One turntable was all DJ Champ had. The fade was to wait.
Two big speaker box for the boom.
Two tweeters
hung like bees on wire above the front door.
Sacred hearted Jesus
Mister Clarence dancing to Lord Nelson’s ‘Night Train’, was the only glimpse we stole of him
in this motion.
With his head up and easy, smiling even,
holding out his glass of Whiteways of Whimple to the side so it don’t spill when he slide
and spin on his heel.
There were full women in the kitchen
smoking filterless Broadways and drinking Scotch straight. Tanty Ursula was young then, among them, strong
and long before her stroke,
Ursula had plenty verve.
She would stand unsolicited and sing to the room. Sing out with her tremulous voice.
Sing, ‘My Way’ or ‘Misty, sing ‘The Way We Were’, wavering between keys but upwards she drove,
into the wild arc
of her highest note.
Black history
Now, her aunt Zeen had been in Boston since 1972. Zeen’s blood was close to her skin.
She would throw her head back an laugh, blow smoke. Cuss hard and break a young man’s carapace.
She could drink hard rum and linger long after grog had beat up the competition.
She drank men silly, till they floated up and sighed.
Zeen would fry chicken by the bucket, curry a cast of river crabs,
soup up some bull foot soup — Fridays on Dorchester Avenue.
Her sons would bring their wives from New England.
Yankee life. Varsity sweaters. Plastic shoes and cheap perfume.
Zeen in Boston working as a nurse.
At night she working for the sanitation department But when Zeen threw a party, she would hire a DJ, And when music leggo — bram —
she would pull people up to dance.
Black history
Now, their mother
Ma, Nobelta Lezama,
was my great grand mother,
she died at 102
after outliving two husbands
after giving birth to eight children walking
8 miles from hillside to town
to sell mangoes in central market. Nobelta could slap harsh cards down
in late night gambling games.
She drank her coffee
black and strong
and knew herb trees by their first names She could see through skin to sickness and foretell things to come.
Born solid.
She did
conjure a spacecraft, they say,
from a calabash, and do this all
without Western belief in the afterlife
But from the root set in sweet mud.
Now, Ma Nobelta’s mother was Ma Marie,
Born of Black Africa
— historical mystery
must have been sometime
in 1870s, this was near after slavery And the village gave her their secrets for safekeeping,
to be unravelled through generations of Black history
black history

Other lyrics by Anthony Joseph:

A Juba For Janet

That dip Miss Janet dip down down in that dim room
bulk of hip and learned us how to dance the juba — the Belair — the limbo. And after this
Miss Janet felt faint an’ had …

An Afrofuturist Poem

I am
my mother’s son
son of the soil
son of the father
son of grandmother grandfather
great aunt and earth born running
born blue and knee high through fever grass
sun of …

Black History

One turntable was all DJ Champ had. The fade was to wait.
Two big speaker box for the boom. Two tweeters
hung like bees on wire above the front door. Sacred hearted Jesus …

Churches of Sound (The Benitez-Rojo)

In churches of sound
of the phonaesthetic bliss of our music
of black notes of codes
and modes of modal blues in one and two
in which the and is actually the groove — the …

Milwaukee & Ashland

I was standing on the corner
of Milwaukee and Ashland,
and all the substance of my breath could not hold me still
within the torrent.
In that moment of singularity
I had …