A Modest Proposal. Satire by Anne Sorbie

annesorbie

A MODEST PROPOSAL

For Sending Alberta Children Back To School

Since there is a growing number of COVID-19 cases among the province’s school-age population, our proposal suggests closing schools immediately and forming a test group to better determine and predict future rates of infection.

First, we highly recommend engaging in the test group, the children of Alberta’s 1% who are currently registered for the 2020 / 2021 school year. These children best represent the most advantaged of the population, and those most equipped to handle the socio-economic losses and future health challenges, possibly long term, that the test may incur. Side effects may include contracting COVID-19, having an inflammatory response to CV19 that leads to multi-organ failure, coma, intubation and ICU stays, the infection of siblings, parents, grandparents and other extended family members, and exponentially, their immediate family members, friends and community contacts. Additionally, death may occur in a very few cases. These elite children (or subjects) will be conscripted. However, if the children volunteer to take part, their parents can avoid the province’s newly minted wealth tax.  Volunteer subjects will be included in the test on a first come first served basis and will represent students from a number of undisclosed schools.

Second. There is research to support the idea that these elite children will make the best subjects. Alberta is home to approximately 970,400 children aged 0 – 17 years. We examined statistics describing the health and socio-economic status of all of those children. For example, according to alberta.ca 17% of the province’s children are from low-income families. However, we know that after six months of the pandemic, 17% is a gravely understated figure. We also researched instances of childhood cancer, diabetes, anxiety, low birth weight, disabilities, and addiction. After excluding children effected by the aforementioned challenges, and basing our calculations on numbers of remaining school aged children of the general population (the 99%), we reached the conclusion that there would not be a large enough number of subject children in the 99% to form a test group.

Third. Based on our research above, we are taking the unusual and unpopular step of following the provincial government’s lead, and allowing our experiment to cater only to the 1%. We also gathered provincial data detailing the percentages of children registered for elementary school, junior high, and high school for the 2020 / 2021 school year. Children attending ECS through grade six make up 55.5% of Alberta students, grades seven through nine, 21.5%, and grades ten through twelve, 23%.

Fourth. We compiled a list of elite school-aged children in Alberta. As a result we determined that our test group subjects number between 9,704 and 10,392.

Fifth. For illustrative purposes the age group spread of the test group subjects is based on the lower number and is detailed here:

UNDISCLOSED

ALBERTA

SCHOOLS

 % OF

TOTAL

CHILDREN

 SAMPLE

1%

STUDENTS
ELEMENTARY 55.5 5 386
JUNIOR HIGH 21.5 2 086
HIGH SCHOOL 23.0 2 232
TOTALS 100.0 9 704

Sixth. The Alberta Students’ COVID-19 Return to School Test Group (elite children of the 1% only) may (or may not) be completely representative of the children of Alberta’s wealthy. As well, it may (or may not) provide the most reliable results. However. This can be seen as an example case of what can occur when following the provincial government’s lead.

Seven. These sacrificial lambs, which we will take great pains to prepare for the reckoning, will become legendary. The daily activities and movements of the test group subjects will be live-streamed via Zoom. Anyone may tune into The ABC’s of the Alberta COVID-19 Games. Subscription is free for the 99%. The 1% may donate to subscribe. Their donations will demonstrate their degree of commitment to their children and to the future of Alberta education. Special recognition and additional tax exemptions will be given to the highest donor.

Eighth. The parents of the test group subjects will be responsible for the safe transportation of their children to and from their schools, curricular and extra-curricular activities, and extended family and friend gatherings. This may be undertaken personally, or the subjects may be escorted by nannies and or drivers, or by other family members, including willing grandparents. All involved must complete a waiver and register with the Test Group Lead. Social distancing and mask wearing rules apply wherever and whenever deemed necessary by the federal government, the province of Alberta, the Cities of Calgary and Edmonton, the specific boards of education governing the schools being attended, and possibly by the parents of, and or by the test subjects themselves.

Ninth. We, the 99%, will thank the 1% and their elite children for their sacrifices to and for the betterment of our province and country, and by extension, other provinces and countries.

Tenth. Our deepest respect and gratitude will go to the teachers who volunteer to take part. They will design, implement, and deliver all curriculum on short notice, or what will be referred to as, the meat and potatoes of the Alberta COVID Games. Most of the educators will either be ageing out of their positions, or suffering from an underlying health issue. This makes the end of their careers (and perhaps their lives) highly possible given the test group circumstances. Praise be to them for their gifts to herd immunity. Further, the young school principal who suggested their appropriateness for participation in the test group, and who has outlined the small degree of loss that School Boards might suffer as a result of their contributions, will be the designated Test Group Lead. As such, she will be responsible for personally carrying out all administrative functions for the schools involved; these will be conducted with the utmost prudence. We recognize she may experience challenges re-engaging custodial staff to undertake the recommended increase in the sanitizing of bathrooms and classrooms, hallways and gathering spaces. To that end, we assume she will directly engage volunteer parents and or their proxies in those duties as well when and wherever required.

Last. The Alberta Students’ COVID-19 Return to School Test Group (elite children of the 1% only) will return to school on October 1, 2020. The experiment will continue until December 15, 2020 or until those participating are infected, schools are closed because of outbreaks, or the test group end date is achieved. Results will inform the return to school by the children of the 99% in January 2021.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Online sources consulted:

“A Modest Proposal,” by Jonathan Swift
alberta.ca
en.m.wikipedia.org
The Calgary Herald
The Edmonton Journal
The Globe and Mail
CBC News
CTV News
Global News
Facebook
Twitter

Other Notes:

All percentages mentioned are from alberta.ca (2019 and 2020)
The numbers of Alberta children aged 0 – 17 have been rounded to the nearest hundred
The 2020 student population is reported on alberta.ca
The children of the 1% test group subjects number is my own invention and is for the (satirical) purposes of this article only.

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Anne Sorbie is a Calgary writer whose third book, Falling Backwards Into Mirrors, was released by Inanna Publications In October 2019. Most recently she performed, “This Is A Prayer For You,” for The Indie YYC and published a piece in YYC POP (Frontenac, July 2020) edited by Sheri-D Wilson.  photo (credit Monique de St. Croix)

Still. Short Fiction by Jenn Ashton

JennAshtonPhoto_byMelissaNewbery5

Still

(reprinted with permission by Tidewater Press)

A few times a year I start to feel the walls closing in. The house seems smaller and I realize that it’s probably getting too cluttered in here. Although I watched Marie Kondo’s program on decluttering religiously and even bought the book, the habits did not completely form and after a year of collecting old clothes and odds and ends and donating them to Goodwill each month, I’m afraid I fell off the “tidy” wagon.

Our house isn’t exactly messy though. Rather it just begins to feel close when stuff starts to pile up—books, dog toys and even plants, especially because lately I’ve been on a succulent binge and my entire desk has been taken over by all the lovely shapes and colors. But, with three small, very active dogs and my husband Charlie in the house, it can feel a bit like a whirlwind of activity in here. Sometimes I know that it’s also my mind that needs to calm and declutter too, and tidying the house will help with that, so last Saturday I flicked on the TV to watch Marie’s happy little frame and rewatched my favorite episode, the one with the vet, and then felt refreshed and ready to revisit my clutter.

