Artwork © Judson K. Evans

 

Visions of the future

Nations

drowning in cemeteries

      drowning under death

            coasts eroded by the greed of the departed

                even in afterlife

                   taking more space than they deserve

                      ice melted by hubris

Nature’s brilliance

                Sun and moon and stars

                   blotted out by so many

                                          skyscrapers neon lights bombs

                                          plastic reality

Love segregated by chains and walls and bars and cages and myths

      by lands separated by oceans separated by papers

Destiny thwarted by Bablyon

 

                 OR

 

Earth’s browns and greens

    dotted by a million tiny fires

       centerpoints of a million villages

          home to infinite grandmothers nestling grandbabies

               whispering songs of love and peace and wisdom to their ears

                the gift of Ancestors            preserved

Home for everyone

No one lost

Sankofa fulfilled

 

Wake up Zombies

We decide

 

Katherine Jenkins Djom is a mother, teacher, anti-racist educator and doula. She enjoys poetry in all forms and being outside of the United States.

Judson Evans is a full-time Instructor in the Liberal Arts department at The Boston Conservatory at Berklee where he has taught a range of courses, from a Poetry Workshop on haiku, prose poetry and haibun, to a course on theories of cave art and the role of the cave in ritual and philosophy. In 2007 he was chosen by John Yau as an Emerging Poet for The Academy of American Poets. He was one of the founding members of Off the Park Press, and published work in each of its three anthologies responding to provocative contemporary painters. His most recent work has been published in (print journals) Laurel Review, Folio, Volt; 1913: a journal of forms; and Green Mountains Review, and (online journals) White Whale Review and Amethyst Arsenic. He won The Phillip Booth Poetry Award from Salt Hill Review in 2013. He has collaborated with composers, such Mohammed Fairouz, Mart Epstein, and Rudolf Rojhan, who set several of his poems to music, as well as with choreographers, dancers, musicians and other poets, including Gale Batchelder, and videographers Nate Tucker and Ray Klimek. His poetry collection with Gale Batchelder, Chalk Song, is forthcoming.