Joshua Bennett on Hype Machine
Posted by Marion Smallwood | Filed under Announcements
Support Excelano Project Alumnus Joshua Bennett by listening to his latest track: Don’t Let Me Go Feat. AmJay at http://hypem.com/track/1195451. Click the heart to the right of the title to favorite the song and help Josh climb his way up the Hype Machine charts!
Where I found Our Mother
Posted by Aysha El Shamayleh | Filed under Poetry
He found Eve by a motel,
smoking her first cigarette,
munching on an apple,
standing in high boots,
And filth.
She got in a car with him.
She was one woman, who
often replaced the apple with a dick,
and took pleasure in it like sin.
Asked him, “is your cum toxic?
I hear your pregnant women get nauseous often.”
She got close enough to catch his scent.
Noticed, men’s cologne smells like sex,
And wondered if its made that way
because men hesitate to spend on anything else.
He pushed his way up her shaved pussy,
And it burnt.
Called her Mamma,
as he urgently dug his way back into a womb.
His sweated face almost resembled a babe in tantrum-mode,
while he realized he is still an infant,
but nothing but a fringe fits anymore.
He came inside her,
like she was a house.
Never rung the door bell, claiming he did not know where it was.
But his wife had told him a thousand times
That it was right at her clitoris.
She had collapsed in a puddle of her puke in a public bathroom a few days afterwards.
The pregnancy test showed a plus sign.
She figured she was positive…
Happily pregnant with his twins,
Thought of naming one
“Garbage”,
in honor of a white trash heritage.
And the other
“Aids”,
who would get the best of both worlds –
A name that meant relief,
but when capitalized implied death. She thought it was deep,
so he’s the one she decided to keep.
Rest assured, death does brings relief to some.
She finally decided to dispose of the life the man had disposed inside of her.
Garbage cried for his Momma as the trashcan cradled him.
He cried loud, but with no sign of arms,
he grew quiet
and died.
She walked into the dark.
I had found her,
hitchhiking her way back to the motel,
munching on an apple,
headed back to where it had all begun.
One night in one city
Posted by Aysha El Shamayleh | Filed under Poetry
That evening the sun ducked its head between the wet and the bent thighs of hills.
With the dimmed down lights…
the city knew what it had to do.
Its residents hurried out of houses in glamorous colors,
shades,
suites,
dresses
and hair-does
to clubs, street corners, bars and pubs.
The city knew it had to make a noise.
It had to make a beat -
For the baby making,
For the booty shaking,
For Mr. Duncan, the drunkard on Orchard and Stanton, who dances out of his shoes,
For my blues.
As for the buildings on the hill,
you could see that the night had transformed dicks into light switches
Turned on and back off.
The blinking of bedrooms was proof of the heaving ecstasy that the sun had caused.
And so in the dim of this world,
On his balcony, a woman walked up to him.
Composing Jazz with her bare feet,
like a gypsy or my midnight heartache.
That night was a special one,
because there was no weight in this world but a see-through shirt on her back.
He pulled her in.
she swayed her low pitch against his upbeat,
Asked him to find his grip on her tempo.
She said, “tonight,
we should dance our cracked hearts into glory”.
He had nothing but memories of Nina Simone from the day before
and black coffee in his stomach,
Hell, he wanted to dance…
Man to woman,
because truth be told
no one but Gaye fans know how to put a quivering end to a debaucherous night behind the grapevine.
And so they danced themselves into dirt.
but there was time still…
There was time to get pealed, naked and sweet.
That night between the sheets,
he took her B sharps into his mouth like two pomegranates.
He told her “this is the end of Stevie Wonder,
because I might run my lips down your harmonica
But today we aint calling to say we love one another.”
She whispered to him in quavers;
“work your grandfather clock pendulum”
he said, “ I want my hands on your hourglass.
Lay your soul between my guitar strings,
And lets make something more everlasting than sweat.”
…And as the last orgasmic sand grain slipped through her frames
they ended,
intertwined on the cold floor like a treble clef.
roses are red, nigga
Posted by Marion Smallwood | Filed under Poetry, Print
did she curl around your fist, quiet,
obedient strands of hair under your fingernails.
you said real men can’t keep their hands clean.
was her weight submissive and pretty, dragging, wearing that lipstick,
looking like a girl i once knew.
was her throat soft and ready, did your hands fit around it.
was it a surprise, how did you ask her, did she say yes, did she scream.
you know–that’s legally binding in some states.
i promised not to look if he was hurting her
on the street, scaring her into a ball at the bottom of the steps.
i promised not to listen, not to intervene,
to hold my tongue.
but i said that i’d be very upset
and you said you would be too. you said you would be too.
could you see her lipstick peeling,
her palms open in surrender, her goose-flesh shaking.
did she tell you she loves you
without meaning it,
she didn’t mean it. you didn’t mean this.
she looks just like a girl i once knew.
