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Catrice Greer
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the poet
Baltimore-based writer Catrice Greer is a 2021 nominee for The Pushcart Prize who spent November 2020 serving as a Poet-In-Residence for the Cheltenham Poetry Festival. Catrice has been published in several local publications and online journals, as well as in an international anthology. She's currently a Guest Editor for IceFloe Press, and Guest Poetry reviewer for Fevers of the Mind.
the poems
Cortical Cartography
I give thanks for you bravely doing this again
traveling synapse by synapse
trails of electric pulses
jumping blackhole gaps
that used to remember
holding the dead space
a new soma body
birthing from bleating darkness
show us the nucleus
the middles
of what we were made of
Axons spread
like kamikaze flying squirrel bodies
with arms akimbo
reaching
dendrites touching
Grateful for even
this axon potential
sometimes on
sometimes off
Praise for brave
synaptic
dives and jumps
Grateful for re-birthed
myelin insulating
protecting
making sure that we traffic on
our way by the quickest route
charged
in this dark matter
discovery-space
This astronomy
building anew,
wrinkled city of light,
crevices, crannies,
gyri and sulci,
ridges and valleys
jellied,
crinkled mass
sectioned by lobes
all speaking trillions
simultaneous
synaptic voices
prayerfully all at once
this chatter mines
the neuronal network
and we build
a whole new world
I Am Home
Lost you
Early November
When the leaves started falling
And time faded backward
Sitting here crocheting
Stitching memories
one loop at a time
Your voice in my head swirling
Humming a hymn, your favorite
And I sing each note yearning, solemn
As if you’d appear suddenly
solo into a duet and we
raise our voices as high
as you ascended when it was time
For you to be called home
I rock
quietly ashen stilted lone tree
Swaying
In a wood still lush
knowing I sit with a pain
I can barely speak the name
awash with memories of you
and the absent space
we called your chair, dresser, your place at the table
the place we used to go every Friday,
your touch, your smile beaming
a side-eye on an inside joke between us,
The memory that had your name all over it that our family can’t tell anymore
without crying, laughing, wishing you here
And one day
I will see your face again
We will see you
Feel you
As your spirit is so close in the air here near me
Near us
vibrating in the humming
I believe I can feel you
We will never forget you
A whisper softly tells me:
'I am home'
The Gathering
Hear ye, hear ye
We are gathered here today
family, friends, enemies,
enemies of my enemies
We are here at the black hole mouth
of this isolated cave
in the grief painted
infected unknown space
to bury our dead among us
Those dead things between us
that hold us back
Those things we no longer speak
Those things that twine and whip round
our vocal chords
that prevent the i’m sorries
i miss yous, i love yous
the pieces that bumble forward
like an emotionally blind man heady on drink
bumbling home too late
for whatever he was meant to be there for
knocking over sentimentals, and traditions,
passed down collectibles shattered
in pieces launched
jagged landmine shards
speckling the ground
Our DNA, our ancestors,
mothers, fathers,
grandmothers, grandfathers long gone
our creators ask us to stand here together
Ask ourselves
if in this space we will abandon
Our old skins
Our old breath
and choose to share anew
Can we bury this dead thing between us all
so we can
stand wrapped in sinew, tendons, blood¹
coursing miracles spiraling through the breath lifting us
in a swirl of meditative purpose
Can we find a new space
a sense of being
We are here in this vortex
to bury the living dead
under loam, clay, rocks,
into the broken soil
Cover it.
Mark it as resting here
never to go forward
We mark new paths with a sign
here as we crawl out
heel to heel ... 6ft apart
linked in spirit
life begins anew
we celebrate together
mourning yesterdays
embracing our multicolored confettied
I forgive yous, littered
in the air,
celebrating
our tomorrows
¹ Ezekiel 37:8 — King James Version:
'And when I beheld, lo, the sinews and the flesh came up upon them,
and the skin covered them above: but there was no breath in them.'
Publishing credits
Cortical Cartography: Silver Spring Town Center Newsletter
(Ancestral Voices 2020)
I Am Home: Afro-American Newspaper (Baltimore Edition)
The Gathering: first published under the title Elegy
in the Silver Spring Town Center Newsletter (Vol. 8, Issue 9)
S h a r e