Learning to Sing
When did you learn how to sing, he asked
when I saw I was trapped
I understood that at
least my voice was free
Where did you learn that song, he asked
I made it out of the rhythm of your fists
you liked to hit two in the legs
one in the ribs
Where did you get the breath, he asked
I pulled it from the air
where I had left all of my screams
Where did you find the strength, he asked
I found the one bone
you did not break
Where did you find the words, he asked
I took the ugly ones you threw
at me and turned them around
Where did you find the heart, he asked
I took back that one
I gave to you
Where did you find the knife to free your bonds, he asked
I sharpened my fingers on
my love for myself and
clawed my way out
The Harbour
I wonder what
happened on this old harbour
did they march the slave men
and women out of the boats here
chains on their necks and
douse buckets of water
over their heads
to clean them
of the salt that
caked their skin?
Did they oil the men’s
muscles so they rippled
in the heat and gave
pride to their owners
that they had bought
strength and beauty
across the ocean to
grace this hard land?
Is this the place
where they separated
the men from the women
and wedged distrust
between them, leaving
us to stitch ourselves
back to each other?
I stand on this harbour
and smell the slaves’
sweat and their fear,
their courage and grace
I see their ghosts in the water
floating through time and I
run to them, needle and
thread in hand, ready to mend
their broken ghost hearts
About the author: Leslie Dianne is a poet, novelist, screenwriter, playwright and performer whose work has been acclaimed internationally in places such as the Harrogate Fringe Festival in Great Britain, The International Arts Festival in Tuscany, Italy and at La Mama in New York City. Her stage plays have been produced in NYC at The American Theater of Actors, The Raw Space, The Puerto Rican Traveling Theater and The Lamb's Theater. She holds a BA in French Literature from CUNY and her poems have appeared in The Lake, Ghost City Review, The Literary Yard, About Place Journal and Kairos and are forthcoming in Hawai’i Review. Her poetry was recently nominated for a Pushcart Prize.