All the Songs We Sing, page 5
launched a movement,
liberated a people,
emancipated a nation.
When I Thought of Racism
Diane Judge
I thought of still bodies on oak trees
roasted into anonymity by the fires of hatred
of fourteen-year-old flesh bludgeoned by the Tallahatchie
of four little girls blasted apart one Sunday
their bombed Bibles’ profaned passages
floating down on top of stained glass shards
of chains biting into the flesh of a Byrd
dragged on a Jasper, Texas dirt road
bloodied soil marking the path of his screams
When I thought of racism
I did not know to think
of a hoodie, rainbow candy, tea
poet: code’s story
Raina J. León
you think it is so distant the lynching what to make of the story my mother told in the car on the way to my wedding how there was a boy who liked her came calling round and said what would they do if we went to prom together the white boy asked she said you might live but me they’d find in a ditch because that’s what happened to one black boy who went calling round a pretty white girl the folks warned her they warned him but young in love defiant all that high in the mountains what screams to not hear they found him in a ditch but her she didn’t come back to town but lived but not so far in time more recent still the moroccan boy on the edge of manhood
by the side of the road between pennsylvania and ohio a group of us had just returned from a conference on race and organizing and social action hopeful
not on guard must be 14 years now we got lost he turned around in the wrong gravel driveway the man came with his gun called the police we saw it that rifle on a brown leather seat manuel he held his hands out front
still only reached for his wallet when the officer said and slow from a distance my friend david so black and proud went mad we had to hold him back
so many hands it’s not right it’s not right and still that officer made manuel go back to the gravel rake it level with bare hands that rifle was there while whiteness watched while we in the next van watched just to know he would leave alive and on the day of my wedding on the way to marry an Italian man
my mother told a story I had heard before a lesson was that ditch still yawning and then a month later when we went bowling the mountain alley what more to do
how love noticed the whiteness all the whiteness whispered in my ear
so white and i said you notice but i feel and my family we’ve been here two hundred years and him but remember I’m the foreigner and so we two found the lightest ball not skilled it was a turbulent brown we held and aimed and let go not skilled
so many gutters waiting next to us a couple with a toddler i smiled because
children she smiled back but him not one word while he launched his green against the raised guards set to guide his son’s way
iset, god and mother
Raina J. León
all names existed within
my mother
but i cannot remember hers
it was sacred
like red mud slathered over the shaved scalp
after the rains and acacia flowers
the signs of girls blooming
my mother materials
for dung heap soil
water thatch home
in the rooms of our place
we gathered the dying
over fire and smoked herbs
from that womb
to the other place that cauls
the eyes as crossing sign
mother taught me to breathe
life : incense to burn
death : ember
or reversed?
i have forgotten the song
i never heard a care or smelled sweetness
unspoken symbiotic cycle
why doesn’t my daughter know this, too?
warmth that radiated
from leather-cracked hands
how entangled her name is with vein
sacred needs
no memory to be
the spirits enveloped filled
godded me up and through
but how to be a mother and mother
to a god
when i cannot remember my own mother’s name
but i see her life on my hands
and in all water
every drop of rain
persephone (call me perse)
Raina J. León
when your mother is a god
you don’t get the newest goth
lipstick or bubblegum candy rings.
daughter of mother without flaw,
every man who sees wants to poke.
in preschool you learn about erections
from the dads circling her show and tell:
an emerald, eye-size in her palm.
mothers point their perking high,
and the teacher pats your head:
your mother tells such stories! such charm!
you get the knowing smile,
the reach of lunge anticipation—
with such a mother, what
a morsel you might be, even at 5—
morsel: the bauble of tendon
peeled slowly from the horrored hand
she never deliberates violets
when the world would show
its cruelty to women she is perfect-cruel
and she sings so prettily to you children!
what flair, panache! i’ll teach you what that means:
his wide brown eye thumb-sickle
mother says be nice or she will eat
she does anyway peregrine falcon
swoop-gone
new doll chiseled in white
Sweetness
Sheila Smith McKoy
I heard your voice before I saw you
and rushed out of my bed.
