Poetry by Morgan Parker, Khadijah Queen, and Malcolm London

While Poets Watch will continue to feature Black poets after today, I wanted to wrap up Black History Month with a few rising Black poets.

First is Morgan Parker. From Brooklyn, she is a poet, editor educator, and Cave Canem fellow. Her published works include Other People’s Comfort Keeps Me Up At Night (Switchback Books, 2015) and There Are More Beautiful Things Than Beyonce (Tin House Books, 2017).

If You Are Over Staying Woke
by Morgan Parker

Water
the plants. Drink
plenty of water.
Don’t hear
the news. Get
bored. Complain
about the weather.
Keep a corkscrew
in your purse.
Swipe right
sometimes.
Don’t smile
unless you want
to. Sleep in.
Don’t see the news.
Remember what
the world is like
for white people.
Listen to
cricket songs.
Floss. Take pills.
Keep an
empty mind.
When you are
hungover
do not say
I’m never drinking
again. Be honest
when you’re up
to it. Otherwise
drink water
lie to yourself
turn off the news
burn the papers
skip the funerals
take pills
laugh at dumb shit
fuck people you
don’t care about
use the crockpot
use the juicer
use the smoothie maker
drink water
from the sky
don’t think
too much about the sky
don’t think about water
skip the funerals
close your eyes
whenever possible
When you toast
look everyone in the eyes
Never punctuate
the President
Write the news
Turn
into water
Water
the fire escape
Burn the paper
Crumble the letters
Instead of
hyacinths pick
hydrangeas
Water the hydrangeas
Wilt the news
White the hydrangeas
Drink the white
Waterfall the
cricket songs
Keep a song mind
Don’t smile
Don’t wilt
funeral
funeral



The second poet featured today is Khadijah Queen, board chair of Kore Press who is soon to join the core faculty of Mile-High MFA in creative writing at Regis University. Her published works include include chapbooks bloodroot and No Isla Encanta, poetry collections Fearful Beloved and Black Peculiar, individual pieces appearing in countless magazines and anthologies.

_________________________ overheard, misheard or re-imagined
by Khadijah Queen

"Do not appear if you do not want to disappear." —Foucault



I lost the poem I wrote in a strip club,

could have sworn I wrote it on the back

of an important to-do list. Perhaps

a persona poem. Something like:

            I am the body hawker

            running from the police.

Or:

            What other people do

            to destroy themselves is

            too obvious for me, so

            I had to use my own thoughts.



In that case, the poem would have

less to do with stripping than with paying

attention to the absence of dollars

tucked into a g-string.

Perhaps I should wear g-strings

dangling pink rhinestones. Perhaps I should

practice stroking metal poles with

my strong thighs and painterly hands. Why not

dramatize and sensualize endangerment. People do

enjoy juxtaposition. But what if


just this failing memory is enough.

Finally, here is Malcolm London. He is a poet, educator, activist, organizer, and TED Talk speaker. His poetry is mostly spoken, so here are a couple videos well worth listening to:

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/columnists/75790376-157.html

"High School Training Ground"

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"Ghazal for White Hen Pantry" by Jamila Woods

Jamila Woods lives in Chicago and is a poet, singer, and teaching artist. She is a singer for the soul group M&O, and is a member of a collective of poets and educators of color called Dark Noise. Her work earned her a Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Fellowship from the Poetry Foundation a few years ago.

Ghazal for White Hen Pantry
by Jamila Woods

beverly be the only south side you don’t fit in
everybody in your neighborhood color of white hen

brown bag tupperware lunch don’t fill you
after school cross the street, count quarters with white friends

you love 25¢ zebra cakes mom would never let you eat
you learn to white lie through white teeth at white hen

oreos in your palm, perm in your hair
everyone’s irish in beverly, you just missin’ the white skin

pray they don’t notice your burnt toast, unwondered bread
you be the brownest egg ever born from the white hen

pantry in your chest where you stuff all the Black in
distract from the syllables in your name with a white grin

keep your consonants crisp, coffee milked, hands visible
never touch the holiday-painted windows of white hen

you made that mistake, scratched your initials in the paint
an unmarked crown victoria pulled up, full of white men

they grabbed your wrist & wouldn’t show you a badge
the manager clucked behind the counter, thick as a white hen

they told your friends to run home, but called the principal on you
& you learned Black sins cost much more than white ones





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"Eulogy" by Kevin Young

I've featured Kevin Young before, but I chose him again today because when he was grieving the loss of his father he compiled an anthology of poetry called The Art of Losing: Poems of Grief and Healing. Since the Wayne Township community is grieving the loss of two young lives today, I wanted to share a poem of his again. May poetry be a source of small comfort during this heavy time.

