childhood remembrances
are always a drag
if you're Black
you always remember things like living in Woodlawn
with no inside toilet
and if you become famous or something
they never talk about how happy you were to have
your mother
all to yourself and
how good the water felt when you got your bath
from one of those
big tubs that folk in chicago barbeque in
and somehow when you talk about home
it never gets across how much you
understood their feelings
as the whole family attended meetings about Hollydale
and even though you remember
your biographers never understand
your father's pain as he sells his stock
and another dream goes
And though you're poor it isn't poverty that
concerns you
and though they fought a lot
it isn't your father's drinking that makes any difference
but only that everybody is together and you
and your sister have happy birthdays and very good Christmasses
and I really hope no white person ever has cause
to write about me
because they never understand
Black love is Black wealth and they'll
probably talk about my hard childhood
and never understand that
all the while I was quite happy
“CHOICES”
if i can't do
what i want to do
then my job is to not
do what i don't want
to do
it's not the same
thing
but it's the best i can
do
if i can't have
what i want . . . then
my job is to want
what i've got
and be satisfied
that at least there
is something more to want
since i can't go
where i need
to go . . . then i must . . . go
where the signs point
through always understanding
parallel movement
isn't lateral
when i can't express
what i really feel i practice feeling
what i can express
and none of it is equal i know
but that's why mankind
alone among the animals
learns to cry
into this hall. He’ll dine out,
she’ll sleep late,
they’ll
let the sun burn them happy all morning
—a
little hope, a little whimsy
before
the loudspeaker blurts
and
we leap up to become
Flight
828, now boarding at Gate 17.
“Used”
The conspiracy's to make us thin.
Size threes are all the rage,
and skirts ballooning above
twinkling knees are every man-child's
preadolescent dream. Tabla rasa. No slate's that clean--
We've earned the navels sunk in
grief when the last child emptied us
of their brief interior light.
Our muscles say
We have been used.
Have you ever tried silk sheets?
I did, persuaded by postnatal dread
and a Macy's clerk to bargain
for more zip.
We couldn't hang on, slipped to
the floor and by morning the quilts
had slid off, too. Enough of guilt--
It's hard work staying cool.
3.MAYA
ANGELOU
“PHENOMENAL WOMAN”
Pretty women wonder where my secret lies.
I'm not cute or built to suit a fashion model's size
But when I start to tell them,
They think I'm telling lies.
I say,
It's in the reach of my arms
The span of my hips,
The stride of my step,
The curl of my lips.
I'm a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That's me.
I walk into a room
Just as cool as you please,
And to a man,
The fellows stand or
Fall down on their knees.
Then they swarm around me,
A hive of honey bees.
I say,
It's the fire in my eyes,
And the flash of my teeth,
The swing in my waist,
And the joy in my feet.
I'm a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That's me.
Men themselves have wondered
What they see in me.
They try so much
But they can't touch
My inner mystery.
When I try to show them
They say they still can't see.
I say,
It's the arch of my back,
The sun of my smile,
The ride of my breasts,
The grace of my style.
I'm a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That's me.
Now you understand
Just why my head's not bowed.
I don't shout or jump about
Or have to talk real loud.
When you see me passing
It ought to make you proud.
I say,
It's in the click of my heels,
The bend of my hair,
the palm of my hand,
The need of my care.
'Cause I'm a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That's me.
“Preacher, Don't
Send Me”
Preacher, Don't Send me
when I die
to some big ghetto
in the sky
where rats eat cats
of the leopard type
and Sunday brunch
is grits and tripe.
I've known those rats
I've seen them kill
and grits I've had
would make a hill,
or maybe a mountain,
so what I need
from you on Sunday
is a different creed.
Preacher, please don't
promise me
streets of gold
and milk for free.
I stopped all milk
at four years old
and once I'm dead
I won't need gold.
I'd call a place
pure paradise
where families are loyal
and strangers are nice,
where the music is jazz
and the season is fall.
Promise me that
or nothing at all.
4.GARY
SOTO
“HOW THINGS WORK”
Today it's going to cost us twenty dollars
To live. Five for a softball. Four for a book,
A handful of ones for coffee and two sweet rolls,
Bus fare, rosin for your mother's violin.
