A vivid witness to suffering, iniquity and humanity
Rhonda across the M. Ward street grew from up the in home Dayton, of Paul Ohio,
Lawrence Dunbar, who was arguably the first
African American poet of note in the United
States. As a third-grader, Ward began reciting
Dunbar’s poems. Her interest in poetry grew from there.
Ward’s poems reflect on the nuances of everyday life. She has written about issues specific to women and environmental issues. Often her poems focus on racism and racial inequality in America.
Ward, who recently concluded her service as poet laureate for the city of New London, believes that Americans are awakening to the power of poetry. She hopes that many more people will find their own voices as they attend to the voices of poets.
“Poetry is a wonderful medium to really get a reader thinking about issues that face us daily. And those don’t always have to be heavy subjects,” Ward said. She hopes that more people will “explore poetry for the simple pleasure of reading and enjoyment, even as it is currently gaining momentum as an avenue of protest.”
Ward currently co-hosts the annual Langston Hughes Community Poetry Reading at the Mystic Museum of Art. She has served on the Board of Directors for The Writers Block Ink and for Soul Mountain Retreat. She has collaborated with visual artists on numerous projects, including 3 Steps Forward, 2 Steps Back, which addresses systemic racism; this exhibition opened in April in Vero Beach, Florida.
Her poetry has appeared in many venues in print and online, including in the anthology Waking Up to the Earth, edited by Connecticut Poet Laureate Margaret Gibson, and online at the Academy of American Poets’ Poem-a-Day Project. Ward has even read her poetry in international venues, including at sites in Skiathos, Greece; Cumbria, UK; and Sofia, Bulgaria.
Dance, Amari
for Amari Diaw
Amari Diaw was four years old in 2003 when she faced being banned from her dance school recital in New Bedford, MA, because she wore her hair in braids that could not be “slicked back and pulled into a bun.”
Do not untie your hair Amari. Do not,
For perfect plies and pirouettes, turn
From native locks or wish for whiteness.
Kick up your thick-boned legs
In cultured protestation
Avoid unbraided simulation
Take first position
Stand on pointed principles
Deconstruct the dance politic.
Do not untie your hair Amari. Do not,
For perfect plies and pirouettes, turn
From native locks or wish for whiteness.
Kick up your thick-boned legs
In cultured protestation
Avoid unbraided simulation
Take first position
Stand on pointed principles
Deconstruct the dance politic.
Voyage
My abdomen lurches to my throat at the motion of this ship
While I determine to swallow it back to its proper place. Unsuccessful, succumbing to emesis, my spew contributes to the stench.
We lie prostrate, shoulder to shoulder,
Manacled, beaten, starving.
Dead bodies lie amongst us, stiffening, rotting, decaying. The White men come now and then to relieve our suffering somewhat.
They douse us with water; fill some of our hands
With what we must call food, then remove the dead Feeding them to the waves.
The sea fights for us now, and against us. She emulates our rage,
Tossing and turning. The guttural roar of thunder groans for us;
The rain is our tears; the wind tosses this enemy vessel. We are doomed to the will of our captors.
Freedom is My Nature
Five days on foot traveling only by night The leaves are black the grass is black
The trees are black.
The moonless sky is black.
The moss is a black velvet path. Traveling by night the forest is black I am a chameleon
Bittersweet
The Magnolia is the official state flower and state tree of Mississippi.
Your pristine petals bore a blood-streaked legacy
Your fragrance collided with the stench of decomposition
Your branches became swings for noose-looped ropes Your fruit was dark and bruised and bitter
Your roots absorbed generations
Your bark scratched against the wounds of a nation Of long division
Multiplied
Assimilation
Remember when fried chicken was even better on the second day
And we all wanted to be freed by the “Chains of Rap Brown”
When Angela Davis was puttin’ down and all around town
Little brown babies were playing in the streets
Mother May I
One-Two-Three Red Light
Hide and Go Seek
Those were the great days
When summers meant picnics in the park
Now we can’t even say the word ‘cause
Somebody heard it was code
For pick a niggah
Damn shame, ‘cause I can’t get that name out of my head But, remember when Dr. King was dreaming
When Jimmy Hendrix played guitar with his mouth And down south Jim was crowing like some kind of Awkward bird
Then
They shot Martin, they shot Malcom
Somebody beat a boy named Emmet Till until
His face was a bloody pulp
The Kennedys got shot and the whole damned world Went to hell-in-a-handbasket
Discrimination got reversed
Affirmative action was disavowed
And liberation came down to
Burning bras
We’ve come a long way but I wonder
Have we overcome?
