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Excerpt from "Brief Notes On Staying // No One is Making Their Best Work When They Want To Die"
I don’t mean sadness as much as I mean the obsession with it. Once, on the wrong edge of a bridge, a boy I knew who played songs let his feet slip off. I found a tape of his after he was gone, and the music sounded sweeter, or at least I told myself it did. What I really want to do is say that life is impossible, and the lie we tell ourselves is that it is too short. Life, if anything, is too long. We accumulate too much along the way. Too many heartbreaks, too many funerals, too many physical setbacks. It’s a miracle any of us survive at all. I know that I stopped thinking about extreme grief as the sole vehicle for great art when the grief started to take people with it. And I get it. The tortured artist is the artist that gets remembered for all time, particularly if they either perish or overcome. But the truth is that so many of us are stuck in the middle. So many of us begin tortured and end tortured, with only brief bursts of light in between, and I’d rather have average art and survival than miracles that come at the cost of someone’s life.
Afro-Latina
Afro-Latina,
Camina conmigo.
Salsa swagger
anywhere she go
como
'¡la negra tiene tumbao!
¡Azúcar!'
Dance to the rhythm.
Beat the drums of my skin.
Afrodescendant,
the rhythms within.
The first language
I spoke was Spanish.
Learned from lullabies
whispered in my ear.
My parents’ tongue
was a gift
which I quickly forgot
after realizing
my peers did not understand it.
They did not understand me.
So I rejected
habichuela y mangú,
much preferring Happy Meals
and Big Macs.
Straightening my hair
in imitation of Barbie.
I was embarrassed
by my grandmother’s
colorful skirts
and my mother’s
eh brokee inglee
which cracked my pride
when she spoke.
So, [ ], I would poke fun
at her myself,
hoping to lessen
the humiliation.
Proud to call myself
American,
a citizen
of this nation,
I hated
Caramel-color skin.
Cursed God
I’d been born
the color of cinnamon.
How quickly we forget
where we come from.
So remind me,
remind me
that I come from
the Taínos of the río
the Aztec,
the Mayan,
Los Incas,
los Españoles
con sus fincas
buscando oro,
and the Yoruba Africanos
que con sus manos
built a mundo
nunca imaginado.
I know I come
from stolen gold.
From cocoa,
from sugarcane,
the children
of slaves
and slave masters.
A beautifully tragic mixture,
a sancocho
of a race history.
And my memory
can't seem to escape
the thought
of lost lives
and indigenous rape.
Of bittersweet bitterness,
of feeling innate,
the soul of a people,
past, present and fate,
our stories cannot
be checked into boxes.
They are in the forgotten.
The undocumented,
the passed-down spoonfuls
of arroz con dulce
a la abuela's knee.
They're the way our hips
skip
to the beat of cumbia,
merengue
y salsa.
They're in the bending
and blending
of backbones.
We are deformed
and reformed
beings.
It's in the sway
of our song,
the landscapes
of our skirts,
the azúcar
beneath our tongues.
We are
the unforeseen children.
We're not a cultural wedlock,
hair too kinky for Spain,
too wavy for dreadlocks.
So our palms
tell the cuentos
of many tierras.
Read our lifeline,
birth of intertwine,
moonbeams
and starshine.
We are every
ocean crossed.
North Star navigates
our waters.
Our bodies
have been bridges.
We are the sons
and daughters,
el destino de mi gente,
black
brown
beautiful.
Viviremos para siempre
Afro-Latinos
hasta la muerte.
body without the "d"
the bo’y wakes up
the bo’y looks at itself
the bo’y notices something missing
there is both too much and not enough flesh on the bo’y
the bo’y is covered in hair
what a hairy bo’y
some makes it look more like a bo’y
some makes it look more like a monster
the bo’y did not learn to shave from its father
so it taught itself how to graze its skin and cut things off
the bo’y cuts itself by accident
the blood reminds the bo’y it is a bo’y
reminds the bo’y how a bo’y bleeds
reminds the bo’y that not every bo’y bleeds
the bo’y talks to a girl about bleeding
she explains how this bo’y works
this bo’y is different from hers
bo’y has too much and not enough flesh to be her
the biology of a bo’y is just
bo’y will only ever be a bo’y
the bo’y is Black
so the bo’y is and will only ever be a bo’y
the bo’y couldn’t be a man if it tried
the bo’y tried
the bo’y feels empty
the bo’y feels like it will only ever be empty
the bo’y feels that it will never hold the weight of another bo’y inside of it
no matter how many ds fit inside the bo’y
the bo’y is a hollow facade
it attempts a convincing veneer
bo’y dresses — what hips on the bo’y
bo’y paints its face — what lips on the bo’y
bo’y adorns itself with labels written for lovelier frames
what a beautiful bo’y
still a bo’y
but a fierce bo’y now
a royal bo’y now
a bo’y worthy of being called queen
what a dazzling ruse
to turn a bo’y into a lie everyone loves to look at
the bo’y looks at itself
the bo’y sees all the gawking at its gloss
the bo’y hears all the masses asking for its missing
the bo’y offers all of its letters
— ‘ b ’ for the birth
— ‘ o ’ for the operation
— ‘ y ’ for the lack left in its genes
what this bo’y would abandon
for the risk of being real
the bo’y is real
enough and too much
existing as its own erasure
— what an elusive d —
evading removal
avoiding recognition
leaving just a bo’y
that is never lost
but can’t be found
When I Grow Up (Edited)
Ask me now
Am I too late?
Ask me now what I want to do for a living.
Am I too late? Cause I think I finally figured it out
I don't want to do for a living
I want to be life.
I want to make things grow, and move, and breath, and reproduce, and respond.
I just want to make things respond and react and rejoice and relax and relate and release and receive
as soon as I recite.
When I grow up,
I don't want to be like those other kids who want to be doctors and ballers and astronauts.
I want to be passion, and heat and energy.
When I grow up,
I don't want to be a fireman, let me be the fire
The explosion behind the soul's big bang theory that leaves in it's place ... desire
That burning within that gives life to the word "aspire"
Let me warm the cold souls of the despairing and heartless
Let me light the paths of those wandering in the darkness
And provide children with their first definition of "hot"
And when the artists of the world have become so infatuated with ice that the whole world freezes over,
Let me be the poet that melts the ice-caps, drowns the planet, and starts this world over -
2 poets at a time like Noah ...
When I grow up
I don't want to be an astronaut, I want to be the space that he explores -
Not the doctor, let me be the cure.
The prescription for a better life ...
the way through which the sick and the shut-in can find hope, health, happiness, and healing.
I want to be the pill of which they take two, and the call that is placed that next morning.
I want to be the white blood cell that strengthens the immune system,
the clot that stops the bleeding,
the antidote that counters the poison;
I want to speak antibiotic poetry that defeats your life's viruses,
but only if you take my words in 3 times a day until the entire bottle is gone;
I want to be the perspective of the world through the eyes of an autistic child who is diagnosed with a sickness
when in fact she merely sees the world with a clarity that the rest of us could only dream of having ...
When I grow up
I don't want to be a preacher, I want to be the word
Not the artist, I want to be the art
Not the painter, let me be the canvas
Not the choreographer, let me be the dances
Not the poet, let me be the stanzas
When I grow up
I don't want to be the singer, I want to be the sound!
The song you sing the way you sing it when you think aint nobody else around
When I grow up,
I don't want to be a lawyer I want to be justice.
Not the philosopher, but the philosophy that the brilliant minds try to follow,
Or the brilliance in those minds,
Or even the elusive concepts that they can't quite figure out like
hope, purpose, faith ... and time.
I wanna be time
When I grow up,
I want to be the antonym of void,
the antithesis of without,
the contradiction of silence,
the inverse of absence,
the reverse of regression,
the antilogy to emptiness,
the illumination of shadows,
the opposite of darkness...
I wanna be the opposite of darkness when I grow up!
So that when the greatest poet in existence
recites the first line
of the greatest poem ever written
"let there be light"
then - I can begin.
Still I Rise
You may write me down in history
With your bitter, twisted lies,
You may trod me in the very dirt
But still, like dust, I’ll rise.
Does my sassiness upset you?
Why are you beset with gloom?
’Cause I walk like I’ve got oil wells
Pumping in my living room.
Just like moons and like suns,
With the certainty of tides,
Just like hopes springing high,
Still I’ll rise.
Did you want to see me broken?
Bowed head and lowered eyes?
Shoulders falling down like teardrops,
Weakened by my soulful cries?
Does my haughtiness offend you?
Don’t you take it awful hard
’Cause I laugh like I’ve got gold mines
Diggin’ in my own backyard.
You may shoot me with your words,
You may cut me with your eyes,
You may kill me with your hatefulness,
But still, like air, I’ll rise.
Does my sexiness upset you?
Does it come as a surprise
That I dance like I’ve got diamonds
At the meeting of my thighs?
Out of the huts of history’s shame
I rise
Up from a past that’s rooted in pain
I rise
I’m a black ocean, leaping and wide,
Welling and swelling I bear in the tide.
Leaving behind nights of terror and fear
I rise
Into a daybreak that’s wondrously clear
I rise
Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,
I am the dream and the hope of the slave.
I rise
I rise
I rise.
Cento Between the Ending and the End
Sometimes you don’t die
when you’re supposed to
& now I have a choice
repair a world or build
a new one inside my body
a white door opens
into a place queerly brimming
gold light so velvet-gold
it is like the world
hasn’t happened
when I call out
all my friends are there
everyone we love
is still alive gathered
at the lakeside
like constellations
my honeyed kin
honeyed light
beneath the sky
a garden blue stalks
white buds the moon’s
marble glow the fire
distant & flickering
the body whole bright-
winged brimming
with the hours
of the day beautiful
nameless planet. Oh
friends, my friends—
bloom how you must, wild
until we are free.
That Girl
people only see me as that girl
that fat girl just a little too black girl
always sitting in the back girl
that girl
people tell me you're weak girl
no one wants to hear you speak girl
look at me
I'm not at your feet girl
stop crying girl
it's not like you're dying girl
no one would like you for who you are
and your career definitely won't go far
not with that hair those clothes those shoes
you really need to change all of you girl
sometimes I tell myself
you know depression ain’t cute girl
and you should stop waiting
and do what you have to do girl
I mean if you're gonna end it then do it already girl
just make sure you keep your hands steady girl
you want to get it right girl
just wait til night girl
then get the knife girl
it only takes one slice girl
look at you
too weak to take your own life girl
but God told me
aren't you tired of waiting to die girl
all you have to do is try girl
I gave you life to live girl
I gave you your gift to give girl
I'm always here girl
it's okay to shed a tear girl
just don't fear girl
because you are that girl
made strong enough to carry the world on your back girl
so stand up straight girl
you will be great girl
it is your fate girl
don't worry about the past
remember who was first shall be last
so you've endured the worst girl
now it's your turn to be first girl
then God held out his hands
he said take this girl
don't waste it girl
you'll know when to use it girl
it's a miracle girl
like you, you are a miracle girl
Excerpt from "Giovanni's Room"
To remember it so clearly, so painfully tonight tells me that I have never for an instant truly forgotten it. I feel in myself now a faint, a dreadful stirring of what so overwhelmingly stirred in me then, great thirsty heat, and trembling, and tenderness so painful I thought my heart would burst. But out of this astounding, intolerable pain came joy; we gave each other joy that night. It seemed, then, that a lifetime would not be long enough for me to act with Joey the act of love.
Excerpt from "The Fire Next Time: My Dungeon Shook"
There is no reason for you to try to become like white people and there is no basis whatever for their impertinent assumption that they must accept you. The really terrible thing, old buddy, is that you must accept them. And I mean that very seriously. You must accept them and accept them with love. For these innocent people have no other hope. They are, in effect, still trapped in a history which they do not understand; and until they understand it, they cannot be released from it. They have had to believe for many years, and for innumerable reasons, that black men are inferior to white men. Many of them, indeed, know better, but, as you will discover, people find it very difficult to act on what they know. To act is to be committed, and to be committed is to be in danger. In this case, the danger, in the minds of most white Americans, is the loss of their identity. Try to imagine how you would feel if you woke up one morning to find the sun shining and all the stars aflame. You would be frightened because it is out of the order of nature. Any upheaval in the universe is terrifying because it so profoundly attacks one's sense of one's own reality. Well, the black man has functioned in the white man's world as a fixed star, as an immovable pillar: and as he moves out of his place, heaven and earth are shaken to their foundations. You, don't be afraid. I said that it was intended that you should perish in the ghetto, perish by never being allowed to go behind the white man's definitions, by never being allowed to spell your proper name. You have, and many of us have, defeated this intention; and, by a terrible law, a terrible paradox, those innocents who believed that your imprisonment made them safe are losing their grasp of reality. But these men are your brothers—your lost, younger brothers. And if the word integration means anything, this is what it means: that we, with love, shall force our brothers to see themselves as they are, to cease fleeing from reality and begin to change it.
Ka 'Ba
A closed window looks down
on a dirty courtyard, and black people
call across or scream or walk across
defying physics in the stream of their will
Our world is full of sound
Our world is more lovely than anyone's
tho we suffer, and kill each other
and sometimes fail to walk the air
We are beautiful people
with african imaginations
full of masks and dances and swelling chants
with african eyes, and noses, and arms,
though we sprawl in grey chains in a place
full of winters, when what we want is sun.
We have been captured,
brothers. And we labor
to make our getaway, into
the ancient image, into a new
correspondence with ourselves
and our black family. We read magic
now we need the spells, to rise up
return, destroy, and create. What will be
the sacred words?
my dad asks "how come black folk can't just write about flowers?"
bijan been dead 11 months & my blue margin reduced to arterial, there’s a party at my house, a
house held by legislation vocabulary & trill. but hell, it’s ours & it sparkle on the corner of view
park, a channel of blk electric. danny wants to walk to the ledge up the block, & we an open
river of flex: we know what time it is. on the ledge, folk give up neck & dismantle gray
navigation for some slice of body. it’s june. it’s what we do.
walk down the middle of our road, & given view park, a lining of dubois’ 10th, a jack n jill feast, &
good blk area, it be our road. we own it. I’m sayin’ with money. our milk neighbors, collaborate
in the happy task of surveillance. they new. they pivot function. they call the khaki uniforms. i
swift. review the architecture of desire spun clean, & I could see how we all look like ghosts.
3 squad cars roll up at my door & it’s a fucking joke cuz exactly no squad cars rolled up to the
mcdonald’s bijan was shot at & exactly no squad cars rolled up to find the murders & exactly no
one did what could be categorized as they “job,” depending on how you define time spent for
money earned for property & it didn’t make me feel like I could see less of the gun in her holster
because she was blk & short & a woman, too. she go,
this your house?
I say yeah. she go,
can you prove it?
I say it mine.
she go ID? I say it mine.
she go backup on the sly
& interview me going all what’s your address—don’t look!
& hugh say I feel wild disrespected.
& white go can you explain that?
& danny say how far the nearest precinct?
& christian say fuck that.
& white go can you explain that?
I cross my arms. I’m bored & headlights quit being interesting after I called 911 when I was 2 years old because it was the only phone number I knew by heart.
failed avoidance of 'the body' in a poem
after TJ Jarrett
your therapist wants to know where
in your body you most feel your anxiety.
you tell her in the bones
behind your face. they have their own
music, like ptolemy’s universe,
and chirp like shuriken
dancing in the road. your therapist says
you hurt because there are things
you’ve never been taught to do:
how to hold yourself in sleep.
how to drive. how to live with men.
back when you were five—or maybe four—
your father knelt before you for the last
time, close enough
that you could smell him, a zephyr
of kool’s filter kings and leaving.
he pushed the tricycle toward you, purple and white
streamers limp as hair on the handlebars.
by the time you mounted the cranium-shaped
seat, he was gone.
your new goal is to learn to breathe
through bones, to make flutes of them.
although, in reality, you are much more supple:
a crooked fold of flesh that comes so quickly
when called. you are the warm-bellied
animal on the shoulder,
coated in sunscreen and your father’s curiosity:
white-haired possum with his green, green eyes.
you’re now the oldest you may ever be.
you have never before been this afraid.
there are no bodies bound to rush in the room
when your own becomes a bullet ringing the tiles.
you know all about “love’s austere and lonely
offices”: checking your stools for blood.
checking your breasts for lumps. checking your neck
for swelling nodes. checking the locks,
the coffeepot, all the cracked
eyes blinking fire on the kitchen stove.
your own weep against a pillowcase
you haven’t washed, stiff with the
miasma of your hair. you stare
at pictures of the girlfriend grinning in sunlight.
you feel bad for not being taken with yourself more,
but your body is all asymptotes and fractals.
your own skin splinters in the dark
from your dense heat. the pieces
come back together under a halo of prescriptions
steeping your head in yellow light. sometimes,
while combing your hair, a sliver of cartilage
lodges in your finger pad. you lick
the glittering blood and spit out the shard.
compared to your father, this is not unkind.
somewhere between your skull and the skin
that swaddles it, all the songs you didn’t know
you needed to learn from him appear
and vanish with the rhythm of your breathing.
