Best Poems – DISCRIMINATION

“When they rode up at first dark and called his name,
He came out like a man from his little shack
He saw his landlord, and he saw the sheriff,
And some well-armed riff-raff in the pack.
When they fired questions about the meeting,
He stood like a man gone deaf and dumb,
But when the leaders left their saddles,
He knew then that his time had come.
In the light of the lanterns the long cuts fell,
And his wife’s weak moans and the children’s wails
Mixed with the sobs he could not hold.
But he wouldn’t tell, he would not tell.
The Union was his friend, and he was Union,
And there was nothing a man could say.
So they trussed him up with stout ploughlines,
Hitched up a mule, dragged him far away
Into the dark woods that tell no tales,
Where he kept his secrets as well as they.

He would not give away the place,
Nor who they were, neither white nor black,
Nor tell what his brothers were about.
They lashed him, and they clubbed his head;
One time he parted his bloody lips
Out of great pain and greater pride,
One time, to laugh in his landlord’s face;
Then his landlord shot him in the side.
He toppled, and the blood gushed out.
But he didn’t mumble ever a word,
And cursing, they left him there for dead.
He lay waiting quiet, until he heard
The growls and the mutters dwindle away;
‘Didn’t tell a single thing,’ he said,
Then to the dark woods and the moon
He gave up one secret before he died:
‘We gonna clean out dis brushwood round here soon,
Plant de white-oak and de black-oak side by side.’”

“I told Susan Reyna
I don’t like her
because she’s fat and ugly
and she wears big brassieres
and smells like chocolate candy
and comes in late each morning
with her tongue puff puffing
and her wrinkled blouse
half in half out
and who probably stole
Walter Milky’s money
and never gives back pencils
just sleeps all day
while we do numbers
or all the time in a red pen
she got for her birthday
writes Susan Susan Susan
in fancy letters

The nun says
we must be kind
to everyone
or rot in fires
including Susan
who is sick
and has the fits
till she gets tired
then two boys
have to hold her legs
down and one girl her dress
and she gets to sleep all day
and wakes with crumpled hair
and spit

This
is who I told
I don’t like you
because you stink
of chocolate
and menstruation
and who is sick
already 48 hours
but I don’t care”

(For Eric Walrond)

“Once riding in old Baltimore,
   Heart-filled, head-filled with glee,
I saw a Baltimorean
   Keep looking straight at me.

Now I was eight and very small,
   And he was no whit bigger,
And so I smiled, but he poked out
   His tongue, and called me, “Nigger.”

I saw the whole of Baltimore
   From May until December;
Of all the things that happened there
   That’s all that I remember.”

“Locked arm in arm they cross the way
The black boy and the white,
The golden splendor of the day
The sable pride of night.

From lowered blinds the dark folk stare,
And here the fair folk talk,
Indignant that these two should dare
In unison to walk.

Oblivious to look and word
They pass, and see no wonder
That lightning brilliant as a sword
Should blaze the path of thunder.”

