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TWO POEMS

 

by Sheila Smith McKoy

        

                                                                                        

SOUNDING OCEANS

​

4/2/22

​

i know the Atlantic like I know my hand--

swimming into the heart of her waves

i am part of a lineage of blackbrowntan

arms reaching out above the cresting

waters

 

the Pacific was warm to me, stranger

though I was to her sand & her shores

& her chilling waters, but in Hawaii

she was blue - warm as my east-shore

waters

 

the caress of the Indian warming

& welcome. she joined with warm,

tan sand just beyond the winding

rocky path that led me to her gentle

waters

 

there are possibilities in oceans,

ways to encounter the deep

emotion, connect to the songs

that Earth only whispers in her

waters

​

​

WHILE THE PRETTY MUSIC PLAYED

for Jaco Pastorius

​

i hear echoes of everything lush 

          in the wilds of your sound
your genius straddles so many levels

          of consciousness, sounds strong
enough to free us from the hellish heft 
          of life, liberate us from ourselves 
that bass can trace every kind of karma 
    
you leap through time everywhere, merge
          soul-first into astral-beats 
blue whales speak to you in bass notes 
          when they rise to meet the sun  
this time, destiny waits at the door
          near the Midnight Bottle Store
foretelling parables for the yet un-damned 


i will not listen to the sounds of your dying heart 
while it sprawls dog-down in that alleyway instead 
of rising like a blackbird flying fearlessly in the moonlight 

 

* * *

​

An award-winning poet, fiction writer, and filmmaker, Sheila Smith McKoy is the recipient of the 2020 Muriel Craft Bailey Memorial Prize in poetry, and a Pulitzer and Pushcart nominated writer. She was editor of Obsidian: Literature in the African Diaspora for nine years, 2006-2015. In addition to The Bones Beneath, Smith McKoy has authored or edited several books, most recently including The Wisdom of Ifá: An Ancient Paradigm for the Twenty-First Century and Beyond (co-edited, 2025), Teaching Literature and Writing in Prisons (2023), Recovering the African Feminine Divine in Literature, the Arts, and Performing Arts: Yemonja Awakening (co-edited, 2020).

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