MoJo! Has Moved!

The current issue of MoJo! is online at the new site:

http://mojowriters.weebly.com

 

Archives, blogroll, and other extras will remain here for the time being.

Mignon Ariel King, Editor, November 1, 2009

MoJo! Issue #3

Editor’s Intro.

If you’ve studied Black literature in a formal manner you know that the journey motif plays a major role in the creation and understanding of African-American women’s fiction. Black women protagonists cross bridges, rivers, city lines, the invisible but substantial border between North and South, oceans, et cetera. Their physical travels are metaphor. How a character makes (or does not make) an internal journey–how she changes, matures, comes to comprehend herself and the world outside of herself–is the heart of the literary work.

This issue of MoJo! illustrates very different interpretations of “journey”– physical, ancestral, political, ideological, spiritual–that all reveal a singular concept, transformation. These journeys, however, are not fictional. They reflect who we are, who we could have been, and who we might someday become. Enjoy the freedom of summer and allow changes to embrace you or to sweep you away.

–Mignon Ariel King, Boston, Massachusetts, Summer 2009

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MoJo! Issue #3
Theme: Journeys

Joyce Angela Jellison, Boston, MA
Leg to foot to pavement
(the 2009 Boston Marathon)

leg to
foot
to cement
covers
distance
in proper time
there is
the push of wind
against a back damp from exertion
still the running
the need to cover ground
pulls leg
to move foot
to pound pavement
and the cycle continues
for some
this is enough
the distance is covered by sheer desire
to compete and win
compete and win
compete and win
with distance wearing the soles of your shoes to mere strips of rubber bound
by a privileged determination – a determination that allows room for
failure if it should occur

then there are the others
who travel
distance in planes
from lands
roasted brown like nuts are roasted on cold afternoons in sprawling city
parks
these lands that bear the humility of suffering
the wrath of an unrelenting sun that balances her body on crumbling red
earth
a place where fickle clouds hover menacingly, rarely
yielding water

the Africans as they are collectively called
come
and
run
with their respective
villages
connected to heart
to leg
to foot
to pavement
and they cover distance with wind cooling backs also damp from
exertion and now fear

it is this fear
that steadies their breathing
and gives balance

the fear
of returning home
with less
and so they run with mother, father, uncles and aunts running
in spirit alongside them
with ancestors within them
village
to heart to leg to foot to pavement
village to heart to leg to foot to pavement
Kenya
Ethiopia
Nigeria
running packs
having discovered a way
to win freedom
we watch and calculate the last time an american
ran and won this race
1982 or 1985?
leg to foot to cement
is not enough
there most be more
to cover the distance
separating
the haves
from the
have nots

Joyce Angela Jellison is the author of two books, Where Everything Fits Beautifully and Black Apple. She describes her poetic style as “[sometimes] a bit provocative. I often use anatomy as metaphor in the tradition of Hattie Gossett.” She is also the director of Write Out Loud: Transforming Our Lives Through Writing Our Truths writeoutloud.synthasite.com.

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Lolita Paiewonsky, Cambridge, MA
A Schoolgirl

I.

I am the girl

I imagined the Sisters’ small rooms,
neat but not bare, not so uncomfortable

I crave the Quiet of St. Augustine’s contemplations
the silence of his mother’s tears
that I think the Sisters must know intimately

I yearn for the freedom of devotion to God
to worship with my gifts and talents
unrestrained by the world, and at all hours

…

II.

I return to the campus one Sunday afternoon.
It is quiet as a daytime moon, so close you could feel its pulse
The empty grounds beneath the maples
are still except for a spring breeze
In the distance, baby robins nestled
in the highest green boughs

Passing the classroom buildings, I gaze up
at the Biology Lab and, higher, to the convent
with its small stained-glass skylights
rendering the interior safe and sacred and
cool in the summer

I seem to remember a fountain crowded with starlings
and sparrows in the Spring
It is not in the yard now.
Petals drink from rain puddles, thrushes chatter from the trees

At the front of the building, the end of an azalea-
lined approach, I try the ivy-framed door
that is of course locked.

I do not ring the ivory doorbell, cross-shaped. Instead,
I stand back and embrace this place of my youth,
a magnolia, face to the sun of memory
senses flooding over me

III.

Alma mater beckons me again the next Sunday.

Entering the unguarded campus,
I kick off my shoes, walk white sock-footed
on the grass, verdant as ever,
unconcerned about grass stains.

Dropping my bag under an oak,
oblivious of passers-by, I break
into a run the length of the east lawn
passing the birch trees ringing the campus,
recall the relay races at Parson’s Field.

Reaching the perimeter, not out of breath, I
turn into the breeze and jog back.
My bag still under the tree, I plop down
beside it, gulp from my non-designer water bottle,
lean back against the oak and close my eyes,
smiling

A handsome voice floats by, “You’re in pretty good shape.”
The form with scent of musk sitting beside,
but not touching, me. My head resting on the
tree’s trunk. His, nodding toward the pink brick building,
“Did they teach you Goethe. . . Lorca . . .
Pushkin?” (Unbeknownst, he struck a chord.)
Changing lines once more, the voice muses,
“Do you hear that music?”, he rises from the grass,
tanned, agile, strong, musk. His hand outstretched,
“Dance with me, right here, barefoot on the grass–”

In the sunlit shadow of Sta. Teresa’s my legs
and heart move to dance.

An hour later, the sun, red and slipping behind the Arch *
west of the Mississippi River, I open my eyes,
my bag between the tree and my back, the stranger,
vanished. I pick up a stone, smooth and speckled.
I walk the fifteen blocks home…

In the present century, a grassy lot
graces the corner plot on Cleveland Avenue
kept for years in our family after a middle-of-the-night arson…
One block north, St. Joseph’s Parochial, our
grammar school.