We're completing our task. The tip I left
For the waitress filters down
Like rain, wetting the new roots of a child
Perhaps, a belligerent cat that won't let go
Of a balled sock until there's chicken to eat.
As far as I can tell, daughter, it works like this:
You buy bread from a grocery, a bag of apples
From a fruit stand, and what coins
Are passed on helps others buy pencils, glue,
Tickets to a movie in which laughter
Is thrown into their faces.
If we buy goldfish, someone tries on a hat.
If we buy crayons, someone walks home with a broom.
A tip. a small purchase here and there,
And things just keep going. I guess.
“Oranges”
The first time I walked
With a girl, I was twelve,
Cold, and weighted down
With two oranges in my jacket.
December. Frost cracking
Beneath my steps, my breath
Before me, then gone,
As I walked toward
Her house, the one whose
Porch light burned yellow
Night and day, in any weather.
A dog barked at me, until
She came out pulling
At her gloves, face bright
With rouge. I smiled,
Touched her shoulder, and led
Her down the street, across
A used car lot and a line
Of newly planted trees,
Until we were breathing
Before a drugstore. We
Entered, the tiny bell
Bringing a saleslady
Down a narrow aisle of goods.
I turned to the candies
Tiered like bleachers,
And asked what she wanted -
Light in her eyes, a smile
Starting at the corners
Of her mouth. I fingered
A nickel in my pocket,
And when she lifted a chocolate
That cost a dime,
I didn't say anything.
I took the nickel from
My pocket, then an orange,
And set them quietly on
The counter. When I looked up,
The lady's eyes met mine,
And held them, knowing
Very well what it was all
About.
Outside,
A few cars hissing past,
Fog hanging like old
Coats between the trees.
I took my girl's hand
in mine for two blocks, Then released it to let
Her unwrap the chocolate.
I peeled my orange
That was so bright against
The gray of December
That, from some distance,
Someone might have thought
I was making a fire in my hands.
5.ETHERIDGE
KNIGHT
“CELL SONG”
Night Music Slanted
Light strike the cave of sleep. I alone
tread the red circle
and twist the space with speech
Come now, etheridge, don't
be a savior; take your words and scrape
the sky, shake rain
on the desert, sprinkle
salt on the tail
of a girl,
can there anything
good come out of
prison
“Hard Rock Returns To Prison From The
Hospital For The Criminal Insane” by Etheridge Knight
Hard Rock/ was/ "known not to take no shit
From nobody," and he had the scars to prove it:
Split purple lips, lumbed ears, welts above
His yellow eyes, and one long scar that cut
Across his temple and plowed through a thick
Canopy of kinky hair.
The WORD/ was/ that Hard Rock wasn't a mean nigger
Anymore, that the doctors had bored a hole in his head,
Cut out part of his brain, and shot electricity
Through the rest. When they brought Hard Rock back,
Handcuffed and chained, he was turned loose,
Like a freshly gelded stallion, to try his new status. and we all waited and watched, like a herd of sheep,
To see if the WORD was true.
As we waited we wrapped ourselves in the cloak
Of his exploits: "Man, the last time, it took eight
Screws to put him in the Hole." "Yeah, remember when he
Smacked the captain with his dinner tray?" "he
set
The record for time in the Hole-67 straight days!"
"Ol Hard Rock! man,
that's one crazy nigger."
And then the jewel of a myth that Hard Rock had once bit
A screw on the thumb and poisoned him with syphilitic spit.
The testing came to see if Hard Rock was really tame.
A hillbilly called him a black son of a ____
And didn't lose his teeth, a screw who knew Hard Rock
>From before shook him down and barked in his face
And Hard Rock did nothing. Just grinned and look silly.
His empty eyes like knot holes in a fence.
And even after we discovered that it took Hard Rock
Exactly 3 minutes to tell you his name,
we told ourselves that he had just wised up,
Was being cool; but we could not fool ourselves for long.
And we turned away, our eyes on the ground. Crushed.
He had been our Destroyer, the doer of things
We dreamed of doing but could not bring ourselves to do.