My purge lasted until exactly noon on Sunday and then came to a full stop when I came across the plastic bin of our old photos stored under the bed. I never know what to do with photos now, scan them and have them printed into a book? We have so many that they would fill countless albums. I guess our parents had the same problems when slides came out and everybody had a slide projector. Of course, they didn’t do anything with them, we had a slide night exactly twice in my life when I was small, and then, the same as Charlie’s folks, the slides and the old, (usually) broken pro- jectors were handed down to us (where incidentally, they sit side by side in the back closet because we don’t know what to do with them either). We’ve tried to look at the slides themselves, without the projectors, on bright days, but the ensuing headaches aren’t worth it.

So on Sunday we sat going through photos. I lasted a bit longer than Charlie because he hates doing tedious stuff like this, not that he doesn’t like helping, but because it’s hard for him to stay doing anything for too long—it’s hard on his body. Which is fine, I don’t really mind because I was able to linger over our wedding album and recall the day and the days afterward and then I found my favorite photo of all.

The thing I love about this picture of Charlie is how still and serene he is, with his flash of smiling eyes and his mouth open just enough to make his dimples even deeper. We were on our honeymoon in Bali and ran out of film, and a nice Greek couple lent us their camera for a few photos. I took this shot of Charlie beside an elephant, but we laugh because I didn’t even manage to get all the elephant in the shot. We offered to pay for the film, but kind couple shook their heads no, and when they found out we had just been married the gentleman unclipped a keychain off his backpack, a metal one with the Greek flag on it and handed it to us with a smile. (We love when strangers come together in travel; it’s like we’re all instant friends and it gives us hope for humanity.) Those people were so kind, and that day was so amazing, and I loved Charlie so much already back then, I never knew time would increase that by leaps and bounds year after year.

Although the Polaroid is small, it is made big in my hands because of my huge respect for my husband. And I love it because he is so still, whereas in reality, sometimes looking at the live Charlie in front of me hurts my eyes and makes a small earthquake in my brain. In fact, sometimes I have to look away when we’re talking, and I know how painful that is for me to do, so I can imagine how painful it is for Charlie, to see me doing it.

He wasn’t always like this; decades ago when we first met, he had just the odd movement he couldn’t control. His toes curling in, his leg twisting for no reason and, oh, he would get writer’s cramp, really badly, so he couldn’t open his hand after scribbling a few words with a pencil.

Sometimes if he was stressed or tired, or maybe too hot, his neck would get a bit jumpy and his head looked like it was shaking. These days it happens almost all the time, except when he is lying down, and he lies down a lot, so we can talk and so he can just have a break. His muscles get sore and tired from firing and fighting against each other all the time. I can’t imagine his pain and frustration. Sometimes his head actually gets stuck looking to the left and he jokes that he’s “leaning a little left” on those days. Sometimes the Botox treatments work to relax his muscles, but sometimes not. We’ve tried the DBS (Deep Brain Stimulation) with some result, but nothing lasts too long. But we’re hopeful, the more of his special exercises he does, the better he is, we know he’s rewiring his brain, so we keep up a pretty good regime, and dysto- nia isn’t life threatening so we’re happy and grateful.

And Charlie’s a gentleman, does everything he can manage, and when he’s lying down, he’s just my old Charlie, cracking jokes and talking about life. We talk a lot about life, his viewpoint is so unique, and when we talk, I see the world differently. He’s my hero. His continuous movement has pushed him beyond his body, and instead of being sullen or angry, it is like he has transcended. He talks about ideas and philosophizes and creates solutions for bigger problems. He has moved outside of himself.

At night I put splints on his legs and his wrists so his body doesn’t get pulled out of shape while he sleeps. For some people like Charlie, the muscles contracting can pull the joints out of alignment, and since we would like to avoid surgery if we can, we splint and we yoga. Charlie is an amazing Yogi. Even though he can’t physically do a lot of the positions, he tells me that his yoga is a mindful state, not a physical state, and I can feel the calmness around him. That’s why sometimes it’s hard to see him in such rapid movement, tremoring and spasming, sharp sudden jarring movements or slow repetitive ones. It’s against his nature.

At first, doctors diagnosed him with multiple sclerosis, but after many clinic visits, tests and long lines of doctors, we just stopped and stood and then finally stepped outside the whirlwind of the medical system. We were done, and then by fluke, after Charlie had fallen down a couple of times, tripping over his own foot, we were sent to a new neurologist. We had already given up at this point and were serenely living our best life, Charlie’s best life, and we were content. Well, as content as you can be with your neck stuck in one direction and the rest of your body in spasm. Our new doctor undiagnosed MS and gave him a new diagnosis of dystonia. She also gave us all kinds of hope and now we look forward to a day when his body might be tranquil, and move under his own direction, instead of Charlie having to work around his brain’s odd decisions.

I show him the old Polaroid picture when he’s lying down and he can see it clearly then too, because his head is propped up on pillows and he’s not moving as much, and we both love it for the same reason: the look on his face is happy and restful and there is an elephant, but we don’t always see it, and in the photo, Charlie is still.

“Still” is a story in People Like Frank and other stories from the edge of normal
by Jenn Ashton, Tidewater Press, 2020

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A writer from the age of six, Jenn Ashton was first published when she was fourteen. She has written fiction, non-fiction and children’s books as well as editorials and articles for periodicals and journals. She sits on the boards of the Federation of BC Writers and Indigenous Writer’s Collective and was recently recognized by the BC Historical Federation for excellence in non-fiction writing. Jenn is a graduate of Simon Fraser University’s Writer’s Studio where she now works as a teaching assistant. She lives in North Vancouver.

The Piano. Short fiction by by Janice MacDonald

janice macdonald

The Piano

The nuns were amazingly accommodating of her mother, a Protestant divorcee, who couldn’t get through traffic to pick her up till after four. Normally, girls at the convent school didn’t start piano lessons right away, but they called the music teacher, who ran her through some exercises, pronounced her musical and agreed to take her every day after school for lessons and practise sessions, and the Burser beamed and sorted out the paperwork for Mommy to sign. Providing she was baptized, no of course it didn’t matter what religion, they would take her.

When class was over each day, she took her coat and lunch box up to the music rooms, and practised her scales and pieces. Sister would give her a lesson one day a week, and one of the older girls, Julie or Melucia, would oversee her practise each other day. She sometimes was allowed to practise in one of the bird rooms, where finches sang in cages, but most often she was in a room with one or two pianos, a window and a relatively sound-proof door. The practice rooms ran along a balcony hall above the gymnasium, and oftentimes she could watch the older girls play volleyball or basketball, themselves practising, practising.

At home, there was no piano to play. Sister had given her a cardboard keyboard, which she unfolded on the kitchen table and dutifully practised the fingering of her scales. Mommy smiled up from the other side of the table where she marked other children’s homework. Someday she would be able to play some of the little pieces for Mother, when they had a piano of their own.

