Jacqueline Johnson
Ode to Iyansa
Iyansa, austere gates of divine mystery which
you so aptly guard are now flung open
accepting so many from the hospitals,
nursing homes, streets, and transit.
The lines between the city of the living and
the city of the dead now blurred,
open for quick crossings without the rituals, or
ceremonies of leave taking and long goodbyes.
Once you were content to be the keeper of secrets
wearing a rose colored headwrap,
quietly attending to the new returnees.
Your legion of invisible ones always willing to aid the living.
Now the city where I live has so many dead,
you have taken up residence in parking lots
with truckloads of former husbands, wives,
grandmothers, fathers, sons, and daughters.
In this America your power is unquantifiable as
we count lives lost and transfigured forever.
You now are stronger than you ever intended to be.
Your tears flow unceasing.
Fight to keep as many as you can alive.
Iyansa, goddess whose gifts can both save
us and give others a quick merciful end.
We dream of a different time yet unborn.
Purple hued tempests fly all around the earth
where only a hint of your power is mirrored.
Iyansa, fierce owner of the ancestral realm
bless the day you can close your gates.
Wild Child
Basquiat, you are forever 27.
The many ways you wrote upon canvas,
family trees mixed with Kongo crosses;
glyphs and incantations of every weary Black man.
Faces Elegua inhabited.
That bluish, black man,
bulging eyes rapt upon life,
baring his teeth
upon the hoary land.
Could be grinning.
Could be screaming.
Drawing and redrawing that squarish
head covered in dreadlocks onto
concrete walls, train stops and storefronts.
The surface did not matter
only that you left your sign.
Everything was fuel.
Everything.
*Elegua -god of chance and the crossroads
Homer
Herbal packets in calico apron pocket
musty grey dress covered in food stains,
a chorus of hands all at her command.
Heart big enough to fight man, woman, master
or slave; no Johnny-Jumper ever dare
ever think about trying her.
Back a textured broad cloth
cut and re-cut in its own crazy design.
Her breasts, belly, thighs -- where
beauty should be - map to a
strange, ancient place
blackened keloids, marks she earned well.
No man dare caress; only oils of
cinnamon, myrrh and sassafras.
This slavery chastens her desires
to the simplest of women.
Together Homer, Callas, and Callieta
turn back death, turn back sickness.
Jacqueline Johnson is a multi-disciplined artist creating in both poetry, fiction writing and fiber arts. Recent exhibitions include: Yours for Race and Country: Reflections on the Life of Colonel Charles Young at the National Afro-American Museum. She is the author of A Woman's Season, on Main Street Rag Press and A Gathering of Mother Tongues, published by White Pine Press and is the winner of the Third Annual White Pine Press Poetry Award. Her work has appeared in: “Show Us Your Papers,” on Main Street Rag press “Revisiting the Elegy in the Black Lives Matter Era,” Routledge 2020, The Slow Down, American Public Media, October 16, 2019 and “Pank: Health and Healing Folio," 2019. Works in progress include: “The Privilege of Memory,” and “How to Stop a Hurricane,” a collection of short stories and “This America,” a poetry collection. She is a graduate of New York University and the City University of New York. A native of Philadelphia, PA., she resides in Brooklyn, New York. She has work forthcoming in: The Langston Hughes Review and Zora’s Den.
