She left, and I stood watching her as she hurried down the hill. I could not concentrate on anything else for the rest of the day. I had two shilling and six pence tied up in a white sock and I kept wondering if the thief stole that too. I had saved up for a long time to buy ice cream and light cake and grater cake at the school harvest. I could hardly wait for lunch time to come.
As the bell rang I dashed home and bored my way through the crowd that was milling around at my gate. The door of the house was still open and the house was ransacked from top to bottom. Clothes, furniture, even food was scattered on the floor. The trunks of clothes and bed spread were capsized and the ward robe was left ajar. All the drawers were pulled out. I got the impression that the thief was searching for something in particular.
The police came and took statement, but it took a long time before the crowd dispersed.
When they were all gone we cleared the things off the floor and tidied back our house. I was happy to find the sock with my money. The thief did not find it. However he took our radio, Papa’s watch and some pound notes that Mama kept in the machine drawer. He also took some of Papa’s clothes, and all the food we had in the house. I was so mad, I wanted to catch him and send him to jail.
The search for the thief started. People started combing the hills for evidence of his hide out. That thief was smart. He wouldn’t even light a fire, so they could detect where he was.
Doors were locked early at nights, and we were warned to stay away from the hills. Papa and the other men made sure to keep a well sharpened machete in the house, and the slightest noise alerted them at nights. To be frank, everybody was on edge.
Then one evening as I reached the square, I knew something was afoot. There was a large crowd and a lot of noise. As I came nearer I realized that they had a prisoner in their midst. He was a chubby black man. He badly needed to be trimmed and shaved. His face was greasy and he was awfully dirty and haggard. They were beating and kicking him. His hands were tied with a rope and all he was doing was grunting. I felt sorry for him.
Soon the police drove up in a jeep. They praised the people for catching the thief. I watched as they opened the back of the jeep to take him away. One held his feet that were tied and the other held him under his two arms.
“One two three,” they counted and threw him into the van on the count of three.
Long after they were gone the people still stood in the square, talking about the thief. It was the first I had seen a real convict up close. I was glad they caught him, but deep inside I felt sorry for him. They had beaten him badly and then they just threw him into the jeep. That picture stayed inside my head for days.
After this incident things changed in the village. Everyone became more cautious, and Mama never left her door open again when she was going to the shop.
Walk Too Fast, Walk Two Time A Poem by Patricia Whittle
If you walk too fass you walk two time
Dis proverb prove true eight time outa nine
For nuff smaddy weh palawash dem job
Soon realize dat a dem own time dem rob
Now Miss Mavis inna one big rush
An no hab time fi put on di final touch
Shi was baking bullas fi sell
Someting shi could do very well.
But tedday shi wake up late
An shi hurry up an bake
So dat shi could reach by five
Wen har customers would arrive
Well of course shi reach in time
But shi neva meck a dime
For afta one smaddy taste di cake
Im seh it give im bellyache
So Miss Mavis lose har sale
An har cake stay till dem stale
Afta dat shi haffi teck great pain
Fi bake good cake fi sell again
Helper A Poem by Patricia Whittle
Housewuck a sinting weh never done
Yu wuck roun di clock an no hab no fun
So if yu hab a job plus a husban
Yu fi try an get a helper if yu can.
Now Valerie live eena one hellova house
So yu expect har fi hab a helper of course
Shi hab three pickney an a full time job
An add to dat shi hab a husban name Bob.
Everytime mi si Valerie, shi too busy
Shi even complain seh har head often dizzy
Shi doan even hab time fi talk pon di phone
Shi seh all di wuck lan pon she alone.
One day mi jus get upset wid har
So mi gi har a piece a mi mine sar
Mi sey, “A full time yu tap gwan like idiot Valerie?
Yu hab pickney an husban an yu still unhappy.
Yu wuck out yu soul case bout yu a cut an carve
If yu hire a helper unnu not gwine starve
Wi hab plenty poor people who waan fi live
Hire one meck God bless yu, fi wat yu give.
Wen yu pay di little wages, it nah done yu money
But wen yu overwuck an get sick, it won’t bi funny
For it sad wen yu rich an yet yu nuh healthy
But a joy if yu healthy, tho yu nuh suh wealthy.
Julie Mango A Poem by Vanessa Simmons
Miss Julie
a perfect handful
to contend with,
always playing hard
to get,
How is the air up there
Miss Julie?
Don't worry
because I will know
when you are ready
for me,
that slow blush
spreading like the dawn
over young skin.
I will come for you
and steal you away
behind their backs
Miss Julie
I will savor your wild
tropical scent
of heat and savage rain
and be your first
carnivorous love
of sweet pulp and
warm sticky punch.