Ghosts of Jack ‘n’ Jill, Alpha Phi Alpha, the Links,
and Madre’s Las Amigas parties
Ghosts of barbeques on the custom pit our father designed
and scent of his trademark BBQ sauce
Backyard and side lawn lanterns strung from the maples
and fireworks glow, play tricks in the shadows

Ghosts of late N.A.A.C.P. and civil rights meetings
in our living room, moved for safety to
father’s upstairs law office on Broadway

Ghosts of badminton, horseshoes, and croquet on the side lawn
Brothers’ friends climbing a hill of manure
bought to fertilize the roses
(did brother ever reap punishment for that gambol!)

Ghosts of Grana and Gramps, Madre’s parents
visiting Easters and Christmases
Ghosts of my St. Joseph’s friends before
we learned what colour was

IV.

The wind is brisk as I reach the vacant lot.
The land stands pouting, sentinel of memory
like decimated trees.

S.T.A. returns to mind.

Leaving early mornings through the white, gated fence
to walk the fifteen blocks in Fall, in Winter, in Spring
until, finally, permission to drive to school like the other girls.

For so long those halls held safe the giggles and secrets
of ingénues boarding at S.T.A. before the turn of the century,
navy blue-and-white-clad

How many, like me, sneaked to the upper floors
souls seeking solace, to be closer to God,
or to satisfy foolish curiosity

How many, like me, had the chance to roam those floors,
spend a week under the stained-glass transoms
see the day’s sun through the skylights as
the Sisters saw it morning after morning

And lived to capture it in a poem,
partly lived
partly flight of fancy

V.

Life or fancy
Double-sided veil
Abbey or the world
Solitude or chaos, or
A learned way through the world’s
Frights and enchantments.

How does a soul, a heart, learn such lessons,
discover such a way through
The earth’s valleys and ditches with
Only one life to live?

Somehow, before the hourglass shatters, one
Must find it.
But how to uncover the path?
Sages say look within.

Maybe . . .
It takes going far, far back
And then trudging forward, anew
Fitted with wings of wisdom
Culled from poems
Or from Memory, as St. Augustine taught.

Poems like this one of a life
Partly lived, partly flight of fancy

[Editor's Note: This work is excerpted from a work-in-progress, The convent at Sta. Teresa Academy : A schoolgirl’s flight of fancy]

Lolita Paiewonsky writes librettos, drama, fiction and, especially, poetry (since the second grade). She has presented her poetry with classical and jazz music and original choreography and exhibited it as “poetǎge” (visual poetry); she has been featured poet at many venues. Her poetry has appeared in a number of publications, including The Harvard Dudley Review, Harvard ALANA journals, Wilderness House Literary Review, Bagelbard anthologies, and Bradley University Journal.

The writer has published three limited-edition chapbooks: Who hears the gull’s song?; Fragments and Reflections; and Lights Aglow/Luces Brillantes. Lolita has taught composition, creative writing, and English at secondary through adult levels. She has edited several anthologies; forthcoming is The Jazz 5:30 Anthology, 2006-2008 (First Church, Cambridge). Contact her at appian_lp@yahoo.com.

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Glenis Redmond, Greenville, SC
How I Became a Feminist

First, be born of a woman who worked in a house
all her days in, around, out and about it.

Her posture never curled in question,
her life laid out in exclamatory tasks

and you with your tender heart began
to witness how a woman can balance

the world on something deeper
than a hipbone, an empty checkbook

and even emptier promises.
This is how you became a girl tethered

to a woman you called mother
by witnessing the fish and loaves miracle

on a daily basis. This is how you
grew to understand her rootedness,

watching her turn barren ground
into fertile soil with a mustard seed faith.

This is how you have learned to strand
your life together by red clay beads

she gave to you, solid symbols fashioned
with blood, love and suffering.

Imagine this woman, the author of your life,
one day looks up with all seriousness

into your eyes, asks you to make up your brothers’ beds
as if at the age of twelve you are responsible

to smooth and flatten their undoings
and with your small hands you knew then

her reasons for this demand were smaller
than your budding palms, this raw seed

too cruel to cup and no matter how you tried
to cradle this hardened knot you could not place

it next to the other jewels of womanhood
she gave you. Somewhere within

you knew this was not a one-time request
but an heirloom, a bridle meant for you

to bear and to wear. This is what was handed
to her an unexamined albatross, a rotting lump

meant to tweak and train. As a woman
I finally put wind behind my voice,

casually stated to my mother what I feared to know.
You’ve always loved your sons and grandsons more.

I expected the perfunctory I love all
my children equally. She sits with silence,

sighs and says, there is something about boys.

Glenis Redmond is a 2005-2006 North Carolina Arts Council Literary Award recipient and her latest book is Under the Sun (Main Street Rag). She will be published in the upcoming journal, PLUCK and most recently published in Meridians, African Voices, Rivendell, The Asheville Poetry Review, 2006 Kakalak: A Journal of Carolina Poets, Appalachian Heritage and the Appalachian Journal. Glenis is a native of Greenville, South Carolina and a graduate of Erskine College.
Her website: www.Glenisredmond.com.

****************************************************************************************************************

Qiana Towns
Catenary

The weather is red: hazy hot humid.

It is our last day in this historic city,
entry to uncharted land. Perfumed exhaust
escapes the industrial dryer,
roasts rotted meat in the hotel’s dumpster
near the entrance. As we pass, the stench
clinches your kinky locks, rides
your afro to the top floor where we
escape heat.