“Don’t make me send you outside to find a switch,
my grandmother used to say. It was years before
I had the nerve to ask her why switch was the word
her anger reached for when she needed me to act
a different way. Still, when I see some branches—
wispy ones, like willows, like lilacs, like the tan-yellow
forsythia before the brighter yellow buds—I think,
these would make perfect switches for a whipping.
America, there is not a place I can wander inside you
and not feel a little afraid. Did I ever tell you about that
time I was seven, buckled into the backseat of the Volvo,
before buckles were a thing America required.
My parents tried, despite everything, to keep us
safe. It’s funny. I remember the brown hills sloping
toward the valley. A soft brown welcome I looked for
other places but found only there and in my grandmother’s
skin. Yes, I have just compared my grandmother’s body
to my childhood’s hills, America. I loved them both,
and they taught me, each, things I needed to learn.
You have witnessed, America, how pleasant hillsides
can quickly catch fire. My grandmother could be like that.
But she protected me, too. There were strawberry fields,
wind guarded in that valley, tarped against the cold.
America, you are good at taking care of what you value.
Those silver-gray tarps made the fields look like a pond
I could skate on. As the policeman questioned my dad,
I concentrated on the view outside the back window.
America, have you ever noticed how well you stretch
the imagination? This was Southern California. I’d lived
there all my life and never even seen a frozen pond.
But there I was, in 70 degree weather, imagining
my skates carving figure eights on a strawberry field.
Of course my father fit the description. The imagination
can accommodate whoever might happen along.
America, if you’ve seen a hillside quickly catch fire
you have also seen a river freeze over, the surface
looking placid though you know the water deep down,
dark as my father, is pushing and pushing, still trying
to get ahead. We were driving home, my father said.
My wife and my daughters, we were just on our way
home. I know you want to know what happened next,
America. Did my dad make it safely home or not?
Outside this window, lilac blooms show up like a rash
decision the bush makes each spring. I haven’t lived
in Southern California for decades. A pond here
killed a child we all knew. For years after that accident,
as spring bloomed and ice thinned, my daughter
remembered the child from her preschool. And now,
it’s not so much that she’s forgotten. It’s more that
it seems she’s never known that child as anything other
than drowned. My grandmother didn’t have an answer.
A switch is what her mother called it and her grandmother
before her. She’d been gone from that part of America
for over half a century, but still that southern soil
sprang up along the contours of her tongue. America,
I’ll tell you this much, I cannot understand this mind,
where it reaches. Even when she was threatening
to beat me, I liked to imagine the swishing sound
a branch would make as it whipped toward my body
through the resisting air. She’d say, this is hurting me
more than it’s hurting you. I didn’t understand her then,
but now I think I do. America, go find me a switch.”

“He offers, between planes,
to buy me a drink. I’ve never talked
to a fireman before, not one from Brooklyn
anyway. Okay. Fine, I say. Somehow
the subject is bound to come up, women
firefighters, and since I’m
a woman and he’s a fireman, between
the two of us, we know something
about this subject. Already
he’s telling me he doesn’t mind
women firefighters, but what
they look like
after fighting a fire, well
they lose all respect. He’s sorry, but
he looks at them
covered with the cinders of someone’s
lost hope, and he feels disgust, he just
wants to turn the hose on them, they
are that sweaty and stinking, just like
him, of course, but not the woman he
wants, you get me? and to come to that—
isn’t it too bad, to be despised
for what you do to prove yourself
among men
who want to love you, to love you,
love you.”

“Today it’s clear to everyone
who is a Jew and who’s an Aryan,
because you’ll know Jews near and far
by their black and yellow star.
And Jews who are so demarcated
must live according to the rules dictated.

Always, after eight o’clock,
be at home and click the lock;
work only labouring with pick or hoe,
and do not listen to the radio.
You’re not allowed to own a mutt;
barbers can’t give your hair a cut;
a female Jew who once was rich
can’t have a dog, even a bitch,
she cannot send her kids to school
must shop from three to five since that’s the rule.

She can’t have bracelets, garlic, wine,
or go to the theatre, out to dine;
she can’t have cars or a gramophone,
fur coats or skis or a telephone;
she can’t eat onions, pork, or cheese,
have instruments, or matrices;
She cannot own a clarinet
or keep a canary for a pet,
rent bicycles or barometers,
have woolen socks or warm sweaters.

And especially the outcast Jew
must give up all habits he knew:
he can’t buy clothes, can’t buy a shoe,
since dressing well is not his due;
he can’t have poultry, shaving soap,
or jam or anything to smoke;
can’t get a license, buy some gin,
read magazines, a news bulletin,
buy sweets or a machine to sew;
to fields or shops he cannot go
even to buy a single pair
of winter woolen underwear,
or a sardine or a ripe pear.
And if this list is not complete
there’s more, so you should be discreet;
don’t buy a thing; accept defeat.