When she was eight, a friend of Mommy’s went to Europe, and stored her piano with them. For two glorious years, she played the upright grand, and Sister smiled as she progressed with intonation, feeling the story of the notes as much as the correctness of the fingering. Maureen returned, and Sister encouraged Mom to find a way to purchase a small studio model piano, so that music could continue. Sister went with them on several forays, finally settling on an instrument with a beautiful tone and an installment plan.

She took lessons well into high school, playing for the local Sunday School, and taught several youngsters their own first couple of years of lessons. She left for university and eventually moved toward the guitar as a more portable instrument. The piano stayed at Mom’s house and old exam pieces and favourite sonatas were played on it whenever she came home for the holidays.

She married and had musical children. Mom downsized to an apartment and the piano came once more into her possession. They would smile at each other as they watched another generation of young girl lean in to the keys, finding her own release in playing. One daughter especially found her musical voice through the piano. The other took up the drums.

Her marriage foundered. She soldiered on alone for a while and eventually married another man. Mother died. Her daughters grew up, and each left home. Expenses grew and the house felt too big, so they decided to downsize. She girded her loins and divested herself of two-thirds of her possessions, antiques her grandmother and mother had cherished, books she had loved, furniture she had grown up with or chosen with love. When it came to it, though, she couldn’t sell the piano. It came with them.

She didn’t play it often, mostly when her husband was out of the apartment without her, which was rare. He didn’t play, but said he wished to. She pulled out early books for him to play with, but they were too juvenile to catch his interest. The piano held a small stereo, and the latest photos of the girls, and the bench was often piled with paperwork and books. She would dust it, like she had since she was eleven, pulling the soft cloth down the notes in happily discordant chords.

This marriage, meant to last into their dotage, suddenly ripped apart, a shock to her. He wanted other paths, other people. It made sense for her to be the one to move out first. Like an automaton, she packed what was hers, clothing, some bedding, some towels, cups and glasses. Her books, her records, Mother’s silver, Grandma’s china. She took her great-grandmother’s table and left her grandmother’s for him to use. She left the furniture they’d bought together: the sofabed, the coffee table, half the bookcases, and the big chair. She took her grandfather’s rocking chair that had come over the Carlton Trail, and two end tables she had inherited which they’d kept in their move to the condo. While it was so wrenchingly hard, it was easier because so much of her mother’s furniture had already been given away when they had downsized. He had been using her mother’s desk since the move, so she left that for him. And no matter how she measured the new apartment, there would be no way to take the piano.

He said he would like to try again to learn to play. No word of trying again on the marriage. He spoke as if this was all easy and obvious and meant to be. She continued to move in shock, setting one foot in front of the other, not reacting, aiming for a carapace of civility, hoping to get to the safety of the new apartment before she broke down and cried for a month. Or forever. He continued to smile and babble about amicability and meeting for brunch. It was as if he, who had once been able to finish her sentences, had overnight become a different person, one she couldn’t quite understand, and who wasn’t hearing her sentences at all.

When it came time to stage and sell the condo, he received a variety of offers from his new friends to storage extra furniture. She felt a pang of disloyalty to her mother and grandmother, whose beloved furniture would be jostled by strangers, people who had no understanding of the sacrifice and care that had gone into their purchase and sustenance. She wrote and asked that he might consider giving his step-daughter the piano, a suggestion he rebuffed curtly, saying he had understood the furniture and belongings she had left were his portion of their shared goods and he wasn’t about to pay to move and tune a piano just to give it to someone else.

A day or two later, he had had time to reconsider his outburst. He wrote that of course their daughter could eventually have the piano if she moved back to town. Was there anything else she wanted back? She met him to receive the homely footstool her grandmother had cobbled together from an orange crate, to save it from any stranger’s sneers.

She determined to reorganize her thoughts to get beyond any sense of loss. While she had been brought up to respect possessions and history and the sacrifices and care that went into them, she had also learned that things were just things. She vowed to reframe her story to find a way to remove the ugliness and mitigate the pain.

When she was young, she practised on a cardboard keyboard, and then a borrowed upright grand, and then her wonderful mother had budgeted to buy her a piano, which had sustained the melodies of two generations.

And then, tragically, it was engulfed in flames.

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Best known for the Randy Craig Mysteries, the first detective series set in Edmonton, Alberta, Janice MacDonald has also produced non-fiction, short fiction, drama and music, and two rather spectacular children. She is also the author of the award-winning children’s book, The Ghouls’ Night Out. Janice spent almost two decades teaching literature, communications and creative writing at the University of Alberta and Grant MacEwan University, and now keeps the Government of Alberta safe from dangling modifiers. At the moment, she is also honoured to represent AB/NWT/NU on The Writers Union of Canada on National Council. For more information than you could possibly require, head to www.janicemacdonald.ca.

Timeless Memories by Joshua Akemecha. A review by Edward A. Ayugho

Ayugo (book review)

FROM TIMELESS MEMORIES TO TIMELESS INSIGHTS: A REVIEW OF JOSHUA

AKEMECHA’S TIMELESS  MEMORIES AT ITS LAUNCH ON FRIDAY 8TH JULY

2016 IN BAMENDA, BY EDWARD A. AYUGHO

 

INTRODUCTION

Society constitutes the field in poetry for the poet who knows to reap his literary grain from the tares that are sowed there. E.E Hale Jr. in The House of Mirth prescribes that:

In anything fit to be called by the name of reading, the process should  be absorbing and voluptuous;

we should gloat over a book, be rapt clean out of ourselves, and rise from the perusal out mind filled

with busiest kaleidoscopic dance of images, incapable of sleep… (309)

This is a befitting description that will follow the reading of Joshua Akemecha’s poetry collection: Timeless Memories; a collection that holds one’s interest and absorbs his attention unflaggingly to the end. In his poetic craft, Akemecha shrewdly observes and zooms into the cesspool of vice which roots itself an ethos that defines and characterizes society’s moral options. Before we delve into examining some of the poems in the collection, it will be rewarding to pause at this point to remind ourselves of what poetry seeks.

WHAT IS POETRY?

We would consider here a few informed and authoritative observations about poetry. In his book

Poetry: A Pocket Handbook, R.S Gwynn argues that:

Poetry need not be intimidating or obscure, thus providing a gentle reminder that the roots of poetry,

like those of all literature, were  passed down from generation to generation in ancient societies and

recited for audiences that included all members of the tribe, from the wizened elders to the youngest

children. For the most part of the long history, poetry has been a popular art form aimed at audiences. (2-3)

Audiences here means hearers and it emerges from this position that the emphasis in poet is that it aims at hearers who should immediately, and without difficulty understand what the poetry is saying. Therefore the bond between speaker, listener and context should not be corrupted by convolution. We will borrow again from Gwynn who also asserts that “one of the most persistent myths about poetry is that its language is artificial, “flowery” and essentially different from the language that people speak in going about their daily lives.” (11) While this may be true of some poetry, we can easily find numerous examples that reveal the opposite of the coin. Timeless Memories is one of these examples.

