Wednesday, August 10, 2022

June Jordan

POEM ABOUT MY RIGHTS 

Even tonight and I need to take a walk and clear

my head about this poem about why I can’t
go out without changing my clothes my shoes
my body posture my gender identity my age
my status as a woman alone in the evening/
alone on the streets/alone not being the point/
the point being that I can’t do what I want
to do with my own body because I am the wrong
sex the wrong age the wrong skin and
suppose it was not here in the city but down on the beach/
or far into the woods and I wanted to go
there by myself thinking about God/or thinking
about children or thinking about the world/all of it
disclosed by the stars and the silence:
I could not go and I could not think and I could not
stay there
alone
as I need to be
alone because I can’t do what I want to do with my own
body and
who in the hell set things up
like this
and in France they say if the guy penetrates
but does not ejaculate then he did not rape me
and if after stabbing him if after screams if
after begging the bastard and if even after smashing
a hammer to his head if even after that if he
and his buddies fuck me after that
then I consented and there was
no rape because finally you understand finally
they fucked me over because I was wrong I was
wrong again to be me being me where I was/wrong
to be who I am
which is exactly like South Africa
penetrating into Namibia penetrating into
Angola and does that mean I mean how do you know if
Pretoria ejaculates what will the evidence look like the
proof of the monster jackboot ejaculation on Blackland
and if
after Namibia and if after Angola and if after Zimbabwe
and if after all of my kinsmen and women resist even to
self-immolation of the villages and if after that
we lose nevertheless what will the big boys say will they
claim my consent:
Do You Follow Me: We are the wrong people of
the wrong skin on the wrong continent and what
in the hell is everybody being reasonable about
and according to the Times this week
back in 1966 the C.I.A. decided that they had this problem
and the problem was a man named Nkrumah so they
killed him and before that it was Patrice Lumumba
and before that it was my father on the campus
of my Ivy League school and my father afraid
to walk into the cafeteria because he said he
was wrong the wrong age the wrong skin the wrong
gender identity and he was paying my tuition and
before that
it was my father saying I was wrong saying that
I should have been a boy because he wanted one/a
boy and that I should have been lighter skinned and
that I should have had straighter hair and that
I should not be so boy crazy but instead I should
just be one/a boy and before that         
it was my mother pleading plastic surgery for
my nose and braces for my teeth and telling me
to let the books loose to let them loose in other
words
I am very familiar with the problems of the C.I.A.
and the problems of South Africa and the problems
of Exxon Corporation and the problems of white
America in general and the problems of the teachers
and the preachers and the F.B.I. and the social
workers and my particular Mom and Dad/I am very
familiar with the problems because the problems
turn out to be
me
I am the history of rape
I am the history of the rejection of who I am
I am the history of the terrorized incarceration of
myself
I am the history of battery assault and limitless
armies against whatever I want to do with my mind
and my body and my soul and
whether it’s about walking out at night
or whether it’s about the love that I feel or
whether it’s about the sanctity of my vagina or
the sanctity of my national boundaries
or the sanctity of my leaders or the sanctity
of each and every desire
that I know from my personal and idiosyncratic
and indisputably single and singular heart
I have been raped
be-
cause I have been wrong the wrong sex the wrong age
the wrong skin the wrong nose the wrong hair the
wrong need the wrong dream the wrong geographic
the wrong sartorial I
I have been the meaning of rape
I have been the problem everyone seeks to
eliminate by forced
penetration with or without the evidence of slime and/
but let this be unmistakable this poem
is not consent I do not consent
to my mother to my father to the teachers to
the F.B.I. to South Africa to Bedford-Stuy
to Park Avenue to American Airlines to the hardon
idlers on the corners to the sneaky creeps in
cars
I am not wrong: Wrong is not my name
My name is my own my own my own
and I can’t tell you who the hell set things up like this
but I can tell you that from now on my resistance
my simple and daily and nightly self-determination
may very well cost you your life

Thursday, January 21, 2021

William Waring Cuney

She does not know

her beauty,
she thinks her brown body
has no glory.