Walk everywhere you want to go
in rain or sleet or hail or snow.
Don’t leave your house, don’t push a pram,
don’t take a bus or train or tram;
you’re not allowed on a fast train;
don’t hail a taxi, or complain;
No matter how thirsty you are
you must not enter any bar;
the riverbank is not for you,
or a museum or park or zoo
or swimming pool or stadium or
post office or department store,
or church, casino, or cathedral
or any public urinal.
and you be careful not to use
main streets, and keep off avenues!
and if you want to breathe some air
go to God’s garden and walk there
among the graves in the cemetery
because no park to you is free.

And if you are a clever Jew
you’ll close off bank accounts and you
will give up other habits too
like meeting Aryans you knew.

He used to be allowed a swag,
suitcase, rucksack, or carpetbag.
Now he has lost even those rights
but every Jew lowers his sights
and follows all the rules he’s got
and doesn’t care one little jot.”

“There’s no checking your color
at the door when you’re
encased in black skin.
I caught Mom reading about
the Freedom Rides
and was well-versed in the 
horrors of lynching
long before puberty.
The ghost of Emmett Till hung heavy
from the time I was five.
So, at age eleven,
when Grandma Sally,
my mother’s grandma,
asked my mother to send me South
for a visit, I flat out refused to go
even though it meant a break
from the madness that was home.
I was all for getting to know family, 
but visions of me mouthing off
to the wrong white person,
or failing to step off a sidewalk
if ordered, or being dragged
off a bus because
I dared to sit up front
were recurring nightmares.
So, no, Mom, I told her.
Not going. Not ever.
Don’t send me there unless
you seriously want me to die.

I never got to see Grandma Sally.
I’ll just have to meet her
on the other side, where racism
has been excised
and justice is 
common as dirt.”

“I am the woman with the black black skin
I am the laughing woman with the black black face
I am living in the cellars and in every crowded place
     I am toiling just to eat
     In the cold and in the heat
          And I laugh
I am the laughing woman who’s forgotten how to weep
I am the laughing woman who’s afraid to go to sleep”

“From Belsen a crate of gold teeth,
from Dachau a mountain of shoes,
from Auschwitz a skin lampshade.
Who killed the Jews?

Not I, cries the typist,
not I, cries the engineer,
not I, cries Adolf Eichmann,
not I, cries Albert Speer.

My friend Fritz Nova lost his father—
a petty official had to choose.
My friend Lou Abrahms lost his brother.
Who killed the Jews?

David Nova swallowed gas,
Hyman Abrahms was beaten and starved.
Some men signed their papers,
and some stood guard,

and some herded them in,
and some dropped the pellets,
and some spread the ashes,
and some hosed the walls,

and some planted the wheat,
and some poured the steel,
and some cleared the rails,
and some raised the cattle.

Some smelled the smoke,
some just heard the news.
Were they Germans? Were they Nazis?
Were they human? Who killed the Jews?

The stars will remember the gold,
the sun will remember the shoes,
the moon will remember the skin.
But who killed the Jews?”

“Landlord, landlord,
My roof has sprung a leak.
Don’t you ’member I told you about it
Way last week?

Landlord, landlord,
These steps is broken down.
When you come up yourself
It’s a wonder you don’t fall down.

Ten Bucks you say I owe you?
Ten Bucks you say is due?
Well, that’s Ten Bucks more’n I’ll pay you
Till you fix this house up new.

What? You gonna get eviction orders?
You gonna cut off my heat?
You gonna take my furniture and
Throw it in the street?

Um-huh! You talking high and mighty.
Talk on—till you get through.
You ain’t gonna be able to say a word
If I land my fist on you.

Police! Police!
Come and get this man!
He’s trying to ruin the government
And overturn the land!

Copper’s whistle!
Patrol bell!
Arrest.

Precinct Station.
Iron cell.
Headlines in press:

MAN THREATENS LANDLORD

TENANT HELD NO BAIL

JUDGE GIVES NEGRO 90 DAYS IN COUNTY JAIL.”

