See our Photo of the Week (and archive of more)

Art Changes
Opinion Advertize Permission
To be notified of new articles Survey Store About Us

A Sharecropper's Pantoum

by M. Ayodele Heath
Atlanta, Georgia

for a dry season

The drug cocktails that have slashed the mortality rate of
HIV-positive people in the U.S. and Western Europe are
all but non-existent in Haiti. [O]nly 3 to 4 percent of
people with AIDS [there] have access to the newest drugs.

-- Alfredo S. Lanier, The Chicago Tribune, 2003

Hauling this pine box on a black Chevrolet,
I pray to a candle at the end of its wick.
White burial clothes in a garbage bag,
I ride for a place to die.

I pray to a candle at the end of its wick
on the mud road home from Port-au-Prince
and ride toward a place to die
where mangoes hang and sugarcane turns.

By the dust road home from Port-au-Prince,
I am a black skeleton -- 6 feet tall, yet 90 pounds --
where mangoes hang and sugarcane burns.
I turned the earth before I got this thing.

A lesioned skeleton -- a rainbow tall, now 70 pounds --
I dream across the waters and of the miracles there
and turn to earth in the jaws of this thing:
eyes -- black holes, lungs -- green clouds.

Dreaming across the waters and of the miracles there,
white burial clothes in a garbage bag,
eyes -- black holes, lungs -- green clouds,
I haul my pine coffin in a black Chevrolet.

This poem won First Place in the Poems of Solidarity for Haiti Contest.

Please also see:

Published in In Motion Magazine May 19, 2010


Email, Opinions & Discussion

If you have any thoughts on this or would like to contribute to an ongoing discussion in the
E-mail, Opinions & Discussion column click here to send e-mail to publish@inmotionmagazine.com.



In Unity/NPC Productions/Links


What is New? || Affirmative Action || Art Changes || Autonomy: Chiapas - California ||
Community Images || Education Rights || E-mail, Opinions and Discussion ||
En español || Essays from Ireland || Global Eyes || Healthcare ||
Human Rights/Civil Rights || Piri Thomas ||
Photo of the Week || QA: Interviews || Region || Rural America ||


Search || Donate || To be notified of new articles || Survey ||
In Motion Magazine's Store || In Motion Magazine Staff ||
In Unity Book of Photos ||
Links Around The World || OneWorld / US ||
NPC Productions


Copyright © 1995-2014 NPC Productions as a compilation. All Rights Reserved.