When was the last time you felt the warm scalp of a woman Run your fingers through her hair Twisted her natural locks through your fingers Or walked your fingers through the rows of braids Just like walking through the fields of corn When did you see the true beauty of your African Woman? Or…
Born To Gain or To Suffer
Grandmother! Our sage of our grandmother gathered us Beneath the big oak tree On a very beautiful night She began to sing: Born to gain or Born to suffer Born to gain or Born to suffer She began to utter to us: Great men are sons of good men Whose hearts are walls Weak men…
Nya Ku Toc
It’s sarcastic how girls at seventeen, Who should have been singing, Baba black sheep or father Abraham, Are singing songs like, He has played me, he has played me. Trashed my heart, took my virginity. And so forth, and so on. And, and you wonder where kids learn songs. This poem was inspired by…
The Man We Married
They say good girls go bad ‘cause bad guys don’t treat them right A good woman is as scarce as a dog’s tears And I remember Marriage was never meant to be a fight but a period to garnish our lives I hate that I once loved but now I detest But please don’t judge…
Peace Be Still
Keyword: Ignite There are times when I could start a riot when I actually want peace Peace be still Peace be even more still for the day is coming Where we shall not long to be united but be one Or at the very least we can hope And maybe this will be our dawn…
Silence
Silence shall not Calm the waters nor free us. Silence shall not Prosecute nor stop them. Silence shall imprison us Enslave our souls. Silence shall tie our hands While they strip off our clothes Please their hands in our lions. And even then Silence shall not Let us moan in ecstasy. Link to the Italian…
I Am
I am Mixed Race, Half Caste, Half Breed and Colored. Any way you look at it His blood mixed with her blood Mixed with their blood To make our blood. And now all that blood runs through my children’s Tiny beautiful veins. We are the New bloods. African Bloods. We were colonized and reorganized yet…
Jambula tree
When Sylvie and I are six we eat jambula till our tongues turn indigo then we travel home with night licking our heels. In the morning, our foreheads still anointed in violet blessings, we twine our stick-arms around its branches and stuff banana fibre dolls in the hollows of its roots. We swaddle make-believe babies…
Roberta Turkson – Robbie Ajjuah Fantini
Roberta Turkson’s career in poetry started in 2011, as a way to drive the pain off her chest, after failing to fulfil the fondest dream of having her own traditional Ghanaian restaurant in Nashville. “With lots of time on my hands and pain in my heart, I took to writing which turned out to be…