“They took me out
To some lonesome place.
They said, ‘Do you believe
In the great white race?’

I said, ‘Mister,
To tell you the truth,
I’d believe in anything
If you’d just turn me loose.’

The white man said, ‘Boy,
Can it be
You’re a-standin’ there
A-sassin’ me?’

They hit me in the head
And knocked me down.
And then they kicked me
On the ground.

A klansman said, ‘Nigger,
Look me in the face—
And tell me you believe in
The great white race.'”

“Where is the Jim Crow section
On this merry-go-round,
Mister, cause I want to ride?
Down South where I come from
White and colored
Can’t sit side by side.
Down South on the train
There’s a Jim Crow car.
On the bus we’re put in the back
But there ain’t no back
To a merry-go-round!
Where’s the horse
For a kid that’s black?”

“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 woman 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
my self
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”

“When I was a young child
in Lynchburg, Virginia
I could not ride the 
trolley car sitting next
to our white neighbor
but could sit, nestled 
close to her
under her grape arbor
swinging my feet
eating her scuppernongs
and drinking tall, cold
glasses of lemonade
she offered us on 
hot dry summer days

When I was a young child
moving to Montclair, New Jersey
I could now ride the 
trolley car sitting next
to our white neighbor
but did not dare
cross the bitter line
that separated our house
from hers
and she never offered us
tall, cold glasses of lemonade
on hot, dry summer days”

“His spirit in smoke ascended to high heaven.
His father, by the cruelest way of pain,
Had bidden him to his bosom once again;
The awful sin remained still unforgiven.
All night a bright and solitary star
(Perchance the one that ever guided him,
Yet gave him up at last to Fate’s wild whim)
Hung pitifully o’er the swinging char.
Day dawned, and soon the mixed crowds came to view
The ghastly body swaying in the sun.
The women thronged to look, but never a one
Showed sorrow in her eyes of steely blue.

And little lads, lynchers that were to be,
Danced round the dreadful thing in fiendish glee.”

“For the dim regions whence my fathers came
My spirit, bondaged by the body, longs.
Words felt, but never heard, my lips would frame;
My soul would sing forgotten jungle songs.
I would go back to darkness and to peace,
But the great western world holds me in fee,
And I may never hope for full release
While to its alien gods I bend my knee.
Something in me is lost, forever lost,
Some vital thing has gone out of my heart,
And I must walk the way of life a ghost
Among the sons of earth, a thing apart;
For I was born, far from my native clime,
Under the white man’s menace, out of time.”

“Think you I am not fiend and savage too?
Think you I could not arm me with a gun
And shoot down ten of you for every one
Of my black brothers murdered, burnt by you?
Be not deceived, for every deed you do
I could match—out-match: am I not Africa’s son,
Black of that black land where black deeds are done?
But the Almighty from the darkness drew
My soul and said: Even thou shalt be a light
Awhile to burn on the benighted earth,
Thy dusky face I set among the white
For thee to prove thyself of highest worth;
Before the world is swallowed up in night,
To show thy little lamp: go forth, go forth!”

“What kind of name is Omar?
I asked this new boy at school.
You named after a candy bar or what?
You know you’re too light to be milk chocolate. 

Omar looked at me and laughed.
Since that first smile, he’s my best friend.
Maybe my best friend ever. 

Folks call us the inseparables
Like one of those old singing groups 
my daddy is always talking about. 

Omar is a muslim name Omar tells me.
I think it sounds like a candy bar.
Like O’Henry, Baby Ruth, Mars or Almond Joy.

Maybe his mamma should have named him
Snickers because of the way he laughs. 
Omar’s name sounds like candy
and the way he acts is sweet to me.

Every teacher except Mrs. Greenfield thinks so.
Mrs. Greenfield she don’t like Muslims.
and the rest of us she calls natural born sinners 
because of the way we talk and behave. 