The Pedestrian
When the pickup truck, with its side mirror,
almost took out my arm, the driver’s grin
reflected back; it was just a horror
show that was never going to happen,
don’t protest, don’t bother with the police
for my benefit, he gave me a smile—
he too was startled, redness in his face—
when I thought I was going, a short while,
to get myself killed: it wasn’t anger
when he bared his teeth, as if to caution
calm down, all good, no one died, ni[ght, neighbor]—
no sense getting all pissed, the commotion
of the past is the past; I was so dim,
he never saw me—of course, I saw him
Boy Breaking Glass
To Marc Crawford
from whom the commission
Whose broken window is a cry of art
(success, that winks aware
as elegance, as a treasonable faith)
is raw: is sonic: is old-eyed première.
Our beautiful flaw and terrible ornament.
Our barbarous and metal little man.
“I shall create! If not a note, a hole.
If not an overture, a desecration.”
Full of pepper and light
and Salt and night and cargoes.
“Don’t go down the plank
if you see there’s no extension.
Each to his grief, each to
his loneliness and fidgety revenge.
Nobody knew where I was and now I am no longer there.”
The only sanity is a cup of tea.
The music is in minors.
Each one other
is having different weather.
“It was you, it was you who threw away my name!
And this is everything I have for me.”
Who has not Congress, lobster, love, luau,
the Regency Room, the Statue of Liberty,
runs. A sloppy amalgamation.
A mistake.
A cliff.
A hymn, a snare, and an exceeding sun.
Speech to the Young: Speech to the Progress-Toward
Say to them,
say to the down-keepers,
the sun-slappers,
the self-soilers,
the harmony-hushers,
"Even if you are not ready for day
it cannot always be night."
You will be right.
For that is the hard home-run.
Live not for battles won.
Live not for the-end-of-the-song.
Live in the along.
To the Young Who Want to Die
Sit down. Inhale. Exhale.
The gun will wait. The lake will wait.
The tall gall in the small seductive vial
will wait will wait:
will wait a week: will wait through April.
You do not have to die this certain day.
Death will abide, will pamper your postponement.
I assure you death will wait. Death has
a lot of time. Death can
attend to you tomorrow. Or next week. Death is
just down the street; is most obliging neighbor;
can meet you any moment.
You need not die today.
Stay here--through pout or pain or peskyness.
Stay here. See what the news is going to be tomorrow.
Graves grow no green that you can use.
Remember, green's your color. You are Spring.
truth
And if sun comes
How shall we greet him?
Shall we not dread him,
Shall we not fear him
After so lengthy a
Session with shade?
Though we have wept for him,
Though we have prayed
All through the night-years—
What if we wake one shimmering morning to
Hear the fierce hammering
Of his firm knuckles
Hard on the door?
Shall we not shudder?—
Shall we not flee
Into the shelter, the dear thick shelter
Of the familiar
Propitious haze?
Sweet is it, sweet is it
To sleep in the coolness
Of snug unawareness.
The dark hangs heavily
Over the eyes.
How to Tell My Dad that I Kissed a Man
Blame your drag queen roommate—Lamar by day, Mahogany
by night—and then blame his sequined dresses—all slit high [ ]
Explain that dusk smells so different in Spain—musky cherry—
tight tangerine burst—sage mixed with lavender
Tell him you were under the influence of bees or bats—
the spin and swirl of doves
Tell him you were half asleep—about to leave to the dunes just
west of Madrid—better yet say forest—he knows that
crazy [ ] happens in a forest
[ ]
Tell him timing
Tell him ease
Tell him sweat and sweat
Tell him lips
[ ]
Tell him flat-chested
Tell him, “crook”—I mean, “creek”
Tell him tales—lies—tears—water—weakness—churros—
chocolate—hot—heat—heave—
Hush
Hush
Hush
Tell him anything you want—then tell him
You did it again
Duplex ["I begin with love"]
I begin with love, hoping to end there.
I don’t want to leave a messy corpse.
I don’t want to leave a messy corpse
Full of medicines that turn in the sun.
Some of my medicines turn in the sun.
Some of us don’t need hell to be good.
Those who need most, need hell to be good.
What are the symptoms of your sickness?
Here is one symptom of my sickness:
Men who love me are men who miss me.
Men who leave me are men who miss me
In the dream where I am an island.
In the dream where I am an island,
I grow green with hope. I’d like to end there.
Say Thank You Say I'm Sorry
I don’t know whose side you’re on,
But I am here for the people
Who work in grocery stores that glow in the morning
And close down for deep cleaning at night
Right up the street and in cities I mispronounce,
In towns too tiny for my big black
Car to quit, and in every wide corner
Of Kansas where going to school means
At least one field trip
To a slaughterhouse. I want so little: another leather bound
Book, a gimlet with a lavender gin, bread
So good when I taste it I can tell you
How it’s made. I’d like us to rethink
What it is to be a nation. I’m in a mood about America
Today. I have PTSD
About the Lord. God save the people who work
In grocery stores. They know a bit of glamour
Is a lot of glamour. They know how much
It costs for the eldest of us to eat. Save
My loves and not my sentences. Before I see them,
I draw a mole near my left dimple,
Add flair to the smile they can’t see
Behind my mask. I grin or lie or maybe
I wear the mouth of a beast. I eat wild animals
While some of us grow up knowing
What gnocchi is. The people who work at the grocery don’t care.
They say, Thank you. They say, Sorry,
We don’t sell motor oil anymore with a grief so thick
You could touch it. Go on. Touch it.
It is early. It is late. They have washed their hands.
They have washed their hands for you.
And they take the bus home.
working title
The name of this poem is:
How to write a poem about Ferguson
Or
The name of this poem is:
How a black man dies and no one makes a sound
Or
The name of this poem is:
Everywhere is Ferguson
Or
The name of this poem is:
When the moonrise sounds like gunshots
Or
The name of this poem is:
How to teach your babies to walk and not run, ever.
Or
The name of this poem is:
How to teach your babies to carry a wallet
the size of your smile
Or
The name of this poem is:
How to smile & not make yourself a target
Or
The name of this poem is:
How to write a poem the same size of Emmett Till’s lungs
Or
The name of this poem is:
How to write a poem about America’s thirst
Or
The name of this poem is:
Black blood’ll keep you thirsty
Or
The name of this poem is:
I’m still thirsty, An American Horror Story
Or
The name of this poem is:
How to write an escape route from a tornado
Or
The name of this poem is:
How to write an escape route
when the tornado’s name is Stop & Frisk
Or
The name of this poem is:
How walk the streets without fearing
someone will cut your neck open
Or
How to walk into a boardroom
without fearing someone will cut your legacy open
Or
How to walk without asking for it
Or
How to walk without asking for it
Or
How to determine what “asking for it” looks like
Or
The name of this poem is:
How “asking for it” feel like a church bombing
Or
The name of this poem is:
How to not intimidate nobody in 3 small steps
Or
The name of this poem is:
How to use your science books as Teflon
& how that still might not work
Or
The name of this poem is:
How to write about the one time you held a gun
Or
The name of this poem is:
How to write about the one time you had a gun pointed to your face
Or
The name of this poem is:
How to write about the one time you had a gun pointed to your face
Or
The name of this poem is:
How to write about the one time you had a gun pointed to your face
Or
The name of this poem is:
How to write about the one time you had a gun pointed to your face
Or
The name of this poem is:
How to write a poem from the perspective of a cop’s gun
a cop’s Taser
a cop’s baton
a cop’s boot
Or
The name of this poem is:
How to write poem without r e p e a t i n g yourself
Excerpt from "Parable of the Sower"
There is no end
To what a living world
Will demand of you.
Untitled
My house got robbed in New York. I didn't even call the police. I wanted to, but I couldn't. My crib is too nice. It's not that it's too nice, but it's too nice for me. You know how the police are in New York. Soon as I open the door, they'll be like, "He's still here! Open and shut case, Johnson. Apparently this black guy broke in and hung up pictures of his family everywhere. Never seen anything like it.
Mixed Bitch
is allowed to love herself.
She wants to tell Nikky Finney
about her beautiful black girl arms
how they shimmer and shimmy in space—
making muscle songs of her tendons
and the dark matter beef.
Mixed Bitch wants to commission Kehinde Wiley.
She wants renaissance prints behind her mulatto skin,
gold lamé and a big ass frame inside the First
Museum.
She was caught between two allegiances, different,
yet the same. Herself. Her race. Race! The thing
that bound and suffocated her. Whatever steps
she took, or if she took none at all, something
would be crushed. Crushed?
Mixed Bitch don’t know her Daddy.
Mixed Bitch don’t know her Daddy.
Mixed Bitch
don’t know
her Daddy.
But ain’t she still allowed to love herself?
Mixed Bitch lets herself love—
the black inside: the white inside: the black of herself.
My Therapist Wants to Know about My Relationship to Work
I hustle
upstream.
I grasp.
I grind.
I control & panic. Poke
balloons in my chest,
always popping there,
always my thoughts thump,
thump. I snooze — wake & go
boom. All day, like this I short
my breath. I scroll & scroll.
I see what you wrote — I like.
I heart. My thumb, so tired.
My head bent down, but not
in prayer, heavy from the looking.
I see your face, your phone-lit
faces. I tap your food, two times
for more hearts. I retweet.
I email: yes & yes & yes.
Then I cry & need to say: no-no-no.
Why does it take so long to reply?
I FOMO & shout. I read. I never
enough. New book. New post.
New ping. A new tab, then another.
Papers on the floor, scattered & stacked.
So many journals, unbroken white spines,
waiting. Did you hear that new new?
I start to text back. Ellipsis, then I forget.
I balk. I lazy the bed. I wallow when I write.
I truth when I lie. I throw a book
when a poem undoes me. I underline
Clifton: today we are possible. I start
from image. I begin with Phillis Wheatley.
I begin with Phillis Wheatley. I begin
with Phillis Wheatley reaching for coal.
I start with a napkin, receipt, or my hand.
I muscle memory. I stutter the page. I fail.
Hit delete — scratch out one more line. I sonnet,
then break form. I make tea, use two bags.
Rooibos again. I bathe now. Epsom salt.
No books or phone. Just water & the sound
of water filling, glory — be my buoyant body,
bowl of me. Yes, lavender, more bubbles
& bath bomb, of course some candles too.
All alone with Coltrane. My favorite, “Naima,”
for his wife, now for me, inside my own womb.
Again, I child back. I float. I sing. I simple
& humble. Eyes close. I low my voice,
was it a psalm? Don’t know. But I stopped.
poem in praise of menstruation
if there is a river
more beautiful than this
bright as the blood
red edge of the moon if
there is a river
more faithful than this
returning each month
to the same delta if there
is a river
braver than this
coming and coming in a surge
of passion, of pain if there is
a river
more ancient than this
daughter of eve
mother of cain and of abel if there is in
the universe such a river if
there is some where water
more powerful than this wild
water
pray that it flows also
through animals
beautiful and faithful and ancient
and female and brave
why some people be mad at me sometimes
they ask me to remember
but they want me to remember
their memories
and i keep on remembering
mine.
Excerpt from "Between the World and Me" 1
Think of all the love poured into him. Think of the tuitions for Montessori and music lessons. Think of the gasoline expended, the treads worn carting him to football games, basketball tournaments, and Little League. Think of the time spent regulating sleepovers. Think of the surprise birthday parties, the daycare, and the reference checks on babysitters. Think of World Book and Childcraft. Think of checks written for family photos. Think of credit cards charged for vacations. Think of soccer balls, science kits, chemistry sets, racetracks, and model trains. Think of all the embraces, all the private jokes, customs, greetings, names, dreams, all the shared knowledge and capacity of a black family injected into that vessel of flesh and bone. And think of how that vessel was taken, shattered on the concrete, and all its holy contents, all that had gone into him, sent flowing back to the earth.
Excerpt from "Between The World And Me" 2
To be black in the Baltimore of my youth was to be naked before the elements of the world, before all the guns, fists, knives, crack, rape, and disease. The nakedness is not an error, nor pathology. The nakedness is the correct and intended result of policy, the predictable upshot of people forced for centuries to live under fear.
Bedtime Story
bed calls. i sit in the dark in the living room
trying to ignore them
in the morning, especially Sunday mornings
it will not let me up. you must sleep
longer, it says
facing south
the bed makes me lay heavenward on my back
while i prefer a westerly fetal position
facing the wall
the bed sucks me sideways into it when i
sit down on it to put on my shoes. this
persistence on its part forces me to dress in
the bathroom where things are less subversive
the bed lumps up in anger springs popping out to
scratch my dusky thighs
my little office sits in the alcove adjacent to
the bed. it makes strange little sighs
which distract me from my work
sadistically i pull back the covers
put my typewriter on the sheet and turn it on
the bed complains that i'm difficult duty
its slats are collapsing. it bitches when i
blanket it with books and papers. it tells me
it's made for blood and bone
lately spiders ants and roaches
have invaded it searching for food
Dear Mama (4)
when did we become friends?
it happened so gradual i didn't notice
maybe i had to get my run out first
take a big bite of the honky world and choke on it
maybe that's what has to happen with some uppity youngsters
if it happens at all
and now
the thought stark and irrevocable
of being here without you
shakes me
beyond love, fear, regret or anger
into that realm children go
who want to care for/protect their parents
as if they could
and sometimes the lucky ones do
into the realm of making every moment
important
laughing as though laughter wards off death
each word given
received like spanish eight
treasure to bury within
against that shadow day
when it will be the only coin i possess
with which to buy peace of mind
Fruit Of The Flower
My father is a quiet man
With sober, steady ways;
For simile, a folded fan;
His nights are like his days.
My mother's life is puritan,
No hint of cavalier,
A pool so calm you're sure it can
Have little depth to fear.
And yet my father's eyes can boast
How full his life has been;
There haunts them yet the languid ghost
Of some still sacred sin.
And though my mother chants of God,
And of the mystic river,
I've seen a bit of checkered sod
Set all her flesh aquiver.
Why should he deem it pure mischance
A son of his is fain
To do a naked tribal dance
Each time he hears the rain?
Why should she think it devil's art
That all my songs should be
Of love and lovers, broken heart,
And wild sweet agony?
Who plants a seed begets a bud,
Extract of that same root;
Why marvel at the hectic blood
That flushes this wild fruit?
Flu Season
In the summer of 2014, hundred of Memphis police officers
caught the “blue flu,” and took sick days to protest a reduction in
benefits. Almost 40% of the City’s general fund is spent on policing.
It's flu season and I'm sick of bills. It's all
Destiny's Child: bills, bills, bills. We have
armored trucks and SkyCops and no food.
We have body cams and no food and the body
cams are never recording. Have you ever been
denied so much you came down with a blue flu?
Have you ever been as blue as a jar of Blue Magic,
set of blueprints, a river filling with femurs, dull,
red kidneys? I've heard the cops started as a better
way to catch [ ]. Somehow a person with no
-thing is always the most dangerous. How many
times have my taxes paid for riot shields
cliquing together like birds? How much over-
time occupies my block and its quiet? Look:
I lock the door when I'm sure no one's coming.
I ask the ghetto bird, if only briefly, to wait. All my
life, I've been asking for a park. Fresh oranges
that don't take 3 hours to bring home.
Learning Whitney
My father loved my mama
quiet. She never was.
Sang as she dusted,
Whitney was her back-up singer.
He’d disappear, stumble in,
bright blues still in his mouth.
I come from a family of men
who thought saying I love you
was something you saved for sleep or the dead
and tears could get your ass whooped.
Why I don't write about George Floyd
Because there is too much to say
Because I have nothing to say
Because I don’t know what to say
Because everything has been said
Because it hurts too much to say
What can I say what can I say
Something is stuck in my throat
Something is stuck like an apple
Something is stuck like a knife
Something is stuffed like a foot
Something is stuffed like a body
Heartbeats
Work out. Ten laps.
Chin ups. Look good.
Steam room. Dress warm.
Call home. Fresh air.