Eulogy
by Kevin Young

 To allow silence
To admit it in us

always moving
Just past

senses, the darkness
What swallows us

and we live amongst
What lives amongst us

*

These grim anchors
That brief sanctity

the sea
Cast quite far

when you seek
—in your hats black

and kerchiefs—
to bury me

*

Do not weep
but once, and a long

time then
Thereafter eat till

your stomach spills over
No more! you’ll cry

too full for your eyes
to leak

*

The words will wait

*

Place me in a plain
pine box I have been

for years building
It is splinters

not silver
It is filled of hair

*

Even the tongues
of bells shall still

*

You who will bear
my body along

Spirit me into the six
Do not startle

at its lack of weight
How light




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"Hurricane" by Yona Harvey

Yona Harvey teaches at the University of Pittsburgh and is the author of Hemming the Water. I read a few other poems of hers, but "Hurricane" stuck with me most. As good poetry should, it means more to you each time you read it. 

EDIT: After posting this poem, I learned she also co-wrote Black Panther graphic novels. 

Hurricane
by Yona Harvey

Four tickets left, I let her go—
Firstborn into a hurricane.

I thought she escaped
The floodwaters. No—but her

Head is empty of the drowned
For now—though she took

Her first breath below sea level.
Ahhh       awe       &       aw
Mama, let me go—she speaks

What every smart child knows—
To get grown you unlatch

Your hands from the grown
& up & up & up & up
She turns—latched in the seat

Of a hurricane. You let
Your girl what? You let

Your girl what?
I did so she do I did
so she do so—

Girl, you can ride
A hurricane & she do
& she do & she do & she do

She do make my river
An ocean. Memorial,
Baptist, Protestant birth—my girl

Walked away from a hurricane.
& she do & she do & she do & she do
She do take my hand a while longer.

The haunts in my pocket
I’ll keep to a hum: Katrina was
a woman I knew. When you were

an infant she rained on you & she

do & she do & she do & she do




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"Heartbeats" by Melvin Dixon

Melvin Dixon was born in Stamford, CT in 1950. He attended Wesleyan University and earned his PhD from Brown. After teaching at Wesleyan University, he joined the faculty at Queens College. He authored a few books of poetry, and earned a National Endowment for the Arts. In 1992, he died of complications from AIDS. Here is a heartbreaking poem he wrote before his death.

Heartbeats
by Melvin Dixon

Work out. Ten laps.
Chin ups. Look good.

Steam room. Dress warm.
Call home. Fresh air.

Eat right. Rest well.
Sweetheart. Safe sex.

Sore throat. Long flu.
Hard nodes. Beware.

Test blood. Count cells.
Reds thin. Whites low.

Dress warm. Eat well.
Short breath. Fatigue.

Night sweats. Dry cough.
Loose stools. Weight loss.

Get mad. Fight back.
Call home. Rest well.

Don’t cry. Take charge.
No sex. Eat right.

Call home. Talk slow.
Chin up. No air.

Arms wide. Nodes hard.
Cough dry. Hold on.

Mouth wide. Drink this.
Breathe in. Breathe out.

No air. Breathe in.
Breathe in. No air.

Black out. White rooms.
Head hot. Feet cold.

No work. Eat right.
CAT scan. Chin up.

Breathe in. Breathe out.
No air. No air.

Thin blood. Sore lungs.
Mouth dry. Mind gone.

Six months? Three weeks?
Can’t eat. No air.

Today? Tonight?
It waits. For me.

Sweet heart. Don’t stop.
Breathe in. Breathe out.




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"The Craftsman" by Marcus B. Christian

Marcus B. Christian lived from 1900-1976. A poet and educator, he was well known in his home state of Louisiana for his extensive knowledge of African American history, his impressive collections of poetry, and his involvement working at Dillard University and the University of New Orleans (where he taught both English and history).