The fears of years like a biting whip,
Had cut deep bloody grooves
Across our backs.
My old mule,
He's gota grin on his face.
He's been a mule so long
He's forgotten about his race.
I'm like that old mule --
Black -- and don't give a damn!
You got to take me
Like I am.
“The
Negro Speaks of Rivers” (to W. E.
B. B. DuBois)
I've known rivers:
I've known rivers ancient as the world and older than the flow
of human blood in human veins.
My soul has grown deep like the rivers.
I bathed in the Euphrates when dawns were
young.
I built my hut near the Congo and it lulled me to sleep.
I looked upon the Nile and raised the
pyramids above it.
I heard the singing of the Mississippi when Abe Lincoln went
down to New Orleans, and I've seen its muddy bosom turn
all golden in the sunset.
“Po' Boy Blues”
When I was home de
Sunshine seemed like gold.
When I was home de
Sunshine seemed like gold.
Since I come up North de
Whole damn world's turned cold.
I was a good boy,
Never done no wrong.
Yes, I was a good boy,
Never done no wrong,
But this world is weary
An' de road is hard an' long.
I fell in love with
A gal I thought was kind.
Fell in love with
A gal I thought was kind.
She made me lose ma money
An' almost lose ma mind.
Weary, weary,
Weary early in de morn.
Weary, weary,
Early, early in de morn. I's so weary
I wish I'd never been born.
7.Arna Bontemps
“A Black Man Talks of Reaping”
I have sown beside all waters in my day.
I planted deep within my heart the fear
that wind or fowl would take the grain away.
I planted safe against this stark, lean year.
I scatterd seed
enough to plant the land
in rows from Canada to Mexico.
But for my reaping only what the hand
can hold at once is all that I can show.
Yet what I sowed and what the orchard
yields
my brother's sons are gathering stalk and root,
small wonder then my children glean in fields
they have not sown, and feed on bitter fruit.
“The Day-Breakers” by Arna Bontemps
We are not come to wage a strife
With swords upon this hill,
It is not wise to waste the life
Against a stubborn will.
Yet would we die as some have done.
Beating a way for the rising sun.
C8.COUNTEE CULLEN
For a Poet
I have wrapped my dreams in a silken cloth,
And laid them away in a box of gold;
Where long will cling the lips of the moth,
I have wrapped my dreams in a silken cloth;
I hide no hate; I am not even wroth
Who found earth's breath so keen and cold;
I have wrapped my dreams in a silken cloth,
And laid them away in a box of gold.
S
“Simon the Cyrenian Speaks”
He never spoke a word to me,
And yet He called my name;
He never gave a sign to me,
And yet I knew and came.
At first I said, "I will not bear
His cross upon my back;
He only seeks to place it there
Because my skin is black."
But He was dying for a dream,
And He was very meek,
And in His eyes there shone a gleam
Men journey far to seek.
It was Himself my pity bought;
I did for Christ alone
What all of Rome could not have wrought
With bruise of lash or stone.
S
“Saturday's Child”
Some are teethed on a silver spoon,
With the stars strung for a rattle;
I cut my teeth as the black raccoon--
For implements of battle.
Some are swaddled in silk and down,
And heralded by a star;
They swathed my limbs in a sackcloth gown
On a night that was black as tar.
For some, godfather and goddame
The opulent fairies be;
Dame Poverty gave me my name,
And Pain godfathered me.
For I was born on Saturday--
"Bad time for planting a seed,"
Was all my father had to say,
And, "One mouth more to feed."
Death cut the strings that gave me life,
And handed me to Sorrow,
The only kind of middle wife
My folks could beg or borrow.
C9.
CLAUDE MCKAY
“THE HARLEM DANCER”
PPLAUDING
youths laughed with young prostitutes
And
watched her perfect, half-clothed body sway;
Her
voice was like the sound of blended flutes
Blown
by black players upon a picnic day.
She
sang and danced on gracefully and calm,
The
light gauze hanging loose about her form;
To
me she seemed a proudly-swaying palm
Grown
lovelier for passing through a storm.
