Althea Romeo-Mark

Brief Biography and poems from The Stories of Immigrants for Poets of the World. As a child of generations of immigrants and a victim of a civil war, I am always fascinated by the mitigating causes of the journey immigrants make, whether, driven by war, natural catastrophes or whether driven by the desire to improve their economic lot.

Brief Biography Althea Romeo-Mark

Born in Antigua, West Indies, Althea Romeo-Mark is an educator and internationally published writer who grew up in St. Thomas, US Virgin Islands. She has lived and taught in St. Thomas, Virgin Islands, USA, Liberia (1976-1990), London, England (1990-1991), and in Switzerland since 1991.

She taught at the University of Liberia (1976-1990). She is a founding member of the Liberian Association of Writers (LAW) and is the poetry editor for Seabreeze: Journal of Liberian Contemporary Literature. She was awarded the Marguerite Cobb McKay Prize by The Caribbean Writer in June, 2009 for short story “Bitterleaf, (set in Liberia).”   If Only the Dust Would Settle is her last poetry collection. 

Published work in 2014 include “Unwanted Visitors,” and “Small Island Deprivations,” in Tongues of the Ocean, special feature on Antiguan Writers, Winter, 2014. Fitting into One’s Skin,” A review of Joanne Hillhouse’s novel, Oh Gad! in the Antigua and Barbuda Review of Books, summer 2014, “A Story of Immigrants,” personal essay, The Caribbean Writer, Volume 28,  Autumn 2014; Poems for the Hazara: An Anthology and Collaborative Poem (multi-lingual), ed. Kamran Mir Hazar, Winter, 2014; several poems and an essay in WomanSpeak: A journal of writing and Art by Caribbean Women. Ed. Lynn Sweeting, Vol.7, 2013-14. She has been guest poets at the International Poetry Festival of Medellin, Colombia and the Kistrech International Poetry Festival, Kissi, Kenya.

More publishing history can be found at her blogsite:www.aromaproductions.blogspot.com

 

The poems below reflect my attempt to get into the marrow of their ordeals.

 

We Do Not Cry For Meat

 

Yesterday we ate rice and palm oil.

Today we are eating rice and palm oil.

Tomorrow we will eat rice and palm oil.

We eye our bloated bellies

in the shadow of the kitchen fire,

and though not old enough

pretend we are with child,

pretend our fallen teeth will grow,

pretend our limbs are fat

can bear our large tummies

but we wobble when we walk

and do not cry for meat

for the dry land has snatched

our cattle and left us only bones.

 

© 29.03.10 Althea Mark-Romeo

Published in Dirtcakes (www.dirtcakes.org)

 

 

Uninvited

 

She can’t say no

to armed hitchhikers

in military uniforms

when they wave her down.

 

She could speed up

and feel the hail of bullets

slicing through the car frame,

piercing her body.

She wouldn’t live to tell the story.

 

So she stops and smiles,

pretends to be polite,

even though she could be one

minute away from becoming a ghost.

 

All four climb in.

Guns, pointing perilously out windows,

gape at fleeting scenery.

 

Stone-faced soldiers stare

straight ahead as if on a

special mission.

She feels her knees

wobble under her skirt.

 

Her mind in overdrive,

she sees her body

like a large rice sack

lying on the roadside

next to firewood,

raped, mutilated, lifeless.

 

The voice beside her

cracks the silence,

interrupts her deathly vision.

“Stop, we getting down here, ma.”

 

 

From Check Points and Curfews © Althea Mark-Romeo 11.06. 2009

www.liberiaseabreezejournal.com

 

At the Mercy of Gods

 

We come in waves.

Our boats, tiny specks

on dark, fathomless oceans.

 

Driven away by devouring drought,

scattered by quakes, typhoons, cyclones, wars,

we flee, fish in a storm.

 

Propelled by dreams,

we would walk on water

if miracles could be bought.

 

We are swallowed

by sea gods demanding sacrifices.

Our dreams are coveted by 

Agwé, Osiris, Poseidon

who wish to conquer man and land.

 

Do the gods conspire?

 

Jealous Wind and Sea pillage our crops

withhold rain, wake Vulcan, fan his flames.

Belligerent Mars whispers in man’s ear,

demands he bathes in his brother’s blood.

 

Gods cackle at fleeing men.

Ants in their eyes,

they set howling death upon us.

 

Our exhausted Creator sleeps.

 

© Althea Mark-Romeo

 

 

Streetsweeper

 

In this haven I clean paths in parks, sweep streets.

Red stains splatter the ground

where berries fell after last night’s storm.

 

They are not the blood smears

of brothers accused of betrayal.

Hear-say alone is enough

to crush bones back home.

 

I joyfully sweep up berry seeds.

They are not broken fingers, or toes.

 

I wash the walkway, breathe in unpolluted air.

It is free of gasoline fumes spewed

by military trucks heading to frontier towns

to crush the voices of discontent.

 

My heart dances with joy

at the sight of red stains, not blood.

 

 

© Althea Romeo-Mark 11.10. 10 

 

Off the Coast, Winter, 2011 www.off-the-coast.com

 

 

Brief Biography Althea Romeo-Mark

Born in Antigua, West Indies, Althea Romeo-Mark is an educator and internationally published writer who grew up in St. Thomas, US Virgin Islands. She has lived and taught in St. Thomas, Virgin Islands, USA, Liberia (1976-1990), London, England (1990-1991), and in Switzerland since 1991.

She taught at the University of Liberia (1976-1990). She is a founding member of the Liberian Association of Writers (LAW) and is the poetry editor for Seabreeze: Journal of Liberian Contemporary Literature. She was awarded the Marguerite Cobb McKay Prize by The Caribbean Writer in June, 2009 for short story “Bitterleaf, (set in Liberia).”   If Only the Dust Would Settle is her last poetry collection. 

Published work in 2014 include “Unwanted Visitors,” and “Small Island Deprivations,” in Tongues of the Ocean, special feature on Antiguan Writers, Winter, 2014. Fitting into One’s Skin,” A review of Joanne Hillhouse’s novel, Oh Gad! in the Antigua and Barbuda Review of Books, summer 2014, “A Story of Immigrants,” personal essay, The Caribbean Writer, Volume 28,  Autumn 2014; Poems for the Hazara: An Anthology and Collaborative Poem (multi-lingual), ed. Kamran Mir Hazar, Winter, 2014; several poems and an essay in WomanSpeak: A journal of writing and Art by Caribbean Women. Ed. Lynn Sweeting, Vol.7, 2013-14. She has been guest poets at the International Poetry Festival of Medellin, Colombia and the Kistrech International Poetry Festival, Kissi, Kenya.

More publishing history can be found at her blogsite:www.aromaproductions.blogspot.com