Eat right. Rest well.
Sweetheart. Safe sex.
Sore throat. Long flu.
Hard nodes. Beware.
Test blood. Count cells.
Reds thin. Whites low.
Dress warm. Eat well.
Short breath. Fatigue.
Night sweats. Dry cough.
Loose stools. Weight loss.
Get mad. Fight back.
Call home. Rest well.
Don’t cry. Take charge.
No sex. Eat right.
Call home. Talk slow.
Chin up. No air.
Arms wide. Nodes hard.
Cough dry. Hold on.
Mouth wide. Drink this.
Breathe in. Breathe out.
No air. Breathe in.
Breathe in. No air.
Black out. White rooms.
Head hot. Feet cold.
No work. Eat right.
CAT scan. Chin up.
Breathe in. Breathe out.
No air. No air.
Thin blood. Sore lungs.
Mouth dry. Mind gone.
Six months? Three weeks?
Can’t eat. No air.
Today? Tonight?
It waits. For me.
Sweet heart. Don’t stop.
Breathe in. Breathe out.
Heart to Heart
It’s neither red
nor sweet.
It doesn’t melt
or turn over,
break or harden,
so it can’t feel
pain,
yearning,
regret.
It doesn’t have
a tip to spin on,
it isn’t even
shapely—
just a thick clutch
of muscle,
lopsided,
mute. Still,
I feel it inside
its cage sounding
a dull tattoo:
I want, I want—
but I can’t open it:
there’s no key.
I can’t wear it
on my sleeve,
or tell you from
the bottom of it
how I feel. Here,
it’s all yours, now—
but you’ll have
to take me,
too.
The Debt
This is the debt I pay
Just for one riotous day,
Years of regret and grief,
Sorrow without relief.
Pay it I will to the end —
Until the grave, my friend,
Gives me a true release —
Gives me the clasp of peace.
Slight was the thing I bought,
Small was the debt I thought,
Poor was the loan at best —
God! but the interest!
Characteristics of Life
A fifth of animals without backbones could be at risk of extinction, say scientists.
-BBC Nature News
Ask me if I speak for the snail and I will tell you
I speak for the snail.
speak of underneathedness
and the welcome of mosses,
of life that springs up,
little lives that pull back and wait for a moment.
I speak for the damselfly, water skeet, mollusk,
the caterpillar, the beetle, the spider, the ant.
I speak
from the time before spinelessness was frowned upon.
Ask me if I speak for the moon jelly. I will tell you
one thing today and another tomorrow
and I will be as consistent as anything alive
on this earth.
I move as the currents move, with the breezes.
What part of your nature drives you? You, in your cubicle
ought to understand me. I filter and filter and filter all day.
Ask me if I speak for the nautilus and I will be silent
as the nautilus shell on a shelf. I can be beautiful
and useless if that's all you know to ask of me.
Ask me what I know of longing and I will speak of distances
between meadows of night-blooming flowers.
I will speak
the impossible hope of the firefly.
You with the candle
burning and only one chair at your table must understand
such wordless desire.
To say it is mindless is missing the point.
Ode to Gossips
i was mothered by lonely women some
of them wives some of them with
plumes of smoke for husbands all lonely
smelling of onions & milk all mothers
some of them to children some to old names
phantom girls acting out a life only half
a life away instead copper kitchenware
bangles pushed up the arm fingernails rusted
with henna kneading raw meat with salt
with coriander sweating upper lip
in the steam weak tea hair unwound
against the nape my deities each one
sandal slapping against stone heel sandal-
wood & oud bright chiffon spun
about each head coffee in the dowry china
butter biscuits on a painted plate crumbs
suspended in eggshell demitasse & they
begin i heard people are saying
i saw it with my own eyes [ ]’s daughter
a scandal she was wearing [ ]
& not wearing [ ] can you imagine
a shame a shame
Fuck / Shakespeare
And another thing / the grace you brought Othello / how you forged that moor / got him talking down his eloquence as if his tongue wasn’t part swan feather / part molasses / how you wrote a church of darkness steepled by Iago / and Ol’ Thello its soul / beacon of honor and light / Bruh / that shit literary fire / race-theory brimstone / middle-passage gold
but /
how you played Caliban / his tongue as Othello’s / and just as wronged / How you imbibed him with / emblemed him of colonized peoples / got me all riled up / imagining my ancestor’s vengeance / a rough blade thrust through Prospero’s proud heart / but you didn’t / Play ends / Cali still enslaved / Bruh / that shit fucked
I Turn the Volume Down Because Beyonce Says [ ] in the Car While I Drive My Daughter to School
the four-year-old gives her first
protest of the morning whether intentional
or the default position of her mother's resolve
her fist is balled in the way a boy would grip her hair
in a kindergarten class or at any age that boys
put their names on things
she says, hey I like that song and Beyoncé has already finished
saying I'm gonna [ ] me up a [ ] so
I turn the volume back up to five seconds ago
before a father once told a Black woman she was too loud to
fill his daughter's lungs before the tabernacle
of mist filled the car until all we knew to breathe was
gunsmoke and the ire of men interrupting the choir of crows
that ain't meant for their ears and I know
it doesn't take much to get this little girl's blood
into a spell because it was once her grandmother's
blood which means there will be
a day when someone some man tries to pull it
out of her and she becomes a wound where the curses her
father hid from her come tumbling out of the
same
tomb where she once buried a woman with a too quiet face
I come from the fire city
i come from the fire city / fire came and licked up our houses,
lapped them up like they were nothing / drank them like the last
dribbling water from a concrete fountain / the spigot is too hot to
touch with your lips be careful / fire kissed us and laughed / and
even now the rust climbs the walls, red ivy / iron fire and the brick
blossoms florid / red like stolen lipstick ground down to a small
flat earth / stand on any corner of the fire city, look west to death
/ the red sun eats the bungalows / the fire city children watch
with their fingers in their mouths / to savor the flaming hots or
hot flamins or hot crunchy curls or hot chips / they open the fire
hydrants in the fire city and lay dollar store boats in the gutters /
warrior funeral pyres unlit
Thank God I Can't Drive
My brain is trying so hard to outrun this.
It is doing more work than the lie.
I could go to jail for anything. I look like that
kind of girl. I only speak one language. I am
of prestige but can’t really prove it. Not if
my hands are tied. Not if my smartphone is
seized. Not if you can’t google me. Without
an archive of human bragging rights, I’m
[ ] nobody, an empty bag, two-toned
luggage. I’m not trying to be sanctimonious,
I just found out that I’m afraid to die, like,
there goes years of posturing about, beating it
like I own it, taking it to the bathroom with
the tampons—like, look at me, I am so agent
and with all this agency I can just deploy
death at any time. The truth is
that I’m already on the clock, I’m just a few
notches down on the “black-girl-with-bad
mouth” list, the street lights go out and I’m
just at the mercy of my own bravery and
their punts of powerlessness, their “who
the hell do you think you are’s?”
fat girl Confuses Food & Therapy, Again
after Jennifer Jackson Berry
Who hasn’t carved a fork
through a cut of cake and tasted
dollar store crowns, neon streamers,
wind-up toys coruscating on the rug
like confetti, tune of our skittering
shoes, fingers hooked to scoop
jam from the sandwiches, thumbs plump
as blackberries in our wild, wagging
mouths—those honeyed years
before I understood my body’s struggle
against the morning’s golden net.
Now, the patterned progress of neighbors
through the day’s long maw goes grayscale
and the nearby train scrambling the tracks
hums like static. My partner slabs
his tongue inside me, layers each lick
like strips of papier-mâché. I should tell him
there’s no use, but instead pour ink-like
to the fridge for another bite of cake,
feel, finally, like a bird’s nest, its delicate dip
of twig and twine, slip a new gown
of frosting on my tongue, hope what sugars
stays long enough for one of us to taste it.
Confronting Hatred
how beautiful would it be
if we lived in a place
where everyone called hatred
by its full name,
tapped it on the shoulder,
looked into its eyes
without shaking
and said
“you cannot live here
anymore.”
Potato Chips
Potato Chips, how my mouth just drips
Potato Chips, how my mouth just drips
Crunch, crunch, I don't want no lunch
All I want is potato chips
Potato Chips, how my mouth just drips
Potato Chips, how my mouth just drips
Crunch, crunch, I don't want no lunch
All I want is potato chips
No matter where it is
You'll always find a bag around
Be it in a bar or picnic, even a baseball ground
Potato Chips, how my mouth just drips
Potato Chips, holy drip drip drips
Crunch, crunch, I don't want no lunch
All I want is potato chips
Bag bag bag
Bag of Potato Chips
Potato Chips, high crunchy, crunchy
Potato Chips, crunch, crunchy, crunchy
Crunch, crunch, crunch, I don't want no lunch
All I want is potato chips
Potato Chips, how my mouth just drips
Potato Chips, crunchy, crunchy, crunchy, crunchy, crunchy, crunchy
Don't bring me no lunch, All I want is potato chips
No matter where it is
You'll find a bag around
I could be even in a bar or picnic, or a baseball ground
Doesn't matter
Potato, potato, a chippy chipo
Crunch, crunch
Bring me no lunch, All I want is potato chips
Love, I'm Done with You
You ever wake up with your footie PJs warming
your neck like a noose? Ever upchuck
after a home-cooked meal? Or notice
how the blood on the bottoms of your feet
just won’t seem to go away? Love, it used to be
you could retire your toothbrush for like two or three days and still
I’d push my downy face into your neck. Used to be
I hung on your every word. (Sing! you’d say: and I was a bird.
Freedom! you’d say: and I never really knew what that meant,
but liked the way it rang like a rusty bell.) Used to be. But now
I can tell you your breath stinks and you’re full of shit.
You have more lies about yourself than bodies
beneath your bed. Rooting
for the underdog. Team player. Hook,
line and sinker. Love, you helped design the brick
that built the walls around the castle
in the basement of which is a vault
inside of which is another vault
inside of which . . . you get my point. Your tongue
is made of honey but flicks like a snake’s. Voice
like a bird but everyone’s ears are bleeding.
From the inside your house shines
and shines, but from outside you can see
it’s built from bones. From out here it looks
like a graveyard, and the garden’s
all ash. And besides,
your breath stinks. We’re through.
Excerpt from "Hunger"
When you’re overweight, your body becomes a matter of public record in many respects. Your body is constantly and prominently on display. People project assumed narratives onto your body and are not at all interested in the truth of your body, whatever that truth might be. Fat, much like skin color, is something you cannot hide, no matter how dark the clothing you wear, or how diligently you avoid horizontal stripes.
Allowables
I killed a spider
Not a murderous brown recluse
Nor even a black widow
And if the truth were told this
Was only a small
Sort of papery spider
Who should have run
When I picked up the book
But she didn’t
And she scared me
And I smashed her
I don’t think
I’m allowed
To kill something
Because I am
Frightened
I Take Master Card (Charge Your Love To Me)
I've heard the stories
'bout how you don't deserve me
'cause I'm so strong and beautiful and wonderful and you could
never live up to what you know I should have but I just want to let you know:
I take Master Card
You can love me as much as your heart can stand
then put the rest on
account and pay the interest
each month until we get this thing settled
You see we modern women do comprehend
that we deserve a whole lot more
than what is normally being offered but we are trying
to get aligned with the modern world
So baby you can love me all
you like 'cause you're pre-approved
and you don't have to sign on
the bottom line
Charge it up
'til we just can't take no more
it's the modern way
I take Master Card
to see your Visa
and I deal with a Discovery but I don't want any American
Express 'cause like the Pointer Sisters say: I need a slow hand
Noche de Lluvia, San Salvador
Rain who nails the earth,
whose infinite legs
nail the earth, whose silver faces
touch my faces, I marry you. & open
all the windows of my house to hear
your million feral versions
of si si
sí
si
si
Some of My Worst Wounds
Some of my worst wounds
have healed into poems.
A few well-placed
stabs in the back
have released a singing
trapped between my shoulders.
A carrydown
has lent leverage
to the tongue’s rise
and betrayals sent words
hurrying home
to toe the line again.
The Hill We Climb
When day comes we ask ourselves,
where can we find light in this never-ending shade?
The loss we carry,
a sea we must wade
We've braved the belly of the beast
We've learned that quiet isn't always peace
And the norms and notions
of what just is
Isn't always just-ice
And yet the dawn is ours
before we knew it
Somehow we do it
Somehow we've weathered and witnessed
a nation that isn't broken
but simply unfinished
We the successors of a country and a time
Where a skinny Black girl
descended from slaves and raised by a single mother
can dream of becoming president
only to find herself reciting for one
And yes we are far from polished
far from pristine
but that doesn't mean we are
striving to form a union that is perfect
We are striving to forge a union with purpose
To compose a country committed to all cultures, colors, characters and
conditions of man
And so we lift our gazes not to what stands between us
but what stands before us
We close the divide because we know, to put our future first,
we must first put our differences aside
We lay down our arms
so we can reach out our arms
to one another
We seek harm to none and harmony for all
Let the globe, if nothing else, say this is true:
That even as we grieved, we grew
That even as we hurt, we hoped
That even as we tired, we tried
That we'll forever be tied together, victorious
Not because we will never again know defeat
but because we will never again sow division
Scripture tells us to envision
that everyone shall sit under their own vine and fig tree
And no one shall make them afraid
If we're to live up to our own time
Then victory won't lie in the blade
But in all the bridges we've made
That is the promise to glade
The hill we climb
If only we dare
It's because being American is more than a pride we inherit,
it's the past we step into
and how we repair it
We've seen a force that would shatter our nation
rather than share it
Would destroy our country if it meant delaying democracy
And this effort very nearly succeeded
But while democracy can be periodically delayed
it can never be permanently defeated
In this truth
in this faith we trust
For while we have our eyes on the future
history has its eyes on us
This is the era of just redemption
We feared at its inception
We did not feel prepared to be the heirs
of such a terrifying hour
but within it we found the power
to author a new chapter
To offer hope and laughter to ourselves
So while once we asked,
how could we possibly prevail over catastrophe?
Now we assert
How could catastrophe possibly prevail over us?
We will not march back to what was
but move to what shall be
A country that is bruised but whole,
benevolent but bold,
fierce and free
We will not be turned around
or interrupted by intimidation
because we know our inaction and inertia
will be the inheritance of the next generation
Our blunders become their burdens
But one thing is certain:
If we merge mercy with might,
and might with right,
then love becomes our legacy
and change our children's birthright
So let us leave behind a country
better than the one we were left with
Every breath from my bronze-pounded chest,
we will raise this wounded world into a wondrous one
We will rise from the gold-limbed hills of the west,
we will rise from the windswept northeast
where our forefathers first realized revolution
We will rise from the lake-rimmed cities of the midwestern states,
we will rise from the sunbaked south
We will rebuild, reconcile and recover
and every known nook of our nation and
every corner called our country,
our people diverse and beautiful will emerge,
battered and beautiful
When day comes we step out of the shade,
aflame and unafraid
The new dawn blooms as we free it
For there is always light,
if only we're brave enough to see it
If only we're brave enough to be it
Gallery Songs
for Cynthia
I. If you want to buy my wares…
In the gallery, Desperation and Need are not for sale,
neither is Night’s Mist,
but you can buy What Makes Love
Fade.
Come, see:
the crescent of her body in the clutch of need,
the drenched mop of her body
cutting the red flame with its shadows,
these small photos you can buy.
II. What Makes Love Fade?
Money or Lack, Noise or Silence,
I answer expertly.
I am a scientist, dissecting
this heart like a greasy frog,
handlings its limp tubes
with my metal fingers.
III. Estas son las mañanitas…
You said my heart hopped
like a rana and sang me a frog song,
rubbing your fingers on me,
fingers that you think are crooked.
Sana, sana, heal, heal,
you sang, if not today, mañana,
rubbing your hands on me,
hands too small to hide a strawberry.
Despierta, mi bien, despierta,
I want to touch you
while you are wide awake
with my dirty mouth.
Excerpt from "The Autobiography of Malcolm X, as told to Alex Haley"
I have often reflected upon the new vistas that reading opened to me. I knew right there in prison that reading had changed forever the course of my life. As I see it today, the ability to read awoke inside me some long dormant craving to be mentally alive. I certainly wasn’t seeking any degree, the way a college confers a status symbol upon its students. My homemade education gave me, with every additional book that I read, a little bit more sensitivity to the deafness, dumbness, and blindness that was afflicting the black race in America. Not long ago, an English writer telephoned me from London, asking questions. One was, “What’s your alma mater?” I told him, “Books.” You will never catch me with a free fifteen minutes in which I’m not studying something I feel might be able to help the black man.