Upon
her swarthy neck black, shiny curls
Profusely
fell; and, tossing coins in praise,
The
wine-flushed, bold-eyed boys, and even the girls,
Devoured
her with their eager, passionate gaze;
But,
looking at her falsely-smiling face
I
knew her self was not in that strange place.
"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 accursed 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!
G10. GWENDOLYN BROOKS
“THE POOL PLAYERS.
SEVEN AT THE GOLDEN SHOVEL.”
We real cool. We
Left school. We
Lurk late. We
Strike straight. We
Sing sin. We
Thin gin. We
Jazz June. We
Die soon.
“The Mother” by Gwendolyn Brooks
Abortions will not let you forget.
You remember the children you got that you did not get,
The damp small pulps with a little or with no hair,
The singers and workers that never handled the air.
You will never neglect or beat
Them, or silence or buy with a sweet.
You will never wind up the sucking-thumb
Or scuttle off ghosts that come.
You will never leave them, controlling your luscious sigh,
Return for a snack of them, with gobbling mother-eye.
I have heard in the voices of the wind the voices of my dim killed
children.
I have contracted. I have eased
My dim dears at the breasts they could never suck.
I have said, Sweets, if I sinned, if I seized
Your luck
And your lives from your unfinished reach,
If I stole your births and your names,
Your straight baby tears and your games,
Your stilted or lovely loves, your tumults, your marriages, aches,
and your deaths,
If I poisoned the beginnings of your breaths,
Believe that even in my deliberateness I was not deliberate.
Though why should I whine,
Whine that the crime was other than mine?--
Since anyhow you are dead.
Or rather, or instead,
You were never made.
But that too, I am afraid,
Is faulty: oh, what shall I say, how is the truth to be said?
You were born, you had body, you died.
It is just that you never giggled or planned or cried.
Believe me, I loved you all.
Believe me, I knew you, though faintly, and I loved, I loved you
11. ROBERT HAYDEN
“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?
12. AI
“Conversation”
We smile at each other
and I lean back against the wicker couch.
How does it feel to be dead? I say.
You touch my knees with your blue fingers.
And when you open your mouth,
a ball of yellow light falls to the floor
and burns a hole through it.
Don't tell me, I say. I don't want to hear.
Did you ever, you start,
wear a certain kind of dress
and just by accident,
so inconsequential you barely notice it,
your fingers graze that dress
and you hear the sound of a knife cutting paper,
you see it too
and you realize how that image
is simply the extension of another image,
that your own life
is a chain of words
that one day will snap.
Words, you say, young girls in a circle, holding hands,
and beginning to rise heavenward
in their confirmation dresses,
like white helium balloons,
the wreathes of flowers on their heads spinning,
and above all that,
that's where I'm floating,
and that's what it's like
only ten times clearer,
ten times more horrible.
Could anyone alive survive it?
They say I’m a beast.
And feast on it. When all along
I thought that’s what a woman was.
They say I’m a b---.
Or witch. I’ve claimed
the same and never winced.
They say I’m a macha, hell on
wheels, viva-la-vulva, fire and brimstone,
man-hating, devastating,
boogey-woman lesbian.
Not necessarily,
but I like the compliment.
The mob arrives with stones and sticks
to maim and lame and do me in.
All the same, when I open my mouth,
they wobble like gin.
Diamonds and pearls
tumble from my tongue.
Or toads and serpents.
Depending on the mood I’m in.
I like the itch I provoke.
The rustle of rumor
like crinoline.
I am the woman of myth and bulls---.
(True. I authored some of it.)
I built my house of ill repute.
Brick by brick. Labored,
loved and masoned it.
I live like so.
Heart as sail, ballast, rudder, bow.
Rowdy. Indulgent to excess.
My sin and success—
I think of me to gluttony.
By all accounts I am
a danger to society.
I’m Pancha Villa.
I break laws,
upset the natural order,
anguish the Pope and make fathers cry.
I am beyond the jaw of law.
I’m la desperada, most-wanted public
enemy.
My happy picture grinning from the wall.
I strike terror among the men.
I can’t be bothered what they think. Que se vayan
a la chingchangchong!
For this, the cross, the Calvary.
In other words, I’m anarchy.
