Eugene B. Redmond

3 Kwansaba Tales Tall as Maya

"You want to know how it feels
to give birth, my dear brother? Imagine
pulling your upper lip over your head
like a stockin' cap" . . . mid-80s/church-
theater & Maya's serving slices of Winston-
Salem/house-talk to me & the
sister-ring: Ruth Love & Dolly McPherson. . .

raising an after-repast glass we share
a mid-70s memwar from Sonoma (California)
Wine Country: a Paris-born/ e epistle from
Jimmy Baldwin: "writing is like shitting bricks."
Then an Africa-aged pause, quake-filled
-& quiet-as a poem's pounce, as
a San Andreas or New Madrid Fault. . .

another after-repast glass segues into
another 70s mise en scene: Marie Collins,
star of Sacramento's Oak Park School of
Afro-American Thought-& the public heart
whom Maya called "an awesome mental machine,"
a title I badn't heard before-&
haven't heard since, except to parrot it.

Troupe of Kwansabas for a Bloodsman of Tropes

So what's blood worth to you, Quincy?
Watts of jagged images that main-line
veins of your canvas like ritual-dancin',
bling-slung zombies? High-fivin', lowjivin'
homeys boardin' juju's of conch-us-nests
while you songify river skulls & ocean
hulls-& ask, Hoo wants to gno?

How blood be, QT? A vamp re:
vessels of styles ala Satchmo & Miles?
Kindred saints chuck-walkin' ntu doo-wop?
Ellison's blues-maze to end visible angst?
Or Ish's sync-phonic Legba/ba liturgy? So

what, if Jimmy's straits filter Marquez &
Morrison thru Dumas' ankh-with no chaser?

Poets, jazzers & rebels ain't orphans: just
pariahs in the wheres of some: but
blood keeps boardin' express Tranes to mothers,
muses & Cherokee Lovers; flyin'Jubas &
Daedaluses back to myth nests, hippin' to
catch hops between sacred tomes & flatted
pomes that shay shay with veve-dig?

Pilgrim Age
For Sheryl Johnson
(1955-2007)

Yours was a pilgrim age to narrate
a page, orate a stage, create a
sage-filled anl& ship of kush-lighted
airs & heirs: Hetshepsut!-she-king's nom
de plume-you singer of hajj in
groves of poet-trees: stretch, diva-vine,
you statue-as-queen-who wholes us.

©2005-7 by Eugene B Redmond

Cover Design: Joseph McNair