The Craftsman
by Marcus B. Christian

I ply with all the cunning of my art 
This little thing, and with consummate care
I fashion it—so that when I depart,
Those who come after me shall find it fair
And beautiful. It must be free of flaws—
Pointing no laborings of weary hands;
And there must be no flouting of the laws
Of beauty—as the artist understands.

Through passion, yearnings infinite—yet dumb—
I lift you from the depths of my own mind
And gild you with my soul’s white heat to plumb
The souls of future men. I leave behind
This thing that in return this solace gives:
“He who creates true beauty ever lives.”




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Poetry by Muhammad Ali

By request, here are a few poems by Muhammad Ali--whose spoken word was as poetic as his boxing. The tone of his poetry ranges from lighthearted to serious ("Freedom" was written after the 1971 Attica prison riots and the death of 43 people). Check out this interview with Sonia Sanchez and Adrian Matejka about the poetry of Muhammad Ali.

The Truth
by Muhammad Ali

The face of truth is open,
The eyes of truth are bright,
The lips of truth are ever closed,
The head of truth is upright.

The breast of truth stands forward,
The gaze of truth is straight,
Truth has neither fear nor doubt,
Truth has patience to wait.

The words of truth are touching,
The voice of truth is deep,
The law of truth is simple:
All that you sow you reap.

The soul of truth is flaming,
The heart of truth is warm,
The mind of truth is clear,
And firm through rain or storm.

Facts are but its shadows,
Truth stands above all sin;
Great be the battle in life,
Truth in the end shall win.

The image of truth is Christ,
Wisdom's message its rod;
Sign of truth is the cross,
Soul of truth is God.

Life of truth is eternal,
Immortal is its past,
Power of truth will endure,
Truth shall hold to the last.

***

Freedom 
by Muhammad Ali

Better far—from all I see—
To die fighting to be free
What more fitting end could be?

Better surely than in some bed
Where in broken health I'm led
Lingering until I'm dead.

Better than with prayers and pleas
Or in the clutch of some disease
Wasting slowly by degrees.

Better than a heart attack
or some dose of drug I lack;
Let me die by being black.

Better far that I should go;
Standing here against the foe
Is the sweeter death to know.

Better than the bloody stain
on some highway where I'm lain
Torn by flying glass and pane.

Better calling death to come
than to die another dumb,
muted victim in the slum.

Better than this prison rot;
if there's any choice I've got,
Kill me here on the spot.

Better for my fight to wage
Now while my blood boils with rage,
Less it cool with ancient age.

Better violent for us to die
Than to Uncle Tom and try
Making peace just to live a lie.

Better now that I say my sooth;
I'm gonna die demanding Truth
While I'm still akin to youth.

Better now than later on
Now that fear of death is gone.
Never mind another dawn.


***

I am America.
I am the part you won't recognize.
But get used to me:
Black, confident, cocky.
My name, not yours.
My religion, not yours.
My goals, my own.
Get used to me.
—Muhammad Ali

***

You think the world was shocked when Nixon resigned? 
Wait 'til I whup George Foreman's behind. 
Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee. 
His hand can't hit what his eyes can't see. 
Now you see me, now you don't. 
George thinks he will, but I know he won't. 
I done wrassled with an alligator, 
I done tussled with a whale. 
Only last week I murdered a rock, injured a stone, hospitalized a brick. 
I'm so mean, I make medicine sick.

—Muhammad Ali




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"First Fire" by Camille T. Dungy

Camille Dungy is a poet and editor who earned a BA from Stanford University and an MFA from the University of North Carolina, Greensboro. She has won various awards and fellowships for her writing, and is currently a professor of English at Colorado State University.

First Fire
by Camille T. Dungy

Stripped in a flamedance, the bluff backing our houses
quivered in wet-black skin. A shawl of haze tugged tight
around the starkness. We could have choked on August.

Smoke thick in our throats, nearly naked as the earth,
we played bare feet over the heat caught in asphalt.
Could we, green girls, have prepared for this? Yesterday,

we played in sand-carpeted caves. The store we built
sold broken bits of ice plant, empty snail shells, leaves.
Our school’s walls were open sky. We reeled in wonder

from the hills, oblivious to the beckoning
crescendo and to our parent’s hushed communion.
When our bluff swayed into the undulation, we ran

into the still streets of our suburb, feet burning
against a fury that we did not know was change.




