Kingdom

We double dutched
in the middle of the street
turning flying saucers with our hands
drumming beats with our feet

Mamas called us
home for peanut butter
and jelly lunches
winos held up
the corners with brown
paper bags and wobby legs

Mr Murray came crusing
in his cadillac, picking up
numbers, handing out
winnings to the lucky women
and men who’d had the good
fortune to play their weight,
their phone numbers or
their dreams

He gave us nickels
For hershey bars and Mary Janes
we piled into the car
Braids bobbing with excitement
Our hands surfing the city wind
and headed for Freedom land
where we could be
anybody and do anything

I was the fat lady in the mirror
Jackie was the clown with no head
Octavia was a pirate with a sword arm
Robbie was three feet tall
Back home we seesawed and
swung as high as the moon
jacks and balls
spilled over on the stoops
we scooped them up
like stars and planets
in our neighborhood universe

We learned back then
and we haven’t forgotten
that we were once
little girl gods
who owned
the kingdom
of Harlem.

Vessel

You hold my
my small hands
in yours
and sync your
breath to the
flow of my blood
you listen to the
rhythm and beat
of my heart with
your palms, feel the
ancient tides inside of me
as they rise and fall
feel our African ancestors
calling out to you
from afar
you tighten your grip
and my hand grows warm
and now they
are in me too,
and I am no longer
a young girl,
but something
much more
I am ancient
full of our light
I am the vessel
that keeps the
ancestors
alive

We Started Losing Our Stories

We started losing our stories
somewhere on the journey
from the village to the
shore, dropped from scrambling
feet and mothergone touch
they remained there
pounded into the earth by
those who followed
unable to stir the soil
and unroot our tales

We lost our stories
somewhere on the ships
and the fable starved moon
drew or stories out of our
bound together hands
and watched them try
to swim home

We lost our stories
in the fields where we toiled
the whip beat them out of
our spines and they fell in
blood drops and pain and
were absorbed by
the soil

We lost our stories
in the rivers where
we bathed and blessed each
other with water that
flowed with our
history and our names

And we searched and searched
and we found out stories
in the wind and the stars
we found our stories in the
spin of the earth and
the dawn of each day.

Leslie Dianne is a poet, playwright, novelist, screenwriter and performer whose work has been acclaimed internationally at the Harrogate Fringe Festival in Great Britain, The International Arts Festival in Tuscany, Italy, The Teatro Lirico in Milan, Italy and at La Mama, ETC in NYC. Her stage plays have been produced in NYC at The American Theater of Actors, The Raw Space, The Puerto Rican Traveling Theater and The Lamb’s Theater, and at Theater Festivals in Texas and Indiana. She holds a BA in French Literature from CUNY and her writing appears in Lion and Lilac, Bar Bar, Decolonial Passage, The Saartjie Journal, Obsidian, Fresh Words, Heaven Magazine and elsewhere. Her writing has been nominated several times for Best of the Net and the Pushcart Prize.