Poems by Antoinette Ellis-Williams
Dr. Ellis-Williams’ poetry seeks to shed light on those often forgotten. She amplifies our humanness in hopes of healing.
Here you will find a few pieces written by Dr. Antoinette Ellis-Williams.
A season of illness and death, pandemic, and rage and protest and fires and broken glasses and peaceful rage and COVID19 again, and allies and loss and hope and gain and police brutally and police solidarity and unemployment and Zoom and flattening the curves and essential workers and phases and rallies and chanting and virtual praying and masks and social distancing and toilet paper and Lysol and empty shelves and no meat and no dentist and homeschooling and stress and drive by parades and celebrations and not coming home to keep home safe and eating together and cooking at home and pizza and take out and chrome books and toys on the floor and sleeping on couches and artwork in kitchens and fundraising and graduates without work and put your button on mute and walking in parks and arguing about oppression and waiting in food lines and crying for no reason and confined at home and locked up in prison and cutting my hair at home and planning for the next season and afraid to go back to work and voting and registering and completing the census and knowing 45 will try to steal the election and wondering when will 2020 end while focusing on hope
"Run-on Sentence"
1
Behind her
army khaki camouflage mask
Did you notice her eyes?
Her
stolen smile
Lost
by a parasite
Taken
Only for you to
See her eyes.
Did you notice
The red veins
Tracks that take
You to her soul?
Travel along those bending
roads and hills
Walk along heartbreak ridge
Over by the river of
Trauma and shame
Travel along
Blood shot tracks
Tired from carrying the load.
A soul heavy from
Holding black bodies
Killed in summer
Heat
Lying dead
In the sun on
asphalt roads
for four hours.
I Can’t Breathe!
Eyes searching for
Her missing daughters and
Sons. Vanished
Without a trace or so they say.
Look closer
See her eyes
Did you notice them
Giving you the side eye?
The kind of side eye every
Black girl knows by
The time she is three.
They cut you with her pursed
Lips beneath the mask
That says back the fuck up
Don’t think of trying me!
Black girls know how to survive
Side eyes that will put a nigga in
his place
Side eyes that says
don’t even try to sit
Next to me on this bus
‘cause I’m too damn tired.
Her face
you tried to erase
Behind that mask
Gag her mouth,
Silence her scream,
Only for us to see her eyes.
But you forget
her eyes are
Wide open
Very much Alive.
Those are grandmother’s eyes
Squinting in the dim light
To put thread through
The eye of the needle
But seeing so clear.
Eyes reading from slave catchers Amazing Grace red hymnals
Praying eyes
Jesus keep me eyes.
Those eyes wet from the tears
From a place no mother should know
She had to identify her only
Son’s body in the coroners
Ice cold holding tank. Her eyes.
Those eyes have watched
You take
$1.00 and leave me .62
She counts her change. It never
Adds up.
These eyes have watched
Countless Sunsets &
Sunrises
Watched babies take their
First steps
Watched lovers dance their
First dance.
Her eyes can spot
Love and drink regret
They are first hand witnesses
To uprising/ surviving/ and yes
Thriving
If you want to know her
Behind the mask
Look in her eyes
Ain’t nothing prettier than
A
Black
Girl’s
Eyes.
"Her Eyes"
2
What a tragedy to search for peace on a dark, smelly lonely street.
What madness when a little girl seeks comfort of strangers under a concrete bridge.
What a shame when a sweet gentle boy runs away because you he turns a jump rope with a switch in his hips.
Why do you cry and wonder why your kids left home.
Why you shook when you beat them when they were stuttering trying to speak.
Why you lie when you say you don’t know why they left home.
Where were you when your boyfriend came in her bedroom.
Where were you when all they had to eat was in the neighbors’ trash.
Home ain’t all its cracked up to be.
Home ain’t safe
Home ain’t always nice.
Don’t force me to go home.
I’m missing and
It’s better than home.
“Home ain’t always nice”
3
God chose me to be a black woman.
No greater honor than to walk in
My skin.
"Haiku #3"
4
One day you will wake
Up and you will finally
Meet yourself. She will
Be glorious
"Haiku #5"
5
There are days that you
Lose your footing from beneath you.
And then there are days
You are swallowed whole
And have no breather to
Give.
"Haiku #12"
6
POET
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"Burn Phase I: Origins and Activism" Installation Chapbook
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“Black Gardenias: A Collection of Poems, Stories & Sayings From a Woman’s Heart”
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Featured Poet, Jersey City Book Festival, “Tales of Our Cities”
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Poetry Reading
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Harlem Book Fair
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Military Park, Newark, NJ
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Bowery Poetry Club
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East Orange Poetry Café
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Open Mics throughout the tri-state area
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Women Speaks
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Down at the ‘Rho
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Montclair Art Museum
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Newark Museum of Art Community Day
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