On his part, John Keats cited in Considering Poetry: An Approach to Criticism, posits that “poetry should be great and unobtrusive, a thing which enters into one’s soul, and does not startle it or amaze it with itself but with its subject.” Keats stresses the point that “if poetry comes not naturally as the leaves to a tree, it better not come at all.” (122). John Keats then sums up his view in the following poetic rendition: “of poesy, that it should be friend to soothe the cares and lift the thoughts of man.” (Ibid, 119). It is the poet’s duty to find or invent a language that will alone be capable of expressing his personality and feelings, such a language must make use of symbols meant to enhance, not to hinder the reader’s understanding of the poem. The poet should aim at illuminating things that happen to people and their responses, which should lead to a better understanding of one’s own experiences. We will draw from this to sustain the argument, in respond to what poetry seeks, that poetry can be written about absolutely anything. It could glorify, satirize, advocate or explore. We shall draw inspiration from the socio-artistic theory propounded by S.A Ambanasom to read Joshua Akemecha’s Timeless Memories.

THEORETICAL CONSIDERATIONS

The Socio-Artistic Approach which will inform our discussion, hinges on four cardinal tenets: Effectiveness of technique, Artistic truthfulness, readability and social significance. Effectiveness of technique constitutes the way in which the poet conveys his effect. It embodies what is seen and the poet’s attitude towards what is seen. His attitude conveyed by his tone could be criticism, condemnation, glorification or praise. This is appreciated through the use of language. Artistic-Truthfulness hinges on the idea of verisimilitude. It seeks to establish the believability of what the poet is saying, how his poems reflect the socio-cultural, socio-political, socio-economic, and socio-psychological character of his society. Readability considers the success with which the poems in the collection could be read at optimum speed and found interesting. Readability examines linguistic factors such as length and familiarity of vocabulary, complexity of syntactical structure, relationships or connections between words, and the level of abstraction. Social significance underpins the relevance of the poems, how they are conditioned by the social and historical context which informs them. It is in this regard that we can now delve into examining Joshua Akemecha’s poetry collection Timeless Memories.

TEXTUAL ANALYSIS OF Timeless Memories

 

            As earlier observed, Joshua Akemecha’s collection places him on the pedestal of shrewd and meditative poets. As with every poet, he aims to communicate and what he seeks to communicate is the insight into people and the world; he wants to make his audience share that experience, to respond to it the same way as he does. And to this end Akemecha burrows into his childhood and youthful expectations which serve as a perfect place for a poet to look for things to write about. When we read Akemecha’s poem ‘To my Last Pair of Shoes”, it reminds us about Lord Byron’s hypothetical statement cited by Michael Meyer in Poetry: An introduction that “For a man to become a poet… he must be in love or miserable” (xxxii). We cannot afford to be indifferent to the battering throes of poverty and unemployment which Akemecha spotlights in this poem. The second stanza foregrounds the poet’s plight:

You must have called me trash

Because I couldn’t afford a new pair

Yet we trekked the land together

And every door we knocked

They called me Good-for-nothing. (11. 4-8)

The intimacy which Akemecha evokes between the persona and his pair of shoes mirrors or parallels a pair of Beckett’s characters, perennially helpless. It works to highlight the acute bouts of poverty and unemployment staring at the persona. The last two lines of the stanza “and every door we knocked/they called me Good-for-nothing” would seem to be a subtle call for us to re-direct our pedagogic focus form churning out people who cannot weave a basket to developing in learners, transferable skills that should empower them to survive after university, and increase their chances of self-employment and reduce dependency on the state for jobs.

It is also interesting how the poet zooms into awareness creation and like typical romantics such as wordsworth or Keats; he decries the robbing of our environment of its self-worth. Consider to this effect poems like “Ecowar,” “Do not go Farther” among others. Closely associated with this effect poems “Yaoundé” with its “junk over-laden valleys/ of decomposing life… and of scavengers/ caressing crawling worms/Escorted by fleas and flies…” (11. 4-13) could there have been a more apt description of the abandoned litter on our streets?

With amazing ease Joshua Akemecha broaches a variety of issues in his collection. Besides the ones already examined, he delves into politics and lampoons contemporary political characters in poems such as “A town Bereft” which captures the state of emergency declared in Bamenda following the 1992 presidential elections. “High-Flyers” ridicules a leadership rooted in “sit- tight” culture. “Chairs and stools” amplifies this view when the poet says

This chair is a charming stool

They say I pass stool on the stool- –

But the baby doesn’t smell its stool

So if my chair be smeared with stool

Like a baby I will rock on my stool (11.13-18)

Certainly the poet here is addressing political leaders who recycle themselves for extra-time people who will never subscribe to leaving the stage when the applause is loudest. The view is again sustained and seasoned with some Chaucerian humour in “Saloon Aesthetics” in which the poet stretches his vision of “age recycling” which characterizes the quest for political power:

With the smile of an ape

We pose for the touch

Of cosmetic hands

Like porcelain ware (11. 1-4)

In “Do Not Go Farther”, Akemecha also bluntly addresses the “sect” culture that is common place in the political game, and which leads the players to heart-rending moral debauchery.

Listen to the speaker in the 4th stanza of the poem:

…on hourly-minute, second basis

Men screw the waste pipes of men

Dogs become spouses, cats’ babes

…baboons are dressed in suits

Or make-up as whores to wait

Night comes at mid-day

More plague shall alight (11. 17-23)

To the poet, society is led by unconscionable men and the plagues that befall society are a function of these men with untamable moral indiscretions.

In other poems like “Across the Mungo” and “Home” the poet defines the despondence which swallows up the Anglophone who happens to be in the Francophone dominated side of the country. Drawing from this, the poet seeks self-hood and identity because he is robbed of his own identity, relegated to a second class citizen. He thus longs for his identity; one that should inject his being with relevance, an identity that seeks a new orientation and finds expression in the poem “Ambazonia.”

As a third generation Anglophone Cameroonian poet, radicalism as a poetic tool becomes an apparent feature of Joshua Akemechas’s poetry, a trait that holds an appeal to a sizeable portion of the Anglophone public mind. Poems such as “Invitation: To a Common Cause,” “A Call to Arms” and “Matrimony?” attest to this. Joshua Akemecha also punctuates his collection with local life and colour. We have the poems “Of palm wine,” “Yesterday” and in a seeming opposition to the metaphysical John Donne’s “Death, Be not Proud,” Akemecha exhorts deaths to be proud in his “Death be Proud” in which he sees fatalism and the helplessness of man in the face of death

One very important quality of Timeless Memories is that it strikes a balance between gratified venality and fulfilling decency, deliberate failure and purposeful achievement. Where Akemecha castigates in “Do not go Farther”, “Man Master”, “Yaoundé” among others, he eulogizes or praises in poems like “Martin Paul Samba,” and “Combatants”. The collection rounds off on a note that blackmail is a resort for the infamous in the poem “Equivocations.” The poet seemingly draws from the May 6th 1990 Cameroon Calling saga at the Cameroon Radio and Television Corporation (CRTV).

With regard to our evaluation criteria and for all its brilliancy, in every sense of the word, Timeless Memories deserves a literary recognition and space. The issues broached are topical and relevant and will hold an appeal for discussion. That meets our requirement of social relevance.