And then Miss Julie
I will take you home
to breed for me
an infinite feast
of little Julies.
Mr. Brown A Poem by Vanessa Simmons
Mr. Brown don't step foot
on my porch no more,
no more comments on the heat
and how nice I lookin'
and what I doin' standing all the way
over there for
and if he could please
get a glass of water,
how I making him hot and thirsty so
(wink)
but I know in truth
it must be the heat.
Mr. Brown used to visit my porch
at night
with the light turn' off,
there use' to be a lap
between the chair and
my backside,
and warm hands 'round my waist.
Mr. Brown would kiss me
on the dark porch
when the moon was hiding
so nobody could see.
Mr. Brown don't step foot
on my porch no more,
I suspect is because of
Mrs. Brown.
The Grand Master of Time (v1) Art by Barbara Sandiford
The Grand Master of Time (v2) Art by Barbara Sandiford
Sweet Slavery Art by Barbara Sandiford
Rainy Season A Poem by Sarah Venable
In the rhythm of the seasons
when the music of the planet
is in tune with June’s fat moon,
what’s the melody you hear
if you take the time to listen?
The recurring refrain of the rain.
Though the sky may be duller,
the wetness brings out colour
here below,
and makes things glisten
if you take the time to look.
And the moisture is a balm
that bestows a sort of calm
and splendid generation
to all creatures here below,
a caressing penetration
that provides for things to grow.
The skin becomes more supple
the frogs come out and couple
while in darkness, shy fungus
proliferates among us.
Mildew plots insurgence
under every sink and cranny.
Laundry on the line stays clammy.
Light holds in diffusion,
Dampness in suffusion,
And photos stored in boxes
Undergo a fusion, needing
peeling from their wads.
We are forced to change our sunshine ways
beneath this sky that sheds itself
in a soft cloak of rain,
while thick air beckons us
to just go back to bed and sleep for days.
Transport of the Word A Poem by Sarah Venable
Kamau, Kamau, Kamau
Speaks in his measured pace
From word to word,
The upright, steady pole
at the centre of the whirl.
His mind flings out leaping
Stones in a stream.
Stream becomes river
Deep and wide
Need to fly to the other side
And we do,
transported
on wings
of images freely
associating
Sipping dipping
elisions flow
collisions go
Whup! Upside your head
And knock you from streaming
Into conscious wonder.
I wonder how
his raptor vision soars
spotting landmarks
in the panorama of events
then chooses the words;
How what he sees is heard,
How he paints behind our eyes
How some strokes feather,
cut or blur.
His choices are
De liberate,
though sometimes baffling.
But this quibble
is anchovy tango.
(See what I mean?)
The arc remains.
He stands at the lectern
humbly but erect
his forearm sweeping,
round and round
like a coucou stick
stirring the pot of poem
dishing it steaming
into our open beaks,
making arcs over the page.
He does not so much read,
as transmit.
And – What’s this? – I see an aura.
It can’t be so;
I am not one of those
who does. I blink and
the glow remains
curving over the man
tracing circles
in the spotlight.
Through the darkened hall of bodies
I hear his voice in my pores.
-- on the occasion of hearing Kamau Brathwaite reading“Arc” at Frank Collymore Hall
Man Called Raven Art by Glenn Johnson
Homes for the Inde A Story by Glenn Johnson
Claude Heldt was engrossed in reading a report on the status of housing for his Dzil Ligia Si’an Ndee. He unconsciously stroked his groomed brown beard, same color as his collar length hair. His long sleeved shirt was rolled up at the sleeves with a silver bolo tie finishing it off. The report had been ordered a year ago in 1966 by the Bureau of Indian Affairs for all federally recognized American Indian reservations. The results were not pretty; in fact, for all tribes it was appalling. Embarrassingly, his reservation was among the worst of the worst. As the Bureau of Indian Affairs superintendent of the White Mountain Apache reservation, he knew they would blame no one but him—the buck stopped on his desk. The fact that his reservation was grossly underfunded for housing projects was of no consideration to the government’s powers to be. They needed to blame someone, so Claude and his fellow reservation superintendents were tagged it.
Looming large in Claude’s mind was the option of resigning and letting some other sucker take on the inescapable political heat. Vying with that option was Claude’s love for his job of working with the Dzil Ligia Si’an Ndee, and their beautiful reservation in the alpine region of Arizona. Over his 8 years as the reservation Superintendent, he had grown to greatly respect the tribal pride in their ferociously defended customs and traditions. Claude reminisced how it had taken three years to gain the Inde’s trust. They were a very proud people who preferred their own company. He had learned that mistrust was imbedded in their history as a warrior society which was still a source of great pride. It was not lost on the Inde that their not so distant war chiefs, Geronimo and Cochise, were the greatest warriors in the Southwest. For years, Geronimo and Cochise had run the U.S military forces around in circles through some of the most unforgiving terrain in the Southwestern United States. They had driven the Army crazy; not hard to do because the Inde believed they were crazy in the first place. It was not until 1886 with the capture of Geronimo that the American Indian wars ended in the West.