Songs for the People
Let me make the songs for the people,
Songs for the old and young;
Songs to stir like a battle-cry
Wherever they are sung.
Not for the clashing of sabres,
For carnage nor for strife;
But songs to thrill the hearts of men
With more abundant life.
Let me make the songs for the weary,
Amid life’s fever and fret,
Till hearts shall relax their tension,
And careworn brows forget.
Let me sing for little children,
Before their footsteps stray,
Sweet anthems of love and duty,
To float o’er life’s highway.
I would sing for the poor and aged,
When shadows dim their sight;
Of the bright and restful mansions,
Where there shall be no night.
Our world, so worn and weary,
Needs music, pure and strong,
To hush the jangle and discords
Of sorrow, pain, and wrong.
Music to soothe all its sorrow,
Till war and crime shall cease;
And the hearts of men grown tender
Girdle the world with peace.
Makin' Jump Shots
He waltzes into the lane
’cross the free-throw line,
fakes a drive, pivots,
floats from the asphalt turf
in an arc of black light,
and sinks two into the chains.
One on one he fakes
down the main, passes
into the free lane
and hits the chains.
A sniff in the fallen air—
he stuffs it through the chains
riding high:
“traveling” someone calls—
and he laughs, stepping
to a silent beat, gliding
as he sinks two into the chains.
Single Lines Looking Forward. or One Monostich Past 45
The joke is orange. which has never been funny.
For awhile I didn’t sleep on my bright side.
Many airplanes make it through sky.
The joke is present. dented and devil.
For awhile, yellow spots on the wall.
Obama on water skis, the hair in his armpits, free.
I thought the CIA was operative.
Across the alley, a woman named Mildred.
Above the clouds in a plane, a waistline of sliced white.
I don’t sound like TED Talk, or smart prose on Facebook.
These clouds are not God.
I keep thinking about Coltrane; how little he talked.
This is so little; I give so little.
Sometimes when I say something to white people, they say “I’m sorry?”
During Vietnam, Bob Kaufman stopped talking.
The CIA was very good at killing Panthers.
Mildred in a housecoat, calling across the fence, over her yard.
If I were grading this, I’d be muttering curses.
The joke is a color. a color for prison.
Is it me, or is the sentence, as structure, arrogant?
All snow, in here, this writing, departure.
All miles are valuable. all extension. all stretch.
I savor the air with both fingers, and tongue.
Mildred asks about the beats coming from my car.
I forgot to bring the poem comparing you to a garden.
Someone tell me what to say to my senators.
No one smokes here; in the rain, I duck away and smell piss.
I thought the CIA was. the constitution.
I feel like he left us, for water skis, for kitesurfing.
The sun will not always be so gracious.
From the garden poem, one line stands out.
Frank Ocean’s “Nights” is a study in the monostich.
Pace is not breathing, on and off. off.
Mildred never heard of Jneiro Jarel.
I’m afraid one day I’ll find myself remembering this air.
The last time I saw my mother, she begged for fried chicken.
My father still sitting there upright, a little high.
Melissa McCarthy could get it.
Sometimes, I forget how to touch.
In a parking garage, I wait for the toothache.
I watch what I say all the time now.
She said she loved my touch, she used the word love.
In 1984, I’d never been in the sky.
My mother walked a laundry cart a mile a day for groceries.
Betsy DeVos is confirmed. with a broken tie.
Mildred’s five goes way up, and my five reaches.
Those Winter Sundays
Sundays too my father got up early
and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold,
then with cracked hands that ached
from labor in the weekday weather made
banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him.
I’d wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking.
When the rooms were warm, he’d call,
and slowly I would rise and dress,
fearing the chronic angers of that house,
Speaking indifferently to him,
who had driven out the cold
and polished my good shoes as well.
What did I know, what did I know
of love’s austere and lonely offices?
George Floyd
You can be a bother who dyes
his hair Dennis Rodman blue
in the face of the man kneeling in blue
in the face the music of his wrist-
watch your mouth is little more
than a door being knocked
out of the ring of fire around
the afternoon came evening’s bell
of the ball and chain around the neck
of the unarmed brother ground down
to gunpowder dirt can be inhaled
like a puff the magic bullet point
of transformation both kills and fires
the life of the party like it’s 1999 bottles
of beer on the wall street people
who sleep in the streets do not sleep
without counting yourself lucky
rabbit’s foot of the mountain
lion do not sleep without
making your bed of the river
boat gambling there will be
no stormy weather on the water
bored to death any means of killing
time is on your side of the bed
of the truck transporting Emmett
till the break of day Emmett till
the river runs dry your face
the music of the spheres
Emmett till the end of time
Nothing
I ask a student how I can help her. Nothing is on her paper.
It’s been that way for thirty-five minutes. She has a headache.
She asks to leave early. Maybe I asked the wrong question.
I’ve always been dumb with questions. When I hurt,
I too have a hard time accepting advice or gentleness.
I owe for an education that hurt, and collectors call my mama’s house.
I do nothing about my unpaid bills as if that will help.
I do nothing about the mold on my ceiling, and it spreads.
I do nothing about the cat’s litter box, and she pisses on my new bath mat.
Nothing isn’t an absence. Silence isn’t nothing. I told a woman I loved her,
and she never talked to me again. I told my mama a man hurt me,
and her hard silence told me to keep my story to myself.
Nothing is full of something, a mass that grows where you cut at it.
I’ve lost three aunts when white doctors told them the thing they felt
was nothing. My aunt said nothing when it clawed at her breathing.
I sat in a room while it killed her. I am afraid when nothing keeps me
in bed for days. I imagine what my beautiful aunts are becoming
underground, and I cry for them in my sleep where no one can see.
Nothing is in my bedroom, but I smell my aunt’s perfume
and wake to my name called from nowhere. I never looked
into a sky and said it was empty. Maybe that’s why I imagine a god
up there to fill what seems unimaginable. Some days, I want to live
inside the words more than my own black body.
When the white man shoves me so that he can get on the bus first,
when he says I am nothing but fits it inside a word, and no one stops him,
I wear a bruise in the morning where he touched me before I was born.
My mama’s shame spreads inside me. I’ve heard her say
there was nothing in a grocery store she could afford. I’ve heard her tell
the landlord she had nothing to her name. There was nothing I could do
for the young black woman that disappeared on her way to campus.
They found her purse and her phone, but nothing led them to her.
Nobody was there to hold Renisha McBride’s hand
when she was scared of dying. I worry poems are nothing against it.
My mama said that if I became a poet or a teacher, I’d make nothing, but
I’ve thrown words like rocks and hit something in a room when I aimed
for a window. One student says when he writes, it feels
like nothing can stop him, and his laugher unlocks a door. He invites me
into his living.
Cardi B Tells Me About Myself
Dear Frustrated in Flatbush,
Gurl, just go on ahead then.
You waiting for your Daddy
to give you the thumbs up?
Do what you like.
Do what makes your ass happy.
They gon’ call you all makes
and sizes of hoe anyway.
That’s how this thing been set up.
But just cuz they name a thing a thing,
don’t mean it ain’t still named God
in some other language.
Your fortune cookie say you poppin’.
You a full spread of good shit.
Your rotten wisdom tooth.
Your pockmarked shoulders.
Those eyelashes ain’t come here
to talk about the weather.
You the hottest day in July
and every fire hydrant in this city
is written out to your name.
Whatchu dead fish for?
Whatchu call that stroke?
Drowning? Baptism?
Gurl, you betta lick that
collection plate clean
and stop pretending you just
got off the first canoe from Heaven.
You ain’t nothin but
a big bowl of sweat rice.
You wring your left thigh,
they call you Vintage JuJu.
They like, “This some kind of nightmare?”
And it’s just you, smoking a blunt in the dark,
cackling like rain. Like your grandmama
at her ain’t-shit husband’s funeral.
Bitch, you been a woman.
This ain’t new skin.
Slap some Lycra on it
and call yourself a predicament.
You ain’t just somebody’s meal plan.
Pull back your hair and eat.
And look at this muhfukka,
sittin across the table,
lookin like he wanna bite you.
Tonight is tonight and tomorrow
might be somewhere else,
serenading some lesser bitch.
Throw his ass a bone and
stop worrying about your credit score.
You stay banging your tambourine
to the wrong hymnal.
I’m sure they had names
and inescapable mouths but
what your ex gotta do with this?
Why you still got his body in your linen closet?
That’s nasty. Bitch, keep your house clean.
You crying over spilled dick. Gurl buh-bye.
Getchu a free refill.
You too black for indie film housewife.
You too naked for conversation like this.
Too much soft brutality,
too much bathtub depression.
Why you always got your neck swung open?
Free throat don’t pay for your boy’s sneakers.
You already know I don’t even sigh for free.
Shit, I stroke a shallow strobe light,
inchworm down 4 feet of greasy pole,
and I still don’t feel like any less than a miracle.
Excerpt from "Let America be America Again"
Let America be America again.
Let it be the dream it used to be.
Let it be the pioneer on the plain
Seeking a home where he himself is free.
(America never was America to me.)
Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed—
Let it be that great strong land of love
Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme
That any man be crushed by one above.
(It never was America to me.)
O, let my land be a land where Liberty
Is crowned with no false patriotic wreath,
But opportunity is real, and life is free,
Equality is in the air we breathe.
(There's never been equality for me,
Nor freedom in this "homeland of the free.")
Say, who are you that mumbles in the dark?
And who are you that draws your veil across the stars?
I am the poor white, fooled and pushed apart,
I am the Negro bearing slavery's scars.
I am the red man driven from the land,
I am the immigrant clutching the hope I seek—
And finding only the same old stupid plan
Of dog eat dog, of mighty crush the weak.
I am the young man, full of strength and hope,
Tangled in that ancient endless chain
Of profit, power, gain, of grab the land!
Of grab the gold! Of grab the ways of satisfying need!
Of work the men! Of take the pay!
Of owning everything for one's own greed!
I am the farmer, bondsman to the soil.
I am the worker sold to the machine.
I am the Negro, servant to you all.
I am the people, humble, hungry, mean—
Hungry yet today despite the dream.
Beaten yet today—O, Pioneers!
I am the man who never got ahead,
The poorest worker bartered through the years.
Yet I'm the one who dreamt our basic dream
In the Old World while still a serf of kings,
Who dreamt a dream so strong, so brave, so true,
That even yet its mighty daring sings
In every brick and stone, in every furrow turned
That's made America the land it has become.
O, I'm the man who sailed those early seas
In search of what I meant to be my home—
For I'm the one who left dark Ireland's shore,
And Poland's plain, and England's grassy lea,
And torn from Black Africa's strand I came
To build a "homeland of the free."
The free?
Who said the free? Not me?
Surely not me? The millions on relief today?
The millions shot down when we strike?
The millions who have nothing for our pay?
For all the dreams we've dreamed
And all the songs we've sung
And all the hopes we've held
And all the flags we've hung,
The millions who have nothing for our pay—
Except the dream that's almost dead today.
O, let America be America again—
The land that never has been yet—
And yet must be—the land where every man is free.
The land that's mine—the poor man's, Indian's, Negro's, ME—
Who made America,
Whose sweat and blood, whose faith and pain,
Whose hand at the foundry, whose plow in the rain,
Must bring back our mighty dream again.
Sure, call me any ugly name you choose—
The steel of freedom does not stain.
From those who live like leeches on the people's lives,
We must take back our land again,
America!
O, yes,
I say it plain,
America never was America to me,
And yet I swear this oath—
America will be!
Harlem Sweeties
Have you dug the spill
Of Sugar Hill?
Cast your gims
On this sepia thrill:
Brown sugar lassie,
Caramel treat,
Honey-gold baby
Sweet enough to eat.
Peach-skinned girlie,
Coffee and cream,
Chocolate darling
Out of a dream.
Walnut tinted
Or cocoa brown,
Pomegranate-lipped
Pride of the town.
Rich cream-colored
To plum-tinted black,
Feminine sweetness
In Harlem’s no lack.
Glow of the quince
To blush of the rose.
Persimmon bronze
To cinnamon toes.
Blackberry cordial,
Virginia Dare wine—
All those sweet colors
Flavor Harlem of mine!
Walnut or cocoa,
Let me repeat:
Caramel, brown sugar,
A chocolate treat.
Molasses taffy,
Coffee and cream,
Licorice, clove, cinnamon
To a honey-brown dream.
Ginger, wine-gold,
Persimmon, blackberry,
All through the spectrum
Harlem girls vary—
So if you want to know beauty’s
Rainbow-sweet thrill,
Stroll down luscious,
Delicious, fine Sugar Hill.
Impasse
I could tell you
If I wanted to,
What makes me
What I am.
But I don't
Really want to –
And you don't
Give a damn.
Excerpt from "How It Feels To Be Colored Me"
But I am not tragically colored. There is no great sorrow dammed up in my soul, nor lurking behind my eyes. I do not mind at all. I do not belong to the sobbing school of Negrohood who hold that nature somehow has given them a lowdown dirty deal and whose feelings are all hurt about it. Even in the helter-skelter skirmish that is my life, I have seen that the world is to the strong regardless of a little pigmentation more or less. No, I do not weep at the world—I am too busy sharpening my oyster knife.
Sometimes, I feel discriminated against, but it does not make me angry. It merely astonishes me. How can any deny themselves the pleasure of my company? It's beyond me.
Excerpt from "Their Eyes Were Watching God"
Oh to be a pear tree—any tree in bloom! With Kissing bees singing of the beginning of the world! She was sixteen. She had glossy leaves and bursting buds and she wanted to struggle with life but it seemed to elude her. Where were the singing bees for her? Nothing on the place nor in her grandma's house answered her. She searched as much of the world as she could from the top of the front steps and then went on down to the front gate and leaned over to gaze up and down the road. Looking, waiting, breathing short with impatience. Waiting for the world to be made.
RuPaul Gives The Black Girl Miracle Her First Lesson in Realness
how can i be a black woman in this fierce world
and not have needs? i know what it is to be
the crash and current of the sea, honey. to shelter
my own villain and pronounce its hope. but
i say, take my love as the good mundane.
as the extraordinary silence, the fahrenheit.
to be in love with another is to be an open door.
to be in love with yourself is to be the whole damn
house.
A sestina for a black girl who does not know how to braid hair
Your hands have no more worth than tree stumps at harvest.
Don’t sit on my porch while I make myself useful.
Braid secrets in scalps on summer days for my sisters.
Secure every strand of gossip with tight rubber bands of value.
What possessed you to ever grow your nails so long?
How can you have history without braids?
A black girl is happiest when rooted to the scalp are braids.
She dances with them whipping down her back like corn in winds of harvest.
Braiding forces our reunions to be like the shifts your mothers work, long.
I find that being surrounded by only your own is more useful.
Gives our mixed blood more value.
Solidifies your place with your race, with your sisters.
Your block is a layered cake of your sisters.
Force your lips quiet and sweet and they’ll speak when they need to practice braids.
Your hair length is the only part of you that holds value.
The tallest crop is worshipped at harvest.
So many little hands in your head. You are finally useful.
Your hair is yours, your hair is theirs, your hair is, for a black girl, long.
Tender-headed ass won’t last ’round here long.
Cut your nails and use your fists to protect yourself against your sisters.
Somehow mold those hands useful.
Your hair won’t get pulled in fights if they are in braids.
Beat out the weak parts of the crops during harvest.
When they are limp and without soul they have value.
If you won’t braid or defend yourself what is your value?
Sitting on the porch until dark sweeps in needing to be invited, you’ll be needing long.
When the crop is already used what is its worth after harvest?
You’ll learn that you can’t ever trust those quick to call themselves your sisters.
They yearn for the gold that is your braids.
You hold on your shoulders a coveted item that is useful.
Your presence will someday become useful.
One day the rest of your body will stagger under the weight of its value.
Until then, sit in silence in the front with your scalp on fire from the braids.
I promise you won’t need anyone too long.
One day you will love yourself on your own, without the validation of sisters.
No longer a stump wailing for affection at harvest.
Selah
after Margaret Walker’s “For My People”
The Lord clings to my hands
after a night of shouting.
The Lord stands on my roof
& sleeps in my bed.
Sings the darkened, Egun tunnel—
cooks my food in abundance,
though I was once foolish
& wished for an emptied stomach.
The Lord drapes me with rolls of fat
& plaits my hair with sanity.
Gives me air,
music from unremembered fever.
This air
oh that i may give air to my people
oh interruption of murder
the welcome Selah
The Lord is a green, Tubman escape.