Timeless Memories is a collection of poetry with applaudable aesthetic sensibilities. The language is seductive, beautiful and the subject matter elegant and compels both admiration and reading. It also meets our criteria of effectiveness of technique, readability and artistic truthfulness. The collection will surely stimulate discussions that could inspire readers to try their hand at writing their own poems, born out of their experiences. It is also a valuable research document. Note that the book is neatly structured and presented.

CONCLUSION

In Timeless Memories Joshua Akemecha keeps the reader’s interest from the first to the last poem. He evokes varying emotions: pity, fear, horror, hate, love. The collection produces a haunting effect on our imagination not as timeless memories but as timeless insights. On this note, we postulate that Joshua Akemecha’s Timeless Memories is excellent literature, which has worked to mark out a creative or literary space for him as a budding poet to watch and encourage.

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WORKS CITED
Primary Source

Akemecha, Joshua. Timeless Memories. Kansas City: Miraclaire Publishing, 2015. Print.

Secondary Source

Ambanasom, Shadrack A. Matter and Manner: Critical Essays on African Literature. Bamenda: Shiloh Printers, 2015. Print

Ammon’s, Elizabeth (ed.) Edith Wharton. The house of Mirth. New York: W.W Norton & Company, 1990. Print.

Bloom, Harold and Lionel Trilling (eds.) The Oxford anthology of English Literature: Romantic Poetry and prose. Oxford: O.U.P, 1973. Print

Gibaldi, Joseph. MLA Handbook for Writers of research Paper,Sixth Edition. New York: MLA, 2007. Print.

Gwynn, R.S: Poetry: A Packet Anthology, Fourth Edition. New York: Pearson, Education, Inc., 2005

Meyer, Michael. Poetry: An Introduction, Fourth Edition. Boston: Beaford St. Martin’s, 2004. Print.

Raimez, Ann & Maria Jersky. The Open Handbook. Keys for Writers. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2007. Print.

Phythian, B.A (Ed.). Considering Poetry: An Approach to criticism. London: Hodder & Sloughton, 2004. Print.

Poetry by William S. Peters

william s. peters2

A poem for the dead

“I die daily”

It is not as if I planned on dying . . .
At least not at this time,
But I, we always knew
That death always lurked
In the white shadows
Of our lives

Our hues and pigmentation
Was a non-red flag
That signaled our presence
And that of their unfounded hate
For our existence

I bother no more about the ‘whys’,
For
Understanding it all
Is quite the conundrum of humanity
Or the lack thereof . . .
…..
Deal with it,
Live with it,
For it is what it is . . .
Isn’t it?

I stand,
Or should I say,
I lie now in this dark entombment
Alone,
There are many others who
Suffered as I do, did,
Having their dreams
And the promises,
And the hopes of our mothers and fathers
Snatched away,
All because of the abiding fear
Of our endurance,
And our strength . . .
Color!
……
A funny thing,
In spite of it all,
We are still here
As a firm reminder
Of the prevailing ugliness
That lives
Within us all

This is a poem conceived
From a cry of my ancestors,
A poem that had to be written,
A poem that had to be passed on,
A poem that hopefully some will read,
A poem for the dead

“I die daily”

© 22 september 2020 : william s. peters, sr.

www.iamjustbill.com

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A 2016 & 2019 Pulitzer Poetry Prize nominee, William S. Peters, Sr., AKA ‘just bill’, has devoted himself to poetry in 1966. Since the day he became a dedicated voice in making his creative expression public – regardless of form, he has held the passionate conviction that the written art is a necessity. The author’s spiritual essence reflects in his social actions, all of which serve his efforts to ease his personal angst and contribute toward the betterment of humanity and the reconciliation of its plight.

To date, Peters authored more than 55 books. His poems have been published in excess of 220 anthologies, newspapers and literary magazines. In September 2015, the author was recognized as the “Poet Laureate” at the Kosovo International Poetry Festival. His sizeable book, The Vine Keeper was awarded The Golden Grape Award and showcased in Rahovec, the festival’s center. Being so inspired by this communion of poets, Peters penned a book of tribute, O Sweet Kosovo . . . Dreams of Rahovec. This work has been since translated into Albanian by Fahredin Shehu, an esteemed poet and scholar, and was incorporated into the Rahovec School System in 2017.

Poetry by Diana Manole

Diana Manole, Photo by Alex Usquiano, 2019, 3

Bliss Molecules
To COVID-19 Survivors

The smell of water,
fresh water, seawater, dead water, marshes and streams,
water carrying her away—
folded, squished
rocked on the tides of a second Noah’s flood come true,
no ark in sight,
no piece of timber randomly afloat,
all expectations lowered to the basics
“Lower her!” “Turn her!” “Hold her!” some scream
a looped polyphony,
her S.O.S. dawning and fading in her grizzled lungs,
air sacs as is filled with ravenous carnivore algae
“Water, the smell of water! Where from?”
alveolar cells bursting open “She’s drifting!”
she’s adrift like a foetus in the amniotic fluid,
knees sticking out through the skies’ splintered belly skin,
freeze, flight or fight or fall
falling through the cracks between shock waves, reversed,
transverse across the damp nothingness,
no birth plan to stick to, no rebirth in sight
no joystick, no stuffed toy or candy to reward the winner,
alien hands like crane claws, piercing flesh,
rubbing salt in haemorrhaging nostrils “No touching, nooo!
Don’t touch me!” Six masked Golems leaning over
“Now we get her, now she's gone!”
a tube squashed inside, twisting, coiling, snaking
“No, no, please don’t!” then bliss—
mechanical breaths and bliss molecules
“She’s out of the woods!” someone says.

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Diana Manole was born in Romania, immigrated to Canada in 2000, and is proudly identifying herself as a Romanian-Canadian scholar, writer, and literary translator. In her home country, she has published nine collections of poetry and plays, and received 14 literary awards. She has also translated or co-translated seven poetry collections from and/or into Romanian and one from Spanish into English, and co-earned second prize in the 2018 John Dryden Translation Competition with Adam J Sorkin. The winner of the 2020 Very Small Verse Contest of the League of Canadian Poets, her recent poetry has been featured in English and/or in translation in magazines in the UK, the US, Belarus, Mexico, Brazil, South Africa, Turkey, Albania, China, Romania, and Canada. Diana has earned a doctorate from the Centre for Drama, Theatre & Performance Studies at the University of Toronto and a Master of Journalism from Carleton University in Ottawa. As a scholar, she has published 13 peer-reviewed articles and/or book chapters in the US, the UK, and Canada, as well as co-edited a collection of essays, Staging Postcommunism: Alternative Theatre in Eastern and Central Europe after 1989, published by the University of Iowa Press (2020). Diana teaches Theatre and Performance, English and Canadian literatures, and/or Creative Writing at the University of Guelph and at Trent University. Her seventh poetry book, Praying to a Landed-Immigrant God, is forthcoming from Grey Borders Books on 1 December 2020.

