For David
at Baptist Hospital
Each week, you tell me you want to write
but erasing is what you do. Your fingers
rushing across the white lined paper, rubbing
marks away as a Dad brushing
grass from his young son’s jeans or hair after missing
a football, midair. Tell me, are you the son or the father?
Or do you feel as neither, here, surrounded
by strangers poking and pulling
you
for blood while I sit with the poise and beauty
of poetry folded on my lap, across from it all –
the tray of half eaten food, the roar
of monitors speaking for you?
I see you wanting to write though erasing is more
of what you do. Holding my breath like you,
needles approaching your arm, I am waiting
for a word you will find safe.
Any word
you say is fit to stay. But if you must
brush it away, let it be
one I can catch for you
midair.
- Jacinta V. White
(What Matters, Jacar Press, 2013)
at Baptist Hospital
Each week, you tell me you want to write
but erasing is what you do. Your fingers
rushing across the white lined paper, rubbing
marks away as a Dad brushing
grass from his young son’s jeans or hair after missing
a football, midair. Tell me, are you the son or the father?
Or do you feel as neither, here, surrounded
by strangers poking and pulling
you
for blood while I sit with the poise and beauty
of poetry folded on my lap, across from it all –
the tray of half eaten food, the roar
of monitors speaking for you?
I see you wanting to write though erasing is more
of what you do. Holding my breath like you,
needles approaching your arm, I am waiting
for a word you will find safe.
Any word
you say is fit to stay. But if you must
brush it away, let it be
one I can catch for you
midair.
- Jacinta V. White
(What Matters, Jacar Press, 2013)
To Mocksville
“Around 1824, Jesse Clement had quite a plantation that covered a large portion of what is now South Mocksville. This was the year he built a new residence in keeping with his station in life and the tradition of well-to-do Southern people. It is a house that still stands today.” -- Mocksville Enterprise-Record, May 26, 1967.
Your unnamed roads and unpaved paths
stuffed gravel in my throat;
hid the stories behind my voice
I would cough up the following autumns.
Nights I would cry in my dreams
of hearing crows and seeing ghosts.
Years later who knew I would return--
an adult looking for birthrights.
Surprised to discover bamboo roots
growing like orphans on acres
surrounding my grandparents’ home
three miles from the plantation they never spoke of--
its name at the tip of our family tree.
I've returned to find your land nearly impotent.
Compromised tree limbs too weak
to direct where I should walk, search, pray.
A tumultuous tide rises within me as I stand
bruised and naked on your bloodstained back.
I weep seeing you buried underneath secrets and modernity:
no monuments stand to tell the truth,
no stones left for me to gather,
no rivers running for me to dip
my shame and regret.
Your roots spread alongside railroad tracks
wedded to knee-high grass.
My breath remains evidence of a previous union;
and it is I who want to be taken in your arms,
admitted to that there is some kind of love you hold
for me and from me.
Until then, your bamboo will never grow as high as the crow flies.
- Jacinta V. White
(Press 53 Open Awards Anthology, Press 53, 2008)
“Around 1824, Jesse Clement had quite a plantation that covered a large portion of what is now South Mocksville. This was the year he built a new residence in keeping with his station in life and the tradition of well-to-do Southern people. It is a house that still stands today.” -- Mocksville Enterprise-Record, May 26, 1967.
Your unnamed roads and unpaved paths
stuffed gravel in my throat;
hid the stories behind my voice
I would cough up the following autumns.
Nights I would cry in my dreams
of hearing crows and seeing ghosts.
Years later who knew I would return--
an adult looking for birthrights.
Surprised to discover bamboo roots
growing like orphans on acres
surrounding my grandparents’ home
three miles from the plantation they never spoke of--
its name at the tip of our family tree.
I've returned to find your land nearly impotent.
Compromised tree limbs too weak
to direct where I should walk, search, pray.
A tumultuous tide rises within me as I stand
bruised and naked on your bloodstained back.
