Poems for Morris-Jumel Mansion by Naa Akua, Anacaona Rocio Milagro, and Lisa “Rubi G.” Ventura
Apr, 2023
The Forgotten
by Naa Akua
Ask me what freedom is made of
Stirring the pot
a whisper gun powder Eliza Jumel’s wishes
Summer homes to own buy and sell
Maybe make your slaves create a table to make sure
You are always at the head of it
My worries trapped in fickle payments knowing
that free never means sustainable
I sustain a rhythm so the food won’t get clumped up before lunchtime
Hunched over with sweat every bead dropped is a prayer for my babies
For Solomon for time taken from this body that I may never get back
I am backed up by paperwork
But still feel enslaved
I am a surveillance of daydreams
shown through all dark brown eyes
And tattered skin
We don’t belong in this story yet we are the reasons for its success
What an oxymoron even my ancestors chuckle
This notion of necessity and negligence
The blurring lines between cattle cargo and teeth
and lips and mouths and arms and legs
and feet and stomachs and hands
Wrangle them back to the pasture to work
Count them one by one
Until the sun sets
And we are all enveloped by the night
where there are no favorites
who circle around this mansion
Naa Akua is a New York born poet, actor, educator, and sound-word practitioner who is Ghanaian/Bajan and queer. Akua uses the vibratory energy of sound and the intent of word as a vehicle towards healing. Akua, former 2019 Citizen University Poet-in-Residence is a Liberal Arts Teacher at Achievement First East Brooklyn High School, Hugo House teacher, and Young Women Empowered (Y-WE) youth facilitator.
Shipwreck Poem
by Anacaona Rocio Milagro
Do not look for a ship in this poem you will not find one—
just the wreck.
There is no mention of tumultuous sea journeys or Tempests or Odysseus
or whales or the stomach of whales —maybe remnants.
What torments the night to make it dive and rip sails will not be unveiled
—just the wreck.
Because this is a shipwreck poem you will find the ship destroyed
pieces repurposed— bassinets made of driftwood, blood & salvaged hope.
You will be enveloped by the stench of seaweed and vomit. You will find
a people stuck. Isolated.
In an environment not suited for long life. You will fall asleep hungry. Awaken
hungry. Spend the day with your stomach burning the rope of your tongue.
You will be chased. You will run for your life up crumbling mountains
down filthy stairwells live in crumbling housing panic often have night terrors
in broad daylight.
Because so much of a shipwreck poem is to do with delirium—a common
symptom of being castaway. You will find sanity in suicide. Merciful. You will
keep the dead as friends. Religion will be caught between fable, faith and rage.
You will hear screaming & crying. Every so often you will find a floating body
face down in the river and keep drinking. You will build a raft of music
wax melded broken beats mended needle & threaded into beautiful collages—
the world will listen in devotion but ignore the cry for help.
Let me tell you how little is written by born castaways
Because this is my shipwreck poem a 1980’s baby up the street of New York City
where i grew up you’d find a hollow library where my overdue mother resorted
to fish-out books from the garbage to nourish a young poet, an unwelcoming gated
glowing-white Mansion built on a high hill of indigenous skulls on unprotected looted
Lenape land, now sealed with landmark protection & immune to the street avenues
flooded by the war-on-drugs epidemic and the scattered puddles of strung-out bodies and
green glass bottles—emptiness the note. You will find people substitute anything for a boat.
For those of us born of this wreckage you will find our muscles sore — spasms
from unremembered storms. You will find our arms like broken oars make escape
hard. How we try only to redesign the same disaster because the wreck is
all we know.
Because this is a shipwreck poem most important of all you will find & face an
ocean that swallows and hoards all that is meant for you.
Mangoes on the Moon over Morris-Jumel Mansion NYC
by Anacaona Rocio Milagro
A mango tree planted at Morris-Jumel Mansion in New York City
will die. Mangoes cannot grow here. The climates wrong lacking
proper warmth the sun not strong enough the New York frost
will eat it barren inside out. This is law.
Morris-Jumel Mansion is dignified in its old-fashion patriotic pride.