This is why we are here,
to flirt with the unfamiliar in a place
that recognizes our cause, embraces
exploration of the unknown.
Because all that is known lies

in the weight of the brash reminder
you’ve placed beside the nightstand’s lamp.
We are the foul odor this city wants
to escape; but to us sweetness lingers
in the funk we meet on our journey.

From the balcony I spot the same
crumbling pizza box and busted glass
from the night before gathered
near a fountain lazily spitting
green liquid into the air. Just beyond, I watch
Eisenhower’s dream pack itself bumper to bumper—
808’s swallowing muffler cries.

Qiana Towns received an MFA from Bowling Green State University in 2008 and is a Cave Canem fellow. She holds a MA from Central Michigan University where she served as poetry editor for the online literary journal Temenos. Her work has appeared in Prick of the Spindle, Reverie, and Pindeldyboz. myspace.com/qianatowns
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MoJo! Issue #3 . Copyright 2009. All rights reserved. Reproduction of any part of this journal without express written consent of the authors represented herein is exceedingly bad form as well as a serious violation of copyright laws. Each writing will become the exclusive intellectual property of its author as of publication of the next issue of the journal or two months after publication of the current issue, whichever comes first. Corrections, Letters to the Editor, and Queries will become the property of the MoJo! editor.

MoJo! Issue #2

MoJo! Issue #2: Women

Editor’s Intro.

Why have a “Women”-themed issue of a journal that only publishes women’s writing to begin with? Well, one hopes to compile writings that are about women. Woman as subject, from the perspective of Black woman as writer, honors, as opposed to objectifying and distancing. This issue also celebrates the diversity that thrives within the large community who identify as Black women.

I hate to disagree with one of my writing idols, bell hooks, but not all Black women are connected via the culture of the yam. My parents grew up in New Hampshire. Certain traits, beliefs, and cultural inheritances that are Southern, ideas passed to my father from his father, are part of me, but I am both of Southern decent and very much a Northerner. This less-than- mainstream, multicultural, Black American woman surely has African inheritances, yet I owe my recipe book to New England. In other words, I make a mean corn chowder, but I don’t know zip about yams.

Certainly, I would not presume to define Blackness, but I will assert that it is not always a visible or biological thing, nor is it dependent on a country I have never known. Blackness is an emotional and social identity passed via oral tradition and a culture of pride, regardless of how pronounced or subtle, conscious or subconscious, a person’s connection to “African-ness” might be. And being a woman does not vary regardless of where one travels or how she came to be. True womanhood is much more than just biological and chronological facts.

That which connects real Black woman to real Black woman, in my opinion, is a culture of sisterhood—one of support, comfort, encouragement, serious talk, laughter, and the shared joy of waking up more and more comfortable in our own skins each year, each day. Our collective emotional and social state is shaped by a spiritual state that we might not always be able, or in the mood, to define or discuss; however, we can feel, honor, and cherish that bond regardless of our geographic states. In this issue, the journal of the Memoir and Poetry Sisterhood of New England (Maps One) goes national in content and global in spirit, celebrating the many voices of Black women. Happy Women’s History Month!

~Mignon Ariel King, Boston, MA, March 2009

 

Writers in this issue:
Bridgit Brown
Coleen T. Houlihan
Karnythia
Joyce Angela Jellison
Erika King
Mignon Ariel King
Lolita Paiewonsky
Sarah Nieves-Squires

Poetry:

Bridgit Brown, Dorchester, MA
Girl Crush

The bald-headed sister
with Snicker bar skin
thinks we might be kin.

She juts out her chin
– just like my mother does.

She thinks we might be kin –
when we smile our eyes say the same thing –
never mind the brimstone and fire next time
just duck when the chunks of planets
come falling to earth to be grounded.

“I don’t yodel,” she says
and then asks me, “Do you?”

I clear my throat. “That’s for kids,” I say,
but deep down in my canyon
a yodel is surfacing.

She scratches the baldness, smiles, smirks,
and catches the star falling in my eyes.

[Editor's note: S2 is two lines, not three, because of technical issues.]

Essie Mae

Auntie Essie changed her name to “Tanya”
to match her good looks and the possibility
of features in fashion books.

Nobody liked the name change at all
because it pushed our great-great grandmamma
out of the way and nobody that knew her
after the change cared about her black southern roots.

She changed her name and flew to New York City
and took classes at Barbie-zon and took pictures
and sent them home with pink glitter-dipped bunny slippers
for us girls to run around in the dirt under the pecan tree.

Some say she could have made it
but the babies fattened her ankles and expanded her waistline
and the pressure of it all just flattened her dreams
though the New York lights reminded her that she was
clear and far from the wide waste of the Bible Belt
and Blue House and that old pecan tree
and the songs that made it famous
way before anybody called them rhythm and blues.

Nobody up there knew she painted pictures
of her childhood nights and relived them in dreams
or knew that when she came home she told us stories
about the energy of Mars transporting her through subway cars,
and the frequent stops and turns
and the peddler’s cry for “Change.”

Auntie Essie could’ve been a mahogany planet,
rotating on stilettos, orbiting 5th Avenue
– the Big Apple her moon and Lady Liberty her sun,
but shooting stars are dying planets
or women who could’ve been someone.

Bridgit Brown holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Emerson College; is a 2007 Fulbright Lecturing and Research Scholar; and the 2006 Nadya Aisenberg Poetry Fellow. Currently a contributing writer for Color Magazine, she has also worked for newspapers and publishing houses as an editor, freelance writer, reader, and technical writer; she aspires to teach. Miss Brown’s current projects include a full-length collection of prose poems from which “Essie Mae” is excerpted. Follow her blog at: http://www.blogorperish.bridgitbrown.com.

