“Joyce is right about history being a nightmare –but it may be the nightmare from which no one can awaken.  People are trapped in history and history is trapped in them.”  –James Baldwin, “Stranger in the Village.”

If you follow me through social media you know I’m used to visiting plantation landscapes and dressing in the type of clothing enslaved people would wear.  I’ve cooked the enslaved way in many states across the former Confederacy and Border states.  I’ve picked cotton and worked in tobacco fields. I’ve been in rice and sugarcane fields in the Lowcountry and Lower Mississippi Valley dodging teenaged gators and poisonous snakes.  Plantations blind with darkness don’t scare me and I almost take comfort from the spirits that have surrounded me.  I have been in their presence—for real—and the ancestors have been both welcoming…

by james moore

I was
a house on fire
the peninsula blazing with
thin glints Turning
it was lit
it was wild
all the sound
blew the wires and made the lights go
he winked
toward me
like the World’s Fair,
eyes absent.
to some,
too late.
we take a plunge
all
 
All
 
I said
“I don’t want to put you to
any trouble.”
“I don’t want
to put you to any trouble, you see.”
the day     to-morrow         a moment
with reluctance:
 
We both looked
ragged ended and darker

Copyright james moore, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: james w. moore is a writer of poetry, plays, and short stories. his poetry has appeared in the Found Poetry Review, the Silver Birch Press Noir Erasure Poetry Anthology, the Houston Chronicle and on Vermont Edition. five of his full-length plays…

This video from Canada is called International Women’s Day Rally 2013 – Vancouver Art Gallery – Friday March 8 – Patriarchy Chant.

By Veronica Strong-Boag in Canada:

Women’s Day blog censored by Canadian Museum for Human Rights, says author

March 10, 2014

Author’s note: This post was commissioned as an IWD blog by the Canadian Museum for Human Rights. It was initially approved and posted by the Museum on 4 March 2014. It was, however, almost immediately withdrawn as ‘Communications’ at the Museum deemed the one line comment on the current federal Conservative government unacceptable as written. The offer of a substantive footnote and illustrative example from the author brought no reply. ActiveHistory.ca has reposted this time-sensitive contribution here, to which examples of anti-women policies and a footnote have been added.

International Women’s Day on 8th March should be a key date in the human rights calendar. Its place…