Omar says we should tell Mrs. Greenfield 
about herself since it’s Black History Month.
So Omar stands up and says to Mrs. Greenfield:

How come you don’t lead us somewhere?
Why you not like Harriet Tubman?
Why no field trips? 
Why no trips to the museum or zoo?
Why we never go nowhere, why? 

Mrs. Greenfield, she don’t say nothing.
She just look at Omar as if he is the last Muslim 
on earth and is about to die.

I think about how Omar says Muslims pray 
five times a day and how cats have nine lives and 
just maybe Omar might make it to 3 o’clock
or maybe he won’t. 

Suddenly Mrs. Greenfield has one of those 
fainting spells like old Moses Tubman.
She has to sit down behind her desk so 
she tells me to go get her some water. 

I feel free as I race down the hall,
wondering how Omar can be sweet sometimes
and get on everyone’s nerves the next. 

My daddy once told me M&Ms 
melt in your mouth and your hands.
especially if you colored.

Wait until I tell Omar.”

(WHAT DID I DO TO BE SO
BLACK AND BLUE?)

VERSE

“Out in the street,
Shufflin’ feet,
Couples passin’ two by two,
While here am I,
Left high and dry,
Black, and ’cause I’m black I’m blue.
Browns and yellers
All have fellers,
Gentlemen prefer them light.
Wish I could fade,
Can’t make the grade,
Nothin’ but dark days in sight.

REFRAIN 1

Cold empty bed,
Springs hard as lead,
Pains in my head,
Feels like old Ned,
What did I do
To be so black and blue?
No joys for me,
No company,
Even the mouse
Ran from my house,
All my life through
I’ve been so black and blue.
I’m white
Inside,
It don’t help my case,
‘Cause I
Can’t hide
What is on my face, ooh!
I’m so forlorn,
Life’s just a thorn,
My heart is torn,
Why was I born?
What did I do
To be so black and blue?’

REFRAIN 2

Just ’cause you’re black,
Folks think you lack,
They laugh at you
And scorn you too,
What did I do
To be so black and blue?
When you are near,
They laugh and sneer,
Set you aside
And you’re denied;
What did I do
To be so black and blue?
How sad I am,
Each day I feel worse,
My mark of Ham
Seems to be a curse, ooh!
How will it end?
Ain’t got a friend,
My only sin
Is in my skin,
What did I do
To be so black and blue?”

“Gauley Bridge is a good town for Negroes, they let us stand
around, they let us stand
around on the sidewalks if we’re black or brown.
Vanetta’s over the trestle, and that’s our town.

The hill makes breathing slow, slow breathing after you row the river,
and the graveyard’s on the hill, cold in the springtime blow,
the graveyard’s up on high, and the town is down below.

Did you ever bury thirty-five men in a place in back of your house,
thirty-five tunnel workers the doctors didn’t attend,
died in the tunnel camps, under rocks, everywhere, world without end.

When a man said I feel poorly, for any reason, any weakness or such,
letting up when he couldn’t keep going barely,
the Cap and company come and run him off the job surely.

I’ve put them
DOWN from the tunnel camps
to the graveyard on the hill,
tin-cans all about—it fixed them!—

TUNNELITIS
hold themselves up
at the side of a tree,
I can go right now
to that cemetery.

When the blast went off the boss would call out, Come, let’s go back,
when that heavy loaded blast went white, Come, let’s go back,
telling us hurry, hurry, into the falling rocks and muck.

The water they would bring had dust in it, our drinking water,
the camps and their groves were colored with the dust,
we cleaned our clothes in the groves, but we always had the dust.

Looked like somebody sprinkled flour all over the parks and groves,
it stayed and the rain couldn’t wash it away and it twinkled
that white dust really looked pretty down around our ankles.

As dark as I am, when I came out at morning after the tunnel at night,
with a white man, nobody could have told which man was white.
The dust had covered us both, and the dust was white.” 