A street buzzing with concern,
minds discarding answers.
Black feet on a centuries-long journey.
The Lord is the dead one scratching my face,
pinching me in dreams.
The screaming of the little girl that I was,
the rocking of the little girl that I was—
the sweet hush of her healing.
Her syllables
skipping on homesick pink.
I pray to my God of confused love,
a toe touching blood
& swimming through Moses-water.
A cloth & wise rocking.
An eventual Passover,
outlined skeletons will sing
this day of air
for my people—
oh the roar of God
oh our prophesied walking
Mercy
the war speaks at night
with its lips of shredded children,
with its brow of plastique
and its fighter jet breath,
and then it speaks at daybreak
with the soft slur of money
unfolding leaf upon leaf.
it speaks between the news
programs in the music
of commercials, then sings
in the voices of a national anthem.
it has a dirty coin jingle in its step,
it has a hand of many lost hands,
a palm of missing fingers,
the stump of an arm that it lost
reaching up to heaven, a foot
that digs a trench for its dead.
the war staggers forward,
compelled, inexorable, ticking.
it looks to me
with its one eye of napalm
and one eye of ice,
with its hair of fire
and its nuclear heart,
and yes, it is so human
and so pitiful as it stands there,
waiting for my hand.
it wants to know my answer.
it wants to know how i intend
to show it out of its misery,
and i only want it
to teach me how to kill.
Wishes
I'm tired of pacing the petty round of the ring of the thing I know—
I want to stand on the daylight's edge and see where the sunsets go.
I want to sail on a swallow's tail and peep through the sky's blue glass.
I want to see if the dreams in me shall perish or come to pass.
I want to look through the moon's pale crook and gaze on the moon-man's face.
I want to keep all the tears I weep and sail to some unknown place.
Art vs. Trade
Trade, Trade versus Art,
Brain, Brain versus Heart;
Oh, the earthiness of these hard-hearted times,
When clinking dollars, and jingling dimes,
Drown all the finer music of the soul.
Life as an Octopus with but this creed,
That all the world was made to serve his greed;
Trade has spread out his mighty myriad claw,
And drawn into his foul polluted maw,
The brightest and the best,
Well nigh,
Has he drained dry,
The sacred fount of Truth;
And if, forsooth,
He has left yet some struggling streams from it to go,
He has contaminated so their flow,
That Truth, scarce is it true.
Poor Art with struggling gasp,
Lies strangled, dying in his mighty grasp;
He locks his grimy fingers ’bout her snowy throat so tender.
Is there no power to rescue her, protect, defend her?
Shall Art be left to perish?
Shall all the images her shrines cherish
Be left to this iconoclast, to vulgar Trade?
Oh, that mankind had less of Brain and more of Heart,
Oh, that the world had less of Trade and more of Art;
Then would there be less grinding down the poor,
Then would men learn to love each other more;
For Trade stalks like a giant through the land,
Bearing aloft the rich in his high hand,
While down beneath his mighty ponderous tread,
He crushes those who cry for daily bread.
Sleep
O Sleep, thou kindest minister to man,
Silent distiller of the balm of rest,
How wonderful thy power, when naught else can,
To soothe the torn and sorrow-laden breast!
When bleeding hearts no comforter can find,
When burdened souls droop under weight of woe,
When thought is torture to the troubled mind,
When grief-relieving tears refuse to flow;
'Tis then thou comest on soft-beating wings,
And sweet oblivion's peace from them is shed;
But ah, the old pain that the waking brings!
That lives again so soon as thou art fled!
Man, why should thought of death cause thee to weep;
Since death be but an endless, dreamless sleep?
Blue Prelude
Last night, the ceiling above me ached
with dance. Music dripped down the walls
like rain in a broken house. My eyes followed
the couple's steps from one corner
to the other, pictured the press of two chests
against soft breathing, bodies slipping
in and out of candlelight. The hurt
was exquisite. In my empty bed, I dreamed
the record's needle pointed into my back,
spinning me into no one's song.
A Short Note to My Very Critical and Well-Beloved Friends and Comrades
First they said I was too light
Then they said I was too dark
Then they said I was too different
Then they said I was too much the same
Then they said I was too young
Then they said I was too old
Then they said I was too interracial
Then they said I was too much a nationalist
Then they said I was too silly
Then they said I was too angry
Then they said I was too idealistic
Then they said I was too confusing altogether:
Make up your mind! They said. Are you militant
or sweet? Are you vegetarian or meat? Are you straight
or are you gay?
And I said, Hey! It’s not about my mind
These Poems
These poems
they are things that I do
in the dark
reaching for you
whoever you are
and
are you ready?
These words
they are stones in the water
running away
These skeletal lines
they are desperate arms for my longing and love.
I am a stranger
learning to worship the strangers
around me
whoever you are
whoever I may become.
micro
actually i don't understand martha, what do you mean
when you say i speak so well? oh, where did you expect
me to work mary-beth? i don't remember saying i lived on
the South Side muriel. are you telling me your hair doesn't
grow thirty inches overnight melanie? if i'm not like the
other ones, then who am i like melissa? do you follow
everyone around the store macy? when you say my
sentences connect do you mean like conjunctions molly?
well, where else could i have gotten my degree myrtle?
maggie i don't think i understand, what do you mean by
urban? are all kids inner city youth or just the Black ones
marilyn? so missy, beyonce is your spirit animal…explain.
and why wouldn't you go back after you go Black mallory?
let me clarify when you say you wish you had skin like
mine do you mean scarred or sensitive maureen? do they
not have chicken where you're from magda? mackenzie
what's your name mean…no i mean back where your
family's from? i don't think i can be racist, i have a white
friend miranda, right?
pansexual
yes, I do like pans. and pots. and slow cookers. and woks.
and crock-pots. and rice makers. and panini presses. and
waffle irons. and blenders when i am feeling dangerous.
and juicers. and cold presses. and food processors. and
watercoolers. and espresso makers. and cast-iron skillets.
god damn i do love a good cast-iron skillet. and
microwaves. and griddles. and plates. and whatever the
[ ] my partner wants to call themselves.
What It Do Done Red
I love your body. I hate it.
but do I hate to love your body
or do I love hating your body
or do I hate “I love your body”
or do I love your body to hate it
or do I love your body since I hate it
or do I hate loving your body because of it?
Sanctuary
The tide pool crumples like a woman
into the smallest version of herself,
bleeding onto whatever touches her.
The ocean, I mean, not a woman, filled
with plastic lace, and closer to the vanishing
point, something brown breaks the surface—human,
maybe, a hand or foot or an island
of trash—but no, it’s just a garden of kelp.
A wild life.
This is a prayer like the sea
urchin is a prayer, like the sea
star is a prayer, like the otter and cucumber—
as if I know what prayer means.
I call this the difficulty of the non-believer,
or, put another way, waking, every morning, without a god.
How to understand, then, what deserves rescue
and what deserves to suffer.
Who.
Or should I say, what must
be sheltered and what abandoned.
Who.
I might ask you to imagine a young girl,
no older than ten but also no younger,
on a field trip to a rescue. Can you
see her? She is led to the gates that separate
the wounded sea lions from their home and the class.
How the girl wishes this measure of salvation for herself:
to claim her own barking voice, to revel
in her own scent and sleek brown body, her fingers
woven into the cyclone fence.
Diaspora #1
my joy is a dead language.
cherubs sob when i pass them by
as if my fingers carry the wilt
of baby’s breath. i lie in bed & suddenly
i’m closer to my ghosts.
another boy tells me he loves me &
i cannot look him in the eye. another
mother says, “smile, child,” & the clouds
open up to swallow me whole.
the last time i loved, the words died in my belly.
the sparks quit next, & then the boy.
i say i cannot carry another day & the shadows
rejoice. i say i’m going to love me today
& i can hear laughter.
worry about me. i am not well. a child
has gone missing within me & left
not even detritus. all the things in this world
set to kill me encroach upon
the one smile i can offer a new day.
i have said it once & if i do not say
it again, the tigers clawing the insides
of my brain will never sleep: home is nowhere
when you are a stolen thing. an heirloom of haint
& hate.
Excerpt From Belly Song
And I and I/ must admit
that the sea in you
has sung/ to the sea/ in me
and I and I/ must admit
that the sea in me
has fallen/ in love
with the sea in you
because you have made something
out of the sea
that nearly swallowed you
And this poem
This poem
This poem/ I give / to you.
This poem is a song/I sing/I sing/ to you
from the bottom
of the sea
in my belly
This poem/is a song/ about FEELINGS
about the Bone of feeling
about the Stone of feeling
And the Feather of feeling
2.
This poem
This poem
This poem/ is /
a death / chant
and a prayer for the dead:
for the young Jackie Robinson.
a moving Blk/warrior who walked
among us
with a wide/ stride and heavy heels
moving moving moving
thru the blood and mud and shit of Vietnam
moving-moving-moving
through the blood and mud and dope of America
for Jackie/ who was/
a song
and a stone
and a Feather of feeling
now dead
and/ gone/in the month of love
This poem
this poem /is / a silver feather
and the sun-gold/ glinting/ green hills breathing
river flowing...
3.
This poem
This poem
This poem/ is for ME- for me
and the days/ that lay/ in the back/ of my mind
when the sea/ rose up/
to swallow me
and the streets I walked
were lonely streets
were stone / cold streets
This poem
this poem
This poem /is / for me
and my woman
and the yesterdays
when she opened
to me like a flower
But I fell on her
like a stone
I fell on her like a stone...
4.
And now- in my 40th year
I have come here
to this House of Feelings
to this Singing Sea
and I and I / must admit
that the sea in me
has fallen / in love
with the sea in you
because the sea
that now sings/ in you
is the same sea
that nearly swallowed you -
and me too.
Anodyne
I love how it swells
into a temple where it is
held prisoner, where the god
of blame resides. I love
slopes & peaks, the secret
paths that make me selfish.
I love my crooked feet
shaped by vanity & work
shoes made to outlast
belief. The hardness
coupling milk it can't
fashion. I love the lips,
salt & honeycomb on the tongue.
The hair holding off rain
& snow. The white moons
on my fingernails. I love
how everything begs
blood into song & prayer
inside an egg. A ghost
hums through my bones
like Pan's midnight flute
shaping internal laws
beside a troubled river.
I love this body
made to weather the storm
in the brain, raised
out of the deep smell
of fish & water hyacinth,
out of rapture & the first
regret. I love my big hands.
I love it clear down to the soft
quick motor of each breath,
the liver's ten kinds of desire
& the kidney's lust for sugar.
This skin, this sac of dung
& joy, this spleen floating
like a compass needle inside
nighttime, always divining
West Africa's dusty horizon.
I love the birthmark
posed like a fighting cock
on my right shoulder blade.
I love this body, this
solo & ragtime jubilee
behind the left nipple,
because I know I was born
to wear out at least
one hundred angels.
excerpt from "Momma"
I know everything, I know everything, know myself
I know morality, spirituality, good and bad health
I know fatality might haunt you
I know everything, I know Compton
I know street shit, I know shit that's conscious, I know everything
I know lawyers, advertisement their sponsors
I know wisdom, I know bad religion, I know good karma
I know everything, I know history
I know the universe works mentally
I know the perks of bullshit isn't meant for me
I know everything, I know cars, clothes, hoes and money
I know loyalty, I know respect, I know those that's Ornery
I know everything, the highs the lows the groupies the junkies
I know if I'm generous at heart, I don't need recognition
The way I'm rewarded, well, that's God's decision
I know you know that lines from Compton School District
Just give it to the kids, don't gossip about how it was distributed
I know how people work, I know the price of life
I know how much it's worth, I know what I know and I know it well
Not to ever forget until I realized I didn't know shit
The day I came home
Insha'Allah
I don’t know when it slipped into my speech
that soft word meaning, “if God wills it.”
Insha’Allah I will see you next summer.
The baby will come in spring, insha’Allah.
Insha’Allah this year we will have enough rain.
So many plans I’ve laid have unraveled
easily as braids beneath my mother’s quick fingers.
Every language must have a word for this. A word
our grandmothers uttered under their breath
as they pinned the whites, soaked in lemon,
hung them to dry in the sun, or peeled potatoes,
dropping the discarded skins into a bowl.
Our sons will return next month, insha’Allah.
Insha’Allah this war will end, soon. Insha’Allah
the rice will be enough to last through winter.
How lightly we learn to hold hope,
as if it were an animal that could turn around
and bite your hand. And still we carry it
the way a mother would, carefully,
from one day to the next.
Excerpt from "Heavy: An American Memoir"
For the first time in my life, I realized telling the truth was way different from finding the truth, and finding the truth had everything to do with revisiting and rearranging words. Revisiting and rearranging words didn't only require vocabulary; it required will, and maybe courage. Revised word patterns were revised thought patterns. Revised thought patterns shaped memory. I knew, looking at all those words, that memories were there, I just had to rearrange, add, subtract, sit, and sift until I found a way to free the memory.
Summer
Last summer, two discrete young snakes left their skin
on my small porch, two mornings in a row. Being
postmodern now, I pretended as if I did not see
them, nor understand what I knew to be circling
inside me. Instead, every hour I told my son
to stop with his incessant back-chat. I peeled
a banana. And cursed God—His arrogance,
His gall—to still expect our devotion
after creating love. And mosquitoes. I showed
my son the papery dead skins so he could
know, too, what it feels like when something shows up
at your door—twice—telling you what you already know.
A Litany for Survival
For those of us who live at the shoreline
standing upon the constant edges of decision
crucial and alone
for those of us who cannot indulge
the passing dreams of choice
who love in doorways coming and going
in the hours between dawns
looking inward and outward
at once before and after
seeking a now that can breed
futures
like bread in our children’s mouths
so their dreams will not reflect
the death of ours;
For those of us
who were imprinted with fear
like a faint line in the center of our foreheads
learning to be afraid with our mother’s milk
for by this weapon
this illusion of some safety to be found
the heavy-footed hoped to silence us
For all of us
this instant and this triumph
We were never meant to survive.
And when the sun rises we are afraid
it might not remain
when the sun sets we are afraid
it might not rise in the morning
when our stomachs are full we are afraid
of indigestion
when our stomachs are empty we are afraid
we may never eat again
when we are loved we are afraid
love will vanish
when we are alone we are afraid
love will never return
and when we speak we are afraid
our words will not be heard
nor welcomed
but when we are silent
we are still afraid
So it is better to speak
remembering
we were never meant to survive.
Don't Pretty Me
Don’t pretty me. Don’t pretty me.
Don’t pretty me. Don’t pretty me.
Don’t pretty me. Don’t pretty me.
Don’t pretty me. Don’t pretty me.
Don’t pretty me. Don’t pretty me.
Don’t pretty me. Don’t pretty me.
Don’t pretty me. Don’t pretty me.
Don’t pretty me. Don’t pretty me.
Don’t pretty me. Don’t pretty me.
Don’t pretty me. Don’t pretty me.
Don’t pretty me. Don’t pretty me.
Don’t pretty me. Don’t pretty me.
Don’t pretty me. Don’t pretty me.
Don’t pretty me. Don’t pretty me.
Don’t pretty me. Don’t pretty me.
Don’t pretty me. Don’t pretty me.
Don’t pretty me. Don’t pretty me.
Don’t pretty me. Don’t pretty me.
Don’t pretty me. Don’t pretty me.
Don’t pretty me. Don’t pretty me.
Don’t.
Excerpt from "Long Walk to Freedom: Autobiography of Nelson Mandela"
I am fundamentally an optimist. Whether that comes from nature or nurture, I cannot say. Part of being optimistic is keeping one's head pointed toward the sun, one's feet moving forward. There were many dark moments when my faith in humanity was sorely tested, but I would not and could not give myself up to despair. That way lays defeat and death.
praise song
praise the Hennessy, the brown
shine, the dull burn. praise
the dare, the take it, the no face
you’re supposed to make.
praise the house, its many rooms,
hardwood and butter leather couches;
its richness. praise the rich, their friendship.
praise the friends: the child of the well off,
the child of the well off, the child of well,
the child of welfare, the child of welfare.
praise the diversity but praise the Hennessy,
and again, and again. praise
the new year upon us. praise my stumble,
the shaky eye, the fluid arm, but the steady
hand. praise my hand, the burning it has.
praise the dive into the gut of a friend; the dousing
of my hand in his ribs. praise the softness of skin,
the way it always gives.
praise the pulling, the calming down.
praise the fuck that, the jump back into all
five of my friends fist first. praise all
five of my friends pinning me into the thick
carpet, knees in my back. praise my back,
how it hurts and raises anyway, how it flips,
how it’s the best friend of my fists.
praise the swinging pool cue, how it whips
air like a disobedient child, praise the disobedient
and all the chilling i won’t do.
praise the child smile on my face, the fun
plunging a knee into a cheek of my best friend.
praise his blood, the brightness of it, a sun i bask in.
praise my blood, the nose flowing wild with effort,
the mess and taste of it, praise the swallowing,
salt and its sweetness.
praise the morning, the impossible blue,
Midwestern January above us. praise
the blues dulled in my denim by all
the brown. praise the brown shine, the dull
burn.
praise all six in my jeans, our salt
and life sitting dry on my thighs
mixing, refusing to wash away.