Sometimes I think I became the
woman
I am by accident, nothing prepared
the way, not a dramatic, wayward aunt,
or moody mother who read Middlemarch,
or godmother who whispered, "You can be
whatever you want!" and by doing so
performed the god-like function of breathing
grit into me. Even my own sisters
were more concerned with hairdryers and boys
than the poems I recited ad nauseam
in our shared
bedrooms when the lights were out.
"You're making me sick!" my sisters would say
as I ranted on, Whitman's Song of Myself
not the best lullaby, I now admit,
or Chaucer in middle English which caused
many a nightmare fight. "Mami!"
they'd called,
"She's doing it again!" Slap of slippers
in the hall, door clicks, and lights snapped on.
"Why can't you be considerate for once?"
"I am," I pleaded, "these are sounds, sweet airs . . .
They give delight and--"
"Keep it to yourself!"
my mother said, which more than anything
anyone in my childhood advised
turned me to this paper solitude
where I both keep things secret and broadcast
my heart for all the world to read. And so,
through many drafts, I became the woman
I kept to myself as I lay awake
in that dark bedroom with the lonesome sound
of their soft breathing as my sisters slept.
“HAIRBANDS”
My husband has given away my hairbands
in my dream to the young women he works with,
my black velvet, my mauve, my patent leather one,
the olive band with the magenta rose
whose paper petals crumple in the drawer,
the flowered crepe, the felt with a rickrack
of vines, the twined mock-tortoise shells.
He says I do not need them, I’ve cut my hair,
so it no longer falls in my eyes when I read,
or when we are making love and I bend over him.
But no, I tell him, you do not
understand,
I want my hairbands even if I don’t need them.
These are the trophies of my maidenhood,
the satin dress with buttons down the back,
the scented box with the scalloped photographs.
This is my wild-haired girlhood dazzled with stories
of love, the romantic heroine with the pale, operatic face
who throws herself on the train tracks of men’s arms.
These are the chastened girl-selves I gave up
to become the woman who could be married to you.
But every once in a while, I pull them
out
of my dresser drawer and touch them to my cheek,
worn velvet and faded silk, mi tesoro, mi juventud—
which my husband has passed on to the young women
who hold for him the promise of who I was.
And in my dream I weep real tears that wake me up
to my husband sleeping beside me that deep sleep
that makes me tremble thinking of what is
coming.
And I slip out of bed to check that they are still mine,
my crumpled rose, my mauve, my black hairbands.
You can actually hear it in his voice:
Sometimes the only way to discuss it
Is to grip a guitar as if it were
Somebody's throat
And pluck. If there were
A ship off of this planet,
An ark where the blues could show
Its other face,
A street where you could walk,
Just walk without dogged air at
Your heels, at your back, don't
You think he'd choose it?
Meanwhile, here's the tune:
Bad luck, empty pockets,
Trouble walking your way
With his tin ear.
“RODNEY KING BLUES”
I love the world,
But my heart's
Been cheated.
What's in my hands?
Pain, a low
Moan. That's
What it feels like.
Now every street
Shadows my steps.
A sin
And a shame.
What do I carry?
There's
Mr. Death
In his severe
Blue uniform,
Mr. Misfortune
And his legal fists.
A low-
Down funk.
What's on my heart?
'Buke
And scorn,
Mr. Hard Luck's
Satisfaction.
Blue musk.
Sorrowful shoes.
Rodney King Blues.
16. Amiri Baraka
“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?
“Incident” Amiri Baraka
He came back and shot. He shot him. When he came
back, he shot, and he fell, stumbling, past the
shadow wood, down, shot, dying, dead, to full halt.
At the bottom, bleeding, shot dead. He
died then, there
after the fall, the speeding bullet, tore his face
and blood sprayed fine over the killer and the grey light.
Pictures of the dead man, are everywhere.
And his spirit
sucks up the light. But he died in darkness darker than
his soul and everything tumbled blindly with him dying
down the stairs.
We have no word
on the killer, except he came back, from somewhere
to do what he did. And shot only once into his victim's
stare, and left him quickly when the blood ran out. We know
the killer was skillful, quick and silent, and that the victim
probably knew him. Other than that, aside from the caked sourness
of the dead man's expression, and the cool surprise in the fixture
of his hands and fingers, we know nothing.
a\117.
