Where My Birthmark Dances

Here’s a Christmas present from my daughter. My sweet sixteen-year-old made the following video of me reading one my poems- Where My Birthmark Dances.  This poem is inspired by the many women who are forced, due to dire economic conditions, to leave their children and home countries and seek work abroad.

Nikky Finney- Left

Poet Furaha Youngblood to Present Her New Poetry Collection at the Southwest Arts Center in Atlanta

Furaha Youngblood-writer, educator, world traveler and my dear friend-has a new book of poetry out entitled Cat-Eyed Woman from Louisiana. Now, if this title alone doesn’t whet your appetite or the blurb above, I don’t know what will. Furaha will participate in the 2011 Book Fair sponsored by the Fulton County Arts and Culture Center , in Atlanta. Readings will be scheduled throughout the day.


Saturday, December 10, 2011
10:00 a.m-3:00 p.m.
Fulton Country Arts & Culture’s Southwest Arts Center
915 New Hope Road
Atlanta, GA 30331
Phone: 404-613-3220

World AIDS Day-Dec. 1, 2011-Remembering A Great Love

 Photo by Mozambique PEPFAR team

The Japanese Teahouse
To Greg Witcher
By Octavia McBride-Ahebee

I can now see
the skirt hems of hants
stitched by the hands of the living
they keep with them in this sphere
the shame and vanity of us all
and so hide their naked spirits
in calico gowns shielding indigo slips
made loose for easy movement

La Fleur cannot see the ghosts of this house
vying for perfume and overripe papaya
spreading like yeast
in anticipation of bounty
spreading with the unyielding spell of raw cauliflower
He hears their whispers
entangled in the whistling overtones of searching mice
their frosted threats to lick
the healing fungus off the backs of caterpillars
and press into dust with their weightless humor
another cloak of his torment
-the anointed AZT

Yet
his third eye is sane, blighted
perceiving the lust of fear
flapping in its own daydreams
anxious to walk backwards
with those who die away from home

La Fleur wants to sleep with cannons
near the vacant majesty of the Citadelle
under the guard of the grand Baron Samedi
in a grave that slides with no conscience
when the soil breathes too heavily
when forgotten things are collected

He wants to leave my city of foot-long sandwiches
and soft pretzels,
of trolley cars that triumph underneath the unbecoming frailty
of a cowed city
whose river has no bend
to return to Cap-Haitian
saluting the honeyed fantasies of home
spawned by the simple need
of man who can’t build on the cunning of tomorrow

I whisper in his ear still open to thought
I hold his hand, scaled and aloof,
still greedy for the soles of other’s fingertips
I say forget the cannons
and the piece of earth that exhales with no attention
my hants are vain
they dress in slips of purple and blue
today, we will sip evergreen plants
in the park where the Japanese teahouse sings
and we will berate any presumption
yours were days unspent.

Occupy Wall Street Poetry Anthology -Read On

Illustration by Sharon Rosenzweig

Please explore the Occupy Wall Street Poetry Anthology which is ever growing and now runs 538 pages.  Round and Whole, a poem by me-Octavia McBride-Ahebee-, can be found on pp. 493-494.  And do also check out the illustrations by Sharon Rosenzweig of real OWS supporters, which starts on p. 403.

Here’s the link:

http://www.mediabistro.com/galleycat/occupy-wall-street-library-releases-writing-prompt_b43059

Harvest of the Tongue; An Artist Survives- Mossa Bildner and Us All

Gary Lucas and Mossa Bildner

I recently watched the movie version of The Grapes of Wrath with my children after serving another inventive interpretation of spaghetti as an elegant family meal. It’s hard to believe this movie was made in 1940. I had forgotten how bold and brave and honest this film is and its continued relevancy still rings clear.  The fight is still on.

Artist, composer, singer, linguist, translator and teacher Mossa Bildner is the face of me and so many others.  Thank God or whoever, that we have our art to keep us buoyed, because these are sinister times. I salute her example of holding her head up and a giving a face and a voice to where We are in this space and time.    

This interview was recorded two years ago.