Coleen T. Houlihan, Boston, MA
The Crescendo

She stands with her back to the land,
to the way she has come to the now.
Rugged toes crafted by life vibrate for the task.
Her straight back stirs forward,
and her body is the lioness
who knows birth and death
are impossible to separate
on the yellowed, grassy plain.
In the ravine, thousands of miles below,
her eyes somewhere take anchor.
Her mother-love is the phantom fingered wind
which kneads her back, pushes her slightly
forward. And her father is the flex of thigh,
steadily readying for soar.
She is on the edge of a precipice;
she does not yet comprehend the meaning
and smiles as if to a friend
because it is always a desire, this
soon-to-be-believed darkness and light.
There is no ownership here;
the infant must always go free,
but the love will remain.
No matter if she has found herself
destroyed in the end—
The love will remain.
So she takes the step that will place her
in freefall. Opens to the rushing and
surrenders control. Colors the picture bright,
changes the blank page to night,
assures the instrument its life is right
and lands somewhere, in the place
they are meant to be.
No longer alone,
the artist welcomes her creation closer
and in so doing, realizes herself.

Coleen T. Houlihan studied writing at Wellesley College. She has featured at several poetry venues in Massachusetts such as: Stone Soup, Best Sellers, Borders, the Sherman Cafe and Walden Poetry Series. Her poetry has been published in Poesy, The Alewife, The Wilderness House Literary Review, Ibbetson Street, Spoonful: A Gathering of Stone Soup Poets, and Spare Change, as well as abroad.

Joyce Angela Jellison, Boston, MA
Big Mouths

My mothers were not
silent
or shy women
they lived

sometimes

alone
on

fishing boats
or
abandoned plantations where the land screamed with
the blood
of their fathers, brothers
and leaked like morning dew the tears
of their mothers

my mothers lived
with
ink staining their
dresses and fingertips
testaments to their endless testifying

oh these
boisterous
ladies
making noise
saying
things
women
ought
not say

they were
given
to abandoning
loud places
for quiet
places
where
walls ached
for their
voices
to seal cracks
in their
structure –but sometimes
the places
they occupied collapsed in spite of
their spirits
caulking the holes like
plaster

gurl –
you too loud – lower your voice
and I say
naw,
I ain’t –
I just like my mothers
you shush
I say what I want
cause my tongue
love freedom
like my legs
hands
and feet
like all of me love
freedom

these women
with ink stained
dresses
and bare cabinets
cause they
did not think
they would
need more
than words
to sustain them
but
they got hungry
too
not for men
but sometimes
not for children
but sometimes
mostly
they
got
cravings

to
make the ground
shake
and eyes to cross

they was
good spirited
women
my mothers

just never
silent

Joyce Angela Jellison is the author of two books, Where Everything Fits Beautifully and Black Apple. She describes her poetic style as “[sometimes] a bit provocative. I often use anatomy as metaphor in the tradition of Hattie Gossett.” She is also the director of Write Out Loud: Transforming Our Lives Through Writing Our Truths writeoutloud.synthasite.com.

Erika King, San Mateo, CA
Hazel

Flamboyant
city lights
reflect off her pupils.
Red.
Green.
Yellow.
Her hip curves to form a crescent
moon.
Shining, standing like a
flamingo, bending off the cracked,
sidewalk curb.
People sidewalk,
people
know they’re abused, but
get used to it. She has
a scrap of luminous tin
foil crippled around
her painted finger nails.

Hymn to Selene

It was not too long
ago when
I dipped my toes
into ice cold
sand and scurried
along a line
where the glistening
water grasps
our numb shores.

I love nights
just like this,
when the fog softens
the moonlight
and allows
gray atoms to
bond.

I love nights
like this,
when I can face my
shining muse.
Her silver rays
enveloping me
into a
sphere
of wonder.
I ask her if
our circumstances
are guarded by
her premonitory eye.

I walk closer to
her now, feeling
her
wrinkled
warmth through
the gray atoms and
black fog.
And this is
when I die,
when I arrive
at the lighthouse
and discover light.

Erika King’s poetry has appeared in 96Inc (2005), Skipping Stones (2005), and Poesy Magazine xxxvi (2008). She is currently studying Literature and Art History at Bennington College.

Mignon Ariel King, Boston, MA
Art 101: Watercolor on the Theme of ‘Mom’
[For Momma]

I painted five decades of us: women related by how we do or don’t
relate to surrounding societies, supposed communities, and the like.

My ’60s Sister has a huge ‘fro and serious ‘tude, with red, black, green,
straight-striping her dashiki–blazing trails that expect a following.

Mid-’70s girl, all about free love, is leaning, streaming a head scarf
–an auburn-haired Rhoda* in maxi dress of green and yellow diamonds.

Vegetarian womyn jogs her waves through the ’80s while everyone else
relaxes. Earth Day Blue and Brown Aztec. Crayola names for her linen.

I make myself in watercolors too, tunic layered with cultures, as am I,
squiggled with unknown symbols, tambourine in hand, hair giggling.

That’s our mother in the background, wearing solid purple but making it
look sensible. To the viewer she doesn’t see us four, right there breathing

bold splashes and swirls, but off the canvas she has words too, nicknames
to help elder ladies she knows keep track of “all those daughters”:

The smart one, the fun one, the pretty one…. My three sisters frown, twist.
Their labels itch. But I am pegged: free spirit, sigh, just like her daddy.

[*”Rhoda” was a television character in a spin-off of the Mary Tyler Moore Show.]

Mignon Ariel King, editor of this fine publication, does not generally publish her own work here, but felt compelled to add her voice to the Women’s History Month festivities. “Art 101…” is from her shiny-new first collection of poems, The Woods Have Words (Ibbetson Street Press, 2009). Click on the “About the Editor” tab for a bio, or follow her bouncing blog at: http://mignonarielking.wordpress.com.

