniform and said public education had arrived because we survived.
    And still they wonder why we Occupy.

    Today our Baby Boomers ride power scooters making us officially grown.
    we find ourselves strapped down on railroad tracks, yes there’s a spike for every boy and girl. None of us dollar green, the playing field is finally leveled; we’re all equally broke, broken soon to be reassembled in Taiwan. While they’d have us distracted by fragments of glitter strewn here and there, flotsam and jetsam and whomever else Kardashian is doing, quiet in the secret places of the heart dwell the echoes of our parents’ suffrage. We will not take another lie lightly. We will not genuflect politely. We will not prostitute our labor contritely.
    Instead We Occupy.

    Occupy. Verb. 1. Reside or have one’s place of business in (a building) 2. Fill or take up (a space or time). We reside in our homes built on the backs of grandpas and sewn together by grandmas. We fill up the spaces stolen from shoddy promises and twisted dreams; we’re still here so please get used to it. We take up vocal arms against any who seek to cut our toil down to nothing but meaningless pieces of paper.

    We are the daughters of Angela, the sons of Pratt, Los Nietos de Chavez y Sobrinos de Huerta and like them, we’ve already been spat upon and beaten, this scourge is neither new nor life ending, but bred with resilience, knowledge, power, and concrete chins,

    We Occupy.

    Asani Charles 12/08/11

  • Grand Entry

    M.C. bellows,
    “Dancers, last call for Grand Entry!
    Tack on that duct tape, it’s powwow time!”
    But Susie Walks Again is still getting
    her hair braided.

    Drum roll call rumbles through the arena,
    circling outside the ring of white
    vendor canopies, out to the parking lot
    where brown van conversions double
    as champion dancer dressing rooms.

    Graceful Northern Buckskin Grandmas
    make their way to the East Side.
    Spit-smoothing the braids of tiny tots.
    While seasoned Southern Straight Gents
    have one last drag and joke before stepping out.

    Finally, Susie’s braids are done. She runs,
    soars, nearly flys, her fancy shawl is airborne.
    She’s a renegade butterfly, but she catches
    herself. Smooth now, no panting.
    She smile nods at Karlie Charles, first place last.

    The staff & colors are in first, carried by
    Hanoi Vets for Code Talkers.
    Families rise under EZ-UPs,
    dads spotchecking
    for poacher photographers.
    The fireblast of spectra bustles and
    Vibrant heartbeat of the drum
    sing
    the
    same
    song.

    Grand Entry

    © Asani Charles 2002

  • Brown

    Brown. Burnt umber. So much that flesh mirrors the red clay
    borders of Louisiana and Arkansas. Brown enough to know that
    Caddo, Arkansas and Quapaw are more than just street names.
    Tobacco bundles for grandpa, smudging memories for political prisoners
    Osceola and Wild Cat, remembering Tishomingo battling the French.

    Copper. Fallow winters and bronze summers. Wasichus
    wait a beat in case they need a Spanish translator
    later are amazed at the flawlessness of my English.
    Blanched tongues abound, how brown is Nahuatl?
    Nearly empty are the gourds that once carried our languages.
    We scramble to unbleach the words.

    Sienna. Tawny. Just enough to get the Indian price.
    Adequate. The only kid allowed inside the Dineh family’s home
    on Lowell. I told jokes about Zaragoza, Texas.
    Beige enough to stand out at Thanksgiving;
    always mama’s ebony aunts asked, “whose this baby?”
    Guess they were prepping me to handle falling short.

    Redwood. Maroon. The homa rouge of blood wherein
    my veins the three continents met. Sandy brown, we were never red,
    but hues of caramel, earth and wheat. “Indian Orange,” a prop, a ploy,
    better Hollywood’s minstrel tools to praise the cowboys
    and kill the natives. Thirty years later Iron Eyes Cody and Raquel Welch
    continue to stump the masses.

    Bole. Rust. Enough to know why babies die at the foot of the Black Hills.
    Sepia enough to understand that nobody cares about the
    redblack mixedblood experience. “Good hair” is all the consolation
    prize we get. Russet enough to refuse to count quarts of quarters,
    but light to zinnwaldite (just about pinky white) ones always will,
    validation is in the math and the cards you see.

    Brown. Beige. So like moccasins dusting olive drab grass
    yellow faded by an auburn summer sun. Cordovan like wearying
    leathered hands of grandmothers who tell their last stories
    at bingo and lulu for grandbabies underneath
    powwow arbors and EZ shades.

    The hair on my head is unapologetically wavycurlykinkystraight.
    A juxtaposition of those who made me. Carrying their names
    in the sheen of the grade, the amber of my eyes, and the glisten on my skin,
    I but look within and am reminded of their resilience, their passions
    constant like the ground under my feet.
    Brown.

     Asani Charles 7/21/11

  • Theresa

    Theresa

    I saw her one night during a fitful wink of slumber,
    that coy maiden who eludes me during waking hours.
    She wore a blanket colored with pollen and treaty
    promises and centered among them stood
    Changing Woman with turquoise. They faded in and out
    as I wavered, walking through dreamscapes, tossing and turning about.

    Seems like I remember her faint drum and chorus:
    We are-
    Idle-
    No More.

    Then in another moment suspended between now and later,
    between inertia and electricity, I saw this mysterious figure again.
    This time she was clothed again in a blanket but only herds of white buffalo
    ran above its hem and centered on her back stood White Buffalo Calf Woman,
    dancing in place, singing a song. Her expression was resolved;
    her mantra cannot be ignored.

    I’m certain I heard her drum and chorus:
    We are-
    Idle-
    No More.

    Weeks went by and she never visited. I dreamt hard, sure to
    avoid the shallow waters of sleep but she was nowhere to be found.
    I prayed with cedar and sage and found no clarity, had no vision.
    These trickster lines became seamless and invisible; they escaped me.
    It’s odd though, in the slippery moment we forget, a familiar
    shiny shard glimmers in the sand.

    When I saw her a third time, her broad shoulders were shrouded with a shawl
    bearing Mary Brave Bird’s profile and power. To her breast she held a baby
    she named Himak Nittak* and around her ankles shook turtle shells and
    they found today a good day to sing a good song.

    I am most confident in their drum and chorus,
    We are-
    Idle-
    No More.

    And this is how the lines appeared.

    *Today

    Copyright Asani Charles 3/12/13

    Audio file of “Theresa”