Native American
Who is Blogger/Poet/Fiction Writer/Artist Ann Johnson-Murphree?
HAPPY HOLIDAYS TO EVERYONE
2014
HOLIDAY SNOW – ACRYLICS
BY
Ann Johnson-Murphree
Ann Johnson-Murphree
Author Bio…
Born in northern Alabama, father was a Native American (Chickasaw) sharecropper who managed a farm for a businessperson from Decatur, and a mother who worked in the local cotton mill during the Depression to pay for Beautician School. Although her mother lived in the same house, she was emotionally absent since the Author’s birth. The author, raised by her father, Native American great-grandmother and an African-American woman all were great storytellers.
Instead of playing like most children, she roamed the countryside alone or with her father and at night she sat at the feet of these strong-minded individuals listening to the stories of their lives. During the summer, she lived with her fathers’ sister in Birmingham, Alabama; it was there that she would discover a library, and mingle with her aunt’s circle of friends that included local writers, artist, and politicians. A cabin deep within the Black Warrior Forest was the weekend retreat and filled with these people from a different life than her own. This aunt encouraged the imagination of a young Ann with the gift of her first journal, which she filled with stories over the summer. Planted was the desire to write, a seedling waiting to spurt from the warm southern heart of a child.
Nonetheless, with adulthood, the desire to create buried itself deep within, the dream wilted but did not die. It lay dormant, gaining experience all written in hidden journals. These experiences, the contents of these journals became short stories and poetry reading to share with the world.
Throughout the years along with her father, great-great-grandmother, and her beloved Aunt Francis, other influences were, Faulkner, Capote, Fitzgerald, and Harper Lee. Later in life, I discovered the warm and comic writing of Grace Paley. The Collected Stories, the vivid poetry of William Carlos Williams; the strong poetry of Phyllis McGinley, and the world’s most exciting women, Maya Angelou are some of the poets at the top of her list.
The harshness that shrouded her life would cause her to withdraw from most of the world; it fills the pages of her writing, the heartache, the abuse, and the denial from her mother. Today, at a stage of life where she enjoys her children, grand and great grandchildren, her four-legged companion Mason, she lives in Southern Wisconsin…far from her southern roots, writes and paints daily.
ONE OF THE MANY REVIEWS ON HER WORK:
Southern living, tragedy, memories, and nostalgia… 2014
By Dr. Karen Moriarty – Karen Moriarty, Author of “Defending A King ~ His Life & Legacy” [about the incomparable Michael Jackson]
“As a former teacher of English and creative writing, I approached the reading of Ann Johnson-Murphree’s “Honeysuckle Memories” with real enthusiasm. Poetry is not a wildly popular genre currently. However, I have always enjoyed it, partly because it can be consumed in bits and pieces and at any time of day or night. This book did not disappoint. I consider poems the poet’s personal journey of heart-soul-and-mind. This collection of poems is about Southern living, tragedy, death, and memories. The poet-author’s background as a child who grew up in northern Alabama, a sharecropper’s daughter who farmed for his living, colors much of her work. I enjoyed the flow of her writing, her style of combining prose and poetry, and her reflecting the imagery from her earlier memories in vivid terms.
I recommend that you buy and read this book. It is priced well — to entice the potential reader to venture into the realm of poetry. Ms. Johnson-Murphree enjoys, above all else, sharing her love of writing with others who will enjoy it, understand her better, and share her personal journey.”
THE POETRY OF ANN JOHNSON-MURPHREE AT AMAZON.COM –
Bangles and Colorful Cloth for Ma…
Bangles and Colorful Cloth for Ma…
“Dedicated to my Great-Grandmother”
When I was born, you were a young ninety-years old,
your hair pulled tight at the nap of your neck, still
black and bold. At night, you let it down to braid before
you went to bed, it fell to the floor; at first I would watch
in silence from a crack in the door.
The night you caught me I was six, you called me into the
room smiling…asking that I bring you a single broomstick.
I quickly plucked it from mother’s only broom, and rushed
back into the dimly lit room. You showed me how to break
it into small pieces; when I looked bewildered your smile
accented all of your dark wrinkles and creases.
It was then that my eyes opened wide as you put the stick right
through the lob of your ears, its magic I thought; but this is my
great-grandmother I have nothing to fear. As a child, I did not
realize that there was a hole, because when I would touch the
bangles in her ears, she would quickly scold.