Lolita Paiewonsky, Cambridge, MA
Carnival: Da Mahnin’ Afta (The Morning After)

Saturday ‘fore day
bacchanal finale,
Lady in long slinky dress
sneaking home to rest now
Still clad in carnival colours
carrying high-heeled slippers
Crossing la calle,
melting into the early sunshine

Girl dancing in flames

Hey, blackgirl,
What do you see in those
Flames –
Him?
Igniting something longsimmering
An ember
Is it real
Is it momentary
Is it fantasy
Will it die?

Lolita Paiewonsky writes librettos, drama, fiction and, especially, poetry (since the second grade). She has presented her poetry with classical and jazz music and original choreography and exhibited it as “poetǎge” (visual poetry); she has been featured poet at many venues. Her poetry has appeared in a number of publications, including The Harvard Dudley Review, Harvard ALANA journals, Wilderness House Literary Review, Bagelbard anthologies, and Bradley University Journal.
The writer has published three limited-edition chapbooks: Who hears the gull’s song?; Fragments and Reflections; and Lights Aglow/Luces Brillantes. Lolita has taught composition, creative writing, and English at secondary through adult levels. She has edited several anthologies; forthcoming is The Jazz 5:30 Anthology, 2006-2008 (First Church, Cambridge). Contact her at appian_lp@yahoo.com.

Flash Memoir:

Karnythia
Tales from a Survivor

And people will say “Why didn’t she just leave?” like that would fix something. Know when most victims die? When they try to get out. And the craziest part is that people will still swear they should have tried harder, left earlier, done something other than whatever they did. Because victim- blaming is the most comfortable emotional reaction for a lot of folks. Here’s the thing, for a whole host of reasons there’s no way to spot an abuser at a glance, and even if you do figure it out fairly early in the relationship, there’s no guarantee that the fuse on that bomb isn’t so short that you’re already in danger. Does that mean no one should date? No. But it does mean that people should stop blaming the victim and start blaming the abuser. Want to get them help? Great. But don’t serve it with a side of justification for the abuser’s actions, or disdain for the victim. Domestic violence crosses every line regardless of money, race, or religion and we need to start treating it like the sickness it is instead of hiding from it. Yes I got out of my marriage, but it was hard and required me to do some things that I’m not proud of even though they saved my life. Luckily I had friends that truly supported me, and now I hope Rihanna* (and every other victim) has friends that will stand by them until they can call themselves a survivor and get on with life.

*[Editor’s note: Rihanna is a famous young singer whose equally famous boyfriend, Chris Brown, was arrested for (allegedly) assaulting her…yet again.]

The Audacity of Bodily Autonomy

Surgeon sued for giving anesthetized patient temporary tattoo. The tattoo was not at all medical in nature. She had surgery for a herniated disc and the next morning discovered a rose tattoo had been placed on her abdomen below her panty line. The doctor doesn’t deny doing it. In fact he claims he does this with all his patients to lift their spirits after surgery. Now, the really interesting (and disturbing) thing about this situation is how people have reacted to this woman’s decision to sue. The comments on this article are just the tip of the iceberg. Many people seem to be outraged by this woman being willing to sue this doctor for marking her (however temporarily) in her pelvic area without her permission.

We’ve all gone the rounds about the politics of choice as it applies to reproduction. But the idea that women’s bodies are public property doesn’t stop there. Catcalling, comments on weight, comments on hair or makeup from strangers are all just symptoms of a larger societal delusion that women’s bodies are a commodity first. Somehow we’ve gotten stuck in this idea that a woman’s valuing of her body as a part of herself comes second because her first role is to belong to the world at large. Women who refuse to accept that paradigm and insist on being recognized as people first whether it be by yelling back at catcallers, refusing to let strangers touch them, or filing suit when they feel they’ve been violated are then castigated for having the temerity to think that they can dictate what happens to their bodies. Apparently we’re just supposed to accept these “lesser” intrusions and not take steps to reclaim that sense of safety because nice girls know their place and don’t delude themselves that they have a right to feel safe and comfortable.

Well, I’m with the women who yell back, who walk away, who press charges and file lawsuits. Because it is past time we got past this idea that being nice = being a willing victim that never complains. I don’t want to live in a reality where people think marking an unconscious woman without her permission is a-okay because it’s temporary, or he didn’t mean any harm, or there’s no proof that he “actually molested her” so she shouldn’t seek legal recourse. I know I’m talking crazy, but wouldn’t it be nice to live in a world where women were viewed as people first? Where people didn’t blame the victim, but instead celebrated her willingness to fight back?

Karnythia is a writer, a historian, and occasionally a loud mouth. In between raising hell and raising kids she usually manages to find time to contemplate the meaning of life as a black woman in America. Read more on a variety of topics at: http://karnythia.livejournal.com.