Listen to Mossa: http://video.nytimes.com/video/2009/12/19/nyregion/1247466202854/neediest-an-artist-survives.html?ref=neediestcases

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/20/nyregion/20neediest.html

Gloria Steinem and Mona Eltahawy in Conversation; Dreaming is a Form of Planning

Mona Eltahawy and Gloria Steinem

Poppies by Georgia O'Keeffe

Ladies, even gentleman, get your coffee or whatever drink gives you comfort and listen to this wonderfully enlightening conversation between American feminist Gloria Steinem and Egyptian feminist Mona Eltahawy.

http://hammer.ucla.edu/watchlisten/watchlisten/show_id/759419

All is Well- Naseer Shamma

The Fabulous Iraqi Oud Player Naseer Shamma

 Give yourself this treat and listen:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nwcm1oHVVlo&feature=related

Remembering Ken Saro-Wiwa- A Point of Entry into the World

Photo-Ed Kashi

Photo- Ed Kashi

Photo-Ed Kashi

In 1994, I was a new, middle-aged American bride living in my husband’s home of Cote d’Ivoire. I had arrived in August and by November I was student at the University of Abidjan’s French language program for non-French speakers. At that time, Liberia’s civil war was in full rage and many Liberians had taken refuge in Abidjan. Some were lucky enough to receive United Nations scholarships which enabled them to take French language courses at the University of Abidjan as well. They became my peers, my friends and my refuge from the callousness of Francophones. They were also my point of entry into Liberian history, Liberian-American history, factional fighting, changing alliances and the delicious joy of rice with palava sauce.

During my brief stint as a formal student in this university, I had many introductions, by my classmates who came from all over English-speaking Africa, to their ambitions, to their struggles and the struggles and successes of their home countries. Though I had had a long history with Nigerians back home, through literature, friendships and as a child when my grandmother hosted a couple-Gabriel and Martini- during the Biafra War, I had never known about the Ogoni people of Nigeria, the Niger Delta and the environmental degradation oil companies like Shell had unleashed. It was Boma, a young man and classmate from the Niger Delta oil region of Nigeria, who so passionately articulated the history of this region and the unchecked abuses it sustained at the hands of big, Western oil companies with the complicity of the Nigerian government.

Over grilled corn or plantain, under fruit trees I listened to Boma and learned of Ken Saro-Wiwa and other equally courageous people and whole communities who challenged the environmental, economic and political abuses perpetrated in their homeland. It was this time I became a short wave radio fiend and listened throughout the day to the BBC’s African service. I could hear interviews with Mr. Saro-Wiwa and follow his campaigns. He became a hero for me on this African sojourn.

In November of 1995, I was still in Cote d’Ivoire, pregnant with my first child, who was due at the end of that month. I was in love with my life and my family and my new country. I cannot describe the devastation and sense of disbelief I physically felt when I heard on Nov. 10, 1995 that the Ken Saro-Wiwa was hanged by the Nigerian government with the complicity of Shell Oil.

As Americans, we have seen firsthand, with our recent experience with the BP Oil Spill in the Gulf of Mexico, what shameless and rapacious behaviors these oil companies display. Well, know that the people of the Niger Delta region have been experiencing this for decades and nothing has been done. Know that this is happening and raise your concerns.

Ed Kashi is a phenomenal photojournalist. The above photos are his and here is a link to an interview he gave concerning his project in the Niger Delta. http://www.bjp-online.com/british-journal-of-photography/q-and-a/1720326/vii-photos-ed-kashi-we-change-consume

Here is my poem inspired by Ken Saro-Wiwa and the simple fact that the personal is the political. Here in my poem is a couple on a lovers’ chase , whose every movement is met by some apparatus associated with the oil extraction activity.

A Chase Through the Niger Delta
For Ken Saro-Wiwa
By Octavia McBride-Ahebee

When my feet pound the damp earth
distancing themselves from the fears of the day
awakening,
as my toes collect mineral wealth
and ancestors’ blessings,
the hope of the world
because I am chased by a lover
in heat
in whose mouth sprouts mango-colored hibiscus,
our blissful flight is still broken,
overthrown by surface pipes,
snaking conduits of slick poison,
fallen piñatas full of slippery promises
lined in fire and incessant flares
engulfing
with fury and inflamed detachment
the tops of our crop’s heads
drowning our stomachs in greasy blackness
stuffing our chest with soot and oil’s disdain
is how a pair of lovers
whose day began unspoiled
fueled by the thrill of a dreamy chase
became uninspired and polluted.
-the end-

I Come Each Day to the Whole of the World

Drawing by Omar S. of I.C.S.A.

Here’s the link to a recent interview I did with Miriam’s Well; Poetry, Land Art and Beyond. Enjoy!
http://miriamswell.wordpress.com/2011/11/02/3-questions-for-octavia-mcbride-ahebee/

On Being Gay, Ghanaian and Many Other Things; Kwame Anthony Appiah

Philosopher Kwame Anthony Appiah/ Photo-Greg Martin

I count Kwame Anthony Appiah, Ghanaian-British philosopher, Princeton University Professor and president of the Pen American Center, as one of a very few contemporary academics who has successfully engaged non-academics to entertain many of his ideas concerning moral and political thought. He is very much the public philosopher is same way I count Cornel West, Noam Chomsky and Henry Louis Gates.

