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Remica L. Bingham-Risher

Remica L. Bingham-Risher

Jun 01, 2014

Remica Bingham is sweet and smart. She is funny and serious. She is a professor, wife, mother and a radiant presence in the world of poetry. I do not know anyone who does not love Remica and her poetry. We were sisters in Atlantis with another friend ( Honoree ) but that is private. She drove from Norfolk to DC and back in one day to lift the world of public radio to a new height. Dan Murano and I are so happy with her work and her kindness to the world, that we wanted to share her. -- Grace Cavalieri

Remica L. Bingham-Risher earned an MFA from Bennington College, is a Cave Canem fellow and a member of the Affrilachian Poets. Her first book, Conversion (Lotus Press, 2006), won the Naomi Long Madgett Poetry Award and was published by Lotus Press. Her second book, What We Ask of Flesh, was published by Etruscan Press in February 2013. She is the Director of Writing and Faculty Development at Old Dominion University and resides in Norfolk, VA with her husband and children. She is currently finalizing a book of interviews entitled Blood on the Page?African-American Poets from the Black Arts Movement to the Neo-Urban Modernist Movement: Interviews, Essays and Poems. For more information on her work and upcoming events, please visit her website.


Missing You

Everybody sings it. It can be hollow
juked or spare. I grew up there
in the middlearth of music.
All along they used it and I was
 
unaware, until the reel-to-reel resurfaced and my voice—
squeaking, grainy, blare—mimicking Diana, rooted
out the heart of the heart, Tell me why the road turns?
No one had the answer. We were a convoy
 
in the midst of melancholy and joy. Little in-betweens,
before and after the final mix, this is where
the art lives, the open of the full mouth kiss.
 
My parents did this. They loved each other.
They burdened me. Our history now—its brass and clang—
something like a crier’s flame, a burning knot I cannot name.

Wildflower

What’s held in the blooming heart—smoke and irises, abalone shells
   the once-was home left opened and swept clean,
       planted rows tended and harvested
              fat with ripening seeds,
         death of one body, birth of another,
       resting place and starting line
     where the runners tuck and wait for the gun,
 the volley of the bullet set free?

Baby Be Mine

The song is honeymint
on your tongue. In your sleep
 
you answer my questions—
There’ll be no more mountains
 
and give commands—
Make sweet love this way.
 
Blind root worker, you spin
into my hollows, half-dreaming
 
the morning’s music
making turnstiles of us as I wake.
 
And when good sense plagues me—
fear of what could be—
 
you are still beside me, singing
As long as we believe.

 


As Mary

When God says    Move
 
you recognize the miraculous
annunciation    the angel’s voice
 
You’ve been praying
haven’t you? To be duly used?
 
He sends the man who takes you
as you are    and now this:
 
what you’ll briefly hold as kin,
often but never fully your own—
 
Forsake the gifts if you want
the angel warns    see if they’ll come again

Equal Measure

Daughters teach you
everything. I know this
 
but still ask my husband if he can
braid my hair
 
because he’s been away
from his daughter
 
nine months now
and is sick with idleness.
 
We are in the kitchen,
I’ve just returned from a trip—
 
three more nights he’s learned
to live alone—
 
and my hair is one large wet mess
nothing like hers in the school picture
 
after hours of clips
and combs and care.
 
Just as he has always said it,
he says Yes while I part
 
two equal measures, then condition
the length, make it easier to tame.
 
He stands beside me, patient
as the waiting season.
 
When he suffers the mass,
fashioning thick plaits, he says
 
lean and please
and some words in between but
 
I am taken up by the tenderness
of him, his hands
 
most like the hands of familiar
women, learned and unafraid.
 
In bed, we dream of different things—
I am covered in a flurry
 
of his warm skin. All night
he is collecting dolls,
 
beads, little shoes;
he is worn thin
 
with searching.
In the morning,
 
after I’ve given him
so little room
 
to sleep, I find the plaits
have survived my battling,
 
my body at rest only when pressed
in odd curvature against his.
 
His work is something like a miracle
the way it’s lasted
 
and, as I haven’t learned yet
to bear all his undoing,
 
I comb out the plaits but leave
their waves and impressions—
 
my hair, full as when I was a girl,
my heart, filled with his sorrows.

Ways to Please a Five-year-old Superhero

Don’t call him The Blur. Do teach him to spell it.
Play the fastest music you can find,
watch him as he dances.
Tell him he’s a master
and no one’s close to keeping up.
Explain fish scales, shadows,
ocean waves, and underwear
when he asks about their purpose.
Kiss his father in the kitchen
at the sink. Kiss both his cheeks
next. Say, You were right
that time, when he argues with his sister.
Buy toy cars in red and yellow metal.
Leave them in a shiny bag
on his bed. Let him sit
in the ‘man chair’ upstairs,
though it often swallows him when he rocks.
When he gives you dandelions
pretend they are irises.
When he misses the toilet
applaud him for making it
to the bathroom.
If he wants to climb
in your lap, all arms and eyelashes,
give him a hand up; don’t squirm
when his elbow skewers your ribs.
Make him drumsticks for dinner,
hide the vegetables in the rice.
He’ll say You’re the best
cooker I know if you’ve done it right.
Let him run in the house.
Try not to yell about steps and corners.
When he asks Am I good
at being good? Tell him
though he’s wiggling from his seat
with stained hands and shirttail wagging
he’s the strongest, he’s the fastest, he’s the best.

© Remica L. Bingham-Risher, all rights reserved

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