Mignon Ariel King, Boston, MA
Race and the Multicultural Black Woman Writer
Q: What’s wrong with being labeled an African-American poet? A: Not a thing–if the writing (and/or poet) primarily has an African-American focus. African-American poets and Black American poets are not necessarily the same thing. The majority of my poetry very much reflects my being a woman. I am indeed always Black, but most of my poetry is not reflective of that; even if it were, my culture is artistic, acquired, not race- and primary-culture- based. The problem with labeling me an African-American writer is twofold. The label suggests that I am obligated to write within a certain literary tradition, which I do not, and it encourages readers to focus on my personal biology (which is offensive, at any rate) instead of the body of my work. The label also implies, directly or via assumptions of the culturally ignorant, that I am representative of mainstream African- American culture. I should think that a good number of mainstream African Americans would object to that implication. How does a culturally deviant Black poet represent the values, traditions, beliefs, lifestyles of mainstream African Americans? Not very well, nor should she presume to. She represents one viewpoint, one voice, hoping to reflect others at times.
A recent conversation on the topic also reveals that the term “Black” might have a certain resonance to those of us who are old enough that our parents lived through segregation. My parents were not allowed to sit in certain restaurants right here in Boston. Couldn’t order a cup of coffee or a muffin in the city in which I was born!! That still freaks me out a bit. A friend who is about ten years younger, however, embraces the term “African-American” and doesn’t get what the fuss is all about. Her parents do; they tell her she is Black, never mind what the teachers said in school. There is an added dimension for me that “Black” is a global term. I can elaborate to “Black American” when my nationality is important to a discussion—without that annoying hyphen that seems an unwanted ‘gift’—but I feel linked in a positive, social and emotional way to all Black people as well as via the history of oppression of anyone with Black biology. It needs to be made clear, repeatedly, that racist abuse of Black people around the world is a current event that recycles the past, not “ancient history” that is dead and buried and oughtn’t be dug up. I rarely write about race issues in my poetry, but just labeling myself a Black person speaks volumes.

Mignon Ariel King’s info is under the “About the Editor” tab.

Sarah Nieves-Squires, Cambridge, MA
The Other

When did I become the THEM?

I remember it well: The child was being propelled in the market’s carriage, competing for space among the Beech-Nut pureed peas, the giant bottles of Coke and the humongous boxes of Kellogg’s Corn Flakes. My cart, on the other hand, was empty — it was, after all, Fargo, North Dakota, and Goya had not yet ventured its presence into their aisles. So I’m roaming through the aisles, bereft — nothing in sight to relieve the blandness of the mid Western diet to my flavor- thirsting palate — when, roaring around thecorner, fully loaded and stocked , baby at the helm and Mommy proudly at the prow, the Beech-Nut carrier emerged. “What’s that, Mommy?” the child asked. It took me a few seconds to realize that the that was me. That which he had never seen. A human with dark skin. Hey, I would say black, but the fact is that because of the northern exposure I had had for all that year I had lost my beautiful Piel Canela and was more like a yellowish-brown than my usual gorgeous black.

“What’s that, Mommy?” Mommy seemed to not know what to say. Perhaps she was wonder-ing herself, yet she could not persuade herself to come closer and let the child perceive my humanity first hand. She blushed, was flustered, mumbled something about some lady and sped off, careening towards the check-out, hopefully feeling guilty about her silence, but I suspect probably just being confused about having to explain my presence there—in the white plainness of North Dakota, amid the silencing of the native children’s voices being carted off to the Americanizing Schools. Hopefully not thinking why don’t I please go away. Why do I have to insinuate my presence thus to her dear child? What to tell him? How?

I wonder what became of that child and whether in his growing up years he was further exposed to any of Us Others. I wonder if he remembers this first encounter at all. Yet I suspect it wouldn’t be the vivid memory it is for me, because in the end, most likely, when they left the supermarket and went home, everything was the way it had been when they left. Whereas for me, nothing was ever the same: I had met the Other and the Other was Me.

Sarah Nieves-Squires is a Black Latina American. Sarah has lived in many states of the Union, but calls Cambridge, Massachusetts her home away from home–which is San Juan, Puerto Rico.

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MoJo! Issue #2 2009 All rights reserved. Reproduction of any part of this journal without express written consent of the authors represented herein is exceedingly bad form as well as a serious violation of copyright laws. Each writing will become the exclusive intellectual property of its author as of publication of the next issue of the journal or two months after publication of the current issue, whichever comes first. Corrections, Letters to the Editor, and Queries will become the property of the MoJo! editor.

MoJo! Issue #1

Welcome to MoJo! –a New-England-based online literary journal which showcases the flash memoir* and poetry of Black and African-American women writers, celebrating our unique yet connected voices and experiences.

mojo n. hidden magic or charm

*Loosely translated here as personal narratives and social commentary.

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Editor’s Introduction

What would you like for your 45th birthday? A laptop? A forty-eight-inch flat-screened HDTV? A shopping spree in New York? Perhaps a trip to Tuscany? That all sounds wonderful, but women like me, who learned to read at three, fell asleep clutching Ezra Jack Keats’ picture books as well as a two-foot-tall rag doll, survived being a quirky bookworm teen while longing to be Diana Ross instead…maybe we eventually became community organizers, editors, proofreaders, performance artists, poets, reporters, teachers, or women’s rights activists instead of glamorous superstars—well, some of us have always longed for a community, a sisterhood of compatible minds and kindred spirits.

I have been giving myself birthday presents since I started my first job, socking away whatever I could each week, a dollar, five, ten, and never peeking or keeping track, then counting it out on the special day to buy myself whatever I pleased. January 6, 2009 is my 45th birthday; this year, as I feel the loss of a poet-friend’s smile and generous spirit, I am especially grateful to be a member of the writing community that produced this journal. This first issue of my “very own” journal is my present. Like friendship, it could not be purchased. One of nine siblings, I was taught to share. So I hope that you enjoy the journal too, understanding why I am so very proud to identify above all else as a Black woman writer.

Like many, as I’ve matured I have learned that life is all about balance. There are always choices and alternatives to the absolute of “this or that”. Why not “this and that”? Welcome to my community, one in which women can be both beautiful and writers. Thank you, Sister writers! This is just what I wanted.

Mignon Ariel King
Editor
Boston, Massachusetts
January 6, 2009

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Bridgit Brown, Dorchester, MA
The Silver Drinking Gourd

[Strings]
When the towers fell & the people scattered, I put my dreams on pause for a moment, and even though I knew the way back home, I had forgotten the way forward so I sang this melody while searching my way through the present, and the song reminded me of how the thumb strums music into the air with no strings attached.

