About this author: Ebony began her journey as an artist, activist, and educator twenty-eight years ago in the Bayou City, Houston, TX. Her mission is to empower individuals to pursue creative expression, social change, and the divine spirit through the arts. Ebony matriculated through the English department at Texas A & M University as an Undergraduate Research Fellow and earned a Master of Fine Arts degree in Poetry from American University in Washington, DC. She is a Visiting Instructor of English at North Carolina Central University and an Adjunct Instructor of English at Louisburg College. Her first poetry chapbook, the sweet smell of juju funk was published by her grassroots literary press, betty?s daughter, April 2006. For more information about Ebony or to schedule a performance or workshop, please visit www.goldendharma.blogspot.com, www.myspace.com/mamashieroglyphics. Contact this author at: goldendharma(at)yahoo.com

Done

by Ebony Noelle Golden
August 2006

(for new orleans)

theory one:
you boiled over and belched out
your gumbo children like a calabash
that knows not its tipping point saturated
ecosphere skin and spice isthmus pumped
dry walled off and craving the sanctity
of your irrigated origin

your mothers steep
in plutonic filings olive oil
henna themselves speechless
burn myrrh on
watery altars

in this case
even tears are a blasphemous
azurite deity cantos
chanted backward
seasonless

these crescent mamas
once babies of pretty
haired octoroons
float up desiccated
intonations of absolute waterlessness

bone bare barren dust

theory two:
who raids your city?s eurhythmy

ripples your throat
inundates the praline encrusted mouth

was it the insatiable thirst
of a swamp demon
prowling to feed her babies
on your tabasco and bourbon
marinated pulp

or the sins stewing in your bacchanal bayous
that rattle loose the heavens and leave you
a bleak and vegetation void canvas
theory three:
atone atone atone
the day soon arrives
when flashlights and fresh
jugged water are useless clutch
tight your faith
sincerely kiss your mama?s tobacco lips
pumice the scales from your eyes
and view the foreshadowed destruction
martyrs have a different face now
amen

[This poem was first published in Stanford University's Black Arts Quarterly, Spring/Summer, 2006]