Mango for Tiger

Books and CDs by Glenis Redmond

Gwendolyn Knight: Discovering Powerful Images / Backbone / Steam Dreams, an Anthology

Glenis on Poetry (CD) Monumental (CD)

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Mango

for Tiger

By Glenis Redmond

I like to know where I AM

at all times.

Where I am going,

E. T. A., weather conditions, what’s going on.

Contribute it to my astrology

the particular hour of my birth

my sun sign, Virgo, with Saturn in the seventh house.

I feel things strongly, deeply, passionately,

but only after careful thought and thoughtful analysis.

I’ve heard this refrain all too often in my life

echoed from my lover’s lips,

“You think too much.”

Then I disappear into his eyes.

This Rasta man, dreads falling down his back like black rain.

The way this man moves

I want to be caught in his groove and I AM.

I can’t get out of the slant of his Portuguese eyes,

the firmness of his African hips.

The way that this man dips,

I want to stand up on the mountain and shout about it

thank God about it.

No, thank Jah about it.

I want to give praise

for the particular curves of this man’s bones.

He is deep.

He is deep not with words.

He is deep with his two thousand year-old heart.

With his arms he has carried me to a place

where I can forget my complex make up.

He has carried me where

water washes away reason.

He has reshaped my landscape.

Made me melt with the heat of his desire.

His hands

How they have learned their lesson?

I’d rather not know.

But I am thankful for he is all beauty and danger

the product fire.

He looks up from that deep place in his eyes and says . . .

“I want to make you something to eat.”

He disappears into his world.

He slowly turns inhales a mango

his world is all flesh and juice sliding between lips

as dark as magenta sunrise.

do not want for naught.

do not envy mango or any other foreign fruit.

I am wide open with desire,

body tight with tension

and the knowledge

will become a mango

this night,

and nothing else

will exist

in his world.

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posted 19 June 2006

Glenis Redmond is an award-winning performance poet, praise poet, teacher, and writer. For the past twelve years, she has traveled both domestically and abroad, performing and teaching.

Her poetry has won the Carrie McCray literary award 1995, NC Literary Artist Fellowship 2005, Denny C. Plattner Award for Outstanding Poetry, 2005. She is also the two-time recipient of fellowships from both the Vermont Writing Center and the Atlantic Center for the Arts. Glenis has been published in numerous literary journals and publications including Stanford University's Black Arts Quarterly, Obsidian II: Black literature in Review, Emrys Journal, Bum Rush The Page: Def Poetry Jam, Appalachian Journal, Appalachian Heritage and African Voices.

As a performer, Glenis Redmond was the Southeast Regional Individual Poetry Slam Champion in 1997 and 1998, and placed in the top ten twice in the National Individual Slam Championships. She currently presents a variety of performances for audiences of all ages in venues ranging from top performing arts centers to juvenile detention centers. Glenis has performed in many diverse locations including the Paddington Arts Festival in England, the Nuyorican Poets Cafe in New York City, the Poetry Circus Festival in Taos, New Mexico, and the Peace Center in her native South Carolina.

As a teacher, Glenis Redmond has recently been invited to join the national touring roster for the Kennedy Center's Partnership in Education Teacher Training. She helps both professional and amateur writers from 9-90 find their own poetic voices through workshops and classes across the nation. Email: poetica11@aol.com and Website: www.Glenisredmond.com

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update 3 August 2008