Then my fifth greats, the rice planters, came and pushed me to the tips of the lips of the Combahee, where I stood for a good while, humming this tune and gazing at the water’s copious flow until I finally asked the river for a ride on that black star line and gave it five grains of Uncle Ben’s in return for the journey.

Waiting on that wish, I sang fly away home and I sang fly away home, and in the mean time I ate the purple figs and baby watermelons that the greats gave to me, and I spit the seeds out into the air and mashed them into the soil with my toes when they fell to the ground.
[Percussions]
One bright morning, I woke from sleep on a tapeline mat, and met eyes with a mucous-eyed toddler pulling a bike with no wheels while the crash of the pestle and the mortar set rhythm to the day. All day, I danced to the sound that is rhythm here, is living here, is gold here where the babies sell Dunhills. Please don’t smoke them when you’re old because they’ll kill.

Still, they grew, despite the red, dry and molten earth, with mother stooping by, the babies grow, with older sister chasing butterflies and counting the number of push-ups the salamander does in the time it takes to finish a lullaby or the time it takes the crow to crouch and fly away. They sway and grow, dancing along the sidewalk’s edge, bending to pull a twig from the seams. They grow and rise up holding a belly full of laughter in the mornings.
[Horns]
But in Elmina, spirits lead you down the steps and point the way through her belly, past her blood-stained, stinking bowels and out of the door of no return. Then spirit beckons you back to listen to the waves slap against the rocks and the sea’s haunting wail and night’s whisper: Loose your sister and you loose your mother too. Loose your brother. Loose your father too.
[Wind Chimes]
Her sister castle sits on the edge of the cape’s coast, watching her walls glisten in the subtle ripples of the sea, but it’s still morning, and though she might not know that close-up the blood stains can be seen, and that even she bleeds, and she too has a door that many have left through, all I can do about it is tell a brother to bury his hatchet.

“Lay down your axe and come with me to the West, where Tantee and Tee-tee them went long before anybody knew they was gone,” I say.
[Voices]
“Come,” I say, “see their footprints on the shore. Come hear the answers to who? What? Where? Want some more? See that tree right there? Black Moses wept at its roots and Haiti has a pestle too. See Ellegua is singing in Venezuela too? Put down your shovel. Come, and hear this. See how we fah eat the red rice too, but don’t call it “jollof” like you do. Come, we go tell. Put down your plow. Come with me, now.”

All the little ones follow me to the black star line.

The last thing I see is a calloused palm, raised high, but I have no more francs to toss into the well. I barely have me as I cling to my red, white, and blue. So sadly, I sing this beauty, copper sun on golden corn, shining sea to sea – for YOU – and ask you if my words had lights and my song was played on your heart unstrung, would you sing my tune alone in the dark?
[Strings]
When the rumble of the thunder stopped, I pressed play and in my dreams I could fly and I could see the light spark the dark when there was no flick or flame. I could hear words travel on a train of thought when no voice was heard. And when I turned corners, Rina, Florence, Phyllis, Mamma, and Pearl – they were all still there, saying the same old things, like telling me “Hush-up!” “Listen!” and “Hear girl, go and sip from the silver drinking gourd.”

End Notes:
1Harriet Tubman led 750 slaves to freedom via the Combahee River on June 2, 1863.
2Elmina Castle was one of the most important stops on the route of the Atlantic Slave Trade.
3 Cape Coast Castle, less than a mile from Elmina Castle, was also used in the Atlantic slave trade.
4 Ellegua is a spirit associated with “opening the ways” or crossroads.
5Jollof rice is a popular dish all over West Africa.

Bridgit Brown holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Emerson College; is a 2007 Fulbright Lecturing and Research Scholar; and the 2006 Nadya Aisenberg Poetry Fellow. Currently a contributing writer for Color Magazine, she has also worked for newspapers and publishing houses as an editor, freelance writer, reader, and technical writer; she currently aspires to teach. Miss Brown’s current projects include a full-length collection of prose poems from which (this) poem is excerpted. Follow her blog at: http://www.blogorperish.bridgitbrown.com.

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Jocelyn Burrell, Boston, MA
Naked Before The Colossus

Her gods? Savage as
mine. Still, neither poet nor
bee-keeper nor mine-

blank to all save white
drone, sons by second wife-could
fathom this black pen

chasing their sins. Bring
honey: your oracle’s dead
but I still persist.

Such Gifts

Today you turn four.
Gaping lace curtains rush her
defeat, streamers thrown

underfoot like the fight.
Felled by her own sword, she bears
only what came before.

The rival sighs: his
arms declare her victor and
you, consolation.

Jocelyn Burrell is fascinated by many things, especially the devastation of poetry. Under various pen names her work has appeared in the now [in her opinion] suspect publications LiP magazine and Grub Street’s Rag Mag (February 2009). She is also editor of the anthology Word: On Being a [Woman] Writer. Someday you might see this poem and other efforts stitched together in “This Was Her Father’s Daughter: Poems.” Distraction and dialogue welcome at luapreta@gmail.com.

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Coleen T. Houlihan, Boston, MA
Jamaica’s Past

How deeply do I love?
For I am saying something-
goodbye through the slam
of a door that shuts within
your steady, controlled, hate obscured eyes.

My friend, how much do you despise,
as to feel would admit too much.
I’ve gotten use to the echo of your life,
dust to dust.

Somehow the door was opened again.
We plotted together- the divulgence of sins.

There must have been a whirlwind created,
Jamaica’s past that meant what was
could no longer be.

In that place we lived in the sun,
and all unsaid
went on and on,
but we stanched the blood and were young.

Then through the crack slipped
your frustration,
a ricochet, old bleeding through.
The shadow still pursues.