“The years had rubbed out his youth,
But his fellows ranked him still
As a chimney sweep without a peer. . .
Whether he raced a weighted corset
Up and down the throat of a freakish flue,
or, from a chair of rope,
His eyes googled and his mouth veiled,
He wielded his scraping knife
Through the walled-in darkness.

The soot from ancient chimneys 
Had wormed itself into his face and hands.
The four winds had belabored the grime on him.
The sun had trifled with his ebony skin
And left ashen spots.

Sometimes Sootie Joe’s wealthy customers
Heard him singing a song that gave them pause:

I’s a chimney sweeper, a chimney sweeper,
I’s black as the blackest night.
I’s a chimney sweeper, a chimney sweeper,
And the world don’t treat me right
But somebody hasta black hisself
For somebody else to stay white.”

"Four weeks have passed since I left, and still 
I must write to you of no work. I've worn down 
the soles and walked through the tightness 
of my new shoes, calling upon the merchants, 
their offices bustling. All the while I kept thinking 
my plain English and good writing would secure 
for me some modest position. Though I dress each day 
in my best, hands covered with the lace gloves 
you crocheted—no one needs a girl. How flat 
the word sounds, and heavy. My purse thins. 
I spend foolishly to make an appearance of quiet 
industry, to mask the desperation that tightens 
my throat. I sit watching—

though I pretend not to notice—the dark maids
ambling by with their white charges. Do I deceive 
anyone? Were they to see my hands, brown 
as your dear face, they'd know I'm not quite 
what I pretend to be. I walk these streets 
a white woman, or so I think, until I catch the eyes 
of some stranger upon me, and I must lower mine, 
a negress again. There are enough things here 
to remind me who I am. Mules lumbering through 
the crowded streets send me into reverie, their footfall 
the sound of a pointer and chalk hitting the blackboard 
at school, only louder. Then there are women, clicking 
their tongues in conversation, carrying their loads 
on their heads. Their husky voices, the wash pots 
and irons of the laundresses call to me.  Here,

I thought not to do the work I once did, back bending 
and domestic; my schooling a gift—even those half days
at picking time, listening to Miss J—. How 
I'd come to know words, the recitations I practiced 
to sound like her, lilting, my sentences curling up
or trailing off at the ends. I read my books until
I nearly broke their spines, and in the cotton field,
I repeated whole sections I'd learned by heart,
spelling each word in my head to make a picture
I could see, as well as a weight I could feel
in my mouth. So now, even as I write this
and think of you at home, Goodbye

is the waving map of your palm, is 
a stone on my tongue."

“Already the words are changing. She is changing
     from colored to negro, black still years ahead.
This is 1966—she is married to a white man—
     and there are more names for what grows inside her.
It is enough to worry about words like mongrel
     and the infertility of mules and mulattoes
while flipping through a book of baby names.
     She has come home to wait out the long months, 
her room unchanged since she’s been gone:
     dolls winking down from every shelf—all of them
white…”

“Before the war, they were happy, he said.
quoting our textbook.  (This was senior-year

history class.)  The slaves were clothed, fed,
and better off under a master’s care.

I watched the words blur on the page.  No one
raised a hand, disagreed.  Not even me.

It was late; we still had Reconstruction
to cover before the test, and —luckily—

three hours of watching Gone with the Wind.
History, the teacher said, of the old South—

a true account of how things were back then.
On screen a slave stood big as life: big mouth,

bucked eyes, our textbook’s grinning proof—a lie
my teacher guarded.  Silent, so did I.”

“I think the strange, the crazed, the queer
will have their holiday this year,
I think for just a little while
there will be pity for the wild.

I think in places known as gay,
in secret clubs and private bars,
the damned will serenade the damned
with frantic drums and wild guitars.

I think, for some uncertain reason,
mercy will be shown this season
to the lovely and misfit,
to the brilliant and deformed—

I think they will be housed and warmed
and fed and comforted a while
before, with such a tender smile,
the earth destroys her crooked child.”

* Paul Bigelow