Pomegranate Means Grenade
The heart trembles like a herd of horses. —Jontae McCrory, age 11
Hold a pomegranate in your palm,
imagine ways to split it, think of the breaking
skin as shrapnel. Remember granada
means pomegranate and granada
means grenade because grenade
takes its name from the fruit;
identify war by what it takes away
from fecund orchards. Jontae,
there will always be one like you:
a child who gets the picked over box
with mostly black crayons. One who wonders
what beautiful has to do with beauty, as he darkens
a sun in the corner of every page,
constructs a house from ashen lines,
sketches stick figures lying face down-
I know how often red is the only color
left to reach for. I fear for you.
You are writing a stampede
into my chest, the same anxiety that shudders
me when I push past marines in high school
hallways, moments after video footage
of young men dropping from helicopters
in night vision goggles. I want you to see in the dark
without covering your face and carry verse
as countermeasure to recruitment videos
and remember the cranes buried inside the poems
painted on banners that hung in Tiananmen Square—
remember because Huang Xiang was exiled
for these. Remember because the poet Huang Xiang
was exiled for this: the calligraphy of revolt.
Always know that you will stand nameless
in front of a tank, always know you will not stand
alone, but there will always be those
who would rather see you pull a pin
from a grenade than pull a pen
from your backpack. Jontae,
they are afraid.
Love Elegy in the Chinese Garden, with Koi
Near the entrance, a patch of tall grass.
Near the tall grass, long-stemmed plants;
each bending an ear-shaped cone
to the pond’s surface. If you looked closely,
you could make out silvery koi
swishing toward the clouded pond’s edge
where a boy tugs at his mother’s shirt for a quarter.
To buy fish feed. And watching that boy,
as he knelt down to let the koi kiss his palms,
I missed what it was to be so dumb
as those koi. I like to think they’re pure,
that that’s why even after the boy’s palms were empty,
after he had nothing else to give, they still kissed
his hands. Because who hasn’t done that—
loved so intently even after everything
has gone? Loved something that has washed
its hands of you? I like to think I’m different now,
that I’m enlightened somehow,
but who am I kidding? I know I’m like those koi,
still, with their popping mouths, that would kiss
those hands again if given the chance. So dumb.
If We Must Die
If we must die, let it not be like hogs
Hunted and penned in an inglorious spot,
While round us bark the mad and hungry dogs,
Making their mock at our accursèd lot.
If we must die, O let us nobly die,
So that our precious blood may not be shed
In vain; then even the monsters we defy
Shall be constrained to honor us though dead!
O kinsmen! we must meet the common foe!
Though far outnumbered let us show us brave,
And for their thousand blows deal one death-blow!
What though before us lies the open grave?
Like men we’ll face the murderous, cowardly pack,
Pressed to the wall, dying, but fighting back!
I Am Too Pretty For Some Ugly Laws
I am not suppose to be here
in this body,
here
speaking to you.
My mere presence
of erratic moving limbs
and drooling smile
used to be scrubbed
off the public pavement.
Ugly laws used to be
on many U.S. cities’ law books,
beginning in Chicago in 1867,
stating that “any person who is
diseased, maimed, mutilated,
or in any way deformed
so as to be an unsightly or disgusting object,
or an improper person to be allowed
in or on the streets, highways, thoroughfares,
or public places in this city,
shall not therein or thereon
expose himself to public view,
under the penalty of $1 for each offense.”
Any person who looked like me
was deemed disgusting
and was locked away
from the eyes of the upstanding citizens.
I am too pretty for some Ugly Laws,
Too smooth to be shut in.
Too smart and eclectic
for any box you put me in.
My swagger is too bold
to be swept up in these public streets.
You can stare at me all you want.
No cop will buss in my head
and carry me away to an institution.
No doctor will diagnose me
a helpless invalid with an incurable disease.
No angry mob with clubs and torches
will try to run me out of town.
Whatever you do,
my roots are rigid
like a hundred-year-old tree.
I will stay right here
to glare at your ugly face too.
A Study in Perspective
I.
Looking at you was the hardest thing.
Taking off my clothes
While you stayed dressed,
II.
Nothing.
III.
My body a knife, my shoulder
Its blade, I cut a path before me.
Or sometimes I’m an apprentice ghost
Unsure in the art of haunting;
No one sees me as I pass.
IV.
No one sees me as I pass
Though someone is always looking,
Translating texts of skin and eyes
As: our lives are whole without her.
V.
The intention of the taker doesn’t matter;
Shame lies only in not being had,
Pain in too much having.
VI.
If you weren’t older by twenty years,
Superior in race, middle-class
By marriage and sighted,
You couldn’t whisper strip
And then refuse to do the same.
We get away with what we can,
And this poet gives what she gives.
VII.
Historically, it was a woman’s fate, a slave’s:
Submission to a gaze s/he can’t return.
VIII.
I am not you; that’s you and not me.
From a distance the boundaries stay clear,
And fear lies coiled and sleeping in its place.
IX.
Up close, I look at you, give you
My body without its mask of blindness,
Allow you to see me, my eyes
As they work at seeing you.
And not because, as I have said,
I loved you more, or am most good,
Just well-rehearsed as vulnerable.
Hon or We have both traveled from the other side of some hill, one side of which we may wish we could forget
Love me stupid.
Love me terrible.
And when I am no
mountain but rather
a monsoon of imperfect
thunder love me. When
I am blue in my face
from swallowing myself
yet wearing my best heart
even if my best heart
is a century of hunger
an angry mule breathing
hard or perhaps even
hopeful. A small sun.
Little & bright.
i'm just doing my job
is not an answer or solution or remedy
is not what you say
is not how you respond
is not professional or kind or noble
is not a prayer or lending a hand
is not a sermon
is not a law
is not an offering
is not altruistic or people-spirited
is not protecting
is not comforting
is not listening or seeing or doing
is not enuff
just doing my job
is not a being
Ode to a Dominican Breakfast
Keep your pancakes, french toast, eggs
benedict, your muffins and scones
Keep your waffles and four types of syrup
the way your eggs scramble but never sizzle
Nothing more scrumptious than mangu con queso frito
The other day I wore a white dress
with a wide skirt and a red sash
I danced merengue barefoot on my stoop. I kissed the
Dominican flag, once for each time I remembered a taino word
yuca, batata, tanama, ocama, yautia, cacique, juracan,
every bite on the plate, every morsel like a bachata tune
This can all be yours, get off the long lines at the brunch spot
Forget the grits and cheesy okra. Ring my doorbell
Five ingredients: Olive oil, onions, plantain, white cheese and flour
Excerpt from "Song of Solomon" 1
You think dark is just one color, but it ain’t. There’s five or six kinds of black. Some silk, some woolly. Some just empty. Some like fingers. And it don’t stay still. It moves and changes from one kind of black to another. Saying something is like pitch black is like saying something is green. What kind of green? Green like my bottles? Green like a grasshopper? Green like a cucumber, lettuce, or green like the sky is just before it breaks loose to storm? Well, night black is the same way. May as well be a rainbow.
Excerpt from "Song of Solomon" 2
“Stop picking around the edges of the world. Take advantage…We live here. On this planet, in this nation, in this country right here. Nowhere else! We got a home in this rock, don’t you see? Nobody starving in my home; nobody crying in my home, and if I got a home you got one too! Grab it. Grab this land! Take it, hold it, my brothers, make it, my brothers, shake it, squeeze it, turn it, twist it, beat it, kick it, kiss it, whip it, stomp it, dig it, plow it, seed it, reap it, rent it, buy it, sell it, own it, build it, multiply it, and pass it on-can you hear me? Pass it on!
We Are Not Responsible
We are not responsible for your lost or stolen relatives.
We cannot guarantee your safety if you disobey our instructions.
We do not endorse the causes or claims of people begging for handouts.
We reserve the right to refuse service to anyone.
Your ticket does not guarantee that we will honor your reservations.
In order to facilitate our procedures, please limit your carrying on.
Before taking off, please extinguish all smoldering resentments.
If you cannot understand English, you will be moved out of the way.
In the event of a loss, you’d better look out for yourself.
Your insurance was cancelled because we can no longer handle
your frightful claims. Our handlers lost your luggage and we
are unable to find the key to your legal case.
You were detained for interrogation because you fit the profile.
You are not presumed to be innocent if the police
have reason to suspect you are carrying a concealed wallet.
It’s not our fault you were born wearing a gang color.
It is not our obligation to inform you of your rights.
Step aside, please, while our officer inspects your bad attitude.
You have no rights we are bound to respect.
Please remain calm, or we can’t be held responsible
for what happens to you.
Variation on a Theme by Elizabeth Bishop
Start with loss. Lose everything. Then lose it all again.
Lose a good woman on a bad day. Find a better woman,
Then lose five friends chasing her. Learn to lose as if
Your life depended on it. Learn that your life depends on it.
Learn it like karate, like riding a bike. Learn to fall
Forever. Lose money, lose time, lose your natural mind.
Get left behind, then learn to leave others. Lose and
Lose again. Measure a father’s coffin against a cousin’s
Crashing T-cells. Kiss your sister through prison glass.
Know why your woman’s not answering her phone.
Lose sleep. Lose religion. Lose your wallet in El Segundo.
Open your window. Listen: the last slow notes
Of a Donny Hathaway song. A child crying. Listen:
A drunk man is cussing out the moon. He sounds like
Your dead uncle, who, before he left, lost a leg
To sugar. Shame. Learn what’s given can be taken;
What can be taken, will. This you can bet on without
Losing. Sure as nightfall and an empty bed. Lose
And lose again. Lose until it’s second nature. Losing
Farther, losing faster. Lean out your open window, listen:
The child is laughing now. No, it’s the drunk man again
In the street, losing his voice, suffering each invisible star.
Woo Woo Roll Deep
it’s not just me. Be clear,
the whole squad Woo Woo. Kin
stay lifted up in metal clouds. Or
knuckle deep in earth. Talking
about how they periods right
around the corner and what that means
alongside Chani’s latest Mercury read.
Shira can’t wait to tell you
about the dream she had.
Big eyes growing wider at each detail.
Freaked out and charged at the spirit’s hooks
deep in her brain’s knowing signal.
It all connected. Courtney paints
one wall miss-my-daddy red
in every new home she stays in.
Morgan say she wants to find love
this year, keeps a rose quartz between
her tits. Gio the 3rd grade teacher
in Bed-Stuy use to end her emails
‘bet you love could make it better.’
A week after the 314th police killing this
year, Jenna mixes up a tincture of charcoal,
lemon, and lavender in little spray bottles.
Hands them out to us after burgers in Harlem.
Woo Woo. Jozie got her man’s EKGs tatted
on her ring finger. 3 years since he crossed
and you best believe she correct when she
talk about him in the present-tense. Gerloni
keeps a frothy pot of black eyed peas boiling
on News Years day. Marlee staves off the yeast
with a garlic clove in her puss. You can’t tell us
shit. We always down for the miracle.
The regular-as-fuck dawn making brand new
the farm of our hearts. Jessie, the filmmaker
slash jewelry maker slash teaching-artist, dangles
a dried out tea bag above her nose, gapes
intently at this new face of God appearing
right before her like, isn’t this just
the most beautiful thing
you’ve ever seen?
Song 33
I saw a demon on my shoulder, it's lookin' like patriarchy
Like scrubbin' blood off the ceiling and bleachin' another carpet
How my house get haunted?
Why Toyin body don't embody all the life she wanted?
A baby, just nineteen
I know I dream all black
I seen her everything, immortalizin' tweets all caps
They say they found her dead
One girl missin', another one go missin'
One girl missin', another
But niggas in the back quiet as a church mouse
Basement studio when duty calls to get the verse out
I guess the ego hurt now
It's time to go to work, wow, look at him go
He really 'bout to write about me when the world is in smokes?
When it's people in trees?
When George was beggin' for his mother, saying he couldn't breathe
You thought to write about me?
One girl missin', another one go missin'
One girl missin', another one
Yo, but little did I know all my readin' would be a bother
It's trans women bein' murdered and this is all he can offer?
And this is all y'all receive?
Distracting from the convo with organizers
They talkin' abolishin' the police
And this the new world order
We democratizin' Amazon, we burn down borders
This a new vanguard, this a new vanguard
I'm the new vanguard
Twerk Villanelle
for Valentine
my girl positioned for a twerk session —
knees bent, hands below the thigh, tongue out, head
turned to look at her body’s precession.
she in tune. breath in. breasts hang. hips freshen.
she slow-wine. pulse waistline to a beat bled
for her, un-guilt the knees for the session.
fair form of vertebrae- backbone blessing,
her pop-in innate. her pop-out self-bred,
head locked into her holied procession.
dance is proof she loves herself, no questions —
no music required, no crowd needed.
she arched into a gateway, protecting —
this dance is proof she loves me, no guessing.
a bronx bedroom, we hip-to-hip threaded.
she turn to me, tranced by her possessing.
she coils herself to, calls forth a legend —
round bodied booty, bounce a praise ballad.
she break hold, turn whole in a twerk session.
body charmed, spell-bent, toward procession.
Hoodie
A gray hoodie will not protect my son
from rain, from the New England cold.
I see the partial eclipse of his face
as his head sinks into the half-dark
and shades his eyes. Even in our
quiet suburb with its unlocked doors,
I fear for his safety—the darkest child
on our street in the empire of blocks.
Sometimes I don’t know who he is anymore
traveling the back roads between boy and man.
He strides a deep stride, pounds a basketball
into wet pavement. Will he take his shot
or is he waiting for the open-mouthed
orange rim to take a chance on him? I sing
his name to the night, ask for safe passage
from this borrowed body into the next
and wonder who could mistake him
for anything but good.
Heaven Be a Xanax
When people say how are you
I say good
It is a rule no one can answer
Crying in The Gap by my therapist’s office
or I am still angry with my parents
for traumatizing me
through organized sports
Dangerous and satisfying body of water
I can almost remember heaven
or Still a woman slaughtered for wonder
or Unfortunately misplaced grip
I am not doing a good job waiting
When I get to heaven I’m going
to wear my good bra
so no one can stay mad at me
I won’t have any feelings to hurt just
cheeseburgers on cheeseburgers on
deep colored slumber
Just men offering their golden bodies
And I will take the offering on my tongue
And it will not be a vault
And someone will not invade me
And I will kneel to pray
And I will address the prayer to myself
And I will be allowed
Bad Habits
Petey liked to twist the right end of his mustache when he was
listening for updates. (Y’all remember Petey. He was always
on that chuck chill-out tip, but most days he didn’t get
to choose.)
When he ignited a squabble, Chuna would slap his right thigh to
get every syllable out with a violent scansion.
Tommy Lee threw rocks at unsuspecting pigeons.
Dwight kept his right hand tucked into the crotch of his Lees,
steady stunting on some bollo.
Angel bit his tongue when he wanted to ask a question.
Max counted his money and his money counted him.
Brother Lo liked to whistle “All the Things You Are” when it
rained that Puerto Rico rain.
Chee-wa’s nose used to break out into an anxious table of
contents when he was skied up.
Papu would dance if he wanted to make a point. So, imagine
him saying, Nah, nah, nah, fuck that shit, and poppin’ &
lockin’ on every word.
Nestor hated the words Stop, I was only playing.
Loco Tommy blinked three times, convulsively, and then tapped
the right side of his face against his right shoulder blade.
Jujo spit and spit and spit and spit.
Popeye had a villainous laugh.
Dre loved to crash revivals.
Chino Chan did back handsprings from sewer to sewer
whenever he received good news.
Georgie could scratch his ankle straight through a
graveyard shift.
The first thing out of Skinicky’s mouth was always a feeling.
A Little Close Though, If You Can, for What Got Lost Here
Other than that, all was still — a quiet
so quiet that, as if silence were a kind of spell, and
words the way to break it, they began speaking.
