July 7 at 7 Stages Theatre --
Imani Dances Before She Walks

We have raised you
Through litany
Pass the seventh chant

Resurrection of bone
You came
Like life in reverse

Me giving birth
(but not me)

My first born

(so lovely)
But not mine
Daughter of my wild season

But more / Grand Daughter
Faith I have that a
Chorus of community

Shall shelter you
Faith I see
In your steps

Dancing already on legs of oak
Courageous spirit of
GreatGrandMother anchors

Your surefooted ways
I / GrandMother
Provide air for sustenance

And Imani is dancing
(already) On legs of oak
ToYoruba rhythms

Senegalese chants
Strokes of Djimba
(all praise to the drummers)

Into the future

Imani dances



---

Exile

In the margin of the day
dividing Lebanon from
Israel, the scribbled
notes of your lives

lie buried in snowdrifts
Three am / caffeine renders me
television drone
beneath my bed

darkness calls
voices bark (silent
yet unyielding)
417 excuses I invent

secure in my zone of
demarcation. Were this
a road I would find
you in the trenches

Yours is a sacrificial settlement
cradled between sleep and death
twelve and seventeen
mark your impasse
(you were borne to sorrow)

In these days af mid-
life crises, I know you
(purely) by way of
sound-bites
headlines

Like spoiled children
passing licks
(gone too far)
six am and you come

Slick
like a serpent
Bloated

like yesterday's news

---

Winter

Through the mist
Bosnia-Sarajevo
Decode time
Travel more slowly
Than the bullets

Unrequited ghost
Heroes of
Lost crusades
Memory of
Plague infests

These lands
Same people
Same bridge
Birthed a World War
(and two ... and three ?)

Fear rises
Sinister
Wanton
Vultures sip, while
Missiles scamper slope to slope

The news-sayers say
This war has worked
Rap'e
Torture
Rule Meanwhile
I cruise C-Span

Adjust the image ...
Will we pass on this blame
Will we deem everyone a victim
Will we claim all is justified
(the time has come to weep)

For the sorrowful faces of children
For leaves that cling still to the trees
For bitter water ploughed in furrows
(the time has come to weep)

Far the moon like an eyelid
Spying the coming winter

---

• Click here for a review of Remembering My Birth
  by Dr. Gary Alan Fine of the University of Georgia
  
• Alice Lovelace, Remembering My Birth: Recent and Collected Poems
  (Introduction by Dr. Ja Jahannes)
  Horizons Press, 1994.
  
• Available from Stone Fish Productions: 404.794.4427