From the current issue: Aubrey Barnes. "Black Like Me"

Let me tell you a fact about myself
That almost everyone I meet feels the need to remind me
I am black
I’m so black that I make Micheal Blackson not seem so
Black, son
I’m so black that in a game of laser tag
I should be permitted to keep my
Eyes open and and teeth showing
Otherwise i’d be cheating
I’m so black that you would swear that i’m a vampire
Because when i’m in photos with no flash
All you see floating clothes
I’m so black that when i’m out for a run
People look at me in jaw dropping awe
Speechless that I’m moving so fast
They mistaken me for the Flash
But, he’s a white superhero
So that’d never happen
Instead they look at me in grandiose curiosity
Asking
“Sir, are you from Africa?”
I’m so black that when I mention that I like to watch basketball
People roll their eyes
To a point that i’d swear their brain rolled right along with them
But when I go to games in cities such as Geneseo
You would swear that I walked into the Gymnasium in my underwear
The way people silently over stare
At
The odd black man at a basketball game
He must be here for a girl
Or to cause some trouble
Maybe we should make eye contact
When he doesn’t make eye contact
But if he makes eye contact
When we make eye contact
He’ll knock our eye contacts
Out
Let’s just not make any contact
I am so black
That my teammate in college was stricken with fear at my appearance
But when he heard that my speech was “politically correct”
And my posture stood erect
He breathed out in great calm
Because it was evident that I was
White
So white that I make Carleton look like Tupac
So white that I mistaken Malcolm X’s name
For Malcolm the Tenth
I am so white that my all white friend, from an all white college
In an all white city told me
“You aren’t like the black people on TV”
When I go to the gym to play basketball
People run to me for a challenge
And leave victor
With an easy scored 21
To my hard toiled 16
Saying “you must not have inherited the genes”
But when it comes to these sixteens
I'm sweet like i'm sixteen
Addictive like nicotine
Spittin fire like kerosene
And you know what friends say to me?
“Oh my gosh, you actually are black!”
So I am black
But I am White
Or maybe people are just color blind
Shutter blinds closed to any sunny possibility of a no label society
Globular organs shrouded with stereotypical presumptions
Assumptions derived from contrived corruptions
Making these ideas of “acting black” and “acting white” alright
But it’s not alright if you’re white acting black
Or black acting white
Well it is okay
Just know we’re going to give you a hard time
When you forgot your belt at home\
And your pants a little
We’re going to say you’re dressing black
But when its around your waist and nicely fit
We’re going to then say you’re dressing ‘white’
Kind of like how Pharisees
Those religious leaders you hate
Judged good and evil by what they perceived with their eyes
Instead of looking into the heart that lies
When Eloheim said there is no Jew nor Gentile
Nor male or female
I believe if he stood in the midst of our color coded community
He would say there is no black nor white
I’m exactly what I was destined to be
An oddity and comedy
Laughable because giggling only makes sense of something that doesn’t make sense
A black acting white
A white acting black
An oxymoron prone to give minds
Prone to labels panic attacks
I mean when was the last time
You went to an ice cream parlor
Anticipating all flavors to be same?
That’d be lame
Just like a world full of agents
Trapped in a Matrix
The Neos bring change
Something out the norm
So i’ll forever say i’m
The paint splashes in a padded room
That can’t be cleaned by swiffer, rag or a broom
I am what I am because I Am said I am
So you see
It's not that I am whiter than you
Or you're blacker than me
But we're the same
Human beings bearing the same beautiful image
So in the end
I’m white like you
And you’re black like me


Watch Aubrey perform this poem.

New Issue Cover, Featured Authors, and Samplers

NEW ISSUE COMING SOON!

We are finalizing ads for the magazine and sending out writer's contracts soon and will have a new issue out hopefully within a month. Featured in this issue will be poetry, fiction, and nonfiction/academic work by:

X. H. Collins
Cody Sanderson
Sal Marici
Aubrey Barnes
Melanie Hanson
Farah Marklevits
Margie Mejia Caraballo 
Thomas McKay
Laura Winton
Misty Urban
Kenneth Darland
Michael Thomas Kelly
Megan Lee




We will also feature photos from our participation in 100,000 Poets for Change from 2014 and 2016, from our Coin-Op semi-monthly open mic, and some Exquisite Corpses written around town.

