Lineage
–Margaret WalkerMy grandmothers were strong.They followed plows and bent to toil.They moved through fields sowing seed.They touched earth and grain grew.They were full of sturdiness and singing.My grandmothers were strong.My grandmothers are full of memoriesSmelling of soap and onions and wet clayWith veins rolling roughly over quick handsThey have many clean words to say.My grandmothers were strong.Why am I not as they?
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A Plagued Journey
–Maya AngelouThere is no warning rattle at the doornor heavy feet to stomp the foyer boards.Safe in the dark prison, I know thatlight slides overthe fingered work of a toothlesswoman in Pakistan.Happy prints ofan invisible time are illumined.My mouth agaperejects the solid air andlungs hold. The invader takesdirection andseeps through the plaster walls.It is at my chamber, enteringthe keyhole, pushingthrough the padding of the door.I cannot scream. A boneof fear clogs my throat.It is upon me. It issunrise, with Hopeits arrogant rider.My mind, formerly quiescentin its snug encasement, is strainedto look upon their rapturous visages,to let them enter even into me.I am forcedoutside myself tomount the light and ride joined with Hope.Through all the bright hoursI cling to expectation, untildarkness comes to reclaim meas its own. Hope fades, day is goneinto its irredeemable placeand I am thrown back into the familiarbonds of disconsolation.Gloom crawls aroundlapping lasciviouslybetween my toes, at my ankles,and it sucks the strands of myhair. It forgives my headyfling with Hope. I amjoined again into itsgreedy arms.
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Rosa Parks
–Nikki Giovanni
This is for the Pullman Porters who organized when people said they couldn’t. And carried the Pittsburgh Courier and the Chicago Defender to the Black Americans in the South so they would know they were not alone. This is for the Pullman Porters who helped Thurgood Marshall go south and come back north to fight the fight that resulted in Brown v. Board of Education because even though Kansas is west and even though Topeka is the birthplace of Gwendolyn Brooks, who wrote the powerful “The Chicago Defender Sends a Man to Little Rock,” it was the Pullman Porters who whispered to the traveling men both the Blues Men and the “Race” Men so that they both would know what was going on. This is for the Pullman Porters who smiled as if they were happy and laughed like they were tickled when some folks were around and who silently rejoiced in 1954
when the Supreme Court announced its 9—0 decision that “separate is inherently unequal.” This is for the Pullman Porters who smiled and welcomed a fourteen-year-old boy onto their train in 1955. They noticed his slight limp that he tried to disguise with a doo-wop walk; they noticed his stutter and probably understood why his mother wanted him out of Chicago during the summer when school was out. Fourteen-year-old Black boys with limps and stutters are apt to try to prove themselves in dangerous ways when mothers aren’t around to look after them. So this is for the
Pullman Porters who looked over that fourteen-year-old while the train rolled the reverse of the Blues Highway from Chicago to St. Louis to Memphis to Mississippi. This is for the men who kept him safe; and if Emmett Till had been able to stay on a train all summer he would have maybe grown a bit of a paunch, certainly lost his hair, probably have worn bifocals and bounced his grandchildren on his knee telling them about his summer riding the rails. But he had to get off the train. And ended up in Money, Mississippi. And was horribly, brutally, inexcusably, and unacceptably murdered. This is for the Pullman Porters who, when the
sheriff was trying to get the body secretly buried, got Emmett’s body on the northbound train, got his body home to Chicago, where his mother said: I want the world to see what they did to my boy. And this is for all the mothers who cried. And this is for all the people who said Never Again. And this is about Rosa Parks whose feet were not so tired, it had been, after all, an ordinary day, until the bus driver gave her the opportunity to make history. This is about Mrs. Rosa Parks from Tuskegee, Alabama, who was also the field secretary of the NAACP. This is about the moment Rosa Parks shouldered her cross, put her worldly goods
aside, was willing to sacrifice her life, so that that young man in Money, Mississippi, who had been so well protected by the Pullman Porters, would not have died in vain. When Mrs. Parks said “NO” a passionate movement was begun. No longer would there be a reliance on the law; there was a higher law. When Mrs. Parks brought that light of hers to expose the evil of the system, the sun came and rested on her shoulders bringing the heat and the light of truth. Others would follow Mrs. Parks. Four young men in Greensboro, North Carolina, would also say No. Great voices would be raised singing the praises of God and exhorting us “to forgive those who trespass against us.” But it was the Pullman Porters who safely got Emmett to his granduncle and it was Mrs. Rosa Parks who could not stand that death. And in not being able to stand it. She sat back down.