I found his discussion about being gay and Ghanaian fascinating and insightful. Here is the link to that discussion.

http://bigthink.com/ideas/24107

Nikki Rosa and the Photographs of Nana Kofi Acquah

Photo- Nana Kofi Acquah

Photo- Nana Kofi Acquah

 

An excerpt from Nikki Giovanni’s “Nikki Rosa”

….And though you're poor it isn't poverty that
concerns you
and though they fought a lot
it isn't your father's drinking that makes any difference
but only that everybody is together and you
and your sister have happy birthdays and very good
Christmases
and I really hope no white person ever has cause
to write about me
because they never understand
Black love is Black wealth and they'll
probably talk about my hard childhood
and never understand that
all the while I was quite happy


I thought of this poem when I awoke one morning last week to be greeted in my inbox by the wonderful photographs of Ghanaian photographer Nana Kofi Acquah. Many of the photographs were of my beloved Cote d’Ivoire and they showed what I remember and keep in my heart; the beauty, the resilience and innovation of a phenomenal people. Like the Giovanni, Acquah celebrates what most outsiders can’t get or don’t want to and that is we make our way in this world, despite unimaginable obstacles, and we do so using our humanity and sheer inventiveness. And we arrive often at what is joyous and celebratory. Enjoy these photographs of Cote d’Ivoire and Ghana and support Acquah’s efforts. Here’s the link.

http://nanakofiacquah.blogspot.com/

Solidarity Statement from Cairo

I just left University of Penn’s Irvine Auditorium and a full house enraptured by Angela Davis, who still has fire in her soul.   She referenced and analyzed many human movements, including Occupy Wall Street.   She quoted a bit from the following statement addressed to us, by some participants in the Egyptian uprising.  Here is the whole, brilliant statement.  Read it and be inspired to move in a new direction. And by the way, I am so inspired the hundreds of young people who came out to listen to Ms. Davis tonight.  Bravo to us all.

Solidarity Statement from Cairo

To all those in the United States currently occupying parks, squares and other spaces, your comrades in Cairo are watching you in solidarity. Having received so much advice from you about transitioning to democracy, we thought it's our turn to pass on some advice.

Indeed, we are now in many ways involved in the same struggle. What most pundits call“The Arab Spring” has its roots in the demonstrations, riots, strikes and occupations taking place all around the world, its foundations lie in years-long struggles by people and popular movements. The moment that we find ourselves in is nothing new, as we in Egypt and others have been fighting against systems of repression, disenfranchisement and the unchecked ravages of global capitalism (yes, we said it, capitalism): a System that has made a world that is dangerous and cruel to its inhabitants. As the interests of government increasingly cater to the interests and comforts of private, transnational capital, our cities and homes have become progressively more abstract and violent places, subject to the casual ravages of the next economic development or urban renewal scheme.

An entire generation across the globe has grown up realizing, rationally and emotionally, that we have no future in the current order of things. Living under structural adjustment policies and the supposed expertise of international organizations like the World Bank and IMF, we watched as our resources, industries and public services were sold off and dismantled as the “free market” pushed an addiction to foreign goods, to foreign food even. The profits and benefits of those freed markets went elsewhere, while Egypt and other countries in the South found their immiseration reinforced by a massive increase in police repression and torture.

The current crisis in America and Western Europe has begun to bring this reality home to you as well: that as things stand we will all work ourselves raw, our backs broken by personal debt and public austerity. Not content with carving out the remnants of the public sphere and the welfare state, capitalism and the austerity-state now even attack the private realm and people's right to decent dwelling as thousands of foreclosed-upon homeowners find themselves both homeless and indebted to the banks who have forced them on to the streets.

So we stand with you not just in your attempts to bring down the old but to experiment with the new. We are not protesting. Who is there to protest to? What could we ask them for that they could grant? We are occupying. We are reclaiming those same spaces of public practice that have been commodified, privatized and locked into the hands of faceless bureaucracy , real estate portfolios, and police ‘protection’. Hold on to these spaces, nurture them, and let the boundaries of your occupations grow. After all, who built these parks, these plazas, these buildings? Whose labor made them real and livable? Why should it seem so natural that they should be withheld from us, policed and disciplined? Reclaiming these spaces and managing them justly and collectively is proof enough of our legitimacy.