We want to thank our advertisers so far, The Artery, Theo's Java Club, Spellbound, and the Midwest Writing Center for their contributions. We want to thank Quad City Arts for their ArtsDollars grant, Neighborhood Laundromat for letting us use their space for the Coin-Op Readings, and Western Illinois University for their participation in 100,000 Poets for Change as well as copying and posting our color flyers for Coin-Op.

YOUR NAME HERE

Want to be on the Karawane blog, and conseqently on our FB page too? Then you need to submit some work to us! Quad City Writers, the deadline is December 31st and we need to see some more work from you all! Send us the most experimental writing you have. The work itself needn't have been performed in pubic yet, just so long as you have stood up the mic and read somewhere (or everywhere) before. If you haven't -- it is supposed to be warm this weekend. Grab some relatives after holiday dinner and go out to the park and DECLAIM your poetry to the world!

Keep looking to the Facebook page as well. Karawane, Garage 3, the Figge Art Museum, and the Midwest Writing Center all will have more opportunities for you to read your work publicly! Contact Rozz Toxx or Theo's and set up a reading and then let us know. We will be there! With bells on to accompany you! =8-)

For those of you outside the Quad Cities, we will be accepting submissions soon as well from you!

When a River Floods -- J. Otis Powell!

This was originally published in Issue 9. To read the whole thing, check out our website at http://karawane.homestead.com.

I will be publishing more things that we have previously featured in the magazine to lead up to our deadline and hopefully inspire you all!

__________________________________________________

It began as a trickle; like the headwaters of the Mississippi from Lake Itasca in the Minnesota North Woods, it swells, it deepens and it varies in width like the river running south to the Gulf of Mexico. A Being in Motion was flowing much like a river and subject to, as a river is, changes in weather like the fury of hurricanes, the deluge of thunder storms and the imminent danger of water overflowing its banks. When rivers flood it’s considered a natural disaster and Adamas was realizing that this production held the potential for a cataclysmic destiny as well. As a director Adamas had spent his career managing disasters and he knew what he needed to do to keep this one from becoming a sight in shambles. He needed to reign everything in from where it was to a more controlled level of chaos and wrap it inside time units like television segments.

The production featured improvised music, dance, spoken word and projected images happening simultaneously, but this was not the flat surface of television, this was live multidimensional space. A video could be projected behind live performers and prerecorded audio could fill another part of the soundscape. Adamas talked with Keita and Jamila who were the directors of the house band about punctuating the show instead of filling it with music and they could see the benefits of abbreviations rather than blowing full out all the time. “Only fill the space if its empty” Adamas told them. “And there will be plenty of empty space, you dig?”

Aquanetta’s words kept passing through his brain, ”it’s the same story, everybody is telling the same story.” He could let go of his need to follow the story line or to employ a literal interpretation of the impressions expressed in the performance. He could let go of his need to understand how everything fit together and simply fit everything together. He remembered an event he produced in Birmingham, Alabama in recognition of the life of Malcolm X; nothing was working like he planned, everybody had a different concept, a different message, and a different truth to convey. For some the story was about Malcolm X: a minister for the Nation of Islam, for others it was a story about the prison education of Detroit Red and for still others it was the spiritual transformation of
El-Hajj Malik el-Shabazz. It was a grassroots people powered production and grassroots productions have the precariousness of passion and prevarication; no one knows what’s going to happen because no one is in control and the story changes constantly because stories are organisms.

Realizing that he was not in control was liberating and it allowed him to relax and go with the flow of an eclectic montage of independent happenings that Aquanetta called a show. From the first scene, which was an ensemble of dancers moving in front of a projection of a waving body of water to primal sounds of the waves lapping, slapping then human sounds of moaning and sighing and grunting with live instrumental music and poetry. It was too much and now he understood that was the point of it. Layers of meaning braided together was like his life, like the Mississippi, like the story, like the
show itself; everything happened simultaneously and without hard separations in-between.

Keita wouldn’t stop playing his instruments. He and Jamila set up camp downstage left and were working on something all through rehearsals. “Ya’ll just go on now, don’t mind us. We gon’ be playing all through this thang.” Then he put a horn in his mouth, looked at his wife, nodded and went on. This obsessive behavior inspired the dancers to move constantly as well: on the stage, in the rows between the seats, in the dressing rooms, in the hallways… A BEING IN MOTION was taking shape as a subconscious idea that became a foundation for every aspect of the production. Constant motion and perpetual sound was the primary metaphor and everything else was expressed through that reality. Occasionally Adamas would need to gesture to the band to hush or to hold up a minute while he made something perfectly clear to other artists in the production, but of course nothing was perfectly clear. Everything was a different shade of blues.