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under a soprano sky
–Sonia Sanchez
1.
once i lived on pillars in a green house
boarded by lilacs that rocked voices into weeds.
i bled an owl’s blood
shredding the grass until i
rocked in a choir of worms.
obscene with hands, i wooed the world
with thumbs
while yo-yos hummed.
was it an unborn lacquer i peeled?
the woods, tall as waves, sang in mixed
tongues that loosened the scalp
and my bones wrapped in white dust
returned to echo in my thighs.i hear a pulse wandering somewhere
on vague embankments.
O are my hands breathing? I cannot smell the nerves.
i saw the sun
ripening green stones for fields.
O have my eyes run down? i cannot taste my birth.2.
now as i move, mouth quivering with silks
my skin runs soft with eyes.
descending into my legs, i follow obscure birds
purchasing orthopedic wings.
the air is late this summer.i peel the spine and flood
the earth with adolescence.
O who will pump these breasts? I cannot waltz my tongue.under a soprano sky, a woman sings,
lovely as chandeliers.
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Disregard
–AiOverhead, the match burns out,but the chunk of ice in the back seatkeeps melting from imagined heat,while the old Hudson tiptoes up the slope.My voile blouse, so wet it is transparent,like one frightened hand, clutches my chest.The bag of rock salt sprawled beside me wakes, thirstyand stretches a shaky tongue toward the ice.I press the gas pedal hard.I’ll get back to the house, the dirt yard, the cesspool,to you out back, digging a wellyou could fill with your sweat,though there is not one reason I should want to.You never notice me until the end of the day,when your hand is on my kneeand the ice cream, cooked to broth,is hot enough to burn the skin off my touch.
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i. mood indigo
–Ntozake Shangeit hasnt always been this wayellington was not a streetrobeson no mere memorydu bois walked up my father’s stairshummed some tune over mesleeping in the company of menwho changed the worldit wasnt always like thiswhy ray barretto used to be a side-man& dizzy’s hair was not always greyi remember i was therei listened in the company of menpolitics as necessary as collardsmusic even in our dreamsour house was filled with all kinda folksour windows were not cement or steelour doors opened like our daddy’s armsheld us safe & lovedchildren growing in the company of menold southern men & young slick onessonny til was not a boythe clovers no rag-tag orphansour crooners/ we belonged to a whole worldnkrumah was no foreignervirgil aikens was not the only fighterit hasnt always been this wayellington was not a street
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far memory
–Lucille Clifton1conventmy knees recall the pocketsworn into the stone floor,my hands, tracing againstthe wall their original name, rememberthe cold brush of brick, and the smellof the brick powdery and wetand the light finding its way inthrough the high bars.and also the sisters singingat matins, their sweet musicthe voice of the universe at peaceand the candles their light the lightat the beginning of creationand the wonderful simplicity of prayersmooth along the wooden beadsand certainly attended.2someone inside me remembersthat my knees must be hidden awaythat my hair must be shornso that vanity will not test methat my fingers are places of prayerand are holy that my body is promisedto something more certainthan myself3againborn in the year of waron the day of perpetual help.come from the houseof stillnessthrough the soft gateof a silent mother.come to a betraying father.come to a husband who would one dayrise and enter a holy house.come to wrestle with you again,passion, old disobedient friend,through the secular days and nightsof another life.4trying to understand this lifewho did i fail, whodid i cease to protectthat i should wake each morningfacing the cold north?perhaps there is a cartsomewhere in historyof children crying “sistersave us” as she walks away.the woman walks into my dreamsdragging her old habit.i turn from her, shivering,to begin another afternoonof rescue, rescue.5sinnermanhorizontal one eveningon the cold stone,my cross burning intomy breast, did i dreamthrough my veilof his fingers diggingand is this the dreamagain, him, collarlessover me, calling me backto the stones of this worldand my own whisperedhosanna?6karmathe habit is heavy.you feel its weightpulling around your anklesfor a hundred years.the broken vowshang against your breasts,each bead a wordthat beats you.even nowto hear the wordsdefendprotectgoodbyelost oraloneis to be washed in sorrow.and in this lifethere is no retreatno sanctuaryno whole abidingsister.7gloria mundiso knowing,what is known?that we carry our baggagein our cupped handswhen we burst throughthe waters of our mother.that some are bornand some are broughtto the glory of this world.that it is more difficultthan faithto serve only one callingone commitmentone devotionin one life.