Poetry by Heidi Greco

Heidi_Greco

Flyer

We were grumbling again about the long isolation
loud enough to trade complaints
with the tenant next door, her stamp-

size balcony butting up to ours, neighbourly
enough, in the realm of concrete condos 
high above the world on the 21st floor 

(privileged as we know we are), the ocean
merely blocks away, our view this span
of sparkling blue, the distance to Japan.

Evening waves had shifted, were churning a froth of white, 
stirred by foreign, sideways winds, furrowing the sea
to lines that skewed the wrong way from shore.

She kept saying how they tempted her, calling
her to dive right in, how she pictured being tossed
by them – a joyous, bouncing beach ball

and suddenly she leapt, arms wide, from the railing, 
her open face shining with the red setting sun, 
and for seconds, I swear, she was flying. 

But when we looked and saw her lying on the street,
she was on her side, unmoving and bent, crumpled, 
nearly in the shape of a fallen paper crane. 

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Heidi Greco lives and writes in Surrey, BC. Her next book strays from previous ones – as it’s not poetry or fiction, but a look at one of her favourite films, which will be marking its 50th anniversary next year. Early in 2021, Vancouver’s Anvil Press will be publishing Glorious Birds: A Celebratory Homage to Harold and Maude.   

Website: https://heidigreco.ca 
Twitter: @heidigreco47 

Poetry by Tim Suermondt

Tim Suermondt

LONGEVITY

The city and I
have gotten older.

When we walk arm-in-arm
now for the sake of walking

this is as good as it gets
and we see clearer than ever

before, as if looking through
strange, new eyes—what lucidity.

Here’s the dusk spooling
over the avenue, slowly both

closing it down and opening it up.
There’s a rose on the sidewalk,

a blue skateboard in the gutter
and if we wanted to levitate it

along with so many other things
deep into the sky, we could—

the magician’s touch on us,
at last, like stardust.



  A VISITATION I NEVER TIRE OF

One of the poets I love, one
who no longer walks among us,
still drops by the apartment once a year.
And once again I’m surrounded by
her lyrical intensity, her humor
her imaginative leaps and storytelling.
She tells me she reads my poems
and enjoys them—I prefer to believe
she’s telling me the truth, why not?
We talk poetry and poetry until darkness
shows up and escorts her out.
I look out the window into the darkness
at the birds, the ones you can’t see,
but the ones you know are there, close by.



  HO CHI MINH CITY AT NIGHT

The tiny boats on the river pulse like fireflies,
reflecting off the windows of the French restaurant
where our host has taken out a long table
soon to be loaded with a vast array of foods.

The tropical scent has made its way inside, palm
fronds sketched on the walls to match the ones
lined along the narrow drive way, torchlights
perfectly spaced to assist with the steep curves.

The conversation is both high-minded and trivial,
the affairs of business taking precedence, wine
toasts in the candlelight sincerely made, the entrees
melting in the mouth while cigarette smoke swirls.

The Vietnamese woman next to me praises the food,
but confesses she misses the pho and the heavy noodles.
Hopelessly American, I say I miss a steak and she
smiles and adds “I am most grateful we are allies now.”

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Tim Suermondt’s sixth full-length book of poems “A Doughnut And The Great Beauty Of The World” will be forthcoming from MadHat Press in 2021. He has published in Poetry, Ploughshares, Prairie Schooner, The Georgia Review, Bellevue Literary Review, Stand Magazine, december magazine, On the Seawall, Poet Lore and Plume, among many others. He lives in Cambridge (MA) with his wife, the poet Pui Ying Wong.

Hybrid Poetry by Mbizo Chirasha

a1mbizo-chirasha-diasporian

MIDNIGHT MONOLOGUES (thought tracks on bad politics, quarantine, exile and isolation) *

(i).

I smell the heavy scent of the night, pitch black night

It is sunset on the foothills of my country,

I smell the heavy scent of the pitch-black night,

pitch black night   coils into this tired land feigning its darkness

pitch-black night,

birthing revolutionary ghosts and ideological imbeciles

Pitch black night pregnant with emotion and wrong ambition,

Inside the pitch-black night heartbroken shadows are harvesting funerals,

In this pitch-black night

I drink tears for tea,

munching grief chapped lips for bread,

dry bread to fill up my four-decade aged spiritual torment

I smell the scent of a dying moon, the death of the moonshine

Midnight crawls- in with a groan of poverty,

I scrounge to catch the traces of freedom leftovers through broken windows of life.

I am walking journeys in my mind to touch the glimpse of the feeble moon

I weep at the death of moonlight,

And now gutter rats and stray cockroaches feast from hidden treasures

Dancing out the night -fiesta, feasting alongside corrupt and corrupted shadows,

silent anthills are weeping too, their death bleached bones are weeping too

Mother is no more, she went away with the moonlight, they buried her with a dirge

Mumurevere mumumrerevere

Kana mabvuvuzwa moti ayi namata

Mumurevere mumurevere

Mumurevererere

Kana mabvunzwa  moti ainamata

 Mumureverere, mumureverere ,mumureverere

The last spell of dust still  clung her thick eyelids,

her spirit winked to Gods to announce her journey to the land of her New Canaan.

And we remained in the New Normal.

I shall come to embrace Mama, the same way I came here , my spirit mother shall wink for her spiritual mates to welcome me the fruit of her womb back into the veil of  heavens, spirit-land .

We shall meet again, time is coming

And her spiritual mates shall chant a song, a song of griots, a song of unsung heroes,

a pungwe chant, a song they sang in the struggle for another struggle,

a song that perched black cockerels on the zenith of thrones,

a song that set the sun, a song that rose the sun

a song that killed the moon,

a song that is a paradox

a song that opened doors and shut them,

a song that polished rejects onto ladders of power,

a song of freedom, a song of aborted freedom,

a revolutionary song

a recycled song that recycled ideological demagogues,

we are born by the song and we die by that song.

Mama, I never sang the last hymn for you,

I never saw the last wink or the last giggle,

the fall of lioness, mother freedom.

Testimony of the struggle, the sceptre of freedom,

My heartbeat with the echo of the yesteryear gun, mind-vibes, the raindrop beat rhythm of struggle pungwe songs

Maruza imi ,maruza imi ,maruza imi

Maruza maruza maruza

Maruza imi, maruza imi

Maruza maruza maruza

Maruza imi, maruza imi , maruza imi 

The last spell of dust is still clinging on your thick eyelids.  Hear , hear my  epitaph verse  ‘sleep comfortably in the warm palms of the Lord’ 

And I sing again  the last verse of that struggle pungwe song

Maruza imi ,maruza imi ,maruza imi

Vapambepfumi

Maruza imi, maruza imi

vapambepfumi

Maruza imi, maruza imi , maruza imi 

Vapamembepfumi

Your favorite struggle pungwe song *

(ii)

Tonight ,

I smell the crashing of the revolutionary light

Soothsayers talk in sacred tongues that the light in the moon went with last revolutionary legend,

Tyrannical legend died clutching the clay of country in his hard- clenched right-hand fist. He chanted another chant,

another slogan,

another clenched fist slogan.

In this pitch-black night,

obituaries wetted pseudo revolutionary columns and frail patriotic tabloids,

paradoxical revolutionary legend died with his Marxist -Leninist hardened forehead creased with the graffiti of a stolen country, a country strangled to death, a country that is now a walking ghost.

