My first sale!

Hello everyone!  Hope your week is going well.  I just want to give a shout out to my great friend and mentor, Vanesssa Brantley Newton of Ooh La La Design Studio for being the first to purchase my collection of poems, Affirmations: and Other Poems.  Vanessa is a children's illustrator extraordinaire and I have admired her work for quite some time.  She is magnificent and I consider it an honor that she thought enough of my writing sight unseen.  Thanks so much Nessa!  Check out her lovely blog when you get the chance!

Poetry has always been my first love and was the start of my writing career.  It was a great time for African-American female writers, (back in the early and mid 90's) and I gleaned a wealth of inspiration from many other writers, both great (Alice Walker, Toni Cade Bambara, Gwendolyn Brooks) and small (local writers on the HIP-ology poetry curcuit in Detroit).  So today, I'm feeling pretty generous, and have decided to share a couple of poems from the collection.  Enjoy!

A GATHERING IN THE FIELD

There was a gathering in the field of Sisters,

sitting around a grand table sipping tea,

exchanging words like diamonds on their tongues,

writing their very essence on the wind

like so much brilliance…

And the stars came down from Heaven and listened—

as these Sisters gathered in the field

weaving tales of woman’s love for family and kinship,

spreading their wings in flight through HERstory times,

back to Great-Grams who gave them Queenly Beauty,

dipped in sun-ripened plum juice,

poured in finest crystal,

shimmering reflections in golden rivers

of spiritual revelations like so much Africa Blood

pumping life through the veins of the Nile,

giving birth to her future generations

of Ebony, Bronze, and Topaz daughters

gathered in the field…

as the stars came down from Heaven, listened,

and later…

whispered all they’d heard

to the WORLD.

© 2010, Cherrie Lynn, Affirmations: and Other Poems

LONGING

Enduring the inevitable loss of your

presence.  In your absence,

the inability to touch.  The linking

of our souls, hearts in the distance of space,

so empty…needing

your embrace unable to feel,

touch, hold

you

holding me.

© 2010, Cherrie Lynn, Affirmations: and Other Poems