The Poetry Cafe's Review of Teaching While Black

Henry is an educator… who also feels deeply the frustrations incumbent upon being a Black teacher working in schools with a majority of white educators and students. God bless him for that, and even more so, for the frank, humorous, and compassionate poems in his memorable chapbook, Teaching While Black.

The good folks at The Poetry Cafe have posted their review of Teaching While Black online.

 

“Schizophrenia in G minor” — my only Valentine's Day poem

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Schizophrenia in G minor

when i awoke yesterday
and found you beside me
atlas’ shoulders seemed to settle

as sweet sweat matted hair
hugged your face
in a vertical halo

the classical reprints
adorning our walls
sighed in jealousy

and i was in love

today
you’re a fat
rat nasty cow
and i wish
you would die

 

happy valentine’s day

Poetry East , #53 "Love Poems" Fall 2004

 

Poem published in Take a Stand, Art Against Hate

“said the band-aid to the shotgun wound”

is being reprinted in Take a Stand, Art Against Hate: A Raven Chronicles Anthology.

This poem, originally published in Teaching While Black, explores everything wrong with the application of uncritical anti-bias trainings in public school settings. Or at least what I could fit into one long poem before my head exploded.

I proud to have it included in this anthology.

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Teaching While Black at Wellesley Books

I’m on my book-selling hustle. Been in contact with a few different stores and as of yesterday, Teaching While Black is now available for purchase at Wellesley Books (Wellesley, MA).

I was a METCO student in Wellesley. And now the local bookstore holds a book which is bracketed by two poems about my racial awareness and centeredness being formed in that town. For better or worse.


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Two poems at Dappled Things

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I did a stint as a Christian mystic. I reality, I just read a lot about Christian mysticism, mindfullness, contemplation, meditation, acedia, and a whole trove of related materials, attempting to find…something. The Desert Mothers and Fathers, philosophers and hermits, poets and academics.

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Of course such musing birthed poetry. And, somehow, Dappled Things’ found two of them worthy of publication.

“…as yourself” ~ an attempt to find the balance between “the Golden Rule,” “the Two Great Commandments,” and the mystic’s distrust of “Self.”

“the prophet speaks against Rilke” ~ an ekphrastic response to Rainer Maria Rilke’s “Ick bin auf der Welt zu allein und doch nicht allein genug”

Two Poems Reprinted at Digging Press

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Digging Through The Fat: A Literary & Arts Journal for Cultural Omnivores republishes works from around the internet.

 
Community No 41.

Community No 41.

Two of my poems were selected for Community No 41.:

  1. “the surprising thing,” &

  2. “when asked what i learned in elementary school being bussed from Mattapan to Wellesley.”

    Both are included in my chapbook Teaching While Black.

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"Holding Peace" (CNF) published at How to Pack for Church Camp

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Every once in a while I write a short story, usually based on a real experience. A work of creative non-fiction (CNF). This one has been published by How to Pack for Church Camp.

This time I decided not to include names, to protect the guilty. I know some of the guilty are reading this right now. You went to this camp. You were in the room. You said these things. Hopefully you’re a better person now.

As for my unnamed friend: all my love, B. Now and forever.

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Sometimes submissions are an education. And sometimes you get published.

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When you write a poem entitled “an open letter to the white feminists holding a literary panel on Toni Morrison,” you don’t actually think anyone will publish it.

You send it out thinking, at the very least, some junior reader or part-time editor will have something to think about. Because following her sudden death, what writing conference would ever host a panel discussion about Toni Morrison, but not include one (1) Black woman on the dais? The one you attended. So you write a poem. And cast it upon the waters hoping it will do some good.

{It’s like writing a poem entitled “an open letter to the poetry editor of [name withheld on advice from counsel]” about a passive aggressive, racially charged exchange with an editor: no one will ever publish that poem, but those who read it might think about how they interact with their submitters of color after reading it. }

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And then you get an email saying that someone does want to publish a poem about well-meaning, but misguided white women, and you’re shocked.

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An Advent/Christmas poem (I completely forgot I wrote)

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Advent

Christ climbed down
from His bare Tree
this year
~ Lawrence Ferlinghetti

beside a manger scene, He surveys the wonder of
His pasty complexion surrounded by solemn faces:
the pallor upon the Ikea cast, assembled around

His waxy facade, causes even His capillaries to cringe
as speakers hidden in synthetic straw capture
how the original animals couldn’t keep silent –

the apparent theology of a rum pa pumb pumb aside.
entering the service filled with seasonal sons and daughters
He sniffs for the familiar scent of worship – the sweet censer

of honest meditation, but this multitude presents only
a facsimile of praise: the stench of filthy rags hidden
beneath scented candles and choir robes.

eyes raised, He notices His cross covered by a crown of fir,
and before the altar, the holy family in flannel: a pageant
of preschoolers deified by proud parents. turning to leave,

His shirt sucks to His right side. rushing past unnoticed,
barely beyond beveled doors, the ground clutches His knees;
He falls beneath the phantom of wooden weight.

tasting the gall, He vomits. from above a hand touches
His now sensitive shoulder, and a man with no place
to rest his head, offers all he has: a cotton cloth stained

with gin and dried blood. Christ accepts and wipes His mouth.
His savior nods to the tiny plastic persona beside them and smiles
before limping away with a song: a rum pa pumb pumb.

Published in the anthology Love Among Us (2009).