I always knew you hated this princess form,
waited for the apple, the finalé, bloody thorn.
It was not long.

No lily, I’ve lost crowns before.
We are merely human;
I too have pushed others undertow.

So, finally, the door is shut. We stand on opposite sides,
wearing control- it binds our eyes.
Two bulls with horns, big brawn battling- bloody ploy.

And I still adore.

Coleen T. Houlihan studied writing at Wellesley College. She has featured at several poetry venues in Massachusetts such as: Stone Soup, Best Sellers, Borders, the Sherman Cafe and Walden Poetry Series. Her poetry has been published in Poesy, The Alewife, The Wilderness House Literary Review, Ibbetson Street, Spoonful: A Gathering of Stone Soup Poets, and Spare Change, as well as abroad. visit her at www.coleenthoulihan.com

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Lolita Paiewonsky, Cambridge, MA
TANGOS IN ORANGE* (Tangos anaranjados)
– Por Lolita Paiewonsky (Version Española por la sra. Gabrielle di Lorenzo)

From fallen orange
De los capullos caidos, anaranjados
African Tulip blossoms
de tulipanes africanos
Exotic birds in flight
pájaros exóticos en vuelo
Escape the stamen
escapan el estambre
Finally free to dance
finalmente libres para bailar
Orange tangos in the skies
tangos anaranjados en los cielos.

El cumpleaños

Today . . .
I was thinking of this man today.

It is his birthday
(his “personal new year”, as
I used to refer to it)

A celebration of his life from the womb,
From the womb to today.
Hoy, the day of his grown man’s birthday.

A man’s life — a coin, shiny as a copper penny,
a newly-minted half dollar.
A picture window of Fruition,
a skylight of still more hopes, more dreams.
A prism full of the promise of rainbow colours bursting through.
Or — a weathered old coin, a cracked plate-glass window, now opaque,
a ceiling that once boasted a skylight to the sun, a soul colour-blind to rainbows.

How I still wish him summer flowers and oceans of rainbows and shiny coins.
Not only today. For this man, the birthday man,
is my soul-connection, even if only
by the most gossamer of threads after all this time
(seven years and counting).

On this day, his personal new year, I can still see,
and see through, the picture window.

*previously published in The Harvard Dudley Review

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Valerie, Cambridge, MA

i

just switched my name to ambivalence. to feigned ignorance his win wasn’t cinched by happenstance. but by deliberate plans to take this country back Black president and all..”the rise and fall of know-it-alls..”
my Mother’s gall over my sisters’ dissenting from familial mob mentality that in all actuality helped the creating of more casualities of free thought than that of births, hers was a single issued moral vote..she chokes.. “they both voted for Obama” asks can i believe that. spat into the phone. the one within my twilight zone drones unsympathetic in my ear. my Mother the blind seer. rears her children to fear God if no man. especially not my father’s open backhand
i heard we stand United ‘cuz Divided we fall..tangled ball of backs against walls wake up to your unread messages that said YEAH WE WON!! but i hadn’t begun to feel any difference yet. like getting set to take two steps forward but i was eight light years behind. find your ballot cast without you. what’s a caste without hues who are you not to choose the right crook since it’s two for two and it’s you for you and it’s all we do
started saying Barack roughly eight hundred times a day. after i’d lost the strength to pray when all i’d left to say was redundancies broken records repeat was reminding me i has no stand in this. had no chance in this. how A’s the farthest letter from Z. when as Americans we had every ballandbombandrightandwrongandObamaandJohn in our corner
when my African brethren ruled by Elizabeth Johnson/Sirleaf taught them democracy can be anything you believe it, perceive it, achieve it to be..makes me feel like Barack is an extension of my own diaspora’d displayed paraded enslaved family & i’m proud that we, as a country, have fought for the eroding civil liberties we can still hold onto by the vote? even when G.Dub right-wing republican, moralistic Christian Coalitions rock our boat..with hope afloat i maybe will swim upstream..but on that same screen..my name reads..ambivalence..

it was

before shadows had any permanency at all
the wall just past my home
hit
with long reminders morning would not be put on pause for anything
especially you
take sweetened sips of firewater/kiss inspiration
as she nudges me awake
i always look this way
i plan to start today different.
be the girl that makes you feel something
makes you heal something
talk to when the lights are dimmed
when hushed voices din to nothing
begin as something i trust/something i must not let go of
yet
and faith means believing even when it hurts to
and You
do it differently than others
like the confidence i utter thru a frail voice that one choice
is deceivingly mine
and morning is never deceivingly kind
but it was
before
shadows
had any permanency
at all
before fall fell into my autumnal lap
i couldn’t nap before this/because all my awareness
wrapped
couldn’t be convinced to be bound.
i always look out the window at this house
and wonder how it is
i will move up just one last time before i am satisfied
before i am anesthetized by remembering
defending inner monologue
that reminds me of contentedness
of your airborne kiss
you blow me away today
and i pray that before another dawn comes
that i am the one
that makes you feel something/makes you heal
something
walk thru when the lights are dimmed
until our spirits din
to
nothing.

valerie’s interests include avoiding her surname whenever possible, fabricating an interesting alternate reality, and working on becoming a grown-up. track her progress at myspace.com/lilbitobitch

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MoJo! Issue #1 2009 All rights reserved. Reproduction of any part of this journal without express written consent of the authors represented herein is exceedingly bad form as well as a serious violation of copyright laws. Each writing, plus or minus the editor’s messed-up formatting, will become the exclusive intellectual property of its author as of publication of the next issue of the journal—or two months after publication of the current issue, whichever comes first. Corrections, Letters to the Editor, and Queries will become the property of the MoJo! editor.