Althea Romeo-Mark
Brief Biography and poems from The Stories of Immigrants for Poets of the World. As a child of generations of immigrants and a victim of a civil war, I am always fascinated by the mitigating causes of the journey immigrants make, whether, driven by war, natural catastrophes or whether driven by the desire to improve their economic lot.
Brief Biography Althea Romeo-Mark
Born in Antigua, West Indies, Althea Romeo-Mark is an educator and internationally published writer who grew up in St. Thomas, US Virgin Islands. She has lived and taught in St. Thomas, Virgin Islands, USA, Liberia (1976-1990), London, England (1990-1991), and in Switzerland since 1991.
She taught at the University of Liberia (1976-1990). She is a founding member of the Liberian Association of Writers (LAW) and is the poetry editor for Seabreeze: Journal of Liberian Contemporary Literature. She was awarded the Marguerite Cobb McKay Prize by The Caribbean Writer in June, 2009 for short story “Bitterleaf, (set in Liberia).” If Only the Dust Would Settle is her last poetry collection.
Published work in 2014 include “Unwanted Visitors,” and “Small Island Deprivations,” in Tongues of the Ocean, special feature on Antiguan Writers, Winter, 2014. Fitting into One’s Skin,” A review of Joanne Hillhouse’s novel, Oh Gad! in the Antigua and Barbuda Review of Books, summer 2014, “A Story of Immigrants,” personal essay, The Caribbean Writer, Volume 28, Autumn 2014; Poems for the Hazara: An Anthology and Collaborative Poem (multi-lingual), ed. Kamran Mir Hazar, Winter, 2014; several poems and an essay in WomanSpeak: A journal of writing and Art by Caribbean Women. Ed. Lynn Sweeting, Vol.7, 2013-14. She has been guest poets at the International Poetry Festival of Medellin, Colombia and the Kistrech International Poetry Festival, Kissi, Kenya.
More publishing history can be found at her blogsite:www.aromaproductions.blogspot.com
The poems below reflect my attempt to get into the marrow of their ordeals.
We Do Not Cry For Meat
Yesterday we ate rice and palm oil.
Today we are eating rice and palm oil.
Tomorrow we will eat rice and palm oil.
We eye our bloated bellies
in the shadow of the kitchen fire,
and though not old enough
pretend we are with child,
pretend our fallen teeth will grow,
pretend our limbs are fat
can bear our large tummies
but we wobble when we walk
and do not cry for meat
for the dry land has snatched
our cattle and left us only bones.
© 29.03.10 Althea Mark-Romeo
Published in Dirtcakes (www.dirtcakes.org)
Uninvited
She can’t say no
to armed hitchhikers
in military uniforms
when they wave her down.
She could speed up
and feel the hail of bullets
slicing through the car frame,
piercing her body.
She wouldn’t live to tell the story.
So she stops and smiles,
pretends to be polite,
even though she could be one
minute away from becoming a ghost.
All four climb in.
Guns, pointing perilously out windows,
gape at fleeting scenery.
Stone-faced soldiers stare
straight ahead as if on a
special mission.
She feels her knees
wobble under her skirt.
Her mind in overdrive,
she sees her body
like a large rice sack
lying on the roadside
next to firewood,
raped, mutilated, lifeless.
The voice beside her
cracks the silence,
interrupts her deathly vision.
“Stop, we getting down here, ma.”
From Check Points and Curfews © Althea Mark-Romeo 11.06. 2009
www.liberiaseabreezejournal.com
At the Mercy of Gods
We come in waves.
Our boats, tiny specks
on dark, fathomless oceans.
Driven away by devouring drought,
scattered by quakes, typhoons, cyclones, wars,
we flee, fish in a storm.
Propelled by dreams,
we would walk on water
if miracles could be bought.
We are swallowed
by sea gods demanding sacrifices.
Our dreams are coveted by
Agwé, Osiris, Poseidon
who wish to conquer man and land.
Do the gods conspire?
Jealous Wind and Sea pillage our crops
withhold rain, wake Vulcan, fan his flames.
Belligerent Mars whispers in man’s ear,
demands he bathes in his brother’s blood.
Gods cackle at fleeing men.
Ants in their eyes,
they set howling death upon us.
Our exhausted Creator sleeps.
© Althea Mark-Romeo
Streetsweeper
In this haven I clean paths in parks, sweep streets.
Red stains splatter the ground
where berries fell after last night’s storm.
They are not the blood smears
of brothers accused of betrayal.
Hear-say alone is enough
to crush bones back home.
I joyfully sweep up berry seeds.
They are not broken fingers, or toes.
I wash the walkway, breathe in unpolluted air.
It is free of gasoline fumes spewed
by military trucks heading to frontier towns
to crush the voices of discontent.
My heart dances with joy
at the sight of red stains, not blood.
© Althea Romeo-Mark 11.10. 10
Off the Coast, Winter, 2011 www.off-the-coast.com
Brief Biography Althea Romeo-Mark
Born in Antigua, West Indies, Althea Romeo-Mark is an educator and internationally published writer who grew up in St. Thomas, US Virgin Islands. She has lived and taught in St. Thomas, Virgin Islands, USA, Liberia (1976-1990), London, England (1990-1991), and in Switzerland since 1991.
She taught at the University of Liberia (1976-1990). She is a founding member of the Liberian Association of Writers (LAW) and is the poetry editor for Seabreeze: Journal of Liberian Contemporary Literature. She was awarded the Marguerite Cobb McKay Prize by The Caribbean Writer in June, 2009 for short story “Bitterleaf, (set in Liberia).” If Only the Dust Would Settle is her last poetry collection.
Published work in 2014 include “Unwanted Visitors,” and “Small Island Deprivations,” in Tongues of the Ocean, special feature on Antiguan Writers, Winter, 2014. Fitting into One’s Skin,” A review of Joanne Hillhouse’s novel, Oh Gad! in the Antigua and Barbuda Review of Books, summer 2014, “A Story of Immigrants,” personal essay, The Caribbean Writer, Volume 28, Autumn 2014; Poems for the Hazara: An Anthology and Collaborative Poem (multi-lingual), ed. Kamran Mir Hazar, Winter, 2014; several poems and an essay in WomanSpeak: A journal of writing and Art by Caribbean Women. Ed. Lynn Sweeting, Vol.7, 2013-14. She has been guest poets at the International Poetry Festival of Medellin, Colombia and the Kistrech International Poetry Festival, Kissi, Kenya.
More publishing history can be found at her blogsite:www.aromaproductions.blogspot.com
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