Angelina Grimke
“Tenebris”
There is a tree, by day,
That, at night, Has a shadow,
A hand huge and black,
With fingers long and black.
All through the dark,
Against the white man's house,
In the little wind,
The black hand plucks and plucks
At the bricks.
The bricks are the color of blood
and very small.
Is it a black hand,
Or is it a shadow?
“The Black Finger”
I have just seen a beautiful thing
Slim and still, Against a gold, gold sky,
A straight cypress,
Sensitive
Exquisite,
A black finger
Pointing upwards.
Why, beautiful, still finger are you black?
And why are you pointing upwards? I walk into the bakery next door
To my apartment. They are about
To pull some sort of toast with
cheese
From the oven. When I ask:
What’s that smell? I am being
A poet, I am asking
What everyone else in the shop
Wanted to ask, but somehow
couldn’t;
I am speaking on behalf of two
other
Customers who wanted to buy the
Name of it. I ask the woman
Behind the counter for a
percentage
Of her sale. Am I flirting?
Am I happy because the days
Are longer? Here’s what
She does: She takes her time
Choosing the slices. “I am
picking
Out the good ones,” she tells
me. It’s
April 14th.. Spring, with five
to ten
Degrees to go. Some days, I feel
my duty;
Some days, I love my work.
18. SONIA SANCHEZ for Robert
Lowell
We smile at each other
and I lean back against the wicker
couch.
How does it feel to be dead? I say.
You touch my knees with your blue
fingers.
And when you open your mouth,
a ball of yellow light falls to the
floor
and burns a hole through it.
Don’t tell me, I say. I don't want
to hear.
Did you ever, you start,
wear a certain kind of silk dress
and just by accident,
so inconsequential you barely notice
it,
your fingers graze that dress
and you hear the sound of a knife
cutting paper,
you see it too
and you realize how that image
is simply the extension of another
image,
that your own life
is a chain of words
that one day will snap.
Words, you say, young girls in a
circle, holding hands,
and beginning to rise heavenward
in their confirmation dresses,
like white helium balloons,
the wreaths of flowers on their
heads spinning,
and above all that,
that’s where I’m floating,
and that’s what it’s like
only ten times clearer,
ten times more horrible.
Could anyone alive survive it?
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.breaking. /
When In A Ballad of Remembrance (1962), the line between these two
lines reads: "and smell the iron and velvet bloom of heat." While
this line was deleted, the version in A Ballad of Remembrance is still
a sonnet. There are other variants between both versions; mostly relating to
where the line breaks.
Whenbreaking. / When In A Ballad of Remembrance
(1962), the line between these two lines reads:"and smell the iron and
velvet bloom of heat." While this line was deleted, the version in A
Ballad of Remembrance is still a sonnet. There are other variants between
both versions; mostly relating to where the line breaks. 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 hadwho had In A Ballad of Remembrance: who’d
driven out the cold
and polished my good shoes as well.
What did I know, what did I know
of love’s austereaustere Grave, sober; and lacking
adornment and lonely offices?
“Poem No. 8” i've been a woman
with my legs stretched by the wind
rushing the day
thinking i heard your voice
while it was only the nite
moving over
making room for the dawn
Haiku
we are sudden stars
you and i exploding in
our blue black skins
19. YusefKomunyakaa
“Slamdunk”
Fast breaks. Lay ups. With Mercury's
Insignia on our sneakers, We outmaneuvered the footwork
Of bad angels. Nothing but a hot
Swish of strings like silk
Ten feet out. In the roundhouse
Labyrinth our bodies
Created, we could almost Last forever, poised in midair
Like storybook sea monsters.
A high note hung there A long second. Off
The rim. We'd corkscrew Up & dunk balls that exploded
The skullcap of hope & good
Intention. Bug-eyed, lanky, All hands & feet . . . sprung rhythm.
We were metaphysical when girls Cheered on the sidelines.
Tangled up in a falling,
Muscles were a bright motor
Double-flashing to the metal hoop
Nailed to our oak.
When Sonny Boy's mama died
He played nonstop all day, so hard Our backboard splintered.