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"Marathon" by E. Ethelbert Miller

Eugene Ethelbert Miller was born in the Bronx in 1950. He earned his BA in African American Studies at Howard University, where he has served as director of the African American Studies Resource Center since 1974. He received a Columbia Merit Award in 1993, became an honorary citizen of Baltimore in 1994, and was honored by First Lady Laura Bush at the White House in 2003.

Marathon
by E. Ethelbert Miller

it’s a strange time which finds me jogging
in early morning
the deadness of sleep alive in this world
the empty parks filled with unloved strangers
buildings grey with solitude
now near the end of another decade
i am witness to the loss of my twenties
a promise invisible
i run without purpose
far from the north star
i run with the sound of barking dogs closing in
i have lost count of the miles
i am older and nothing much matters
or has changed




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"Given to Rust" by Vievee Francis

Vievee Francis earned her MFA from the University of Michigan, and her poetry has earned her some impressive awards and fellowships. Currently she is an editor for Callaloo and teaches English and Creative Writing at Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire.

Given to Rust
by Vievee Francis

Every time I open my mouth my teeth reveal
more than I mean to. I can’t stop tonguing them, my teeth.
Almost giddy to know they’re still there (my mother lost hers)
but I am embarrassed nonetheless that even they aren’t
pretty. Still, I did once like my voice, the way it moved
through the gap in my teeth like birdsong in the morning,
like the slow swirl of a creek at dusk. Just yesterday
a woman closed her eyes as I read aloud, and
said she wanted to sleep in the sound of it, my voice.
I can still sing some. Early cancer didn’t stop the compulsion
to sing but
there’s gravel now. An undercurrent
that also reveals me. Time and disaster. A heavy landslide
down the mountain. When you stopped speaking to me
what you really wanted was for me to stop speaking to you. To
stifle the sound of my voice. I know.
Didn’t want the quicksilver of it in your ear.
What does it mean
to silence another? It means I ruminate on the hit
of rain against the tin roof of childhood, how I could listen
all day until the water rusted its way in. And there I was
putting a pan over here and a pot over there to catch it.




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"cutting greens" by Lucille Clifton

One of the most respected poets of our time, Lucille Clifton has earned an impressive collection of accolades. In 2007 she was awarded the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, she's been a finalist for Pulitzer Prizes, and she was the poet laureate for Maryland from 1974 to 1985.  

cutting greens 
by Lucille Clifton

curling them around
i hold their bodies in obscene embrace
thinking of everything but kinship.
collards and kale
strain against each strange other
away from my kissmaking hand and
the iron bedpot.
the pot is black,
the cutting board is black,
my hand,
and just for a minute
the greens roll black under the knife,
and the kitchen twists dark on its spine
and I taste in my natural appetite
the bond of live things everywhere.




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"Harlem" by Langston Hughes

Langston Hughes was one of the most famous and important names to spring from the Harlem Renaissance. This poem was chosen today by request.

Harlem
by Langston Hughes

What happens to a dream deferred?

      Does it dry up
      like a raisin in the sun?
      Or fester like a sore—
      And then run?
      Does it stink like rotten meat?
      Or crust and sugar over—
      like a syrupy sweet?

      Maybe it just sags
      like a heavy load.

      Or does it explode?





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"I am Trying to Break Your Heart" by Kevin Young

As a student at Harvard, Kevin Young joined the Dark Room Collective. He earned a Stegner Fellowship from Stanford University and earned an MFA from Brown University. He has published many books of poetry, and is now the poetry editor of the New Yorker and the director of New York Public Library's Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. Check him out here.

What drew me to this poem was the title, which matches the title of a Wilco song I like. Then I noticed he weaved a line from the song, "I assassin down the avenue," in his poem, which confirmed for me he is a Wilco fan and that's all I need to know to appreciate him and his work. 

I am Trying to Break Your Heart
by Kevin Young

I am hoping
to hang your head

on my wall
in shame—

the slightest taxidermy
thrills me. Fish

forever leaping
on the living-room wall—

paperweights made
from skulls

of small animals.
I want to wear

your smile on my sleeve
& break

your heart like a horse
or its leg. Weeks of being

bucked off, then
all at once, you're mine—

Put me down.

I want to call you thine

to tattoo mercy
along my knuckles. I assassin

down the avenue
I hope

to have you forgotten
by noon. To know you

by your knees
palsied by prayer.