The Daughters of the American Revolution so honored its rich
walls hugged our beloved founding fathers hailing Mount Morris a
historical landmark. Right here on the crowned sugar-coated hill of
Washington Heights. Born and raised down the block this is my
home that I love the only home I’ve ever known I am American
vacant of this unadulterated nationalism—the root and fruit of this
Mansion its settlers of the die-hard self-proclaimed proud
red-blooded Americans that I am not.
Pride in the human heart can only grow in certain climates.
How does pride grow here? In this cold. On this soil. How does
it not rot with grief/ blood-clots/ with the starved demoralized
smallpox genocides/ the Indian Wars/ the African Holocaust? What
compartment in the human genome exists big enough strong
enough to suppress this knowledge? Grand larceny/ mass murder/
this Mansion erected on graves/ at what proximity do you displace
these crimes to give room for pure pride to bloom to flourish
unchallenged in a human heart? How does pride grow here?
Yet, I am confronted by it, touring the Mansion confused by it
as I’m touring the Mansion it is encased in glass in the Mansion.
Mango trees everywhere. Make it make sense. What Frankenstein
science could allow such pride to grow wild into jungles ferment
get drunk off all the life, liberty, and happiness that it wants
unchecked in a human heart? Can you grow mangoes on the moon
and not crack and decompose under the sheer dense freezing
cold suffocating darkness of it all? We cannot change history
and facts do not have alternatives. You, proud American, who can
house our evil past without pause in your human heart—does it hide
from you do you mute it drown it in pesticides is it buried
out of sight like the unmarked Lenape cemeteries? I need to know
What do you do with it? Inside you Where does it go?
Anacaona Rocio Milagro is a poet born, raised and living in NYC. She earned an MFA in Poetry at NYU Paris, an MPH at Columbia University and a BA in Anthropology/Journalism at Baruch College. A Cave Canem Fellow, a Nuyorican Poets Café National Teammate, she’s published in Narrative Magazine, The BreakBeat Poets Anthology, The Common, and others. Her track “Stillmatic” is on streaming platforms. Her mother is from St.Thomas and father from Dominican Republic. IG @poet.anacaona
A brief but worthy account of the Dominican American prototype (an acrostic)
by Lisa “Rubi G” Ventura
“In a society where role models serve as sources of inspiration, it is in the best interest of Dominican children to learn about one of their own who contributed to the formation of the city that they, as many others, have inherited.”
-Ramona Hernández, director, CUNY Dominican Studies Institute
Jung Tobias was a Dutch merchant ship that transported America’s first Dominican to the
United States in 1613. The ship’s crew included a black or mulatto born in Saint Domingue.
Ancestry indicates he was also the first man of African descent in Manhattan.
Naturally strong-willed, resilient, and hardworking.
Refusing to sail back to the Netherlands and demanding to stay by threatening to jump
Overboard if forced to retreat. The captain agreed and left him behind.
Dark-skinned, free, and from Hispaniola, he was recognized as the only nonindigenous to
Reside on the island for a notable amount of time—
Interpreting or making connections between Inhabitants,
Garment Merchants, and Explorers—
Unknowingly, unifying Dominican and American cultures. Earning honorable mention as an
Entrepreneur who promoted economic interactions for the wellbeing of all parties involved.
Zealously, creating a bridge between Las Americas and the Diaspora.
Between Hell & Hearth
by Lisa “Rubi G” Ventura
Here
an ode to black
limbs that created
magic within infernos
enclosed by white walls.
Here
an honorarium
for cooks
and service crews
of well-off establishments.
Here
in remembrance
of domestic staff who punched
-in before dawn toiling
late into the night.
Here
squandering
priceless time cleaning,
polishing silverware
their lips would never touch.
Here
in recognition
of hired, borrowed,
or indentured labor, barely
earning four dollars a month.
Here
in the abyss
of eighteenth-century
cellars, where hearth
and servant pillows are cemented.
Hearth
as in the section of a furnace
where ore is exposed
to flame and meal prep arduously,
lengthy.
Hearth
as in heart and family
as in vital or creative centers,
where food and love
long to be manifested.
