I came to New Bedford, a city of immigrants in the
elbow of Massachusetts that reaches toward the ocean. I came into the flow of people who brought to the city its flavor
of island and sea, Cape Verdean and then Portuguese whalers and sailors who risked their lives each day and named their boats
after daughters for grace and protection: the Tina, the Angela, the Jenny--New Bedford of Americans of color looking
for a town with heart, of disinherited pockets of musicians fighting for survival and city grants--New Bedford, that gateway
transit on the edge of the ocean, that held its people like flowers in an international garden: Latin zinnias, Greek
and Lebanese cyclamen, African violets--each needing its own particular nourishment and identifying it as the same, common
soil.....
New Bedford of the smokestacks, spires, masts--funneling the industry and dreams of the people above the skyline.
New Bedford of the waterfront whose planks tapped out the rhythm of bodies heavy as sacks of fish...New Bedford of the shuttling
loom, the frozen wage, the shrouded-black, middle-aged grandmothers kneading breads of the old country with grandkids in lurex
and law school--New Bedford rising from its knees in the mix of tongues striving to make it home --New Bedford offering an
address for the room in the sky-blue house on the rainbow block of two-storied tenements with stone saint statues walled in
the vegetable gardens....there are those who call it home!
Copyright 1999, A.C.C.E.S.S. ART CORP. INTERNATIONAL,
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
Steam
what it took to transform S/V Ernestina
He was ignited, breathing
the revolution on the waterfront
one day at a time
biking t-shirted, humping the cobblestones
wind whipping between the handlebars
smacking him in the face,
embarking at Coal Pocket pier
like a new maridu
greeting his love, climbing over Her side,
hands made to shoot hoops
wide open
Below decks, he wrenched gut
Transformed bits of shard, ancient
Cod-bone peeling his skin,
Sinew sweat
Shape:
The ribs, how will She run
back
to Djabraba
shore set free
so sabi song
in the sail of a new millennium--
Sailors on replicas of slave ships
ease their karma knowing She exists
as they make the best of history,
job market, working that
theater of the absurd
to reclaim those terrible hollers
into the mantle of mar,
Pirating booty in the biographies
of the Black men who grind,
Salt,
and Steam into being
the struts of this stage,
churning waters into motion,
the grist of who we are
Meant to be....
maridu-husband
Djabraba-island of Brava
sabi-nice, happy
mar-sea
Copyright 2000, A.C.C.E.S.S.ART CORP. INTERNATIONAL PRODUCTIONS,
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
