Cobalt Tears
Before his body can form the needed muscles
To uphold the soaking load of precious cobalt,
He is sentenced to mine,
Collect,
And carry this mineral.
Fragments of cobalt tucked beneath his nails from digging,
Its dust in his lungs,
His tears polluted with it as
Photographers bear witness to the iniquity of greed,
Greed of his country, that owes a debt it will never finish paying,
Greed of foreign companies, whose wages are
Blood and dust.
All harvest wealth that is not theirs.
Foreigners produce new electronic addictions
To keep their masses ignorant of the young hands that
Work from dawn to dusk,
The young hands that move no more,
That are folded gently across their small chests,
Over hearts
That could have beat for exercise, childish games,
The excitement of a green time
That is more and more recast as something
Part of a privileged existence.
Silent Parties
Our home became a killing floor,
The death of sanity,
The death of love.
The mockery of humanity
Embodied by the men passing
Off hunger as strength.
They forced the part of him
That caused life to swell within my womb
Into me.
At the threat of death, I swallowed
The violent sacrament, a sacrilege of
Our union, to our God who is mute
And deaf to my suffering.
They forced themselves into me
With the promise of reducing me to
Pieces, scattering them to oblivion and dust.
I could not, but the child in me had to survive.
A part of him they could not cut away,
A part of me that would thrive, somehow,
In spite of the violation covering him
Like their shadows over me, their sweat
On my body.
Who sees?
Who hears?
Who cares?
We are as dust collecting in the corners of rooms,
Beneath beds, the filth the world tries to ignore
Until they cannot anymore.
I Think a Painter Drives That Car
That one there, with the icy blue peeling paint
Dusted with grit, like gravel soiling fresh snow.
I think a painter drives that car,
With the beat-up beige seats,
Dingy dice dangling from the mirror, tape on the bumper.
There’s no shame in his stride. It’s paid off in one chipped piece.
It rides okay.
Not smooth like it used to, but what’s smooth in his life?
I think he probably worked the smoothness out of his hands
Long ago, certainly out of his face
Lined from weary blue-collar days.
I picture him working with his hands,
On cars, maybe in construction.
It’s all a whirl, but the only thought that’s solid
For me is that he’s an artist at heart.
A painter
Struggling to keep that part of him alive
Against a grating 9-5 or 9-9.
I know those hours, those days,
Belting out weary blues of a worn world
In your work.
I picture him forcing a brush into his hand,
Dipping it in paint and coloring a canvas
With the remnants of his soul
To keep it from souring.
Red Lines
Red lines make the difference
In the places that we live in.
Red lines the streets, soaking
Into the concrete from bodies
Gunned down in impoverished dwellings.
Red faces line neighborhoods with rage
If someone like me, someone brown or black,
Or too poor for their liking approaches to buy a home.
Those same faces run HOAs who run what you
Can do with your house should they grant you entrance
Into their world.
The glaring injustice
Is a great sin
America willfully commits to prop up a system where few win.
I wonder if our leaders will ever grasp a sliver of sense
To see the coming collapse.
The weary hands are curled into fists and are striking
Against them.
The Parlor
The mistress’s parlor must be destroyed.
No, it cannot be restored,
The flower printed wallpaper will not be torn off
And replaced with the bright, richness of an accent
Wall the color of your choice.
No, the lilies must be cast to the fire.
They neither spin nor toil,
Their existence is a spoiled
As the woman who adored them.
Leave the furniture alone.
The black, velvet cushions that welcome
Company to the artisanal couch,
That radiate power while seducing you with comfort,
Must be crushed, the cushions torn, the fabric
Left in tatters as loose, jet tongues prophesizing death
While singing the virtues of stolen wealth.
The vanity will not be reclaimed, passed down
As an antique of apathy through the ages to
Wittle away at the brains of our daughters.
Her dresses and shoes will not be a fashion
Trend to restore women’s femininity because
Why,
How
Can clothes brought at local stores,
At bargain prices strip that from us?
And why would we seek an oppressive
Femininity that leaves us
Polished,
Poised,
Prisoners to indifference and avarice?
Her jewels, however, will be plundered because
They were never hers to begin with,
Nor the ornamental “costumes” she wears
To appreciate the holidays of women she
Can’t remember the next day, Nor the “trinkets” and art that gave her room culture,
The things that hold our stories, our lives, the spirits
And blood of our elders.
These shall be taken and restored to the rightful descendants
Or makers, especially the pearls she clutches when
Militancy is upon her.
The room must go.
Because it is part of the master’s home.
Of Violets
I.
I dream in violet,
Of violets who’ve
Taken on human faces,
Slender stems and satin petals
Made flesh—thus declared the poetess.
I dream of you and I surrounded by violets,
The briskness cool of a blue morning,
The dawn we hiked across to a field
We would never toil or water with our blood.
As it should be. There you are whole, unburdened by
Depression and I am painting the field in my mind before
I return to my desk.
I dream of you bathed in violets
Who’ve formed a purple barrier between you and stress,
Who lend a subtle magic to the water they drift on,
The water cradles you.
The violets whisper how much I love you,
And make miracles out of simplicity.
As if trouble had never touched you.
II.
I dream of you rising to power.
The violence of violets bewildering those who trample them,
Treating them as afterthoughts.
The dignity of womanhood eclipsing poverty
And bigotry, the darkness of her hand becoming
Power incarnate, the darkness of her blood
Healing made material.
I dream of you seeking gardens of your mothers,
Present or ancestor, pulling seeds of yesterday into
Soft beds dug up today, putting seeds of your own
Struggle into soil eager to receive it and delivering A harvest of your enemy’s destruction.
I dream of you reviving lost voices and traditions
Like the one who gave us back Zora, because this
Teaches us that a pallid substitute can never
Fully nourish us—thus declared the novelist
III.
I dream of violets raining
Over my head, of oddities and freedoms
I am not quite accustomed to in faces
I’d seen before on a screen,
In a crowd.
I dream of that confidence.
I dream of them as my friends,
Those considered rough,
Perhaps a bit too smart for their own good, so they say,
Dreamy, lost in worlds they built or others have forged.
I imagine I’ll find them again at this point in my life.
Someone like them, planting ourselves together in
A field of our own, never mind what others say
About us not being pretty or graceful enough.
Because who asked for their validation anyway—thus we declared.
Jasmine Harrell is a D.C. native. She is a graduate of Bowie State University where she studied English and Creative Writing. Her poetry has been published by IHRAF Publishes, the Bacopa Literary Review, SFPA’s Star Line magazine, and Gilbert and Hall Press. She loves drawing, writing, and reading in her spare time and is a devout horror and science fiction fan.