Glistening with sweat, we jibed
& rolled the ball off our
Fingertips. Trouble Was there slapping a blackjack
Against an open palm.
Dribble, drive to the inside, feint,
& glide like a sparrow hawk.
Lay ups. Fast breaks.
We had moves we didn't know We had. Our bodies spun On swivels of bone & faith,
Through a lyric slipknot
Of joy, & we knew we were
Beautiful & dangerous. Those
Winter Sundays
Believing In
Iron
The hills my brothers & I created
never balanced, & it took years
To discover how the world worked.
We could look at a tree of blackbirds
& tell you how many were there,
But with the scrap dealer
Our math was always off.
Weeks of lifting & grunting
Never added up to much,
But we couldn't stop
Believing in iron.
Abandoned trucks & cars
Were held to the ground
By thick, nostalgic fingers of vines
Strong as a dozen sharecroppers.
We'd return with our wheelbarrow
Groaning under a new load,
Yet tiger lilies lived better
In their languid, August domain.
Among paper & Coke bottles
Foundry smoke erased sunsets,
& we couldn't believe iron
Left men bent so close to the earth
As if the ore under their breath
Weighed down the gray sky.
Sometimes I dreamt how our hills
Washed into a sea of metal,
How it all became an anchor
For a warship or bomber
Out over trees with blooms
Too red to look at.
20. JAMES
WELDON JOHNSON
Mother Night
Eternities before the first-born day,
Or ere the first sun fledged his wings of flame,
Calm Night, the everlasting and the same,
A brooding mother over chaos lay.
And whirling suns shall blaze and then decay,
Shall run their fiery courses and then claim
The haven of the darkness whence they came;
Back to Nirvanic peace shall grope their way.
So when my feeble sun of life burns out,
And sounded is the hour for my long sleep,
I shall, full weary of the feverish light,
Welcome the darkness without fear or doubt,
And heavy-lidded, I shall softly creep
Into the quiet bosom of the Night.
21. TOI
DERRICOTTE
For Black
Women Who Are Afraid
A black woman comes up to me at break in the writing
workshop and reads me her poem, but she says she
can't read it out loud because
there's a woman in a car on her way
to work and her hair is blowing in the breeze
and, since her hair is blowing, the woman must be
white, and she shouldn't write about a white woman
whose hair is blowing, because
maybe the black poets will think she wants to be
that woman and be mad at her and say she hates herself,
and maybe they won't let her explain
that she grew up in a white neighborhood
and it's not her fault, it's just what she sees.
But she has to be so careful. I tell her to write
the poem about being afraid to write,
and we stand for a long time like that,
respecting each other's silence.
Brother
Jay's mother is
brown, mine is white-
looking, as I am, as is our father. he says sometimes when he'd go
to fill the vending machines
with our father, the white bartenders
would say, "Is that your helper?"
my father would say, "No, he's my
son." Jay says you can always tell
the person changes by something
in the eyes, it may be small -
the eyes open wider or the brow
creases down. He says that once,
our father sent him to get something
from the truck. When he came back,
the bartender had set him up
with a soda, "Have some pop,"
he said in a friendly way. Another time,
when I was doing a reading in New Jersey,
Jay was with me. "A yuppie place,"
he remembers. After the applause
I thanked them and said, "I'd like to
introduce my brother." When he stood
up, people were still looking around
for somebody, looking
right through him. Finally, when they realized
he was it, he head a woman say, "Oh no!"
as if she had been hit in the solar plexus. maybe that's why he didn't marry
somebody like us. He married a girl
black as God - and brags to family, strangers,
to anyone about that
blackness - so easily recognized, his.