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Problems of Translation: Problems of Language
1I turn to my Rand McNally Atlas.Europe appears right after the Map of the World.All of Italy can be seen page 9.Half of Chile page 29.I take out my ruler.In global perspective Italyamounts to less than half an inch.Chile measures more than an inch and a quarterof an inch.ApproximatelyChile is as long as Chinais wide:Back to the Atlas:Chunk of China page 17.All of France page 5: As we say in New York:Who do France and Italy knowat Rand McNally?2I see the four mountains in Chile higherthan any mountain of North America.I see Ojos del Salado the highest.I see Chile unequivocal as crystal thread.I see the Atacama Desert dry in Chile more than the restof the world is dry.I see Chile dissolving into water.I do not see what keeps the blue land of Chileout of blue water.I do not see the hand of Pablo Neruda on the blue land.3As the plane flies flat to the treesbelow Brazilbelow Boliviabelow five thousand miles belowmy Brooklyn windowsand beside the shifted Pacific waterswelled away from the Atlantic at Cape HornLa Isla Negra that is not an island LaIsla Negrathat is not blackis stone and stone of Chilefeeding clouds to colorscale and undertake terrestrial formsof everything unspeakable4In your countryhow do you say copperfor my country?5Blood rising under the Andes and abovethe Andes bloodspilling down the rockcorrupted by the amoralityof so much spacethat leaves such little trace of bloodrising to the irritated skin the faceof the confession farfrom home:I confess I did not resist interrogation.I confess that by the next day I was no longer sureof my identity.I confess I knew the hunger.I confess I saw the guns.I confess I was afraid.I confess I did not die.6What you Americans call a boycottof the junta?Who will that feed?7Not just the message but the sound.8Early morning now and I remembercorriendo a la madrugada from a differentEnglish poem,I remember from the difficulties of the talkan argumentathwart the wine the dinner and the dancingmeant to welcome youyou did not understand the commonplace expressionof my heart:the truth is in the life
la verdad de la vidaEarly morning:do you say la mañanita?But then we losethe idea of the sky uncurling to the light:Early morning and I do not think we lose:the rose we left behindbroken to a glass of water on the tableat the restaurant standseven sweeterpor la mañanita
Not Forgotten
–Toi DerricotteI love the way the black ants use their dead.They carry them off like warriors on their steelbacks. They spend hours struggling, lifting,dragging (it is not grisly as it would be for us,to carry them back to be eaten),so that every part will be of service. I think ofmy husband at his father’s grave—the grass had closedover the headstone, and the name had disappeared. He took outhis pocket knife and cut the grass away, he swept itwith his handkerchief to make it clear. “Is this the waywe’ll be forgotten?” And he bent down over the grave and wept.
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An Aspect of Love, Alive in the Ice and Fire
–Gwendolyn BrooksIn a package of minutes there is this We.How beautiful.Merry foreigners in our morning,we laugh, we touch each other,are responsible props and posts.A physical light is in the room.Because the world is at the windowwe cannot wonder very long.You rise. Althoughgenial, you are in yourself again.I observeyour direct and respectable stride.You are direct and self-accepting as a lionin Afrikan velvet. You are level, lean,remote.There is a moment in Camaraderiewhen interruption is not to be understood.I cannot bear an interruption.This is the shining joy;the time of not-to-end.On the street we smile.We goin different directionsdown the imperturbable street.
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