Friday Feature: Jennifer Maritza McCauley
- Jae Nichelle
- Sep 12
- 2 min read
Jennifer Maritza McCauley is the author of the cross-genre collection SCAR ON/SCAR OFF (Stalking Horse Press), When Trying to Return Home (Counterpoint Press), a short story collection, Kinds of Grace (Flowersong Press), a poetry collection, and the forthcoming speculative fiction collection Neon Steel (Cornerstone Press/University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point.) Her newest poetry collection VERSUS will be released by Texas Review Press in March 2027. She has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts (prose), Kimbilio (fiction), CantoMundo (poetry), Sundress Academy for the Arts (hybrid). She earned her MFA in creative writing from Florida International University and PhD in literature and creative writing from the University of Missouri-Columbia. She is fiction editor at Pleiades and an assistant professor of English at the University of Missouri-Kansas City.
Africa Hollers Back to Me
(After “Beng Beng Beng” by Femi Kuti)
Tatatata
Tatatatata ta
I’m fresh-skinned and ain’t got no time
for beef-ridden days
under the underbelly of Motherland
The Black girls holler “ay, ay” and I’m in with ‘em,
the cut or whatever you looking for.
Ain’t been back for a minute
but I’m back and y’all read my past.
Figure it out in distinct hieroglyphics
or chopped units of sound
snatched the wig from e’rbody’s core
and I know exactly
how you mewl.
I ain’t been back since I got down
to Lagos sound: oya, bebe
para mi cuerpo, that’s right: kai, na wahala
bengbengbeng like we got that trembling,
heartsplit sound.
So bring in that riddim baby, kiss me swift under
your leaf-drip’d tree
and let that mother-bass keep going
going going going
until my purple mouth is your blue one
and we’re both
fucking
screaming
one last time.
###
Torch Literary Arts is a 501(c)3 nonprofit established to publish and promote creative writing by Black women. We publish contemporary writing by experienced and emerging writers alike. Programs include the Wildfire Reading Series, writing workshops, and retreats.