I weep seeing you buried underneath secrets and modernity:
no monuments stand to tell the truth,
no stones left for me to gather,
no rivers running for me to dip
my shame and regret.
Your roots spread alongside railroad tracks
wedded to knee-high grass.
My breath remains evidence of a previous union;
and it is I who want to be taken in your arms,
admitted to that there is some kind of love you hold
for me and from me.
Until then, your bamboo will never grow as high as the crow flies.
- Jacinta V. White
(Press 53 Open Awards Anthology, Press 53, 2008)
Publications
"False Door of Ni-ankh-Snefru (Called Fefi)," is in the anthology, You Are The River, published by the NC Museum of Art, 2021
A small collection of poems entitled, "A Verse in 10 Moves," inspired by Black female choreographers was commissioned by the National Center for Choreography, 2021
"In Silence I See," appears in the anthology, Crossing the Rift, NC Poets on 9/11 & Its Aftermath, 2021
"state of me" is published in the online edition of Hoot Review.
"To Damascus" is published in English and German in The Transnational: A Bilingual Literary Magazine.
See two of Jacinta's poems in Change Seven Magazine.
"Genesis: A Tribute to Rain" was recently published online by This. Magazine.
Camel City Dispatch
Check out this interview posted on WordMothers about what Jacinta is currently working on, including Snapdragon: A Journal of Art & Healing.
"Early at the Arboretum" published in O. Henry Magazine.
"Lands We Travel" from the current collection Jacinta is working on about historically African-American churches and cemeteries was published by Blackberry: A Magazine.
Jacinta was the feature for the Saturday Poetry Series' "As It Out to Be." Check out the poem and the editor's critique here.
(video below) Watch Jacinta read one of her poems, "Nothing More," at a Writers Group of the Triad event.
Read two of Jacinta's poems, "Between Minutes" (p. 18) and "Aware" (p. 39) in Typoetic!
Listen to Jacinta's latest interview with Frank Stasio, host of WUNC Public Radio's "The State of Things," and as she reads a poem from her upcoming collection.
Jacinta's poem, "Standing in Courage: for Ferguson, MO, and Everywhere Else, USA," was published by The New Voice News.
Jacinta's poem, "Communion Wine," is featured in Prime Number Magazine.
A small collection of poems entitled, "A Verse in 10 Moves," inspired by Black female choreographers was commissioned by the National Center for Choreography, 2021
"In Silence I See," appears in the anthology, Crossing the Rift, NC Poets on 9/11 & Its Aftermath, 2021
"state of me" is published in the online edition of Hoot Review.
"To Damascus" is published in English and German in The Transnational: A Bilingual Literary Magazine.
See two of Jacinta's poems in Change Seven Magazine.
"Genesis: A Tribute to Rain" was recently published online by This. Magazine.
Camel City Dispatch
Check out this interview posted on WordMothers about what Jacinta is currently working on, including Snapdragon: A Journal of Art & Healing.
"Early at the Arboretum" published in O. Henry Magazine.
"Lands We Travel" from the current collection Jacinta is working on about historically African-American churches and cemeteries was published by Blackberry: A Magazine.
Jacinta was the feature for the Saturday Poetry Series' "As It Out to Be." Check out the poem and the editor's critique here.
(video below) Watch Jacinta read one of her poems, "Nothing More," at a Writers Group of the Triad event.
Read two of Jacinta's poems, "Between Minutes" (p. 18) and "Aware" (p. 39) in Typoetic!
Listen to Jacinta's latest interview with Frank Stasio, host of WUNC Public Radio's "The State of Things," and as she reads a poem from her upcoming collection.
Jacinta's poem, "Standing in Courage: for Ferguson, MO, and Everywhere Else, USA," was published by The New Voice News.
Jacinta's poem, "Communion Wine," is featured in Prime Number Magazine.
To learn more about Jacinta's books Resurrecting the Bones, published by Press 53, 2019, and broken ritual, Finishing Line Press, 2012, click here.
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