section header: collage with text "2020 Pandemic Blues"

Angela Lockhart-Aronoff

Whispers

listen here to what we be telling you

now all these oceans and seas be rising up

old winds be flying back over the passage

hauling that dust of the restless spirits

may we ancestors’ circle be unbroken

with what was passed down to you born in you

we worked the mojo the spirit for you

so listen good now while you keep inside

it’s time to rid yourself of that hiding mask

whispering wind of fear in the back yard

a sea drifting haint looking for trash to eat

May we ancestors’ circle be unbroken

If that something unseen whispers your name

don’t breathe a word don’t you open your mouth

a past was born in you passed down to you

we worked the mojo the spirit for you

may you survive these storm’s new elements

may we ancestors’ circle be unbroken

from these viruses and flesh-eating bacteria

and all these seasons and their growing rage

Earth Mother

have mercy on our poor souls

Here comes them rains

Yellow Boots Zuihitsu

Fall 2019. 5:45 am. Woke up too late to journal this morning when outside

the kitchen window a day clean rising yellow sun as I listen

to the Zuihitsu movement of wind all-up inside my head

Harry Bellefonte singing “Daylight coming, and I want to go home”

6:11 am. My morning grown-woman-warrior routine begins I shower off

the night sweats with Rachel Maddow on the iPad propped up behind

the bathroom faucet as I apply my age appropriate war paint over the sink

7:20 am.I lock my black painted apartment door turn around and notice

a pair of little-canary yellow rain boots outside apartment number 2-B

little yellow plastic boots laying on their sides abandoned for weeks

I head on down the marble 1920s postwar staircase past each black

painted apartment door is a story five stories per floor some stories I know

most I don’t as I turn to continue down the third & second flights

Landing on the first floor stepping out the front door skipping down the three-

step stoop that faces the black tree lined park All my Dad ever wanted

to see was the northern fall colors of dying green red and yellow leaves

And as I descend into the 15th Street subway stop headed uptown towards

the next Ground Zero I take note that my old brown working boots

need shining and as old as I am I still miss my Mom and Dad

Wearing this mask Wearing these plastic gloves

Keeping the distance

“Angela, baby, when you coming home?”

Angela Lockhart-Aronoff is a poet, quilter and behavioral health subject matter expert for New York State with a career that began as an addiction counselor in New York City. Angela began writing at age eight, raised in a military family that traveled the United States and Europe. A Geechee-identified African American via her multi-cultural legacy of Mississippi and the Sea Island Corridor of South Carolina, Georgia and Florida. A Children’s Theatre graduate from Florida State and two York University master’s degrees in Educational Theatre and Rehabilitation Counseling. Angela, and her late husband, founded Living Lessons Inc., a non-profit educational theatre company, featured in the New York Times, Glamour Magazine and the book Mega Trends for Women. Angela’s published poems live in two anthologies and chapbook entitled What is it You Think You See? Rice and Cotton is a poetry book in the making.

@angela.lockhartwriting

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