22. NTOZAKE
SHANGE
"sorry"
one thing i don't need
is any more apologies i got sorry greetin me at
my front door
you can keep yrs i don't know what to do witem
they dont open doors
or bring the sun back
they dont make me happy
or get a mornin paper didnt nobody stop usin my
tears to wash cars cuz a sorry
i am simply tired
of collectin ididnt know i was so important toyou i'mgonnahaveta throw some away icant get to the clothes
in my closet
for alla the sorries i'mgonna tack a sign to
my door
leave a message by the phone
'if you called
to say yr sorry
call somebody
else idont use em anymore' i let sorry/ didntmeanta/ & how cdi know abt that
take a walk down a dark & musty street in brooklyn i'mgonna do exactly what
i want to
& iwont be sorry for
none of it letta sorry soothe yr soul/ i'mgonna soothe mine
you were always inconsistent doinsomethin & then bein sorry beatin my heart to death talkin bout you sorry
well i will not call i'm not goin to be nice i will raise my voice
& scream & holler
& break things & race the engine
& tell all yr secrets bout yrself to yr face
& i will list in detail everyone of my
wonderful lovers
& their ways i will play oliver lake
loud
& iwont be sorry for
none of it
i loved you on purpose i was open on purpose i still crave vulnerability & close talk
& i'm not even sorry bout you bein sorry
you can carry all the guilt & grime yawanna
just dont give it to me icant use another sorry
next time
you should admit
you're mean/ low-down/ triflin/ & no count
straight out steadabein sorry alla the time
enjoy beinyrself
we partied the southwest, smoked it from L.A. to El Dorado
worked odd jobs between delusions of escape
drunk on the admonitions of parents, parsons & professors
driving faster than the road or law allowed.
our high-pitched laughter was young, heartless & disrespected
authority. we could be heard for miles in the night
the Grand Canyon of a new manhood.
womanhood discovered
like the first sighting of Mount Wilson
we rebelled against the southwestern wind
we got so naturally ripped, we sprouted wings,
crashed parties on the moon, and howled at the earth
we lived off love. It was all we had to eat
when you split you took all the wisdom
and left me the worry
The ISM by Wanda Coleman
tired i count the ways in which it determines my life
permeates everything. it’s in the air
lives next door to me in stares of my neighbors
meets me each day in the office. its music comes out the radio
drives beside me in my car. strolls along with me
down supermarket aisles
it’s on television
and in the streets even when my walk is casual/undefined
it’s overhead flashing lights
i find it in my mouth
when i would speak of other things
27.
Lamont B. Steptoe
“There is a
House”
There is a house
with all the
rooms filled with Momma
but there is a
river
that separates me
from this house
it is a wide
river
a river so wide that
it must be called
a sea
yes, a sea
a sea so wide
that it must be
called time
yes, time
a time so wide
that it must be
called death
yes, death
28.
Al Young
For
Poets
by Al Young
Stay beautiful
but don't stay down underground too long Dont turn into a mole
or a worm
or a root
or a stone
Come on out into
the sunlight
Breathe in trees
Knock out mountains
Commune with snakes
& be the very hero of birds
Don't forget to
poke your head up
& blink
Think
Walk all around
Swim upstream
Dont forget to fly
“Dreams of Paradise” by Al Young
Ive had dreams of Paradise where all you do is open
your heart
& let the endlessness ooze out. It is quite something to go thru.
One night in Detroit—the death of my stepfather—weary &
hopeful of everything, I lay in bed grieving & wondering,
whereupon, 4 in the morn, the whole room began to expand &
I with it, giddy with silent affirmation—that is to say: It was
the feeling I feel each of us is rightfully entitled to & it doesn’t
happen out in the world of gold & crashing but is a perfect withinness, a peacefulness & surprise that is unkillable
29.
ANA CASTILLO
Ask The
Impossible
I ask the impossible: love me forever.
Love me when all desire is gone.
Love me with the single mindedness of a monk.
When the world in its entirety,
and all that you hold sacred advise you
against it: love me still more.
When rage fills you and has no name: love me.
When each step from your door to our job tires you--
love me; and from job to home again, love me, love me.
Love me when you're bored--
when every woman you see is more beautiful than the last,
or more pathetic, love me as you always have:
not as admirer or judge, but with
the compassion you save for yourself
in your solitude.
Love me as you relish your loneliness,
the anticipation of your death,
mysteries of the flesh, as it tears and mends.
Love me as your most treasured childhood memory--
and if there is none to recall--
imagine one, place me there with you.
Love me withered as you loved me new.
Love me as if I were forever--
and I, will make the impossible
a simple act,
by loving you, loving you as I do