Jamila integrated Aquanetta’s words with her own as a foundation for abstract vocal impressions. She invented music according to emotional expressions that bubbled up from somewhere deep inside her. Her expressions were from somewhere deeper than she could articulate but shallow enough to release and move on. Adamas decided to loop the phrase “stories are ever after” and play it back at particular moments in the production to remind everybody that it’s all about the story. Once the story began to flow it went to places no one expected it to go and it stayed there until it felt like moving on again.

Fundraising for a new issue!!

It has been soooooo long since we have published an issue of Karawane. I'm starting to get back into artistic pursuits and I feel like I finally have the energy to do an issue again. With websites like Kickstarter and Indiegogo, you can fundraise for things like money to actually put out an issue, for promotion, etc. I also need a couple of months to edit the magazine, put out calls for manuscripts, and things that I just cannot do while working 4 jobs! So toward that end, I am launching a fundraising campaign on Indiegogo. Please consider donating and if you can't donate, please forward this campaign on to other people who might be able to donate! I will put out a call for manuscripts probably in a month or two. We will also likely be looking for readers/an editorial board. We will put out a call on the blog and on our FB page. Your humble editrix, Fluffy

Ira's World, Compromised by David Christopher LaTerre

In this German bar in Minneapolis with more dark beers than light there’s sushi a la carte & cell phones on the bar. I can’t get used to it. The bus boys swarm around our humble sniff-in, looking bony & coy. Outside there are agro children-of-hippies slacking heavenward; a little before suppertime/waning Happy Hour …the day’s business doled out as anecdotal. There’s no TV thank Ghod. There’s no Hooters waitresses; more like a James Brown’s Man’s Man’s Man’s Man’s Man’s World.org where you won’t see any goat cheese or dolmas. You won’t see any Miami Vice casual wear. & Gohd to thank: I guess. Is weltsmertz a German word or a Yiddish word? The old guys talk & the women get bored. It’s no longer a world of men … drink is the mediocre equalizer/stave off the gun

Issue 8, 2003: He Had by Jennifer Triton

He Had

Jennifer Triton

no rhythm at all, but i
still sing his eyes like
jazz in my head, an
unstoppable blue, he was
perfectly sky in my
cloudy grey day, he was
sharp as angles, as
sweet as cider & warm
like sunset on brick, he was
cayenne pepper, the
terraced French Quarter,
all voodoo and Miles
rippling thru me- jazz
in my head, he was
mine, in my head he was
sharp with those eyes that
cut me wide, open I was,
honest I was, all angles
and sky he was
unstoppable blue, it was
sharp and unspoken this
bleeding between us this
jazz.

Leigh Herrick, Summer 1998: Poem for Judy Chicago

Poem for Judy Chicago

Leigh Herrick

I understand why the plates -- each
its own horizon, reaching across the dinner table --
And I understand the sexuality of shapes --
the point that these are women's plates, reflective,
each, its proper satisfaction reaching within itself,
announcing its presence, who it is, and who it speaks to --
at least in many of us -- and in you --
And I understand the pulse of expression,
the wave of art embracing the hand the soul
that insists on its existence
lets it move
sets it fee
lets it say it's here.
I understand why the plates, the table --
How very thoughtful to invite us all to dine
on the accomplishments of our predecessors.
Here, to come, to eat and never fill, to feed
without a single chew -- I understand necessity --
And I understand how, quietly, our bodies are the silent link,
still, to our grandmothers' china,
how the cups, saucers, and stemware of genetics and history,
of politics and culture, bear, inherently, our losses and
our gains.
I understand the bodies tied to life, Artemis unfurling
the umbilical flecks found within our ancestors' pottery.
There's fortitude in this communion. I understand
The Dinner Party.
Tied to the tide, swollen, swollen the soul of art.
We eat, drink what we are.
And in the long, tall halls that lead to the showing,
the talk is low beneath our energies.
We enjoy this supper of sounds
until, at last, all Heaven is astir, and all the angels
bent in whisper
that even God is jealous.