If she could dance
naked
under palm trees
and see her image in the river,
she would know.

But there are no palm trees
on the street,
and dish water gives back
no images.

[From No Images]


Tuesday, January 19, 2021

Carolyn Forché

The Colonel 

WHAT YOU HAVE HEARD is true. I was in his house. His wife carried
a tray of coffee and sugar. His daughter filed her nails, his son went   
out for the night. There were daily papers, pet dogs, a pistol on the
cushion beside him. The moon swung bare on its black cord over
the house. On the television was a cop show. It was in English.
Broken bottles were embedded in the walls around the house to
scoop the kneecaps from a man's legs or cut his hands to lace. On
the windows there were gratings like those in liquor stores. We had
dinner, rack of lamb, good wine, a gold bell was on the table for
calling the maid. The maid brought green mangoes, salt, a type of
bread. I was asked how I enjoyed the country. There was a brief
commercial in Spanish. His wife took everything away. There was
some talk then of how difficult it had become to govern. The parrot
said hello on the terrace. The colonel told it to shut up, and pushed
himself from the table. My friend said to me with his eyes: say
nothing. The colonel returned with a sack used to bring groceries
home. He spilled many human ears on the table. They were like
dried peach halves. There is no other way to say this. He took one
of them in his hands, shook it in our faces, dropped it into a water
glass. It came alive there. I am tired of fooling around he said. As
for the rights of anyone, tell your people they can go fuck them-
selves. He swept the ears to the floor with his arm and held the last
of his wine in the air. Something for your poetry, no? he said. Some
of the ears on the floor caught this scrap of his voice. Some of the
ears on the floor were pressed to the ground.
                                                                                     May 1978

Saturday, September 12, 2020

Julia de Burgos

 

Ay ay ay, que soy grifa y pura negra


grifería en mi pelo, cafrería en mis labios;
y mi chata nariz mozambiquea.
Negra de intacto tinte, lloro y río
la vibración de ser estatua negra;
de ser trozo de noche,
en que mis blancos dientes relampaguean;
y ser negro bejuco
que a lo negro se enreda
y comba el negro nido
en que el cuervo se acuesta.
Negro trozo de negro en que me esculpo,
ay ay ay, que mi estatua es toda negra.
Dícenme que mi abuelo fue el esclavo
por quien el amo dio treinta monedas.
Ay ay ay, que el esclavo fue mi abuelo
es mi pena, es mi pena.
Si hubiera sido el amo,
sería mi vergüenza;
que en los hombres, igual que en las naciones,
si el ser el siervo es no tener derechos,
el ser el amo es no tener conciencia.
Ay ay ay, los pecados del rey blanco
lávelos en perdón la reina negra.
Ay ay ay, que la raza se me fuga
y hacia la raza blanca zumba y vuela
hundirse en su agua clara;
tal vez si la blanca se ensombrará en la negra.
Ay ay ay, que mi negra raza huye
y con la blanca corre a ser trigueña;
¡a ser la del futuro,
fraternidad de América! 
Ay ay ay de la grifa negra 


Ay, ay, ay, that am kinky-haired and pure black
kinks in my hair, Kafir in my lips; 
and my flat nose Mozambiques. 
Black of pure tint, I cry and laugh
the vibration of being a black statue; 
a chunk of night, in which my white 
teeth are lightning; 
and to be a black vine
which entwines in the black
and curves the black nest 
in which the raven lies. 
Black chunk of black in which I sculpt myself, 
ay, ay, ay, my statue is all black. 
They tell me that my grandfather was the slave
for whom the master paid thirty coins. 
Ay, ay, ay, that the slave was my grandfather
is my sadness, is my sadness. 
If he had been the master
it would be my shame: 
that in men, as in nations, 
if being the slave is having no rights
being the master is having no conscience. 
Ay, ay, ay wash the sins of the white King
in forgiveness black Queen. 
Ay, ay, ay, the race escapes me
and buzzes and flies toward the white race, 
to sink in its clear water; 
or perhaps the white will be shadowed in the black. 
Ay, ay, ay my black race flees
and with the white runs to become bronzed; 
to be one for the future, 
fraternity of America! 


