Philly Poetry Chapbook Review is pleased to feature Rohanna Ssanyu’s poem “Found in the African Art Collection of a New Haven Gallery After the Guard Asks Whether My Son Knows the Rules” as our third featured chapbook poem of Issue 11: Winter 2026. You can find more poetry in her chapbook, The Marabou Who Crossed the Sea, from Small Harbor Publishing.
Found in the African Art Collection of a New Haven Gallery After the Guard Asks Whether My Son Knows the Rules
A cut-up poem made with exhibit labels
A puppet masquerade at the cradle of humankind
made of geometric patterns.
A billion colorful textiles
grouped by vibrant cosmopolitans.
Leopards of leg rattles,
buffalo of calabash gourds and unpredictable actions.
Hyenas adorned in cotton wigs
work out their aggression through dance
and punish those who disturb the community—
the house, the site of power and blood.
The sculptures came into being.
Brass castings, treasures in exile.
Private collections gifted by Mr. and Mrs. Feathers.
Crushed eggshells, horns of secret meaning.
The royal court looks to the future,
to pepper and ivory,
to complex histories on continued display.
The palace is looted!
God of the sea, with aspirations for political office
and future crimes,
sits on a mantle of cotton cloth, singing
while he inserts into his stomach
coins, glass beads, ceremonial swords,
and other antiquities.
(This poem was first published by African American Review. It is reprinted here with the author’s permission.)
About the Poem
I often think about how to share my culture(s) with my children, third-generation immigrants. Culture is born of community. My mother moved to Alaska, United States, from Kampala, Uganda, in the 1980s. As a child, she was my sole interpreter of a culture I belonged to, but didn’t, 8,000 miles away. It is laborious to hold on to a culture removed, one for which I am a perpetual novice. I do, however, try, and I bring my children with me. The West teaches us to value museums and art galleries with name recognition, academic research typed on keyboards, literature written in English. When I search for us in these spaces, this is what I find. My child is questioned. Should I care if a piece of us can or cannot be found in the glass case the guard worries my child’s small fingers will graze? Should I care if the guard assumes my child is new here? Can this space, this culture, only be ours if cut up and reimagined?
Author Bio
Rohanna Ssanyu is a black, biracial, and diasporan writer born in Alaska to a mother from Uganda and a father from Missouri. In 2023, her poem “An Aftermath of Empire” won the Nutmeg Poetry Prize organized by the Connecticut Poetry Society, and her poem “Turning Self into Muganda Girl” was nominated for Best of the Net by Torch Literary Arts. She is published in Obsidian, African American Review, Literary Mama, and elsewhere. She holds an MFA from Albertus Magnus College, as well as degrees from Southern Connecticut State University and George Washington University. She lives in Connecticut with her husband and children. She teaches in New Haven. Find Rohanna on Instagram @rohannassanyu.
From The Marabou Who Crossed the Sea
The Marabou Who Crossed the Sea follows a second-generation daughter as she seeks to understand her mother and, consequently, the ugliness of the marabou. Written by Ugandan-American poet and teacher, Rohanna Ssanyu, the collection examines the dispersal of a family and the fate of its children. Through the busy streets of the capital, in airmail envelopes, and on big crooked letters, The Marabou Who Crossed the Sea finds beauty in a present viewed through bloodshot eyes. The stork and its counterpart, the crane, with its crown of gold sequins and tail of button strings, find solace.
Available from: Small Harbor Publishing
Contents
“Managing [my husband’s] pain became fraught in the last week of his life when he could no longer swallow the medications that had kept him comfortable…The poem explores the vulnerability and intimacy found in such a crisis.” Read five poems by Amy Riddell, our first biweekly poet of the Winter 2026 issue, along with a few words about “Reading the Body.”
Chapbook Poem: Aphasia by Robert Allen
“Ultimately this is a poem of love and recognition, of finding the right words for the right listener, to the one who listens and understands.” Read the featured Chapbook Poem of the Month for January 2026, “Aphasia,” along with a few words from the poet.
Book Excerpt: The Egg of Anything by Paula Bohince
“The poem is filled with moments of ‘O’ sounds and ‘Ah’ sounds, mimicking the O of the egg and the Ah of the open jaw. I like that the poem is compact in its little form, also a bit egg-like.” Read the featured Excerpt Poem of the Month for January 2026, “The Egg of Anything” from A Violence by Paula Bohince, along with a few words from the poet.
Three Poems by Abraham Aondoana
“Instead of providing any solution to the issue, the poem is ready to be open to the ambiguity that can enable doubt, tenderness, and resilience to co-exist. By so doing, it points to survival not as victory, but as endurance…” Read three poems by Abraham Aondoana, our second biweekly poet of the Winter 2026 issue, along with a few words about “Surviving a Country That is Also a Question.”
Five Poems by Colleen S. Harris
“I am always struck by the juxtaposition of the biology and science of illness versus the life of the person living with it, and how those two spheres constantly interrupt and flow into each other.” Read five poems by Colleen S. Harris, our third biweekly poet of the Winter 2026 issue, along with a few words about “Inflammation As Girl.”
Chapbook Poem: Offering by Richard Jordan
“In my mind, the narrator recognizes that Harper’s fate could very well have been his own, and I hope that readers can relate, in the sense that we all have done reckless things, especially in our youth…” Read the featured Chapbook Poem of the Month for February 2026, “Offering,” along with a few words from the poet.
Book Excerpt: Passage by Paul Hostovsky
“When she’d call me on the weekends, I was high half the time, impatient with her, and unforthcoming. It’s one of my greatest regrets. The tears well up just thinking about it. I didn’t grieve her properly. I’m grieving her now.” Read the featured Excerpt Poem of the Month for February 2026, “Passage” from Perfect Disappearances by Paul Hostovsky, along with a few words from the poet.
“The poem captures us both there in the dreaded check up appointment: me clenching crinkling paper, scared of what the lab reports say; him…lab reports in hand like some mysterious document…” Read three poems by Mary Whitlow, our fourth biweekly poet of the Winter 2026 issue, along with a few words about “Examined.”
February ’26: Section Editors & Staff Wanted
Editor Aiden Hunt begins year three with a call for applications for section editors and other editorial and production staff in this editor’s note.
“I am most comfortable in a chair with a pen looking at nature through a window. And yet nature is something my mind is also totally immersed in…So I think it’s a bit of a paradox.” Poet Lisa Low discusses her latest chapbook in this interview with Contributor Saudamini Siegrist.
“My work has always found a focus in the bodies of women, and watching the mix of strength and fragility in women as they face illness and pain has been a topic that I keep coming back to.” Read four poems by Betty Stanton, our fifth biweekly poet of the Winter 2026 issue, along with a few words about “Vein Song.”
Chapbook Poem: Found in the African Art Collection… by Rohanna Ssanyu
“It is laborious to hold on to a culture removed, one for which I am a perpetual novice. I do, however, try, and I bring my children with me. … Can this space, this culture, only be ours if cut up and reimagined?” Read the featured Chapbook Poem of the Month for March 2026, “Found in the African Art Collection of a New Haven Gallery After the Guard Asks Whether My Son Knows the Rules,” along with a few words from the poet.
Book Excerpt: Targeted by Frances Klein
“The poem focuses specifically on the way that online algorithms ‘read’ a person’s internet history related to pregnancy or trying to conceive, then deliver the most painful possible ads…” Read the featured Excerpt Poem of the Month for March 2026, “Targeted” from Another Life by Frances Klein, along with a few words from the poet.