There you were, AWOL,
straight from Viet Nam.
I got to you before my sister and brother,
the first to get to your outstretched arms.
We all piled on you, awaiting your absent smile.
But the sweetness of your life
had already sunk beneath
the rippling waters of the Tra Khuc.
There in the flesh you stood.
You, black-enough-to-be-navy-blue,
our favorite bastard cousin,
unshaven and handsome in your uniform
as if defying the lead story on the news:
fifty-five US soldiers killed that day.
Here, you said, and put your army jacket on me.
It hung all the way to my ankles.
You didn’t take the time to tell me
about all the pins on the lapel
like you would’ve done
before we knew about a place called My Lai.
When you took Mama aside,
we were ordered back to bed,
lost in sleep,
placated by the miracle of your return
while you went home to kiss your toddling girl,
to reclaim your wayward wife,
but instead found your mother-in-law,
her monstrous hips high in indignation
waiting with a gun,
defending the military stipend
they ran through every month,
the proceeds from the rental.
Struggling, the bullet found
its way straight into her heart.
Sometime before dawn,
you gave up your life in the attic
of their little shotgun house
thousands of miles away from your M-16.
Too late, my mother arrived.
Your blood and her blood
had mingled in a pool in the sloping floor,
a sickening sweetness claimed the air.
By the time the sun came through my window,
I had already seen your soul dancing in the light.
But I was only nine and did not know
that one could dance the sayi’erhe
and still come home.
Pollination
Outskirts of Raleigh, NC, 1968
Sheila Smith McKoy
When I found it,
it had to have been more than twenty years
since King’s Peach orchard had held the land,
worked by the multicolored browns, blacks,
and yellowed tans
picking the sweetness
that sometimes left its juices
slipping down the chin
At least twenty years
since the King’s truck wound its way
to Holly Springs, Fuquay-Varina, and Willow Spring
picking workers,
hauled in the back
packed-in too close to sit,
they rose and fell
breast against chest
rocking in the truck’s uneasy sway
When King sold his land,
the neat rows of peach trees were cleared,
begetting a neighborhood named Orchard.
Our house was the first one built
decades after anyone had ridden
in the shadow-play of sundown
rubbing back to front, homeward-bound
in a King’s Peach truck
That summer was a hot witness
to alliterative assassinations
claiming Medgar, Martin, Malcolm—
to Camelot days slain along with my innocence.
That June, I found the first bright spot,
a blood-red end to staying out after dark,
running through the orchard, just like the boys
It was way past too long,
but, there it stood
with its longish leaves, claiming the ground:
a wayward peach tree,
unfettered by rows or time
We found each other:
It somehow growing
twenty years after King’s peach was
picked And me, somehow a changeling,
turned from child to woman overnight.
Both unripe,
neither of us seasoned enough to bloom
Haiku
Sheila Smith McKoy
in Dorian’s wake
a red truck
dangles from a tree
carved wooden horses
of the Chavis Park carousel
a long-ago kiss
tidal pools on the beach
near Shell Island
a toddler’s laugh
a single deer
grazing near the pond
at RDU
near the ruins
of St. Agnes Hospital
magnolia blooms
Interrogation of Harriet Tubman
Lenard D. Moore
You say I should escape with you,
follow the North Star that spills light
like my good breast drips milk.
I’ve already had my children snatched
from me as if they were brown eggs
in some nest. So you think I’m going
to trust you? What I’m going to eat?
An oak leaf? A pine needle? A twig?
My feet feel like axed wood.
My body feels like a sack of sweet potatoes.
You brave woman going to poke
that pistol in my side, make me walk.
I don’t know what massa might think.
He said I was real good. And you say
you’re taking me to freedom
that’s as wide as this pitch-black night.
Can you tell me what’s waiting for us
in the thicket? Will a horseman be there
with his long black whip? A gun slung
over his shoulder to take us back
to that plantation? So why should I
follow you and the North Star tonight?
I hear a growl to our right.
I hear a yowl to the left.
You say keep walking with my feet
straight ahead, quick and quiet.
