Here by Martha Christina

          3 p.m., August 24, 2019

The bell
at St. Michael’s church
begins to toll, marking
the arrival in Jamestown
of the first enslaved Africans.

The bell tolls for one minute;
three seconds each for those
who survived the trip.

A few blocks from the church,
“cargo” that arrived generations
later, was locked in the warehouses
of the wealthy, devout, and generous
slave traders who donated the church’s
stained glass windows, saints’ faces
modeled on their own.



Martha Christina is a frequent contributor to Brevities. Longer work appears in Innisfree Poetry Journal, Naugatuck River Review, earlier postings of Red Eft Review, and most recently in Star 82 Review, Crab Orchard Review, and Tiny Seed Literary Journal's Pollinator Project. She has published two collections: Staying Found (Fleur-de-lis Press) and Against Detachment (Pecan Grove Press).