Frank O'Hara

TO THE POEM 

Let us do something grand 

just this once          Something 

small and important and 
unAmerican          Some fine thing 

will resemble a human hand 
and really be merely a thing 

Not needing a military band 
nor an elegant forthcoming 

to tease spotlights or a hand 
from the public’s thinking 

But be          In a defiant land 
of its own a real right thing 

Thursday, August 20, 2020

Lucille Clifton

 today i mourn my coat.

my old potato.
my yellow mother.
my horse with buttons.
my rind.
today she split her skin
like a snake,
refusing to excuse my back
for being big
for being old
for reaching toward other
cuffs and sleeves.
she cracked like a whip and
fell apart,
my terrible teacher to the end;
to hell with the arms you want
she hissed,
be glad when you’re cold
for the arms you have.

Toi Derricotte

 

Joy is an act of resistance

                    Why would a black woman                                need a fish                  to love? Why did she need a

                    flash of red, living, in thecorner of her eye? As if she could love nothing                    up close, but had to step

                        away from it, come                    back to drop a few seeds                          & let it grab

                    on to her, as if it caught                                          her                  on some hook that couldn't

                hurt. Why did she need a fish                            to write of, a red              thorn or, among the thorns, that

        flower? What does her love have to do                  with five hundred years of            sorrow, then joy coming up like a

                            small breath, a            bubble? What does it have to do                  with the graveyards of the

                Atlantic, in her mother's                                        heart? 

Saturday, May 30, 2020

Sonia Sanchez


Haiku and Tanka for Harriet Tubman


Picture a woman
riding thunder on
the legs of slavery    ...    


2

Picture her kissing
our spines saying no to
the eyes of slavery    ...    


3

Picture her rotating
the earth into a shape
of lives becoming    ...    


4

Picture her leaning
into the eyes of our
birth clouds    ...    


5

Picture this woman
saying no to the constant
yes of slavery    ...    


6

Picture a woman
jumping rivers her
legs inhaling moons    ...    


7

Picture her ripe
with seasons of
legs    ...   running    ...    


8

Picture her tasting
the secret corners
of woods    ...   


9

Picture her saying:
You have within you the strength,
the patience, and the passion
to reach for the stars,
to change the world    ...    


10

Imagine her words:
Every great dream begins
with a dreamer    ...    


11

Imagine her saying:
I freed a thousand slaves,
could have freed
a thousand more if they
only knew they were slaves    ...    


12

Imagine her humming:
How many days we got
fore we taste freedom    ...    


13

Imagine a woman
asking: How many workers
for this freedom quilt    ...    


14

Picture her saying:
A live runaway could do
great harm by going back
but a dead runaway
could tell no secrets    ...    


15

Picture the daylight
bringing her to woods
full of birth moons    ...    


16

Picture John Brown
shaking her hands three times saying:
General Tubman. General Tubman. General Tubman.


17

Picture her words:
There’s two things I got a
right to: death or liberty    ...    


18

Picture her saying no
to a play called Uncle Tom’s Cabin:
I am the real thing    ...    


19

Picture a Black woman:
could not read or write
trailing freedom refrains    ...    


20

Picture her face
turning southward walking
down a Southern road    ...    


21

Picture this woman
freedom bound    ...    tasting a
people’s preserved breath    ...    


22

Picture this woman
of royalty    ...    wearing a crown
of morning air    ...    


23

Picture her walking,
running, reviving
a country’s breath    ...    


24

Picture black voices
leaving behind
lost tongues   ...