Part of Claude’s effort to win over his charges was to call them by their traditional name: Inde—meaning person of the band. The name Apache was not Inde. The historians he read concluded it came from the Yavapai word “pace” that translated to “enemy.” In his reading about American Indian tribes, Claude found it fascinating that the vast number of traditional tribal names, when translated, meant the same thing:“The People” and then words that described their land; thus Dzil Ligia Si’an Ndee—People of the White Mountains.
Claude slumped, over resting his forehead on his desk. He was overwhelmed, as he often was, as to how to help these people. He felt immensely responsible—who else was going to do anything? Housing was rotten, no jobs, Show Low’s businesses hours away as if that made any difference anyway because few of them could afford cars, reservation wide electricity and phone services were decades away. He was at a dead end with job development already used funding from the 1956 Adult Indian Vocational Training Act. No more government jobs to train for that didn’t require a college degree. Even with the HUD funds available for building homes, it was slow going because construction crews were hard to find that would live out in the boonies for months on end. Claude’s brain started to percolate. Housing construction and job training kept bobbing around in his head. They started to drift closer and closer together. “I’ve got it!” he yelled as he jumped up out of his seat. The answer was now clear as day. He would use the Vocational Training Act funds to teach Inde men to learn all of the construction skills needed to build their own homes. And HUD funds would pay for their salaries and for all the building materials once they were ready to start working. He knew that combining the two programs had never been done before by the BIA; but he was sure he could get it approved as a demonstration project.
Claude started immediately, and happily spent the next two days researching both programs and writing as tight a proposal as possible. He wanted to insure approval and funding. When it was finished, he personally drove the two hundred miles to Show Low’s post office, and posted it overnight express to BIA headquarters in Washington D.C. Now the excruciating part: waiting to hear back. One week went by. The second week passed, and finally Claude received a letter from D.C. He tore it open. His heart sunk, not all the way, but a ways. Headquarters wanted to know what accounting procedures would be in place to prevent comingling of funds. Claude thought that he could kick himself for not covering that in his proposal. Finances were not his best suit. “Shoot,” he said to himself, “Should have run it by Phil in the accounting department.” Claude raced over to Phil’s office and gave him the office copy of the proposal and the letter from headquarters. Phil looked at Claude. Looked at the proposal and said, “Hmmm. “Homes for the Apaches.” Not al
l that catchy but it does get to the point. I’ll read it over next couple of days so I know what I’m talking about.” Claude was very anxious to get the proposal back to D.C., but he greatly respected Phil’s expertise, and knew he was going about it the right way. “Phil, this is top priority. Drop everything else. My goal is to send it off to D.C. in three days. Do able?” Phil skimmed through the proposal, and then looked up at Claude. “You got it boss. Oh, yeah, for what it’s worth--great idea.” Claude smiled proudly and headed back to his office.
Again, he personally delivered the revised proposal to the post office in Show Low. Popular stories had it that Show Low got its name from a poker game in the late 1800s. The future land of Show Low was put on the table as a last chance bet. The winner made a show low bet and won--the name stuck. On the drive back, Claude had the windows open taking in the sweet smell of the Douglas Firs. He thought about how the Apache reservation was not the permanent traditional home of the Western Apache. Like many tribes they followed the migration of game with quickly built temporary shelters. But the Inde were not just hunters, they were raiders, to the great consternation—putting it mildly—of Spanish and then American settlements all over the southern region. Just the word Apache struck fear into many a non-Indian and equally Indian’s of other tribes. Their swift and devastating hit and run guerilla tactics were the stuff of legend to this day.
Waiting for the response from D.C., had Claude constantly on edge; it was hard to do even his routine duties. Finally, he got the call from Show Low that he had a certified letter with a BIA D.C. return address. Good thing there were rarely any state troopers in this isolated area of Arizona because he was 15 mile over the speed limit all the way to Show Low. He rushed into the post office, and nervously tapped on the counter—the clerk just could not move fast enough. As soon as he was handed the letter, he tore it open. “Hallelujah,” he yelled. His idea was approved. He was proud, but also thankfully optimistic that this was going to be a major game changer for his Inde. Jobs. Housing. What a coupe. He drove the speed limit back to his office relieved, but also excited and anxious to get started.
St. Somewhere Journal, July 2013 Page 9