February 21st, 2010
Link • Poems, Tributes • 1 Comment
Patricia Smith
52
Baffled by stark ache and symptom, I get in my bed
beside the bearded charmer who is yet in my bed.
As graying denies and dims me, I vaguely recall
the line of whimpering whiners I’ve let in my bed—
every one of them goofy with love, dazzled by curve
and color, until I screeched, “Oh, just get in my bed!”
The could-be queens, pimpled wordsmiths, thugs and mama’s boys,
porcine professors, all casting their nets in my bed.
Valiantly, they strained to woo with verse, acrobatics.
One fool dared a pirouette, on a bet, in my bed!
(We dated for months.) But like the rest, he finally
did things I would much rather forget. In my bed!
So, all that leads to this. Me, a slow, half-century
woman, turning toward he who conjures sweat in my bed.
“Patricia,” he whispers, stroking me young, unnaming
the men. Then my husband turns the world wet in my bed.
–from Rattle #31, Summer 2009
Tribute to African American Poets
February 18th, 2010
Link • Audio, Poems, Tributes • 3 Comments
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
L. Lamar Wilson
DREAMBOYS
My nephew waltzes beside his father,
The man who was the boy who made Faggot!
A reason not to flinch. His neck a merry-
Go-round, our boy rears back, waves
His pointer in my face, jabs his other fist
Into his hip & wails: Watch yo’ mouth!
Watch yo’ mouth, Miss Effie White! ’Cause I
Don’t take no mess from no second-rate diva
Who can’t sustain! In my brother’s eyes, I see
The pain of remembering when I crooned—Don’t
Tell me not to live. Just sit & putter. Life’s candy
& the sun’s a ball of butter—& made him grimace.
I scan the wall of plaques in Mama’s den,
The remnants of home runs & aces that gave
Him hope then, all dusty now. Teeth clenched,
He smiles at his dreamboy & nods in disbelief.
Harrumphs. Lashes flittering, he offers me
The only penance he can: a sheepish grin.
We applaud & feign heartened laughter.
My nephew sees beyond the veil shrouding
His father’s eyes. Realizes this isn’t
How brown boys win favor. Searches
My eyes for answers. Mirrors
A sadness no song can shake.
–from Rattle #31, Summer 2009
Tribute to African American Poets
February 17th, 2010
Link • Audio, Poems, Tributes • Leave a Comment
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
Marcus Wicker
SELF DIALOGUE READING ETHERIDGE KNIGHT
Where’s your voice at, Marcus?
Really. When you die, will they find a notebook filled with one long poem
Tucked beneath a fluffy little pillow? Will it start: Eh yo, fuck the sonnet.
Fuck everything you’ve ever written that don’t sound like a chain gang
Clanking shackles against a railroad track. Fuck words that don’t feel
Like pick-a-switch-welts. No, fuck that—like the bone up under them welts.
Fuck lines that don’t look like family tree stumps & every poem
That don’t taste like a bullet proof vest: like using the word “nigga”
As every motherfucking part of speech. Are you a poet or black man first?
Is there a difference? You wonder who would have the nerve to ask
Etheridge. Who would need to. & are the answers the belly of this poem.
You hope this poem is a cracked prison cell, & not a fluffy little pillow.
Still, they are the same sad thing. You know they are the same.
–from Rattle #31, Summer 2009
Tribute to African American Poets
February 13th, 2010
Link • Audio, Poems, Tributes • Leave a Comment
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
Ian Williams
HERO
The hero wins
because that’s what heroes do when you spend
the money to buy the DVD of a movie you already
know the ending to, not because you’ve seen it before
but because you heard from a colleague in HR
that it’ll make you feel real good after,
it was the best thing she’s seen lately, and that’s
with her being married and every morning pushing spoons
into the faces of her two children
so you watch it
knowing the only thing that will make you feel good
this evening is seeing a bare-chested man wail on another
in a ring and another in a street and another in a ring
in slow mo and the dff dff sounds of the gloves striking
bodies in movies, which don’t sound like bodies for real,
not that you’d admit to knowing that,
and the hero
doesn’t even look like heroes in the real world
which are not the heroes in grade four essays either
but this one time—stay with me—you dropped by a woman’s place
and you were sitting at her kitchen table and she asked you
if you wanted anything to drink and she opened the fridge
and you saw through the crack between her body
and the door only a pitcher of water on the wire shelf
in the yellow light—you want to call her a hero
because she’s surviving with her mouth shut
or yourself because you’re so affected must mean
you’re noble. Go ahead. But there are other words
for you two.
–from Rattle #31, Summer 2009
Tribute to African American Poets
February 8th, 2010
Link • Poems, Tributes • 1 Comment
Martha Modena Vertreace-Doody
DRIVING UNDER THE FULL WOLF MOON
The car grows colder with each no-turn-over
the engine gives to your key—
this—and snow
scatters like rags across the parking lot kept bright all day
with our headlights.
A hook-and-ladder wails
down Woodlawn Avenue chasing fire which waits for the end
to come one way or another.
Wind chill factor. Eggnog lattes.
Some nights I lie next to you
as you sleep, your eyelids flutter like butterflies
over zinnias in our summer garden.
But in January, the Wolf Moon,
the Snow Moon, lurks
behind the honey locust, his gold
melting on us between thin slats
of the half-open blinds.
Rain darkens the firs where we wait for a jump—drizzle
late afternoon into the evening,
then wet snow. Wind
in the Christmas lights still hanging off the church roof—
the days beyond winter solstice
last longer. You wonder why rain
does not clean our car,
just redefines the dirt streaks. I tell you about salt, oil, wax—
the whole nine yards of ways
we invent to kill each other.
–from Rattle #31, Summer 2009
Tribute to African American Poets