In our own occupations of Tahrir, we encountered people entering the Square every day in tears because it was the first time they had walked through those streets and spaces without being harassed by police; it is not just the ideas that are important, these spaces are fundamental to the possibility of a new world. These are public spaces. Spaces forgathering, leisure, meeting, and interacting – these spaces should be the reason we live in cities. Where the state and the interests of owners have made them inaccessible, exclusive or dangerous, it is up to us to make sure that they are safe, inclusive and just. We have and must continue to open them to anyone that wants to build a better world, particularly for the marginalized, excluded and for those groups who have suffered the worst .

What you do in these spaces is neither as grandiose and abstract nor as quotidian as “real democracy”; the nascent forms of praxis and social engagement being made in the occupations avoid the empty ideals and stale parliamentarianism that the term democracy has come to represent. And so the occupations must continue, because there is no one left to ask for reform. They must continue because we are creating what we can no longer wait for.
But the ideologies of property and propriety will manifest themselves again. Whether through the overt opposition of property owners or municipalities to your encampments or the more subtle attempts to control space through traffic regulations, anti-camping laws or health and safety rules. There is a direct conflict between what we seek to make of our cities and our spaces and what the law and the systems of policing standing behind it would have us do.
We faced such direct and indirect violence , and continue to face it . Those who said that the Egyptian revolution was peaceful did not see the horrors that police visited upon us, nor did they see the resistance and even force that revolutionaries used against the police to defend their tentative occupations and spaces: by the government's own admission; 99 police stations were put to the torch, thousands of police cars were destroyed, and all of the ruling party's offices around Egypt were burned down. Barricades were erected, officers were beaten back and pelted with rocks even as they fired tear gas and live ammunition on us. But at the end of the day on the 28 th of January they retreated, and we had won our cities.

It is not our desire to participate in violence, but it is even less our desire to lose. If we do not resist, actively, when they come to take what we have won back, then we will surely lose. Do not confuse the tactics that we used when we shouted “peaceful” with fetishizing nonviolence; if the state had given up immediately we would have been overjoyed, but as they sought to abuse us, beat us, kill us, we knew that there was no other option than to fight back. Had we laid down and allowed ourselves to be arrested, tortured, and martyred to “make a point”, we would be no less bloodied, beaten and dead. Be prepared to defend these things you have occupied, that you are building, because, after everything else has been taken from us, these reclaimed spaces are so very precious.

By way of concluding then, our only real advice to you is to continue, keep going and do not stop. Occupy more, find each other, build larger and larger networks and keep discovering new ways to experiment with social life, consensus, and democracy. Discover new ways to use these spaces, discover new ways to hold on to them and never givethem up again. Resist fiercely when you are under attack, but otherwise take pleasure in what you are doing, let it be easy, fun even. We are all watching one another now, and from Cairo we want to say that we are in solidarity with you, and we love you all for what you are doing.

Comrades from Cairo.
24th of October, 2011.

Conversations with Writers- Octavia McBride-Ahebee

Painting by Zhang Yaowu

Here’s a link to my interview with Conversations With Writers( Oct. 26, 2011) in promotion of my new collection of Poetry-Where My Birthmark Dances, published by Finishing Line Press. 

http://conversationswithwriters.blogspot.com/2011_10_01_archive.html

Support Film Project: The Undocumented by Filmmaker Marco Williams

This skull, part of the remains of a 26 year-old migrant woman,
was found in a remote stretch of Arizona's Sonora desert.

...though you are brave

a believer in dragons and dinosaurs

and their messy intrigues

I will spare you

the whole truth of her journey to you…

                                           from Where My Birthmark Dances

                                                                By Octavia McBride-Ahebee

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                         The

above photos are of shoes found in the Arizona desert; shoes of migrants who have died in the desert.   Deborah McCullough is an artist who uses objects left behind by dead migrants, many who remain unknown, to remind us of the human cost to aspire, of “the vastness of desire.”  There is also a photo of  a bible and a cross made by a migrant out of aluminum foil as a last bid for mercy. 

Thousands of people ride the oceans’ waves, cross deserts, crawl through tunnels and scale fences in search of what we want; “ to eat, to laugh, to grow into ideas.”  As a society, we have failed to respect them, to extend protections and to promote foreign policies that would negate them from leaving their home countries in the first place.