Or have we just come over?
I See You
for Serinol Lowman
I see you, brother, walking up State Street
Pushing the spitting image of yourself in a little navy stroller.
Your runny-nosed protégé has no care past the inner workings of a ball
That jingles when thrown across a room with the crooked force of a toddler
Elbow slightly inward in that awkward way a child is prone to throw
I see you, brother, walking up State Street
Thick black locks falling down your broad back
Camera strap draped around your neck
Lens bag flung over your shoulder
I see you in the studio photographing
Contemporary young Black men and women: Misunderstood, misrepresented
You are newsworthy but not news
You are not stealing, shooting, or shooting up
You are not featured in the papers but I see you Suffering from the Black man’s disease
Of being a Black man in America
And yet,
I look upon the smoothness of your ebony complexion I see the dark, fertile soil of Africa
I look into the abundance of your clear brown eyes
I see the sun shimmering on the placid plane of the Nile I look at the fluent hands that nurture a son
I see a creator molding a new Black man
I see you, brother, walking up State Street
And wonder why America cannot see you
As I see you
Legacy
Now and then the phone will ring and it will be someone from my youth. The voice of a favorite cousin stretched across many miles sounding exactly as she always has: that trained concentration of one who stutters— the slight hesitations, the drawn-out syllables, the occasional lapse into a stammer.
When asked, she says my aunt is well for her age but she forgets. I remember the last time I saw my aunt— leaning on her cane, skin smooth as river rock, mahogany brown, gray hair braided into two plaits stretched atop her head and held in place with black bobby pins.
She called to say James Lee has died. And did I
Aunt Mary, who had four crippled children and went blind after uncle Benny died, died last year? I did not.
We wander back awhile, reminding and remembering: Me under the streetlight outside our front yard face buried in the crook of my arm held close to the telephone pole as I closed my eyes and sang the words:
Last night, night before, twenty-four robbers at my door I got up to let them in...hit ‘em in the head with a rolling pin, then counted up to ten while they ran and hid.
Visiting the graves of grandparents I never knew. Placing blush-pink peonies my father grew and cut for the occasion into mason jars. Saying nothing. Simply staring at the way our lives come down to a concrete slab.
know
Portrait of the Porch in Summer
There are faded lines where he erased, then stretched The too-short porch
Made the windows larger,
Straightened the steps to the multi-paned door
On the two-dimensional replication of the latchkey house
Where he returned sometime after three,
Weekdays. The curtains are closed and still behind shut windows.
No breeze to blow ghost sheers aside to sneak ripple glances
Of the empty jar of promises he opens each day To deposit jail-cell covenants fragile as Dead Sea Scrolls He draws a precise facsimile
Crayon memories of a ten-year-old’s summer
Sitting on the steps of the porch
Chin shoved into the seat of his palm
Awaiting his father’s release
This is Why We’re in The Streets
Because you ripped us from our Motherland
Because you used us to build this land
Because you never paid us for our labors
Because you sold our mothers
Because you sold our fathers
Because you sold our children
Because you raped our women
Because you beat us to a pulp
Because you refused to educate us
Because you called us three-fifths man
Because you hung us from your trees
Because you killed us in the streets
Because you would not let us vote
Because you would not call us “man”
Because of slumlords
Because home ownership is made harder for us Because public assistance breaks up our families Because the books in our schools are often outdated Because our children have no access to technology Because our neighborhoods are food deserts
Because we cannot afford healthcare
Because we cannot trust you NOT to experiment on our bodies
Because you experimented on our bodies
Because you brought crack into our communities Because you poured us into your prisons
Because you take our votes for granted
Because you have traded trees for bullets
Because you have traded trees for knees
Because you do not prosecute killer cops