They spoke of many things:
sunset as a raft leaving the water in braids behind it;
detachment, the soul, obedience;
swans rowing at nightfall across a sky filled with snow;
what did they wish they could see, that they used to see;
to mean no harm, or to not especially, just now, be looking for it;
what would they wish not to see, could they stop seeing;
courage mattering so much less than not spooking easily —
maybe all nerve is; the search-and-rescue map wildflowers
make of a field in summer; deserving it, versus asking for it,
versus having asked, and been softly turned from.
They said it would hurt, and it does.
Booker T. and W.E.B
“It seems to me,” said Booker T.,
“It shows a mighty lot of cheek
To study chemistry and Greek
When Mister Charlie needs a hand
To hoe the cotton on his land,
And when Miss Ann looks for a cook,
Why stick your nose inside a book?”
“I don’t agree,” said W.E.B.,
“If I should have the drive to seek
Knowledge of chemistry or Greek,
I’ll do it. Charles and Miss can look
Another place for hand or cook.
Some men rejoice in skill of hand,
And some in cultivating land,
But there are others who maintain
The right to cultivate the brain.”
“It seems to me,” said Booker T.,
“That all you folks have missed the boat
Who shout about the right to vote,
And spend vain days and sleepless nights
In uproar over civil rights.
Just keep your mouths shut, do not grouse,
But work, and save, and buy a house.”
“I don’t agree,” said W.E.B.,
“For what can property avail
If dignity and justice fail.
Unless you help to make the laws,
They’ll steal your house with trumped-up clause.
A rope’s as tight, a fire as hot,
No matter how much cash you’ve got.
Speak soft, and try your little plan,
But as for me, I’ll be a man.”
“It seems to me,” said Booker T.—
“I don’t agree,”
Said W.E.B.
Excerpt from "Citizen” [Because white men can't]
Because white men can’t
police their imagination
black men are dying.
Weather
On a scrap of paper in the archive is written
I have forgotten my umbrella. Turns out
in a pandemic everyone, not just the philosopher,
is without. We scramble in the drought of information
held back by inside traders. Drop by drop. Face
covering? No, yes. Social distancing? Six feet
under for underlying conditions. Black.
Just us and the blues kneeling on a neck
with the full weight of a man in blue.
Eight minutes and forty-six seconds.
In extremis, I can’t breathe gives way
to asphyxiation, to giving up this world,
and then mama, called to, a call
to protest, fire, glass, say their names, say
their names, white silence equals violence,
the violence of again, a militarized police
force teargassing, bullets ricochet, and civil
unrest taking it, burning it down. Whatever
contracts keep us social compel us now
to disorder the disorder. Peace. We’re out
to repair the future. There’s an umbrella
by the door, not for yesterday but for the weather
that’s here. I say weather but I mean
a form of governing that deals out death
and names it living. I say weather but I mean
a November that won’t be held off. This time
nothing, no one forgotten. We are here for the storm
that’s storming because what’s taken matters.
Dear You,
Make no apologies for yourself
Because you are covered by a listening skin
Because every ache you feel is not your own
Because of your mother’s loss
and your father’s rage
Because of how many rivers they’ve crossed
Because you plummet even if you cannot swim
Because of the lynching tree
Because when you enter bookstores
books fall off shelves into your open palms
Because you ask questions of the universe
so the world opens before you like a page of text
Because of those clouds and that murder of crows
Because poets are your wounded idols
Because the truth, even if it hurts is to be cherished and held
Because when people die you believe that they walk with you daily
Because the river has a mouth that speaks their names
Because the river flows with stories
Because you sit on the shore and listen
Because alone is more comforting than together
Because your pen is oceanic
Because you are big-eyed and eyes wide
Because you suffer from what you see and hear
Because you have sinus arrhythmia
your heart is linked to your breath
and your breath is short,
Because asthma is only one of the monkeys on your back
Because your heart is the vehicle you choose to ride this go ’round
Because it can go forward and backwards in time
Because bookstores have always been oracles
Because poetry is your archeological tool
Because you dig and dive
and you trust the ride of journal and journey
even if you don’t always float
Because your heart beats to your breath
Because of this music, you dance raw and wild
Someday I'll Love Roger Reeves
After Frank O'Hara
Until then, let us have our gods and short prayers. Our obligations.
Our thighbone connected to our knee bone.
Our dissections and our swans. Our legs gashed
upon a barbwire fence and our heels tucked behind a lover’s knees.
Let us have a stalk of sugarcane to suck
and another to tear our backs with what it knows of disaster
and a tadpole’s folly. Let us have mistakes
and fish willing to come to a bell rung across a body of water.
Let us have our drawbridges and our moats. Our heavens
no higher than a pile of dried leaves. Let us have irrelevance
and a scalpel. A dislocated ankle and three more miles to run.
A plastic bottle to hold nothing but last names and a chill.
If none of this will be remembered, then let us keep speaking
with tongues light as screen doors clapping shut
on a child’s fingers. For this is love. To press
one frame against another
and when something like a finger is found between this pressing,
to press nevertheless. For this is our obligation.
Let us forget our obligations. For this is love.
Let us forget our love. Our eyelids’ need for beginnings
and ends and blood. Our coils of hunger
that turn another into dried honey on our hands.
And what if this goes on forever—our ours?
Our drafts and fragments? Our blizzards and our cancers?
Then let us. Then, let us hold each other toward heaven
and forget that we were once made of flesh,
that this is the fall our gods refuse to clean with fire or water.
Don't Nobody
believe nothing
these days
which is why I haven’t
told nobody the story
I’m about to tell you.
And truth is
you probably ain’t
gon’ believe it either
gon’ think I’m lying
or I’m losing it,
but I’m telling you,
this story is true.
It happened to me.
Really.
It did.
It so did.
Public Domain
You catalog by hand, playing librarian in your dead
mother’s house. Try to justify archiving each item:
A balanced checkbook. Mothballs. Life Savers
mints. Back copies of the New York Times.
Frozen chicken pot pies. The Yellow Pages.
Expired Lorna Doone cookies long expired. Panty hose.
A pair of Daniel Green slippers from
Lord & Taylor. Flat Canada Dry ginger ale.
You find a little girl hiding in Mr. Rogers’ mustard
sweater, sew on and sew forth, threading needles
with pubic hairs discovered in the carpet. Surreal
smells. The Pine-Sol dying down in the bathroom.
Which was your father’s bad ear? The one that lost
most of its hearing in the war. There is life in the eyes
unspoken. Your very pulse a secret algorithm, a soft-
ware designed to track your browsing history.
An open casket on view for the whole church to see.
Her genetic code made available for live streaming.
You copyright the notes in the margins of her Bible.
The intellectual property preserved. Shaky cursive
her signature trademark. Upon the fall of a domestic
sphere, a pocketbook is emptied of all its valuables.
To become takes a long time. Blue spells are periods of
red where you pause, the body calculating the losses.
Personal Letter No. 3
nothing will keep
us young you know
not young men or
women who spin
their youth on
cool playing sounds.
we are what we
are what we never
think we are.
no more wild geo
graphies of the
flesh. echoes. that
we move in tune
to slower smells.
it is a hard thing
to admit that
sometimes after midnight
i am tired
of it all.
This is Not a Small Voice
This is not a small voice
you hear this is a large
voice coming out of these cities.
This is the voice of LaTanya.
Kadesha. Shaniqua. This
is the voice of Antoine.
Darryl. Shaquille.
Running over waters
navigating the hallways
of our schools spilling out
on the corners of our cities and
no epitaphs spill out of their river mouths.
This is not a small love
you hear this is a large
love, a passion for kissing learning
on its face.
This is a love that crowns the feet with hands
that nourishes, conceives, feels the water sails
mends the children,
folds them inside our history where they
toast more than the flesh
where they suck the bones of the alphabet
and spit out closed vowels.
This is a love colored with iron and lace.
This is a love initialed Black Genius.
This is not a small voice
you hear.
Selfish
give me a minute to love you
an hour to stare in your face
a moment to praise your nose
your hands, your lips, your eyes
don't say later
don't say tomorrow
because the day's too busy
because the day's too hurried
too demanding
give me a week to hold you
a second to play in your lashes
a night to kiss your forehead
Your back, your feet, your fingers
Don't say you're tired
Don't say your anxious
because the world is calling
because the world is heavy
Ever present
just let me soothe you
let me put you in my mouth and hum sweet tunes
let me calm that ocean
give me a day
give me four and more
to ease and please you
let me take that chip from your shoulder
place it on the nightstand for a while
because you're lonely
and
I am too
Black History
I was wondering about our yesterdays,
and starting digging through the rubble
and to say, at least somebody went
through a hell of a lot of trouble
to make sure that when we looked things up
we wouldn't fair too well
and that we would come up with totally unreliable
portraits of ourselves.
But I compiled what few facts I could,
I mean, such as they are
to see if we could shed a little bit of light
and this is what I got so far:
First, white folks discovered Africa
and they claimed it fair and square.
Cecil Rhodes couldn't have been robbing nobody
'cause he said there was nobody there.
White folks brought all the civilization,
since there wasn't none around.
They said 'how could these folks be civilized
when you never see nobody writing nothing down?'
And just to prove all their suspicions,
it didn't take too long.
They found out there were whole groups of people
— in plain sight —
running around with no clothes on. That's right!
The women, the men, the young and old,
righteous white folks covered their eyes.
So no time was spent considering the environment.
Hell no! This here, this just wasn't civilized!
And another way they knew the folks was backwards,
or at least this how we were taught
is that 'unlike the very civilized people of Europe'
these Black groups actually fought!
And yes, there was some 'rather crude implements'
and yes, there was 'primitive art'
and yes they were masters of hunting and fishing
and courtesy came from the heart.
And yes there was medicine, love and religion,
inter-tribal communication by drum.
But no paper and pencils and other utensils
and hell, these folks never even heard of a gun.
So this is why the colonies came
to stabilize the land.
Because The Dark Continent had copper and gold
and the discovers had themselves a plan.
They would 'discover' all the places with promise.
You didn't need no titles or deeds.
You could just appoint people to make everything legal,
to sanction the trickery and greed.
And out in the bushes if the natives got restless
You could call that 'guerilla attack!'
and never have to describe that somebody finally got
wise
and decided they wanted their things back.
But still we are victims of word games,
semantics is always a [ ]:
places once called under-developed and 'backwards'
are now called 'mineral rich.'
And still it seems the game goes on
with unity always just out of reach
Because Libya and Egypt used to be in Africa,
but they've been moved to the 'middle east'.
There are examples galore I assure you,
but if interpreting was left up to me
I'd be sure every time folks knew this version wasn't mine
which is why it is called 'His story'.
I Think I'll Call it Morning
I'm gonna take myself a piece of sunshine
And paint it all over my sky
Be no rain..
Be no rain..
I'm gonna take the song from every bird
And make em sing it just for me
Bird's got something to teach us all
About being free, yeah
Be no rain..
Be no rain..
And I think I'll call it morning
From now on
Why should I survive on sadness?
And tell myself I got to be alone
Why should I subscribe to this world's madness?
Knowing that I've got to live on
Yeah I think I'll call it morning
From now on
I'm gonna take myself a piece of sunshine
And paint it all over my sky
Be no rain...
Be no rain...
I'm gonna take the song from every bird
And make them sing it just for me
Cause why should I hang my head
Why should I let tears fall from my eyes?
When I've seen everything there is to see
And I know there is no sense in crying
I know there ain't no sense in crying
Yeah I think I'll call it morning
From now on
I'll call it morning from now on, yeah
Cause there ain't gonna be no rain
Be no rain
Be no rain
Object Permanence
(for John)
We wake as if surprised the other is still there,
each petting the sheet to be sure.
How have we managed our way
to this bed—beholden to heat like dawn
indebted to light. Though we’re not so self-
important as to think everything
has led to this, everything has led to this.
There’s a name for the animal
love makes of us—named, I think,
like rain, for the sound it makes.
You are the animal after whom other animals
are named. Until there’s none left to laugh,
days will start with the same startle
and end with caterpillars gorged on milkweed.
O, how we entertain the angels
with our brief animation. O,
how I’ll miss you when we’re dead.
Excerpt from "Me Against the World"
With all this extra stressin'
The question I wonder is after death, after my last breath
When will I finally get to rest through this oppression?
They punish the people that's askin' questions
And those that possess steal from the ones without possessions
The message I stress: to make it stop, study your lessons
Don't settle for less, even the genius asks his questions
Be grateful for blessings
Don't ever change, keep your essence
The power is in the people and politics we address
Always do your best, don't let this pressure make you panic
And when you get stranded
And things don't go the way you planned it
Dreamin' of riches, in a position of makin' a difference
Politicians are hypocrites, they don't wanna listen
If I'm insane, it's the fame made a brother change
It wasn't nothin' like the game; it's just me against the world
Preface
A blackstart bathes
in the deep shade of the lagoon,
six toes sinking into mud.
There is hope in the past.
I am calling out your name
all the time. I am calling
with both voices,
night and day.
Ugly
Your daughter is ugly.
She knows loss intimately,
carries whole cities in her belly.
As a child, relatives wouldn’t hold her.
She was splintered wood and sea water.
They said she reminded them of the war.
On her fifteenth birthday you taught her
how to tie her hair like rope
and smoke it over burning frankincense.
You made her gargle rosewater
and while she coughed, said
macaanto girls like you shouldn’t smell
of lonely or empty.
You are her mother.
Why did you not warn her,
hold her like a rotting boat
and tell her that men will not love her
if she is covered in continents,
if her teeth are small colonies,
if her stomach is an island
if her thighs are borders?
What man wants to lay down
and watch the world burn
in his bedroom?
Your daughter’s face is a small riot,
her hands are a civil war,
a refugee camp behind each ear,
a body littered with ugly things
but God,
doesn’t she wear
the world well.
because there should be love
there should be love poems. iridescent odes to skies
and their fluid, mutating blues, their restless canvases
where we cast the adjectives—brilliant, dark, deep, clear—
that name our daily moods, ringing doubt and delight,
confusion and cheer, the brave lines we spit to spin
out the re-newed story of two lives winding themselves
into joy. there should be lyrics that hit all the notes—do,
mi, sol—in the scale, that belt them out as they arrive—
passionate, pushy, pulsating, unpredictable—breathing
the whole—billie, abbey, ella—range of the torchlit heart.
there should be love poems, star-sprung stanzas that try
out the rough ballad of two lives lifting themselves
higher together than apart: that sing it: breaking relief.
each waking, that the hours are ours to share: certainty
that silver-lines even cumulonimbus ire: the your hand
in my hand in your hand of right now, and from now on.
Riding in Cars With Black Girls or Pantoum for Police
Head nod magic trance
Ocean blue afro magic
Blow smoke signals back
Survival wasn’t optional: past.
Ocean blue Afro magic
Bounces to bass anthem
Survival wasn’t optional past
This moment of succulence.
Bounces to bass anthem
Speakers dictate hip wind
This moment of succulence.
Truth seeping out bone.
Speakers dictate hip wind
Survival wasn’t optional past
This moment of succulence.
Head nod magic trance.
little prayer
let ruin end here
let him find honey
where there was once a slaughter
let him enter the lion’s cage
& find a field of lilacs
let this be the healing
& if not let it be
rose
we were kindergarten sweethearts. you asked me. i said yes. you were a white girl & not pretty. i liked the shape of your face. it looked like a ball with hair. you were red & puffy. we broke because we were five. it mattered until it didn’t. how big a fact at six seven even nine. i treated you like poop. everyone treated you the same. you were the girl with the puffy red face. you were mean. so we were mean. or we were so you. we were nine ten eleven. we were so small & evil. you & barbara sliverman wrapped a jump rope around my neck after i called you a puffy-faced something. when we learned the word bitch, we called you bitch. someone was always willing to remind you of your shit. we were shit, ugly & needed to direct attention everywhere else. girls fought you. said you got around. made you untouchable & easy. you screamed. i remember you always at the top of your lungs. you were kind to your friends. no one liked any of y’all. it was dangerous to be your friend. you were red & dated. your folks shit broke. you were a girl & everyone wanted you to know you were a white frog. if you wished we all watched the last of our water turn to feathers or prayed our children are born with teeth where eyes should be, your prayer was fair. you deserved to parade us through a city of grandmas, smacking our faces, beating us with belts & shoes & whistling branches, pinching ears. if you saw me & stabbed me in the foot i’d understand. we were so mean. i was the bastard fuck in the mob of bastard fucks. the easily swayed torch. o rose, saint of getting roasted in the hallway, warrior queen of the misfits, my love, how did you survive us? if this finds you if there is still a you to find if you know this is about you if you read poems if you take breath into & out of your lungs & find this in a book or in the blue aurora of your phone & this is you: at times i wake in the middle of the night & think
we killed that girl.