Hearth
as in a symbol of one’s home
but who’s hearth is it anyway? if
mistress-in-chief never engulfs
aflame in it.
Elegy for Truths Erased from History [Books]
by Lisa “Rubi G” Ventura
i.
atop Manhattan’s second highest peak
sits a 1765 George-Palladian summer
residence exclusively designed for British
heir. A white house without much external
flair but with unmatched views
of Harlem
of Hudson Harbor, a fortress
for Colonel Roger and Mary Morris—
the largest human dealers of their time
legally conducting trafficking affairs, publicly
quenching a thirst for arrogant glamour
by building fortunes with bludgeoned money.
currency claiming, “In God we Trust”
but greed only trusts the green
hues on its Benjamin’s
wealth only trusts its addiction
to power & thus tower
over highly pigmented Americans. this game
been rigged from the start. affluence
created the regimen. hence,
why law is always
on the side of treasury.
lest we not offend
our pledge of allegiance, but this
is the origin of America’s mysteries. nightmares
recycle themselves repetitiously & superstitiously,
privilege comes to colonize
sacred ancestries. presently,
forevermore,
brown & black
communities—
The genesis of gentrification.
records proving, we stand upon consecrated
territory, whose maiden name is Lenapehoking. Fifty city blocks—
wrenched from indigenous hands
to satiate European business & pleasures
consisting of genocidal experimentations. in the name
of economical explorations. who couldn’t live
prosperously? predator
& prey(ing) their way through
Algonquin-speaking nations. a country’s
foundation landmarked
for its colonization efforts but not
for the lambs sacrificed
by brute British hands.
for five weeks,
Autumn of 1776, General George Washington
& his team encamped
in the second floor’s octagonal room, plotting—
utilizing said vantage
point to this country’s advantage.
ii.
in 1810, Stephen and Eliza Jumel
purchased the residence and its surrounding
acreages. later, Madam Jumel, a self-educated,
businesswoman and widow
twice over, made a name for herself by marrying
immigrant, but rich. only to be scorned
by New York’s haughty elite. unfortunately, her scheme
didn’t guarantee a seat with the likes of Regina George
and her dweebs—madam wasn’t born into greed.
free as bald eagles on dollar
bills, Eliza did not remarry and began
to summer in Saratoga Springs, crossing
paths with a free
[black] family, a free
family, a
family.
hiring them
[all] as staff
& daringly, claiming black offspring
as her kin. but still
treating them like property.
iii.
Anne Northup; mother, wife, cook
& not quite a widow,
but a beloved husband
& adoring father had gone missing—
Solomon Northup, farmer
& gifted musician was alienated
from his relatives by way
of trickery. lured, kidnapped, & drugged
into slavery. hauled from Saratoga Springs to Washington DC
to Louisiana and finally, New Orleans. for twelve years,
a slave. clearing cane to develop
land that would never be entrusted
to any of his kids: Margaret, Elizabeth, or Alonzo.
for a decade, burden
of proof was on him & amendments
per usual, were not
on his side. Typical narrative of [Black]
America
the great.
iv.
(epilogue)
lest we never
forget there are two sides
to every quarter but underdogs
always foot the bill. and so,
this reverence & spot
light is reserved for the lives
that never mattered. for the flesh
that endured as souls
decayed—
loosing hope, strength,
& perhaps, the desire
to remain alive. doing so
anyway, while humbly serving
its enemy.
Lisa “Rubi G.” Ventura (she/her) is a Washington Heights-bred Black Dominican poet and essayist, a first-generation daughter of immigrants, a mother, and has been published by Dominican Writers, Raising Mothers, and Economic Hardship Program in conjunction with Slate, among others. She was interviewed for The Nation’s Going for Broke podcast series and Refinery29’s Somos. Lisa has served as an empowerment panelist and is a VONA alumni. lapoetarubi.com or @poeta_rubi_g.
As one of the nation’s foremost historic houses, Morris-Jumel Mansion (morrisjumel.org) strives to empower audiences to create relevant, contemporary connections to the building, its collections, the land, and its people, past and present. Through historic site tours, programs, and exhibitions, the museum serves as a cultural resource and destination for local communities and domestic and international visitors.