Just like the time when I tried to sneak a peek at her button up
shoes by raising the hem of her long dress, she did not have on
shoes, there were moccasins on those tiny feet…who would have
guessed. Yes, I was only a child without a care, and I spent many
hours sitting at the foot of her old rocking chair.
I never tire of the stories she would tell, sometimes we cried together
and now I can say it…as a child she lived in a white man’s world, she
called it “hell”. Her parents had walked on the “Trail of Tears”, proud
and strong, with every step wondering where they had gone wrong.
She help raise me and she taught me the way, and as her mind begin
to wander in those later years, I was sad, when she would tell her stories
she only remembered the bad. This grand old woman dressed in bangles
and cloths of many colors, with that big ball of hair and the nap of her
neck was a great-grandmother like no other.
She died only days before her birthday, she would have been one-hundred
and five, my father said, Ma would have scolded you saying…
” Don’t you ever let anyone see you cry”.
I was fifteen and the world was bright and colorful with the artwork of fall,
a befitting day to bury this beautiful and proud Chickasaw.
©2012.annjohnsonmurphree
Echoing Images from the Soul eBook Sale
ALO – Personal Art Collection of Ann Johnson-Murphree
Artwork-Acrylics-Watercolors…
Happy Birthday Daddy…
I am going to reblog a poem that I wrote for my daddy, but first a bit of his life story, I hope you enjoy it, his adventures in life were many, as were the heartaches and pain.
It is my father’s birthday, although I wish he were here with me, he would have been “110 years-old” He had just turned eight years old when his mother died, he went to live with his Native American grandmother, as his mother and father were divorced after his father left them sitting in an empty weathered house after he removed everything.
Unfortunately at the age of ten, his father came after him, he lived with his father, slept in the barn, ate on the back porch; treated as a farm laborer. Not allowed to visit his beloved grandmother, he dreamed of running away. When he was twelve, his father put him to work in a Tin Mill, so small in stature he stood on a stool to reach the cutting machine, however he was strong and without help lifted the rippled tin that was stacked next to the machine. He would walk to the Mill early each morning and back at night accept on the end of the workweek; his father would be standing at the “pay window”. Each Friday handed what few pennies that he earned over to his father.
When he would tell the story he eyes would sparkle at the mention of a man he call “Big Ed”. Big Ed brought him his quota of tin each morning; and it was on such a morning that he asks my father if he wanted to get away from his father whom was known as a lazy drunk by everyone in the county. The answer, yes, Big Ed help plan his escape! The day finally arrived, my father placed his “other” set of clothes in a feed sack and went to work. At the end of the day, he stood in line to collect his “pay”, Big Ed stood behind him. My father held out a nervous hand to receive his money, when his father reached for it Big Ed grabbed him by the wrist saying, “Not today, this boy is going away and he needs his money”.
My father told of the railroad hiring water boys, jumped the nearby freight train heading south, he would forever be grateful to his friend, Big Ed. Hired as a water boy, given a place to sleep in a tent, two hot meals a day and a few cents pay each week. This life would continue for the next six years. When he turned eighteen he begin riding the rail, yes, hobo style; finally returned to his grandmother’s when he was twenty. It was during his visit to Birmingham that he met in a local Roadhouse a man by the name of “Pretty Boy Floyd” who connected him with an organization running whiskey throughout the south and as far north as Chicago. It was in the Tennessee Mountains that he was chased by local authorities, his car shot-up and nearly lost his own life.
Hearing of this his grandmother sent him to stay with her cousin who owned a farm in the northern part of the state. It was there that he met and married my mother, had two children and would remain on this farm for years. This is where I grew up, with the most wonderful father in the world, a kind and gentle man that everyone called the Chickasaw Farmer. Below is the poem I wrote about his farming days and the people who loved him.
“Happy Birthday Daddy”
The Chickasaw Farmer…
“A tribute to my Daddy”
Rickety ole man stood on the cotton
Wagon a tin of yellow salve in his
Hand.
Rickety ole wagon
Rickety ole man
A hot southern sun hides behind
the Willows on muddy Flint Creek,
cotton Pickers sweat falling on
parched lips Taste like salty brine
while they wait For the ole man to
call “quitting time”.
Rickety ole wagon
Rickety ole man
Young, old, children, women and men
Bloody fingers cut by the barbs of the
Cotton boll dig into the old yellow salve
Tin.