Loneliness is a science—

consider the taxidermist's
tender hands

trying to keep from losing
skin, the bobcat grin

of the living.





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"Frederick Douglass" by Robert Hayden

Robert Hayden, born Asa Bundy Sheffey in 1913, was the first African American appointed as Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress. He was a professor of English at Fisk University and The University of Michigan.

Frederick Douglass
by Robert Hayden

When it is finally ours, this freedom, this liberty, this beautiful 
and terrible thing, needful to man as air,   
usable as earth; when it belongs at last to all,   
when it is truly instinct, brain matter, diastole, systole,   
reflex action; when it is finally won; when it is more   
than the gaudy mumbo jumbo of politicians:   
this man, this Douglass, this former slave, this Negro   
beaten to his knees, exiled, visioning a world   
where none is lonely, none hunted, alien,   
this man, superb in love and logic, this man   
shall be remembered. Oh, not with statues’ rhetoric,   
not with legends and poems and wreaths of bronze alone, 
but with the lives grown out of his life, the lives   
fleshing his dream of the beautiful, needful thing.





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"Chocolate" by Rita Dove

Rita Dove is from Akron, Ohio. A brilliant scholar, she eventually earned her MFA from the Iowa Writers' Workshop. She has a lot of great work, but "Chocolate" felt most appropriate today as chocolate is the only worthwhile aspect of Valentine's Day.

Chocolate
by Rita Dove

Velvet fruit, exquisite square 
I hold up to sniff 
between finger and thumb - 

how you numb me 
with your rich attentions! 
If I don't eat you quickly, 

you'll melt in my palm. 
Pleasure seeker, if i let you 
you'd liquefy everywhere. 

Knotted smoke, dark punch 
of earth and night and leaf, 
for a taste of you 

any woman would gladly 
crumble to ruin. 
Enough chatter: I am ready 

to fall in love!




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"Heart" by Hope Wabuke

Hope Wabuke is a Ugandan-American poet, essayist, writer, and assistant professor of English and Creative Writing at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. She's a contributing editor for The Root and has been published in many magazines and journals.

Heart
by Hope Wabuke

This your heart I do spoon—
a dull-edged, rusted almost circle of silver—
from within your rib cage

and suck the marrow out hard
raw, my teeth and lips dripped red
by this four chambered organ still pumping 

inside the press of my fingers
bite by bite leeching its hard won 
labors to fuel my parasite life until 

nothing left but your rhythm still live
still moving inside me, I understand 
how long after mine own bones become 

ashes, become dust. Will rise 
the sounding of this
most ancient, terrible thing.




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"The Fears" by Mitchell L.H. Douglas

Mitchell L.H. Douglas is an associate professor of Creative Writing and Literature at IUPUI, and is the reason I fell in love with poetry. His class unlocked poetry for me and made it seem more accessible than it had before. In addition to "The Fears" posted below, here is he is reading his poem "Tallahatchie" from his collection \blak\ \al-fə bet\. I recommend a listen.

The Fears
by Mitchell L.H. Douglas

I.
Bound in the wounded tale
of dream, more
than winding sheet,
entombed, perhaps—
hours of earth pitched atop,
the drop of pebble on wood,
grim rhythm, Reaper’s
open hand, leveled scythe.

I do not know the minutes ahead,
the number afforded,
what seconds can be bought
when buried. Time
is fickle host. No sun
to raise me from the pine;
the box as trap
before my time.

II.
…your open box tops,
upright pitchforks
& six-point stars.         Yes.
I know.

Time for new fears.

Flashback:

80s trips to Chicago—
Michael Jackson’s Off the Wall
summer soundtrack.
The drive from Iowa City
to the South Side,
involuntary dance moves
conjured @ the close of car doors.
Michael’s scarred tenor: serenade
in brick city air. Bare-

knuckled, sister’s stories
bruised their way to memory.
The welt that won’t heal:
how a group of boys cornered, questioned

Who do you represent?

No one, she said,

& she spent the day in their company,
the cult of Barksdale
her eyes through the winded city.

Memories simmer,
years wind above our heads
like the El, & my heart
throbs in my throat
when Dad says
When’s the last time
we saw Chicago?
Let’s drive.


III.

Sometimes, the city—
like memory—
is coffin. How deep
we are
below.





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