A country lost in the cemetery of political vendetta and  propaganda vulgar

Learned tyrannical revolutionary legend, munched the all -protein -all vitamin chlorophyll filled bean-leaf Oxford English dictionary, Imbibed the red-grape beverages of Latina encyclopedia, sanctified by Vatican City Catholic moguls. The dead tyrannical, revolutionary legendary stalwart shaped by concocted ideological recipe and intellectual concoction of Marxist-Leninist-Stalinist socialist gin, Victorian- Elizabethan verbiage, peasant-guerrilla-bush struggle for freedom scholarship, pan African-Nkrumaist socialist extremism-

A balanced diet.

A concocted Ideological recipe.

An Intellectual concoction

The revolutionary legendary stalwart is lying in salient stone

And that lashing tongue with its lips chapped by vitriol is sealed in silent marble

And that Leninist- Stalinist- Marxist- Nkuruma-ist charisma is silent in the silence of the stone

And that extremism carved propaganda-ist clenched fist slogan holds the red clay of earth in silence in the silence of the stone

Tonight, this midnight, Ideological charlatans sing praise and protest, the legend went with the country, the tyrant went the country’s sorrow-soaked epitaphs, grief laden obituaries, tear filled eulogies and our gold in his fistful slogan.

And zealots and charlatans, poets and griots sing still, they sing praise and protest for a guerrilla graduated into patriotic super star, later an autocratic medalist but still he lived and died in paradox, revolutionary paradox

Griots and zealots sing protest and praise still and still they sing to the pitch-black night, to the death of the death of a legend, to the stolen country

Manyarireiko, manyararirei

Manyararie,manyarariyeko

Manyarariyeiko, Manyarariyeko 

the legend stole treasures of the land and the conscience of my now vulgar tutored and vitriol schooled poverty hardened generation.

My generation polarized by political polio.

My generation lost the light of the moon

My generation lost the beautiful blink of the sun

Legendary tyrant died clutching the golden red clay of the country in his slogan hardened clenched fist

Jongwe raenda

Raenda rakanyarara,raenda rakaguta

Raenda Jongwe

Jongwe rakukurudza,raenda jongwe

Jongwe raenda

Raenda jongwe raenda richidemba

Raenda jongwe

Jongwe raenda nezuva,raenda nomwedzi muchena

Raenda Jongwe 

Obituaries inscribed in rain- beaten century- aged potholed highways

epitaph was a black cockerel carved onto the edges of torn bank note,

eulogy was a by a Vatican supplication and a Latin poem

gesters and griots danced out the night with presidential parody

He died inside the pitch-black night,

the funeral ritual was conducted inside the pitch-black night.

…………………………………………………………

( iii)

In this pitch black night, zealots and senators congregate like wild hens

Senators cackling vendetta and zealots singing political vulgar  , gobbling fresh bread from the rich wheat of our sweat, gulping   matured grape-wine of our toil.

Tonight, our tears wash the corruption clad parliament tarmacs

As our ever -pouring sweat rinse their extortion laden court rooms

teargas graffiti decorates the broken statehouse lampposts

Hieroglyphics of poverty match the campaign print on the torn presidential election bandana

I see the president grazing the steak of our ballot-cast for dinner,

I snoop on torn newspaper headlines for lunch

I stuff my rumbling stomach with gossip and grapevine for peace

I see the double -chinned parliamentarians greedly drinking our juicy sweat of our hardly won freedom for breakfast.

I see famished citizens gasping for dignity, dignity imbibed by the  un-couthed mouth of the gun,

Father died with a torn election campaign Tshirt drapped on his wood and tin made coffin and his cold feet was covered by the three doeks emblazoned cheap propaganda, he raised his fist for a solid slogan and chanted a revolutionary hymn before sliding into a death trance.

Father died a socialist , an ideologist , a revolutionary

Towards the dawn of his sunset, he jabbed the wind, jiving for the freedom cockerel,

he chewed propaganda mustard biscuits with gusto  ,

he drank the ideological whisky with verve.

Political vibe chopped his mother tongue and spoke in political tongues of green combat propaganda

Father died waving a fistful slogan.

Father sang a song alongside the slogan chant

A song of the last liberation

A song that was carved on his DNA like a radio antenna

He died before the setting of the moon

and left a song and a slogan chant,

a song of the last liberation

He died before the claws of dawn caressed our rondavels,

In this pitch-black night, I hear the wind whistling the tune of that song

, song of my father

He loved my mother, president black cockerel and the song

Brother went to war and never came back,

I peep through the broken window of life that one day we see brother walking back to his village rondavel,

the pain of loss is decaying my respect to the parliament until my brother returns.

Freedom was gobbled by the November goblins,

revolutionary eggs gulped by greedy young cockerels with their disrespectful alarms announcing dawn at night.

Charlatans reaping cash and belching corruption stink into our sand paper, poverty taunted suffering souls.

Beloved generation, beloved bitter-sodden generation

Our sun set long years before black cockerel died, before November knives hacked the revered black cockerel from the zenith of the throne, Yes, another dawn was announced inside the pitch-black night, before owls announce their anthems, before dog’s howl to the last star, before hyenas laugh the last giggle

The Power of Poetry and the rise of Underground Voices

I am writing a letter to dissidents farting hatred in Congo
Congo, My Nagasaki pimping the state for hot bread and cheap slogans.
Darfur, My Hiroshima, fermenting coup d’états in breweries of war
Dissidents plucking off the petals of the revolution. Drinking the
passion fruit of freedom
I want to silence the gun. I will not silence the sun.

Poetry is currently rated as one of the most influential media of literary arts and resistance activism and the voice for human rights advocacy. From the time of our birthing to these days of maturation, we are all shaped, serenaded and entertained by sweet ancient lullabies, drum beat throbs and early morning birdsongs.   Song and dance are verse in motion, poetry remains a vehicle of freedom of expression and catalytic medium of creative consciousness.  It is a super creative genre that cannot easily relegated to the peripheral pleats of human intellectuality but must be respected in our quest for freedom in all our struggles for human liberation. We are swayed everyday by rough political winds.  Poetry injects   the penicillin of sanity into the corrupted blood of rat-brained devils and iron steel-hearted dictatorial tyrants.  At least they might repent after sipping a bitter sweet beverage of satire and hard to swallow brew of metaphor. Thus, the power of poetry, it is not a silent language. It is the official lingo of literary activism. The language that can be spoken in gutter, underground, ghetto, street pavements, village pathways and polished corridors of power in high offices. And with advent of digital literacy and internet revolution, it is not easy to gag poets and their voices.

The blunt-edged swords of my metaphor and razor-sharp flesh slicing irony burrow truth through banking malls scarred by corruption graffiti.  It roasts and stews up sandy paper souls of political demigods and unrepentant bloodletting war- lords.  It blisters the long extortion roughened – fingers of gluttonous bureaucrats, it scalds ideological imbeciles and revolutionary rejects   with hot holy waters of satire and imagery.