I am a major devotee of the work of independent filmmaker Marco Williams. His body of films include In Search of Our Fathers, Inside the New Black Panthers, I Sit Where I Want; The Legacy of Brown v. Board of Education and  Freedom Summer to name a few.  He is now working to complete his documentary called The Undocumented.   Here is a link to the trailer.

http://www.theundocumented.com/p/trailer.html

Mr. Williams needs our support to help him complete this project.  Kickstarter, the largest funding platform for creative projects in the world, allows us-the every person-to fund projects we believe in.  Kickstarter allows artists to deliver a truth not diluted and distorted by corporate and political dollars.  Here’s the link to Marco Williams discussing the importance of The Undocumented:

http://vimeo.com/26269006

Here is the link to Kickstarter and your way to lend support to this project. http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/395311292/the-undocumented

Jean Binta Breeze-

Jamaica Poet Jean Binta Breeze

I adore her melodious, enchanting and very honest delivery.  Give yourself a morning treat and have a listen.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UBT-2n05eD4&feature=related

An Overdue Victory for Zoliswa Nkonyana

Photos-Zanele Muholi

Photo-Zanele Muholi

Photo- Zanele Muholi

Zanele Muholi is a South African, lesbian photographer who uses her photos as a form of activism.  Muholi has documented more than 50 rapes targeting lesbians in various South African townships as well as continues to capture the everyday lives of women who dare to love.

More than six years ago, 19 year-old Zoliswa Nkonyana was beaten to death because she was a lesbian. According to the Mail & Guardian, “In what gay lobby groups have termed a classic hate crime, the 19-year-old was clubbed, kicked and beaten to death by a mob of about 20 young men on February 4, 2006. The youths, aged between 17 and 20, chased Nkonyana, pelted her with bricks and finally beat her with a golf club a few metres from her home. ..”

Finally after five years of postponements, last week four men were convicted of the murder of Zoliswa Nkonyana and three others were acquitted of the original 9 arrested. To learn more about this case and the particular challenges of Black lesbians in South Africa read the following article by Diane Anderson-Minshall .

http://www.advocate.com/printArticle.aspx?id=238475

Under Our Skin, Too;Breast Cancer Around the World- For Ahou

Painting by Eric Larkin

My daughter was born on a Thursday, in Cote d’Ivoire into the Akan group of the Baoule.  Though my husband and I had already decided to name our first child Sojourner after the indomitable Sojourner Truth, we had decided her middle name would be the traditional name designated for the day of the week in which she would be born.  There was one caveat; if she was born on a Thursday, my husband was insistent that Sojourner would not be given the name of Ahou.  

For both us, names carried powers and omens of their own and my husband’s mother, who was named Ahou, had had such a difficult life.  And her ending was especially full of torment because she died of untreated breast cancer.  My husband had witnessed her agonizing exit out of this world.  He did not want his daughter burdened by his mother’s history.

Our daughter was born on a Thursday. And though Sojourner does not carry the name of her paternal grandmother-Ahou-, she is every bit the feisty, proud person that her maymay was. Ahou, Ahou, Ahou…

October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month and I invite my readers to consider women in other parts of the world and uninsured women here, in the United States, who have no access or very limited access to healthcare that could save their lives.

I wrote the following poem in memory of my mother-in-law and those traditional healers who, in the face of unfamiliar and rapacious challenges like breast cancer, are undeterred in their search for a cure.

Homesick Spirits

By Octavia McBride-Ahebee

                                                    Aya brought back,

                                                                 carrying vestiges of her pride in her hip,

                                                                                   a caged bird from the city

                                                   whose tongue had been eaten

                                                                            by the whipping tongues of red-headed salamanders

                                                   and whose throat, tautly strapped in a malachite choker

                                                                                 with gems made of coffee and bark,

                                                                                              danced holding the cadence of lost crickets.

                              Aya, our village healer,

                                                                                       the child who pushed

feet first into an empty Friday

                                                                                                                       afternoon

                                                                                                                    had grown flat, faithless in the knowledge

                                                                     of her plants

                                               in their power to seduce with fragrance and fear

                                                    these new homesick spirits

who stand at the doors of our breasts

                                                                 bu ld

                                                                    i

                                                                                   ing tunnels with its anger to the tips

where our children once sucked relief

from the taunts of companion spirits who float alone.

I tore-off the dry reeds of my roof

cutting it with a dead cross

dressed in tired, singing cowry shells

to let in the weight and tales of the rain

waiting beneath the stomach of a headless pain

to offer my breast to a star in wanderlust

                                                     after I had c l awe

                                                                                        d

                                        the earth with the whole

                                    of my body

tempting it with the blood of dense life

                                 if it would feast on the whole of my left dreams

                                                                           But Aya, my friend with two daughters

                       who lay in the ground with faces down,

                                                                                  hooded in dyed Guinea cloth

with one breast between them,

said be                                   p a t i e n t ,

                                                                      homesick spirits, she recently learned,

preferred to feed on the sorrow of silenced birds

                                                       than  r

                                                     o

                                                                  t inside an aged breast

that

                 hangs    w                       th                  no

                                      i

                                                                                                                      JOY.

                                                                   -the end-