Four Poems
Crystal Joseph
africa(n) america(n)
how do you ache for a land that you have never lived in
never felt it squirm between your ribs
or have its air inflate your lungs
never touched the soil and had it
lodge underneath your fingernails
how do you mourn for something that
you have never held in your heart –
an ownership that exists in free papers
and dreams that bubble up from
the bottom of the atlantic ocean
The Ship’s Inventory
consists of:
100,000 broken brown bodies
10,000 prayers to the ocean
begging to be swallowed
1,000 souls diving to their demise
100 drunk white men swinging
from the starboard
10 weeks aboard a mass grave
1 retelling of history
island fog
these cobalt pools that turned clear in my hands
deemed this place a paradise
a heaven on earth, where foreigners run to
release their heartaches and forget
i cannot forget because my heartaches live here
nestled among the palm trees are dreams that
never got to grow to their fullest height
so that they too could sweep the clouds
instead they are mangled stumps
it never mattered how hot the sun was,
it was never enough to warm my father’s eyes
this monstrous sun beat down on our backs
until our unprotected skin began to peel
showing our coral coloured flesh
but this was paradise and we could all pretend to forget
while our scabs turned into scars
biography in Black
say atatiana jefferson pamela turner korryn gaines yvette smith miriam carey skelley frey darnisha harris malissa williams shantel davis rekia boyd aiyana stanley-jones tarika wilson kathryn johnston kendra james tyisha miller india kager natasha mckenna tanisha anderson aura rosser alesia thomas sharmel edwards shereese francis alberta spruill michelle cusseaux margaret mitchell kayla moore danetter daniels charleena chavon alexia christian mya hall meagan hockaday sheneque proctor pearlie golden gabriella nevarez sandra bland breonna taylor
if you made it this far then congratulations on surviving.
Crystal Joseph grew up in the sister island nation of Antigua and Barbuda, located in the Caribbean. She graduated from Rutgers University with a major in English and minor in Creative Writing. During her senior year, Crystal completed a Creative Writing Honors Thesis where she explored generational trauma as a result of slavery within different branches of the African Diaspora. She focused mainly on the Black experience within the United States as well as Post Colonial thought within the Caribbean. Crystal was the recipient for the 2020 Mitchell Adelman Award in Poetry and the 2021 Julia Carlie Memorial Prize in Poetry. She was named a Henry Rutgers Scholar and Paul Robeson Scholar and also received High Honors for her thesis. She plans to continue writing and hopes to have her first poetry collection published in the coming years. One day she hopes to return to Antigua & Barbuda and start a Non Profit Organization that focuses on expanding literacy and creativity within the island’s youth.