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

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]

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

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 

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? 

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   ...