Poetry fertilizes the baobab seeds of revolutions in our arduous expedition to freedom.  It remains the literary -machete of resistance through and through out. The echoes transcend from violence smitten favelas of Latina Americas to through blood graffiti on walls of Washington to up to the corruption -creased streets of Africa.

Nazism establishments and Napoleonic political set ups have been using poetry art as propaganda crank to influence segregation, intimidation and totalitarianism. The modern underground poets are now conscious of true and false revolutions.  We refuse to be manipulated and then discarded into cemeteries of failure over-used like condom sheaths.

Today’s world is haunted by turbulent times of warlords, regionalism, super-power autocracy, political banditry, Islamophobia and xenophobia.  Against such global quandary, the poet, the mason of resistance must raise their fist of resilience and proclaim total freedom. Therefore, to remain voices to save vulnerable communities from sinking into dungeons of autocracy and dark pits of casava republics.

For example, a few decades ago, Zimbabwe’s harsh political twists, moral decadence and economic malaise birthed of underground poets and cultivated the rise protest art.  The poets raw – crude art and satire projected mass poverty and as citizens groan under the yoke dynasticity tendencies of the Mugabe’s totalitarian   regime. Now that Mugabe is gone with his political fist, Are we safe with the current regime with their mantra of the Second Republic.   House of Hunger Poetry Slam (founded in 2006) was a direct response to the political- moral crisis perpetuated by the tyrannical, autocratic and corruption drunk Mugabe regime.

The fervent crop of protest poets overthrew the degreed old-guard literists, the old guard regime of poets had lost the salt of expression due to fear and intimidation by the state.  Most of them ended up as commissars of the failing but steel gloved Mugabe regime.  Many had no choice but to succumb to profound silence for the purposes of their saving their lives,  professional careers and  daily freedoms.

The brave lot of new generation protest poets are adamant and vocal about and against the police state tendencies and brutality in Zimbabwe.  We aim our metaphoric slings at post-liberation oppression, against   human rights abuses, police brutality and politically perpetuated violence. Our grand old guard poet’s word-slinged against white-colonialism, slavery, racial segregation and apartheid.  And like today, during those brutal years, dissenting voices were vehemently thwarted. Likewise, todays African regimes gag, imprison, plunder the freedoms and lives of resilient voices.  Those and other experiences led me to create and curate the Zimbabwe We Want Poetry Campaign, it has since generated into Global Poetry of Resistance Movement speaking hard truth to power against moral decadence, against machinations of dictatorships, bad governance, abuse of human rights, gagging of freedom of expression. Protest poetry has remained as the viable medium of literary arts activism in the struggle for tolerance, promotion of dissenting voices and freedom of expression.

When the sun filters its orange into this red earth. I see twin

brothers Renamo and Frelimo laughing out loud to baboons dangling in

gorongosa trees

I see children sniffing face book and colonial dope.

Darfur, drowning in the din of rattling drums and blood dollars, their

children eating wiki leaks for breakfast and twitter mojo for supper,

oiling the revolutionary engines through song and dance

Burning candles from both ends.

Nodding to the wind of drums and beat of the gun, drunk with wind and sound

Sing Darfur

Sing to the freedom babies eating twitter berries and faces book figs.

Forgetting their fingers in Google forests. Licking Wounds after

burning in cultural monoxide and moral dioxide

Bastards starved of ideological oxygen- EXCERPT from SambisasCousins.

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Mbizo CHIRASHA, the Author of a Letter to the President. co-Authored Whispering Woes of Ganges and Zambezi. Co-Edited Street Voices Poetry Collection (Germany Africa Poetry Anthology). Co- Editor of the Corpses of Unity Anthology.  Associate Editor at  Diasporia(n) online. Chief Editor at Time of the Poet Republic. Founding Editor at WomaWords Literary Press. Publisher at Brave Voices Poetry journal.  Curator at Africa Writers Caravan. UNESCO-RILA Affiliate Artist at University of Glasgow. 2020 Poet in Residence Fictional Café. 2019 African Fellow, IHRAF.ORG. Project Curator and Co-Editor of the Second Name of Earth is Peace (Poetry Voices Against WAR Anthology). Contributing Essayist to Monk Arts and Soul Magazine.  Poetry and writtings appear in  FemAsia Magazine ,Wrath -Bearing Tree, Inksweat andtears journal , One Ghana One Magazine, Ofi Press, World Poetry Almanac, Demer Press , Atunis Galaxy poetry online , IHRAF Publishes , The Poet a Day , Bezine.Com , Sentinel UK, Oxford School of Poetry Pamphlet , Africa Crayons, PulpitMagazine,Poetry Pacific, Zimbolicious , Best New Poets ,Poetry Bulawayo , Gramnet webjournal, Diogen Plus , Poeisis.si , Festival de Poesia Medellin and elsewhere.

Poetry by Lisa Reynolds

Lisa Reynolds 1

Normal in a Covid World

He tells me
it’s normal to feel anxious
everyone is these days.
I want to believe him
but as his pen dances
across a thick prescription pad
I wonder if I’m the only one
barely hanging on.

 

Pretender

I pretend my illness doesn’t exist
until I am reminded by others -
those who observe my movements
comment on my unsteady gait
slow speech, raccoon eyes
Some ask questions
Many speculate through whispers
but not you
You were here -
witnessed my struggles
listened to my fears
until they surpassed your own
Then you were gone -
Yet now you’re back, professing concern
“I care about you. I need you to be okay.
Please tell me you are.”
So, I do – to ease your guilt
and protect the pretender that I am



You & Me (Micro-Poem)
Caught in a circle of hellos, we avoid each other’s eyes, side hug
and pretend we were never more than we are now.
And yet - in that brief moment when you drew me in,
I heard your breath hitch the way it used to before we kissed.
Confession Haiku
I think about you
things we did and didn’t do
to keep you alive



Voice in my Head
Look in the mirror. Ignore pale skin and dark circles. Apply lipstick. Pucker. Smile.
At the therapist’s office, share that your best friend died.
If she asks, tell her I was forty-nine.
Mention a few tidbits.
How we met at work.
Took turns on breaks, microwaving popcorn in the staffroom; burning more than a few bags.
Remember how the smell lingered? Drove everyone nuts.
Don’t forget to tell her how we used to hang out at that bar on Yonge Street - you know the one.
I’d drink Bordeaux while you sipped tomato juice, pretending it was a Cesar.
We’d laugh at the ridiculous, share horror stories about relationships, then laugh some more.
Tell her other stuff too.
Like when I was admitted into hospital, how I ditched my gown, and met you in the lounge
wearing jeans and a t-shirt.
We ignored the code blues, hogged comfy seats in a corner, and swapped secrets;
the box in my dresser drawer, the one you hid under your bed.
Before you leave her office, tell her you wore bright colors because I suggested you do.
On your way out, check your face in your compact mirror.
Reapply lipstick. Pucker. Smile.

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Lisa Reynolds is a Canadian writer of poetry and short stories.
Her creative works focus on love, loss, and survival.
She is published internationally in print and online publications.
She lives in a waterfront community east of Toronto, Ontario.
She is working on her first book of poems, reflections on living with chronic illness.