Rickety ole wagon
Rickety ole man
Tar bottom sacks filled with soft white
Gold weary feet follow two old sway
Back mules down a rutted road.
Rickety ole wagon
Rickety ole man
Crimson clouds from wagon wheels
Whirl around tired bodies and drained
Minds; feels like pickers been
Working in the cotton fields since the
Beginning of time.
Rickety ole wagon
Rickety ole man
Mules stop at the fork of the road as the
Cotton pickers walked into the dark of the
Night the Ole man’s heart filled with
Appreciation; cause he’s just an old
Chickasaw farmer trying to
Survive inside a “White Nation”.
Rickety ole wagon
Rickety ole man
Benevolent Memories…
I have enough memories
from the past to last me
for the rest of my life. My
bountiful memory will not
bury them from which they
were born.
A small country church, a
chorus of crows; the splashing
sounds of the brook running
through the Birch trees. The
wind caressing the colossal
row of Oaks in the field.
Death, a road away from the
weathered house of worship,
followed by black feathered
angels. No longer will the water
beneath the Birch cool, nor will
the winds surrounding the Oaks
embrace flesh.
The rocker on the porch is stilled,
no hand waves goodbye. In a
cobwebbed corner of the room,
the sun shines through a cloudy
window, as the image of tattered
curtains dance in a nearby mirror.
Childhood is dead.
****
2013.annjohnsonmurphree
All eBooks at the address below:
http://www.amazon.com/Ann-Johnson-Murphree/e/B00CGBLQZO/ref=sr_ntt_srch_lnk_2?qid=1375763518&sr=8-2
I Write…
In writing poetry, one not only finds an outlet for releasing the quandaries life might bring; creating also gives one a reason to share joy. AJM
The Voices…
I am a writer, from me you shall read
the sounds of insistent voices of those
characters whispering in my ear. They
are fierce, burning with passion, their
messages clear.
They speak to me with the force of a
turbulent sea, at other times like the
surge of the tide, yet always protecting
me… “within me they reside”.
I am a writer.
****
2013.annjohnsonmurphree
All eBooks at the address below:
http://www.amazon.com/Ann-Johnson-Murphree/e/B00CGBLQZO/ref=sr_ntt_srch_lnk_2?qid=1375763518&sr=8-2
A Redbird Day…
It is a Red Bird kind of day as I carefully
walk the bramble-hedged path through
the forest that edged our home. I could
hear leaves crunching, not from my boots…
but a lighter slower movement.
I can hear the crusted creek running beside
the path flowing gently through vein like
openings in the ice. I can smell the wood
smoke from our fireplace.
I know that on the warming shelves of the
old wood stove are hot biscuits and ham
waiting for me to get home from scurrying
the forest for nuts and berries, a treat while
we sit around the fireplace listening to
grandpa’s latest tale of the war he fought in
during his youth.
Mother’s watching from the window for signs
of my bright colored hat she knitted me last
Christmas, she opened the door and waved;
I was late and she was worried. I showed her
my overflowing baskets, she smiled…I wanted
keep her happy so, I did not tell her about the
Wolf.
2013.annjohnsonmurphree
All eBooks at the address below:
http://www.amazon.com/Ann-Johnson-Murphree/e/B00CGBLQZO/ref=sr_ntt_srch_lnk_2?qid=1375763518&sr=8-2
Spirit of Life…
The spirit of life cannot fail no
matter what ocean stream
it takes, no matter where it may
sail. You may stumble and fall,
you may question the mystery
of it all.
You may be pushed into the
darkest of fears; yet you will hear
the whispers of calmness because
the Great Mystery is near. When
you stop trying to reach perfection
in life, you will move ahead. Your
spirit knows that there is nothing
to dread.
Do not be afraid to move onto the
uncomfortable edge and do not be
afraid to fall; you are in the arms of
the Great Mystery and your spirits
“tree of life” will always bear fruit.
If you live within the realm of
spiritual truth.
Experience life with grace and ease;
support the spirit of life, you will find
wonderful blessings during the
brightest of your days and throughout
the darkest of your nights.
2013.annjohnsonmurphree
All eBooks at the address below:
http://www.amazon.com/Ann-Johnson-Murphree/e/B00CGBLQZO/ref=sr_ntt_srch_lnk_2?qid=1375763518&sr=8-2
ann johnson-murphree 