Biting Back
Children do not grow up
as much as they grow away.
My son’s eyes are stones - flat, brown, fireless,
with no visible openings in or out.
His voice, when he cares to try it on,
hovers one-note in that killing place
where even the blues fidget.
Tight syllables, half spoken, half spat,
greet me with the warmth
of glint-tipped arrows. The air around him
hurts my chest, grows too cold to nourish,
and he stares past me to the open door of his room,
anxious for my patented stumbled retreat.
My fingers used to brush bits of the world
From his kinked hair,
but he moved beyond that mother shine
to whispered “fucks” on the telephone,
to the sweet mysteries of scalloped buttons
dotting the maps of young girls,
to the warped, frustrating truths of algebra,
to anything but me. Ancient, annoying apparatus,
I have unfortunately retained the ability to warm meat,
to open cans, to clean clothing
that has yellowed and stiffened.
I spit money when squeezed,
don’t try to dance in front of his friends,
and know that rap music cannot be stopped.
For these brief flashes of cool, I am tolerated in spurts.
At night I lay in my husband’s arms
and he tells me that these are things that happen,
that the world will tilt again
and our son will return, unannounced, as he was -
goofy and clinging, clever with words, stupefied by rockets.
And I dream on that.
One summer after camp,
twelve inches taller than the summer before,
my child grinned and said,
“Maybe a tree bit me.”
We laughed,
not knowing that was to be his last uttered innocence.
Only months later, eyes would narrow and doors would slam.
Now he is scowl, facial hair, knots of muscle. He is
Pimp, homey, pistol. He is man smell, grimy fingers,
red eyes, rolling dice. He is street, smoke, cocked cannon.
And I sit on his bare mattress after he’s left for school,
wonder at the simple jumble of this motherless world,
look for clues that some gumpopping teenage girl
now wears my face. Full of breastmilk and finger songs,
I stumble the street staring at other children,
gulping my dose of their giggles,
and cursing the trees for their teeth.
Prayer
For Yarrow, and all that is bitter.
For the days I rehearse your departure.
For the Yes that is a lie
And the Yes that is not a lie. For You.
For the rivers I will never see. For Yams.
For the way it resembles a woman.
For my mother. For the words
That would not exist without it:
For Yesterday. For not Yet.
For Youth. For Yogurt and the mornings
You feed me. For Yearning.
For what is Yours and not mine.
For the words I repeat in the dark
And the lord that is always listening.
Shout Out
Here’s to the best words
In the right place
At the perfect time to the human mind
Blown-up and refined.
To long conversations and the
Philosophical ramifications of a beautiful day.
To the twelve-steppers
At the thirteenth step
May they never forget
The first step.
To the increase, to the decrease
To the do, to the do
To the did to the did
To the do to the did
To the done done
To the lonely.
To the brokenhearted.
To the new, blue haiku.
Here’s to all or nothing at all.
Here’s to the sick, and the shut-in.
Here’s to the was you been to the is you in
To what’s deep and deep to what’s down and down
To the lost, and the blind, and the almost found.
To the crazy
The lazy
The bored
The ignored
The beginners
The sinners
The losers
The winners.
To the smooth
And the cool
And even to the fools.
Here’s to your ex-best-friend.
To the rule-benders and the repeat offenders.
To the lovers and the troublers
The engaging
The enraging
To the healers and the feelers
And the fixers and the tricksters
To a star falling from a dream.
To a dream, when you know what it means.
To the bottom
To the root
To the base, uh, boom!
To the drum
Here’s to the was you been to the is you in
To what’s deep and deep to what’s down and down
To the lost, and the blind, and the almost found.
Here’s to somebody within the sound of your voice this morning.
Here’s to somebody who can’t be within the sound of your voice tonight.
To a low-cholesterol pig sandwich smothered in swine without the pork.
To a light buzz in your head
And a soundtrack in your mind
Going on and on and on and on and on like a good time.
Here’s to promises that break by themselves
Here’s to the breaks with great promise.
To people who don’t wait in the car when you tell them to wait in the car.
Here’s to what you forgot and who you forgot.
Here’s to the unforgettable.
Here’s to the was you been to the is you in
To what’s deep and deep to what’s down and down
To the lost, and the blind, and the almost found.
Here’s to the hip-hoppers
The don’t stoppers
Heads nodding in the digital glow
Of their beloved studios.
To the incredible indelible impressions made by the gaze as you gaze in the faces of strangers.
To yourself you ask: Could this be God? Straight up!
Or is it a mask?
Here’s to the tribe of the hyper-cyber
Trippin’ at the virtual-most outpost at the edge on the tip
Believin’ that what they hear is the mothership
Drawing near.
Here’s to the was you been, to the is you in
To what’s deep and deep, to what’s down and down
To the lost, and the blind, and the almost found.
The Sticking Point
...the sea deep as love.
-Mary Ruefle, “Rain Effect”
Because the blue and green of it
are content.
Because I’ve opened my mouth
to the salt and it tastes almost
like midnight or a wound. Because
I will fall faster and lighter and
farther where there is no barrier reef
but that’s not the sticking point.
See how sea enjoys a spirit of silence
in its eels, its starfish. Because.
One poet dared to write the sea cold as
love and knew I would ponder what
she meant: how the choices are few
for all who ignore women in revolution.
Imperatives for Carrying On in the Aftermath
Do not hang your head or clench your fists
when even your friend, after hearing the story,
says: My mother would never put up with that.
Fight the urge to rattle off statistics: that,
more often, a woman who chooses to leave
is then murdered. The hundredth time
your father says, But she hated violence,
why would she marry a guy like that?—
don’t waste your breath explaining, again,
how abusers wait, are patient, that they
don’t beat you on the first date, sometimes
not even the first few years of a marriage.
Keep an impassive face whenever you hear
Stand by Your Man, and let go your rage
when you recall those words were advice
given your mother. Try to forget the first
trial, before she was dead, when the charge
was only attempted murder; don’t belabor
the thinking or the sentence that allowed
her ex-husband’s release a year later, or
the juror who said, It’s a domestic issue—
they should work it out themselves. Just
breathe when, after you read your poems
about grief, a woman asks: Do you think
your mother was weak for men? Learn
to ignore subtext. Imagine a thought-
cloud above your head, dark and heavy
with the words you cannot say; let silence
rain down. Remember you were told
by your famous professor, that you should
write about something else, unburden
yourself of the death of your mother and
just pour your heart out in the poems.
Ask yourself what’s in your heart, that
reliquary—blood locket and seed-bed—and
contend with what it means, the folk-saying
you learned from a Korean poet in Seoul:
that one does not bury the mother’s body
in the ground but in the chest, or—like you—
you carry her corpse on your back.
On Evaluating Black Privilege
Black privilege is the hung elephant swinging in the room,
Is the memory of a slave ship,
Praying for the Alzheimer’s to kick in.
Black privilege is me having already memorized my nephew’s eulogy,
My brother’s eulogy,
My father’s eulogy,
My unconceived child’s eulogy.
Black privilege is me thinking my sister’s name,
Safe from that list.
Black privilege is me pretending like I know Trayvon Martin on a first name basis,
Is me using a dead boy’s name to win a poetry slam,
Is me carrying a mouthful of other people’s skeletons
To use at my own convenience.
Black privilege is the concrete that holds my breath better than my lungs do.
Black privilege is always having to be the strong one,
Is having a crowbar for a spine,
Is fighting even when you have no more blood to give,
Even when your bones carried you,
Even when your mother prayed for you,
Even after they prepared your body for the funeral.
Black privilege is being so unique that not even God will look like you.
Black privilege is still being the first person in line to meet Him.
Black privilege is having to have the same sense of humor as Jesus.
Remember how he smiled on the cross?
The same way Malcolm X laughed at his bullet.
And there I go again,
Asserting my Black privilege,
Using a dead man’s name without his permission.
Black privilege is a myth,
Is a joke,
Is a punchline,
Is the time a teacher asks a little boy
What he wanted to be when he grew up
And he said, “Alive.”
Is the way she laughed when she said,
“There’s no college for that.”
And it’s tirin’, you know?
For everything about my skin to be a metaphor,
For everything Black to be pun intended,
To be death intended.
Black privilege is the applause at the end of this poem,
Is me giving you a dead boy’s body and you giving me a ten,
Is me being okay with that.
And I tried writing a love poem the other day,
But my fingers wouldn’t move.
My skin started to blister like it didn’t trust me anymore,
Like it thought I was trading in this noose for a pearl necklace.
Some days I’m afraid to look into the mirror
For fear that a bullet George Zimmermaned its way into my chest while I was asleep.
The breath in my mouth is weapon enough to scare a courtroom.
I’ll be lucky if I’m alive to make it to the stand.
For some people,
Their trials live longer than they do.
Black privilege is knowing that if I die,
At least Al Sharpton will come to my funeral.
At least Al Sharpton will mason jar my mother’s tears,
Remind us that the only thing we are worthy of is our death. We are judged by the number of people it takes to carry our caskets.
Black privilege is me thinking that’s enough,
Is me thinking this poem is enough.
Black privilege is this.
Is this breath in my mouth right now,
Is me standing right here with a crowd full of witnesses to my heartbeat.
Love After Love
The time will come
when, with elation
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror
and each will smile at the other's welcome,
and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you
all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,
the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.
Be Nobody's Darling
Be nobody’s darling;
Be an outcast.
Take the contradictions
Of your life
And wrap around
You like a shawl,
To parry stones
To keep you warm.
Watch the people succumb
To madness
With ample cheer;
Let them look askance at you
And you askance reply.
Be an outcast;
Be pleased to walk alone
(Uncool)
Or line the crowded
River beds
With other impetuous
Fools.
Make a merry gathering
On the bank
Where thousands perished
For brave hurt words
They said.
But be nobody’s darling;
Be an outcast.
Qualified to live
Among your dead.
Excerpt from "In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens"
Black women are called, in the folklore that so aptly identifies one's status in society, "the mule of the world," because we have been handed the burdens that everyone else—everyone else—refused to carry. We have also been called "Matriarchs," "Superwomen," and "Mean and Evil Bitches." Not to mention "Castraters" and "Sapphire's Mama." When we have pleaded for understanding, our character has been distorted; when we have asked for simple caring, we have been handed empty inspirational appellations, then stuck in the farthest corner. When we have asked for love, we have been given children. In short, even out plainer gifts, our labors of fidelity and love, have been knocked down our throats. To be an artist and a black woman, even today, lowers our status in many respects, rather than raises it: and yet, artists we will be.
How Poems Are Made / A Discredited View
Letting go
In order to hold one
I gradually understand
How poems are made.
There is a place the fear must go.
There is a place the choice must go.
There is a place the loss must go.
The leftover love.
The love that spills out
Of the too full cup
And runs and hides
Its too full self
In shame.
I gradually comprehend
How poems are made.
To the upbeat flight of memories.
The flagged beats of the running
Heart.
I understand how poems are made.
They are the tears
That season the smile.
The stiff-neck laughter
That crowds the throat.
The leftover love.
I know how poems are made.
There is a place the loss must go.
There is a place the gain must go.
The leftover love.
On Being Brought from Africa to America
Twas mercy brought me from my Pagan land,
Taught my benighted soul to understand
That there's a God, that there's a Saviour too:
Once I redemption neither sought nor knew.
Some view our sable race with scornful eye,
"Their colour is a diabolic die."
Remember, Christians, Negros, black as Cain,
May be refin'd, and join th' angelic train.
Know Thy Lonely Girl
You crawled inside me
and the wind was kept from you.
We were never swept away.
I was a different kind of hiding place.
Who was who among the stripes and lepers?
The moment I stepped from the pack, you felt
the bandage rip off. Easily spotted now, I walk
steady across the kitchen floor, and lighting the pilot
is the god who reveals herself with this kind of privacy.
Call this the place where thy lonely girl is found.
I confirm for her she is true. My eyes survive her gaze—
even in the company of others, we’re just archipelago.
Lonely Girl has no drama for spilled milk.
She is not a dandelion, and there’s no need
to punish loneliness. Those who try to break her
from solitude use her as practice for their own girl—
they cannot muscle the pain they’ve walled within her,
can’t stomach the girl they have and so greedy-to-the-bone—
their mouths shaped into that vowel for sucking and their
canines point at the girl who is new to your flame.
Indigo On
…and you don’t stop
and you don’t stop
and you don’t…
stop letting cities define you
confine you to that which is cement and brick
we are not a hard peoples
our domes have been crowned
with the likes of steeples
that which is our being soars with the eagles
and the Jonathan Livingston Seagulls
yes, I got wings
you got wings
alas God chillun got wings.
So lets widen the circumference of our nest
And escape this urban incubator
The wind plays the world like an instrument
Blows through trees like flutes
But trees don’t grow in cement
And as heart beats bring percussion
Fallen trees bring repercussions
Cities play upon our souls like broken drums
We drum the essence of creation from city slums
But city slums mute our drums
And our drums become hum drum
‘cause city slums
have never been where our drums are from
just the place where our daughters and sons
become offbeat heartbeats
slaves to city streets
where hearts get broken
when heart beats stop
broken heartbeats become breakbeats
for niggas to rhyme on top
but they rhyme about nothing
they don’t have nothing to rhyme about
‘cause they’ve never seen the moon
your styles can’t be universal
if your not intoned with the wind.
Joy #1
If I cried about all the painful things I have the right to cry about today
I would kill myself.
But the last time I spoke to my nephew
I promised him
I’d be on that plane to visit in 2 months.
I have 49 days left.
49 days to stay alive
to demand joy in my life in all of the dying parts.
And I know if I choose that
I’ll get to 50.
And I know choosing ain’t always a choice.
Like, sometimes, your bones are just heavy.
And, all the time, waking up saying, I’m happy
Won’t make the assault go away
Won’t bring the body back
It may not clear the protest signs
Which is why I say it, all the time.
The pain is an intruder I wake up to.
I speak to her so that she knows I have a voice.
I do not call her a stranger.
I call her a me I have already survived.
I do not call her day 51
breakfast on the east coast
a table of healing, kindred faces
a cot on the floor of a home that housed me dirty
a return flight back to my almost clean
a phone call with nephew
a reminder that joy is always up
on its way.
reading
I am not my sister.
Words from the books curl around each other
make little sense
until
I read them again
and again, the story
settling into memory. Too slow
the teacher says.
Read faster.
Too babyish, the teacher says.
Read older.
But I don’t want to read faster or older or
any way else that might
make the story disappear too quickly
from where it’s settling
inside my brain,
slowly becoming
a part of me.
A story I will remember
long after I’ve read it for the second,
third, tenth,
hundredth time.
Excerpt from "The Autobiography of Malcolm X, as told to Alex Haley"
I have often reflected upon the new vistas that reading opened to me. I knew right there in prison that reading had changed forever the course of my life. As I see it today, the ability to read awoke inside me some long dormant craving to be mentally alive. I certainly wasn’t seeking any degree, the way a college confers a status symbol upon its students. My homemade education gave me, with every additional book that I read, a little bit more sensitivity to the deafness, dumbness, and blindness that was afflicting the black race in America. Not long ago, an English writer telephoned me from London, asking questions. One was, “What’s your alma mater?” I told him, “Books.” You will never catch me with a free fifteen minutes in which I’m not studying something I feel might be able to help the black man.
Ode to the Midwest
The country I come from is called the Midwest —Bob Dylan
I want to be doused
in cheese
& fried. I want
to wander
the aisles, my heart’s
supermarket stocked high
as cholesterol. I want to die
wearing a sweatsuit—
I want to live
forever in a Christmas sweater,
a teddy bear nursing
off the front. I want to write
a check in the express lane.
I want to scrape
my driveway clean
myself, early, before
anyone’s awake
that’ll put em to shame—
I want to see what the sun
sees before it tells
the snow to go. I want to be
the only black person I know.
I want to throw
out my back & not
complain about it.
I wanta drive
two blocks. Why walk—
I want love, n stuff—
I want to cut
my sutures myself.
I want to jog
down to the river
& make it my bed—
I want to walk
its muddy banks
& make me a withdrawal.
I tried jumping in,
found it frozen—
I’ll go home, I guess,
to my rooms where the moon
changes & shines
like television.