photo by rachel eliza griffith
The Cave Canem Fellow is the author of several books including Swag & Dear Twitter: Love Letters Hashed Out On-line, recommended by Small Press Distribution & listed as About.com Best Poetry Books of 2010. She has released five LPs including the live album Sheroshima. As co-founder of the Off Broadway poetry production, Jam On It, and co-producer of NYC’s 1st Performance Poetry Festival: SoundBites Poetry Festival, Mahogany bridges the gap between lyrical poets and literary emcee. Browne has toured Germany, Amsterdam, England, Canada and recently Australia as 1/3 of the cultural arts exchange project Global Poetics. Her journalism work has been published in magazines Uptown, KING, XXL, The Source, Canada’s The Word and UK’s MOBO. She is an Urban Word NYC mentor, as seen on HBO’s Brave New Voices and facilitates performance poetry and writing workshops throughout the country. She is the publisher of Penmanship Books, a small press for performance artists and owns PoetCD.Com, an on-line marketing and distribution company for poets. Mahogany is currently host and curator of the Friday Night Slam at the famous Nuyorican Poets Cafe.
Betty Sez (A Series) I. Betty didn’t take kindly to a man’s instruction. She preferred to tell him where to shove his opinion, instead. My grandaunt was the oldest daughter to a brother with bricks for hands. Her glare promised a gunbutt’n for any man that touched her expensive handbag. At the age of 90, she didn’t hesitate to swing. Cutting the wind in half with her sinewy arms, she snarled, “he trynna steal my stuff.” She was usually right. II. she taught her sister-in-law three things: 1.how to cock a gun 2. how to bet on race horses and win 3. when to run and when to stand up; a cigarette stiff on the cliff between her lips the entire time. Black you are a barrel tumble kick snare drum roll beat box black boxed inside your own head i am always amazed the shimmer wave sauce simmer you shiver like two step, one,two, three bounce alive awake you rain storm cloud wonder it is no wonder i am afraid to speak too scared to listen to the eulogy in their throats a cloak of waiting heavy like tomorrow can’t get here quicker than the A train to Bed Stuy you bullet ridden ready beauty mark enough, already close your ears when you hear us coming pretend there is a sky waiting for your directive gaze the stars are falling around ‘our shoulders this heaven you call home is a scary beauty indeed it is no surprise we can’t keep up no awakening moment to realize you are a jigsaw of Alvin Ailey and Jay-Z do rag renaissance heartbreak sits in your eyes your tongue is a tight rope i fear for our safety too many rpa’s in your snare and roll drum and kick beat and box Black, you are no mirage only a cloud baiting the world’s attention like a bull’s eye