I think about my three children
snatched and sold. I want them back.
Will I ever see them again?
I push back branches, duck limbs
and side-step weeds. No water here.
Can your pistol shoot the horseman
off his horse without missing him?
I think I’ll forget that my feet ache,
my hands sweat with each dark mile.
Sure we won’t see coffles again?
Sure we won’t witness whips again?
Sure we won’t hear auction voices again?
A Reminiscing Daddy
Lenard D. Moore
Daddy, where are you? You asked.
Words winged through our cell phones
that sunlit day when
I drove onto campus,
your first semester, full smile
cut clean across my mouth.
You’re here? You’re outside?
You’re here? You’re outside?
I pulled up to your dorm
in Greenville, where I had run track,
the mile relay twenty-five years ago.
It wasn’t long
before I’d know your bird-quick words.
Their cadence against my ear
made me believe in inquiry.
You’re here? You’re outside?
You’re here? You’re outside?
Now you’re three years dead,
your twisted car long since scrapped.
Your dresses still hang in the closet
in your room where your mother and I
half-sleep, half-listen to rain—
half-wake for your return.
You’re here? You’re outside?
Bop
Coaching Poets
Lenard D. Moore
In class, my six-foot-tall student,
next to the window,
dreads locked on her back,
says guys on the b-ball team
write poetry—don’t want it public.
Up front, I nod.
Know what you must do
Don’t be satisfied
I hand out two poems,
tell them Quincy Troupe, Yusef K
penned them, their riffs clear.
They peer up, wide-eyed,
heads tilted like cups.
They never give a signal
that they write lines
that sizzle with strong light.
Know what you must do
Don’t be satisfied
Three decades I’ve lived
the words that flame my pages
and do not apologize for writing.
A man like me knows
what to tell his students
without shooting jive.
Know what you must do
Don’t be satisfied
Haiku Sequence
Lenard D. Moore
for Sonia Sanchez
your whole notes
wake the dormant trees
the wind’s breath
drums thump
pulsing of the heartsong
the opening sky
jazz and haiku
shake loose my skin
a dusting of pollen
insistent running
of the long river
you’re a cappella
my black hands
cupping the sunlight
jacuzzi bubbles
orange lilies bow
your noontime strut
up the sidewalk
rain long gone
I recite the syllables
of your language
evening walk
I catch your riff
in my voice
(shake loose my skin is the title of Sonia Sanchez’s poetry book)
Haiku
Maiisha L. Moore
the dark rock-road
a car coming down it,
me and my daddy
Mai Bahamian Haiku
Maiisha L. Moore
Bahamian dew
upon the leaning palm
morning sun shines bright
June 14, 2003
3:27 P.M.
glazed and primed conch shells
appeal to my shopping eye
sun hot and blinding
June 14, 2003
3:30 P.M.
pool water splashing
scorched hot pink ceramic tile
struck by naked sun
June 14, 2003
3:33 P.M.
Color Like This
Grace Ocasio
Pop never wore brown pants.
But I knew black men who did.
Growing up, I spied them
in brown slacks and shirts
at barbershops, lounges, chicken
and rib joints, pool halls.
Why’d they wear that color?
Didn’t they know brown sours?
I knew brown as the furrows
above Pop’s brows.
The rust-colored water to drink,
Pop’s stomp, sob, or howl.
Ring of coffee stain
on his breakfast napkin.
Brown, his eyes tinged
with smoke and gin.
The slap of his hand
against my ginger-brown skin.
The way I dragged my feet
to school.
The frown that encircled me
as I stared at his
brown casket. These days
I grind brown—like figs.
Deeper Than Skin
Grace Ocasio
Negro blood is sure powerful because just one drop of black blood makes a colored man.
—Langston Hughes
Negro—word I sipped and steeped in my
blood one quarter of a century. African American
is smoother, like whip cream on the tongue,
sure as red digits on a radio clock,
powerful—water spurting from a showerhead
because African American fits like an ao dai,
just shimmers against my bones, admonishes
one to displace words that sour breath. I
drop lies like scraps and horde suitcases
