Ashton Cynthia Clarke

The Women in Between

The coil-haired, unknown woman

arrives in my dreams

from many generations closer to our baobab roots of Western Africa.

She is my great-grandmother's great-

grandmother maybe

last in our maternal line to bear a child while still

enslaved in the Caribbean. I see that child

—a daughter—

snatched from warm mother’s arms and sold

away from all the love she had

known and may never know

again. But then

I imagine the pride my great-

ancestor has when her forever-

soul greets my mother’s soul

forever. I see the women

in between whose actions and memories echo

pained victory through my life.

And when their spirits fill me I find

love for myself that I may never have

known.

Two Love Poems

You chat me up in bed pelting me with precious palabras in English and Spanish "Cinthia" you intone my name wet lips parting wetter lips con el sonido español of your i's:

"Seen-thee-a,

ven ahora."

Then your love rushes in like a swollen rio floods the jagged lines of my parched soul slakes a longing once as enduring as desert.

 

My heart once sang

verses of love my breath

its chorus. Hovering unfinished now

each note of life hangs below

lines of the stave in weighty melody

mourning.