Althea Romeo-Mark
Diaspora Poet
Winter Night.
Young, brown men pace sidewalks
in the stabbing cold.
Shoulders are hunched.
Hands are embedded in pockets.
They tread like a worried parent
Keeping vigil for a child
late beyond reason.
The eyes of policemen
pierce the backs
of the edgy plodders.
They gleefully ogle
another their next prize catch,
are ready to pounce.
I hurry by,
trolley rattling the quiet night,
eyes focused ahead.
I wrestle with
the thought of profiling
but soon shrug off prospects
of innocence.
Our street
plague by addictive substances,
must be purged.
© Althea Romeo-Mark ,2011
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.
She has been guest poets at the International Poetry Festival of Medellin, Colombia (2010), the Kistrech International Poetry Festival, Kissi, Kenya (2014) and The Antigua and Barbuda Review of Books 10th Anniversary Conference, Antigua and Barbuda (2015)
She has been published in the US Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico, the USA, Germany, Norway, the UK, India, Colombia, Kenya, Liberia and Switzerland. More publishing history can be found at her blog site: