The Black literary tradition is rich and exhaustive, and 20 poems could never hope to scratch its surface. But each one of these poems also contains a world within itself—a refracted look at one’s wounds or visions of new ones or, often, both bound up together in the ways only American poetry can achieve.
These are laments, songs of revolution (both internal and societal), and recipes for change. Some feel like prophecies for the current moment and others feel like visions of even bigger seismic shifts. They speak best for themselves but they call all of us to join them. From Amiri Baraka to Octavia E. Butler, black poetry is truly something amazing to behold. In honor of Black Lives Matter, here are 20 revolutionary poems by black poets.
1. Poem About My Rights by June Jordan
Even tonight and I need to take a walk and clear
my head about this poem about why I can’tgo out without changing my clothes my shoesmy body posture my gender identity my agemy 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 wantto do with my own body because I am the wrongsex the wrong age the wrong skin andsuppose it was not here in the city but down on the beach/or far into the woods and I wanted to gothere by myself thinking about God/or thinkingabout children or thinking about the world/all of itdisclosed by the stars and the silence:I could not go and I could not think and I could notstay therealoneas I need to bealone because I can’t do what I want to do with my ownbody andwho in the hell set things uplike thisand in France they say if the guy penetratesbut does not ejaculate then he did not rape meand if after stabbing him if after screams ifafter begging the bastard and if even after smashinga hammer to his head if even after that if heand his buddies fuck me after thatthen I consented and there wasno rape because finally you understand finallythey fucked me over because I was wrong I waswrong again to be me being me where I was/wrongto be who I amwhich is exactly like South Africapenetrating into Namibia penetrating intoAngola and does that mean I mean how do you know ifPretoria ejaculates what will the evidence look like theproof of the monster jackboot ejaculation on Blacklandand ifafter Namibia and if after Angola and if after Zimbabweand if after all of my kinsmen and women resist even toself-immolation of the villages and if after thatwe lose nevertheless what will the big boys say will theyclaim my consent:Do You Follow Me: We are the wrong people ofthe wrong skin on the wrong continent and whatin the hell is everybody being reasonable aboutand according to the Times this weekback in 1966 the C.I.A. decided that they had this problemand the problem was a man named Nkrumah so theykilled him and before that it was Patrice Lumumbaand before that it was my father on the campusof my Ivy League school and my father afraidto walk into the cafeteria because he said hewas wrong the wrong age the wrong skin the wronggender identity and he was paying my tuition andbefore thatit was my father saying I was wrong saying thatI should have been a boy because he wanted one/aboy and that I should have been lighter skinned andthat I should have had straighter hair and thatI should not be so boy crazy but instead I shouldjust be one/a boy and before that it was my mother pleading plastic surgery formy nose and braces for my teeth and telling meto let the books loose to let them loose in otherwordsI am very familiar with the problems of the C.I.A.and the problems of South Africa and the problemsof Exxon Corporation and the problems of whiteAmerica in general and the problems of the teachersand the preachers and the F.B.I. and the socialworkers and my particular Mom and Dad/I am veryfamiliar with the problems because the problemsturn out to bemeI am the history of rapeI am the history of the rejection of who I amI am the history of the terrorized incarceration ofmyselfI am the history of battery assault and limitlessarmies against whatever I want to do with my mindand my body and my soul andwhether it’s about walking out at nightor whether it’s about the love that I feel orwhether it’s about the sanctity of my vagina orthe sanctity of my national boundariesor the sanctity of my leaders or the sanctityof each and every desirethat I know from my personal and idiosyncraticand indisputably single and singular heartI have been rapedbe-cause I have been wrong the wrong sex the wrong agethe wrong skin the wrong nose the wrong hair thewrong need the wrong dream the wrong geographicthe wrong sartorial II have been the meaning of rapeI have been the problem everyone seeks toeliminate by forcedpenetration with or without the evidence of slime and/but let this be unmistakable this poemis not consent I do not consentto my mother to my father to the teachers tothe F.B.I. to South Africa to Bedford-Stuyto Park Avenue to American Airlines to the hardonidlers on the corners to the sneaky creeps incarsI am not wrong: Wrong is not my nameMy name is my own my own my ownand I can’t tell you who the hell set things up like thisbut I can tell you that from now on my resistancemy simple and daily and nightly self-determinationmay very well cost you your life
2. A Journey by Nikki Giovanni
Though the rail has been ridden . . . winter clouds cover . . . autumn’s exuberant quilt . . . we must provide our own guide-posts . . .
I have heard . . . from previous visitors . . . the road washes out sometimes . . . and passengers are compelled . . . to continue groping . . . or turn back . . . I am not afraid . . .
I am not afraid . . . of rough spots . . . or lonely times . . . I don’t fear . . . the success of this endeavor . . . I am Ra . . . in a space . . . not to be discovered . . . but invented . . .
I promise you nothing . . . I accept your promise . . . of the same we are simply riding . . . a wave . . . that may carry . . . or crash . . .
It’s a journey . . . and I want . . . to go . . .
3. Taking My Father and Brother to the Frick by Derrick Austin
Derrick Austin
Disembark the Turners seem to say,those starburst barges glowing in the dusk,but I can’t read old Rembrandt,his guarded eyes are jewels, like black men.Even the loaned, marble bustsof kings and soldiers fail to arrest you.It’s nearly closing time. The elderly linger,rapt. Who has looked at either of you latelywith such tenderness? Entering the narrow hall,I ignore my favorite portraits, their rufflesand bodices, carnations and powder puffs,afraid to share my joy with you,yet your bearing in this space—the processionof your shoulders, the crowns of your heads—makes them sing anew. You are both good men. Walk into the Fragonard Room. You both seem bored still.It’s fine. Perhaps we can progress like these panels,slowly and without words, here—the citywhere I first knew men in the dark—in this gold and feminine room.
4. Bullet Points by Jericho Brown
Jericho Brown
I will not shoot myself
In the head, and I will not shoot myselfIn the back, and I will not hang myselfWith a trashbag, and if I do, I promise you, I will not do itIn a police car while handcuffedOr in the jail cell of a townI only know the name ofBecause I have to drive through itTo get home. Yes, I may be at risk,But I promise you, I trust the maggotsWho live beneath the floorboardsOf my house to do what they mustTo any carcass more than I trustAn officer of the law of the landTo shut my eyes like a manOf God might, or to cover me with a sheetSo clean my mother could have used itTo tuck me in. When I kill me, I willDo it the same way most Americans do, I promise you: cigarette smokeOr a piece of meat on which I chokeOr so broke I freeze In one of these winters we keepCalling worst. I promise if you hearOf me dead anywhere nearA cop, then that cop killed me. He took Me from us and left my body, which is, No matter what we’ve been taught, Greater than the settlementA city can pay a mother to stop crying,And more beautiful than the new bulletFished from the folds of my brain.
5. Sci-Fi by Tracy K. Smith
There will be no edges, but curves.Clean lines pointing only forward.
History, with its hard spine & dog-earedCorners, will be replaced with nuance,
Just like the dinosaurs gave wayTo mounds and mounds of ice.
Women will still be women, butThe distinction will be empty. Sex,
Having outlived every threat, will gratifyOnly the mind, which is where it will exist.
For kicks, we’ll dance for ourselvesBefore mirrors studded with golden bulbs.
The oldest among us will recognize that glow—But the word sun will have been re-assigned
To the Standard Uranium-Neutralizing deviceFound in households and nursing homes.
And yes, we’ll live to be much older, thanksTo popular consensus. Weightless, unhinged,
Eons from even our own moon, we’ll driftIn the haze of space, which will be, once
And for all, scrutable and safe.
6. Dawn Revisited by Rita Dove
Rita Dove
Imagine you wake up
with a second chance: The blue jayhawks his pretty waresand the oak still stands, spreadingglorious shade. If you don’t look back,
the future never happens.How good to rise in sunlight,in the prodigal smell of biscuits -eggs and sausage on the grill.The whole sky is yours
to write on, blown opento a blank page. Come on,shake a leg! You’ll never knowwho’s down there, frying those eggs,if you don’t get up and see.
7. Between the World and Me by Langston Hughes
And one morning while in the woods I stumbled suddenly upon the thing,
Stumbled upon it in a grassy clearing guarded by scaly oaks and elms
And the sooty details of the scene rose, thrusting themselves between the world and me….
There was a design of white bones slumbering forgottenly upon a cushion of ashes.
There was a charred stump of a sapling pointing a blunt finger accusingly at the sky.
There were torn tree limbs, tiny veins of burnt leaves, and a scorched coil of greasy hemp;
A vacant shoe, an empty tie, a ripped shirt, a lonely hat, and a pair of trousers stiff with black blood.
And upon the trampled grass were buttons, dead matches, butt-ends of cigars and cigarettes, peanut shells, a drained gin-flask, and a whore’s lipstick;
Scattered traces of tar, restless arrays of feathers, and the lingering smell of gasoline.
And through the morning air the sun poured yellow surprise into the eye sockets of the stony skull….
And while I stood my mind was frozen within cold pity for the life that was gone.
The ground gripped my feet and my heart was circled by icy walls of fear—
The sun died in the sky; a night wind muttered in the grass and fumbled the leaves in the trees; the woods poured forth the hungry yelping of hounds; the darkness screamed with thirsty voices; and the witnesses rose and lived:
The dry bones stirred, rattled, lifted, melting themselves into my bones.
The grey ashes formed flesh firm and black, entering into my flesh.
The gin-flask passed from mouth to mouth, cigars and cigarettes glowed, the whore smeared lipstick red upon her lips,
And a thousand faces swirled around me, clamoring that my life be burned….
And then they had me, stripped me, battering my teeth into my throat till I swallowed my own blood.
My voice was drowned in the roar of their voices, and my black wet body slipped and rolled in their hands as they bound me to the sapling.
And my skin clung to the bubbling hot tar, falling from me in limp patches.
And the down and quills of the white feathers sank into my raw flesh, and I moaned in my agony.
Then my blood was cooled mercifully, cooled by a baptism of gasoline.
And in a blaze of red I leaped to the sky as pain rose like water, boiling my limbs
Panting, begging I clutched childlike, clutched to the hot sides of death.
Now I am dry bones and my face a stony skull staring in
yellow surprise at the sun….
8. A Litany for Survival by Audre Lorde
For those of us who live at the shorelinestanding upon the constant edges of decisioncrucial and alonefor those of us who cannot indulgethe passing dreams of choicewho love in doorways coming and goingin the hours between dawnslooking inward and outwardat once before and afterseeking a now that can breedfutureslike bread in our children’s mouthsso their dreams will not reflectthe death of ours;For those of uswho were imprinted with fearlike a faint line in the center of our foreheadslearning to be afraid with our mother’s milkfor by this weaponthis illusion of some safety to be foundthe heavy-footed hoped to silence usFor all of usthis instant and this triumphWe were never meant to survive.And when the sun rises we are afraidit might not remainwhen the sun sets we are afraidit might not rise in the morningwhen our stomachs are full we are afraidof indigestionwhen our stomachs are empty we are afraidwe may never eat againwhen we are loved we are afraidlove will vanishwhen we are alone we are afraidlove will never returnand when we speak we are afraidour words will not be heardnor welcomedbut when we are silentwe are still afraidSo it is better to speakremembering
we were never meant to survive.
9. Monday in B-Flat by Amiri Baraka
I can prayall day& Godwont come.But if I call911The DevilBe herein a minute!
10. RIOT by Gwendolyn Brooks
A Poem in Three Parts
A riot is the language of the unheard.—Martin Luther King, Jr.
John Cabot, out of Wilma, once a Wycliffe, all whitebluerose below his golden hair, wrapped richly in right linen and right wool, almost forgot his Jaguar and Lake Bluff; almost forgot Grandtully (which is The Best Thing That Ever Happened To Scotch); almost forgot the sculpture at the Richard Gray and Distelheim; the kidney pie at Maxim’s, the Grenadine de Boeuf at Maison Henri. Because the “Negroes” were coming down the street. Because the Poor were sweaty and unpretty (not like Two Dainty Negroes in Winnetka) and they were coming toward him in rough ranks. In seas. In windsweep. They were black and loud. And not detainable. And not discreet. Gross. Gross. “Que tu es grossier!” John Cabot itched instantly beneath the nourished white that told his story of glory to the World. “Don’t let It touch me! the blackness! Lord!” he whispered to any handy angel in the sky.
But, in a thrilling announcement, on It drove and breathed on him: and touched him. In that breath the fume of pig foot, chitterling and cheap chili, malign, mocked John. And, in terrific touch, old averted doubt jerked forward decently, cried, “Cabot! John! You are a desperate man, and the desperate die expensively today.” John Cabot went down in the smoke and fire and broken glass and blood, and he cried “Lord! Forgive these nigguhs that know not what they do.”
THE THIRD SERMON ON THE WARPLAND
Phoenix “In Egyptian mythology, a bird which lived for five hundred years and then consumed itself in fire, rising renewed from the ashes.” —webster
The earth is a beautiful place. Watermirrors and things to be reflected. Goldenrod across the little lagoon.
The Black Philosopher says “Our chains are in the keep of the Keeper in a labeled cabinet on the second shelf by the cookies, sonatas, the arabesques. . . . There’s a rattle, sometimes. You do not hear it who mind only cookies and crunch them. You do not hear the remarkable music—’A Death Song For You Before You Die.’ If you could hear it you would make music too. The blackblues.”
West Madison Street. In “Jessie’s Kitchen” nobody’s eating Jessie’s Perfect Food. Crazy flowers cry up across the sky, spreading and hissing This is it.
The young men run.
They will not steal Bing Crosby but will steal Melvin Van Peebles who made Lillie a thing of Zampoughi a thing of red wiggles and trebles (and I know there are twenty wire stalks sticking out of her head as her underfed haunches jerk jazz.)
A clean riot is not one in which little rioters long-stomped, long-straddled, BEANLESS but knowing no Why go steal in hell a radio, sit to hear James Brown and Mingus, Young-Holt, Coleman, John on V.O.N. and sun themselves in Sin.
However, what is going on is going on.
Fire. That is their way of lighting candles in the darkness. A White Philosopher said ‘It is better to light one candle than curse the darkness.’ These candles curse— inverting the deeps of the darkness.
GUARD HERE, GUNS LOADED.
The young men run. The children in ritual chatter scatter upon their Own and old geography.
The Law comes sirening across the town.
A woman is dead. Motherwoman. She lies among the boxes (that held the haughty hats, the Polish sausages) in newish, thorough, firm virginity as rich as fudge is if you’ve had five pieces. Not again shall she partake of steak on Christmas mornings, nor of nighttime chicken and wine at Val Gray Ward’s nor say of Mr. Beetley, Exit Jones, Junk Smith nor neat New-baby Williams (man-to-many) “He treat me right.”
That was a gut gal.
“We’ll do an us!” yells Yancey, a twittering twelve. “Instead of your deathintheafternoon, kill ’em, bull! kill ’em, bull!”
The Black Philosopher blares “I tell you, exhaustive black integrity would assure a blackless Amrica. . . .”
Nine die, Sun-Times will tell and will tell too in small black-bordered oblongs “Rumor? check it at 744-4111.”
A Poem to Peanut. “Coooooool!” purrs Peanut. Peanut is Richard—a Ranger and a gentleman. A Signature. A Herald. And a Span. This Peanut will not let his men explode. And Rico will not. Neither will Sengali. Nor Bop nor Jeff, Geronimo nor Lover. These merely peer and purr, and pass the Passion over. The Disciples stir and thousandfold confer with ranging Rangermen; mutual in their “Yeah!— this AIN’T all upinheah!”
“But WHY do These People offend themselves?” say they who say also “It’s time. It’s time to help These People.”
Lies are told and legends made. Phoenix rises unafraid.
The Black Philosopher will remember: “There they came to life and exulted, the hurt mute. Then is was over.
The dust, as they say, settled.”
AN ASPECT OF LOVE, ALIVE IN THE ICE AND FIRE
LaBohem Brown
In 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.
11. To Bless the Memory of Tamir Rice by Tsitsi Ella Jaji
Plant twelve date palms in a ring around the tarmac. Make them
tall, slight towers, leaning into the wind as princes do. Fear thatthe sweetness of dates will churn your stomach. Plant them anyways.Plant the pudge of his fuzzless face in the arrested time of a school portrait.Plant his exotic name—found in a book that spelled dreamsof eminence and hope for an uncertain coupling—in your ear.Know that whether it leaches into the soil or not, this groundwas watered with his blood. This tarmac turned a rioting red. Strike that.There was a screech of brakes, and sirens howling like a cliché, thena volley of pops that might have been a game if onlywhat came next was not such utter silence.The tarmac was red. There was no riot.Build a circle of palms and something to keep them safe.Build a greenhouse around the twelve palms.Yes, a green house. This land is not our land.Dig up the tarmac, the dark heavy loam of this side of town.Be sure to wear gloves as you dig through the brownfield’smystification. Once the Cuyahoga River was a wall of fire.God knows how rain melts metal.Dig into that earth and builda foundation. Quarry it.Let the little boys and little girls of Shaker Heights and Orangebring a Game Boy or cellphone, or other toy made our of coltan that,chances are, a little boy or little girl dug up by hand in the DRC.Let the children lay their shiny toys in the foundation.Seal up ground with molten lead. Die-cast its melted weight.Yes, make a typecaster’s mold, and leave it a dull grey, like flint.Stamp out a broadside, only set it in the foundation’s floor.Let us read the letter that says this officer was unfit.Let us go over it step by step, every time we walk toward the greenhouse of imaging what this boy’s boyhood should have been,the fulfilling of his name, his promise.Plant an oasis here. How is not my problem.*Let someone who remember how cook de rice.Let she cook de rice with palm oil ’til is yellow an sticky.Of course dem have palm oil in Cleveland. Dis no Third World we livin in.Let she cook she rice an peas. Let she sayhow she know to do it from a film she seen. In de film, dem people fromde sea island gone to Sierra Leone and dema find dey people,dey people dat sing de same song with de same words. Come tofind out dem words is not jes playplay words, dem words for weeping. So demasit down together, an weep together, dey South Carolina an Sierra Leone family.Dey weep over de war, an de water, an de fresh and de forgotten,an dey cook dat rice ’til is yellow and sticky. Dey nyam it with dey hand,outta banana leaf and de old, old man, him say,you never forget the language you cry in.Let all dem little girls from Shaker Heights skip the gymnastics meet.Let dem come and eat rice and eat rice ’til they don’t want to eat rice no morean let dem still have rice to eat. Let them lose their innocence.Let horizons settle low.Let dates and raisin and apples and nuts seem a strange mockeryof the new, the sweet, the hoped for. Let us share the matter.Let us sit here under these date palms,and haggle over whose fault it is. Let the rage that says tear this shit downtear this shit down.Let us start with the glass walls of the greenhouse, as a demonstration.Let the rage that says I cannot speak not speak.Let it suck speech into its terrible maw and leave us shuddering in silence.Let the rage that says, black lives matter matter.Let that other rage that says all lives matter be torn down. Let the matter with howwe don’t all matter in the same way churn up a monumental penitence.Let the date palm offer us shade.Let us ask why we are still here.Let us lower eyes as we face his mother, his father, his sister.
12. The President Visits the Storm by Shane McCrae
“What a crowd! What a turnout!” —DONALD TRUMP, TO VICTIMS OF HURRICANE HARVEY
America you’re what a turnout great
Crowd a great crowd big smiles America
The hurricane is everywhere but here an
Important man is talking here Ameri-
ca the important president is talking
And if the heavens open up the heavens
Open above the president the heavens
Open to assume him bodily into heaven
As they have opened to assume great men
Who will come back and bring the end with them
America he trumpets the end of your
Suffering both swan and horseman trumpeting
From the back of the beast the fire and rose are one
On the president’s bright head the flames implanted
To make a gilded crown America
The hurricane is everywhere but here
America a great man is a poison
That kills the sky the weather in the sky
For who America can look above him
You’re what a great a crowd big smiles the ratings
The body of a storm is a man’s body
It has an eye and everything in the eye
Is dead a calm man is a man who has
Let weakness overcome his urge for death
America the president is talking
You’re what a great a turnout you could be
Anywhere but your anywhere is here
And every inch of the stadium except those
Feet occupied by the stage after his speech will
Be used to shelter those displaced by the storm
Except those feet occupied by the they’re
Armed folks police assigned to guard the stage
Which must remain in place for the duration
Of the hurricane except those feet of dead
Unmarked space called The Safety Zone between
Those officers and you you must not vi-
olate The Safety Zone you must not leave
The Safety Zone the president suggests
You find the edge it’s at a common sense
Distance it is farther than you can throw
A rock no farther than a bullet flies
14. say it with your whole black mouth by Danez Smith
& if you are not innocent, say this: i am worthy of forgiveness, of breath after breath
i tell you this: i let blue eyes dress me in guiltwalked around stores convinced the very skin of my palm was stolen
& what good has that brought me? days filled flinchingthinking the sirens were reaching for me
& when the sirens were for medid i not make peace with god?
so many white people are alive becausewe know how to control ourselves.
how many times have we died on a whimwielded like gallows in their sun-shy hands?
here, standing in my own body, i say: the next timethey murder us for the crime of their imaginations
i don’t know what i’ll do.
i did not come to preach of peacefor that is not the hunted’s duty.
i came here to say what i can’t saywithout my name being added to a list
what my mother fears i will say
what she wishes to say herself
i came here to say
i can’t bring myself to write it down
sometimes i dream of pulling a red apologyfrom a pig’s collared neck & wake up crackin up
if i dream of setting fire to cul-de-sacs i wake chained to the bed
i don’t like thinking about doing to white folkswhat white folks done to us
when i do can’t say
i don’t dance
o my people
how long will we
reach for god
instead of something sharper?
my lovely doe
with a taste for meat
take
the hunter
by his hand
15. Give Your Daughters Difficult Names by Assétou Xango
“Give your daughters difficult names.Names that command the full use of the tongue.My name makes you want to tell me the truth.My name does not allow me to trust anyonewho cannot pronounce it right.” —Warsan Shire
Many of my contemporaries,role models,But especially,Ancestors
Have a name that brings the tongue to worship.Names that feel like ritual in your mouth.
I don’t want a name said without pause,muttered without intention.
I am through with names that leave me unmoved.Names that leave the speaker’s mouth unscathed.
I want a name like fire,like rebellion,like my hand gripping massa’s whip—
I want a name from before the shipsA name Donald Trump might choke on.
I want a name that catches you in the throatif you say it wrongand if you’re afraid to say it wrong,then I guess you should be.
I want a name only the brave can saya name that only fits right in the mouth of those who love me right,because only the bravecan love me right
Assétou Xango is the name you take when you are tiredof burying your jewels under thick layers ofsootand self-doubt.
Assétou the lightXango the pickaxeso that people must mine your souljust to get your attention.
If you have to ask why I changed my name,it is already too far beyond your comprehension.Call me callous,but with a name like XangoI cannot afford to tread lightly.You go hardor you go homeand I am centuriesand ships awayfrom any semblanceof a homeland.
I am a thief’s poor bookkeeping skills way from any source of ancestry.I am blindly collecting the shattered pieces of a continentmuch larger than my comprehension.
I hate explaining my name to people:their eyes peering over my journallooking for a history they can rewrite
Ask me what my name means…What the fuck does your name mean Linda?
Not every word needs an English equivalent in order to have significance.
I am done folding myself up to fit your stereotype.Your black friend.Your headline.Your African Queen Meme.Your hurt feelings.Your desire to learn the rhetoric of solidaritywithout the practice.
I do not have time to carry your allyship.
I am trying to build a continent,A country,A home.
My name is the only thing I have that is unassimilatedand I’m not even sure I can call it mine.
The body is a safeless place if you do not know its name.
Assétou is what it sounds like when you are trying to bend a syllableinto a home.With shaky shuddersAnd wind whistling through your empty,
I feel empty.
There is no safety in a name.No home in a body.
A name is honestly just a nameA name is honestly just a ritual
And it still sounds like reverence.
16. Speculations about “I” by Toi Derricotte
A certain doubleness, by which I can stand as remote from myself as from another.
— Henry David Thoreau
iI didn’t choose the word — it came pouring out of my throatlike the water inside a drowned man.I didn’t even push on my stomach.I just lay there, dead (like he told me)& “I” came out.(I’m sorry, Father.”I” wasn’t my fault.)
ii(How did “I” feel?)
Felt almost alivewhen I’d get in, like the Trojan horse.
I’d sit on the bench(I didn’t look out of the eyeholesso I wouldn’t see the carnage).
iii(Is “I” speaking another language?)
I said, “I” is dangerous.But at the time I couldn’t tellwhich one of us was speaking.
iv(Why “I”?)
“I” was the closest I could get to theone I loved (who I believe wassmothered in her playpen).
Perhaps she gave birthto “I” before she died.
vI deny “I,”& the closerI get, the more”I” keeps receding.
viI found “I”in the bulrushesraised by a dirtinessbeyond imagination.
I loved “I” like a stinky bed.
While I hid in a sentencewith a bunch of other words.
vii(What is “I”?)
A transmission through space?A dismemberment of the spirit?
More like opening the chest &throwing the heart out with the gizzards.
viii(Translation)
Years later “I” came backwanting to be known.
Like the unspeakablename of God, I tried
my 2 letters, leavingthe “O” for breath,
like in the Bible,missing.
ixI am not the “I”in my poems. “I”is the net I try to pull me in with.
xI try to talkwith “I,” but “I” doesn’t trustme. “I” says I amslippery by nature.
xiI made “I” dowhat I wasn’t supposed to do,what I didn’t want to do — defend me,stand as an example,stand in for what I was hiding.
I treated “I” as if”I” wasn’t human.
xiiThey say that what I writebelongs to me, that it is my trueexperience. They think it validatesmy endurance.But why pretend?”I” is a kind of terminal survival.
xiiiI didn’t promise”I” anything & in that way”I” is the one I was mosttrue to.
17. America Will Be by Joshua Bennett
Joshua Bennett
After Langston Hughes
I am now at the age where my father calls me brother when we say goodbye. Take care of yourself, brother, he whispers a half beat before we hang up the phone, and it is as if some great bridge has unfolded over the air between us. He is 68 years old. He was born in the throat of Jim Crow Alabama, one of ten children, their bodies side by side in the kitchen each morning like a pair of hands exalting. Over breakfast, I ask him to tell me the hardest thing about going to school back then, expecting some history I have already memorized. Boycotts & attack dogs, fire hoses, Bull Connor in his personal tank, candy paint shining white as a slaver’s ghost. He says: Having to read the Canterbury Tales. He says: eating lunch alone. Now, I hear the word America & think first of my father’s loneliness, the hands holding the pens that stabbed him as he walked through the hallway, unclenched palms settling onto a wooden desk, taking notes, trying to pretend the shame didn’t feel like an inheritance. You say democracy & I see the men holding documents that sent him off to war a year later, Motown blaring from a country boy’s bunker as napalm scarred the sky into jigsaw patterns, his eyes open wide as the blooming blue heart of the light bulb in a Crown Heights basement where he & my mother will dance for the first time, their bodies swaying like rockets in the impossible dark & yes I know that this is more than likely not what you mean when you sing liberty but it is the only kind I know or can readily claim, the times where those hunted by history are underground & somehow daring to love what they cannot hold or fully fathom when the stranger is not a threat but the promise of a different ending I woke up this morning and there were men on television lauding a wall big enough to box out an entire world, families torn with the stroke of a pen, citizenship little more than some garment that can be stolen or reduced to cinder at a tyrant’s whim my father knows this grew up knowing this witnessed firsthand the firebombs the Klan multiple messiahs love soaked & shot through somehow still believes in this grand blood-stained experiment still votes still prays that his children might make a life unlike any he has ever seen. He looks at me like the promise of another cosmos and I never know what to tell him. All of the books in my head have made me cynical and distant, but there’s a choir in him that calls me forward my disbelief built as it is from the bricks of his belief not in any America you might see on network news or hear heralded before a football game but in the quiet power of Sam Cooke singing that he was born by a river that remains unnamed that he runs alongside to this day, some vast and future country, some nation within a nation, black as candor, loud as the sound of my father’s unfettered laughter over cheese eggs & coffee his eyes shut tight as armories his fists unclenched as if he were invincible
18. A Brief History of Hostility by Jamaal May
Jamaal May
In the beginning
there was the war.
The war said let there be warand there was war.
The war said let there be peaceand there was war.
The people said music and rainevaporating against fire in the brushwas a kind of musicand so was the beast.
The beast that roaredor bleated when brought downwas silent when skinnedbut loud after the skinwas pulled taut over woodand the people said musicand the thump thumpthump said drum.Someone saidwar drum. The drum said waris coming to meet you in the field.The field said wartastes like copper,said give us some more, said lookat the wild flowers our war plantsin a grove and growsjust for us.
Outside sheets are pullingthis way and that.
Fields are smoke,smoke is air.
We wait for fingers to be bentknuckle to knuckle,
the porch overrunwith rope and shotgun
but the hounds don’t show.We beat the drum and sing
like there’s nothing outsidebut rust-colored clay and fields
of wild flowers growingfarther than we can walk.
Torches may come like fox pawsto steal away what we plant,
but with our bodies boundby the skin, my arc to his curve,
we are stalks that will bendand bend and bend…
fire for heatfire for lightfire for casting figures on a dungeon wall
fire for teaching shadows to writhefire for keeping beasts at bayfire to give them back to the earth
fire for the siegefire to singefire to roastfire to fuse rubber soles to collapsed crossbeamsfire for Gehenna
fire for Dantefire for Fallujahfire for readied aim
fire in the forge that folds steel like a flagfire to curl worms like cigarette ashfire to give them back to the earth
fire for ancient reasons: to call down rainfire to catch it and turn it into steamfire for churchesfire for a stockpile of booksfire for a bible-black cloak tied to a stake
fire for smoke signalsfire to shape gun muzzle and magazinefire to leap from the gut of a furnacefire for Hephaestusfire for pyres’ sakefire licking the toes of a quiet brown manfire for his homefire for her flagfire for this sand, to coax it into glass
fire to cure mirrorsfire to cure leechesFire to compose a nocturne of cinders
fire for the trash cans illuminating streetsfire for fuelfire for fieldsfire for the field hand’s fourth death
fire to make a cross visible for several yardsfire from the dragon’s mouthfire for smoking out tangosfire to stoke like rage and fill the sky with human remainsfire to give them back to the earthfire to make twine fall from bound wristsfire to mark them all and bubble blackany flesh it touches as it frees
They took the light from our eyes. Possessive.Took the moisture from our throats. My arms,my lips, my sternum, sucked dry, andlovers of autumn say, Look, here is beauty.Tallness only made me an obvious target made ofoff-kilter limbs. I’d fall either way. I should get ato-the-death tattoo or metal ribbon of some sort.War took our prayers like nothing else can,left us dumber than remote drones. Makeme a loyal soldier and I’ll make you alamenting so thick, metallic, so tank-tread-hard.
Now make tomorrow a gate shaped like a man.I can’t promise, when it’s time, I won’t hesitate,cannot say I won’t forget to return in fall andguess the names of the leaves before they change.
The war said bring us your deadand we died. The people said musicand bending flower, so we sang ballads
in the aisles of churches and fruit markets.The requiem was everywhere: a comet’s taildisappearing into the atmosphere,
the wide mouths of the bereft men that have sung…On currents of air, seeds were carriedas the processional carried us
through the streets of a forgetting city,between the cold iron of gates.The field said soil is rich wherever we fall.
Aren’t graveyards and battlefieldsour most efficient gardens?Journeys begin there too if the flowers are taken
into account, and shouldn’t we alwaystake the flowers into account? Bring them to us.We’ll come back to you. Peace will come to you
as a rosewood-colored road paverin your grandmother’s town, as a trenchscraped into canvas, as a violin bow, a shovel,
an easel, a brushstroke that coversburial mounds in grass. And love, you say,is a constant blade, a trowel that plants
and uproots, and tomorrowwill be a tornado, you say. Then war,a sick wind, will come to part the air,
straighten your suit,and place fresh flowerson all our muddy graves.
19. For My People by Margaret Walker
For my people everywhere singing their slave songs
repeatedly: their dirges and their ditties and their blues and jubilees, praying their prayers nightly to an unknown god, bending their knees humbly to an unseen power;
For my people lending their strength to the years, to the gone years and the now years and the maybe years, washing ironing cooking scrubbing sewing mending hoeing plowing digging planting pruning patching dragging along never gaining never reaping never knowing and never understanding;
For my playmates in the clay and dust and sand of Alabama backyards playing baptizing and preaching and doctor and jail and soldier and school and mama and cooking and playhouse and concert and store and hair and Miss Choomby and company;
For the cramped bewildered years we went to school to learn to know the reasons why and the answers to and the people who and the places where and the days when, in memory of the bitter hours when we discovered we were black and poor and small and different and nobody cared and nobody wondered and nobody understood;
For the boys and girls who grew in spite of these things to be man and woman, to laugh and dance and sing and play and drink their wine and religion and success, to marry their playmates and bear children and then die of consumption and anemia and lynching;
For my people thronging 47th Street in Chicago and Lenox Avenue in New York and Rampart Street in New Orleans, lost disinherited dispossessed and happy people filling the cabarets and taverns and other people’s pockets needing bread and shoes and milk and land and money and something—something all our own;
For my people walking blindly spreading joy, losing time being lazy, sleeping when hungry, shouting when burdened, drinking when hopeless, tied, and shackled and tangled among ourselves by the unseen creatures who tower over us omnisciently and laugh;
For my people blundering and groping and floundering in the dark of churches and schools and clubs and societies, associations and councils and committees and conventions, distressed and disturbed and deceived and devoured by money-hungry glory-craving leeches, preyed on by facile force of state and fad and novelty, by false prophet and holy believer;
For my people standing staring trying to fashion a better way from confusion, from hypocrisy and misunderstanding, trying to fashion a world that will hold all the people, all the faces, all the adams and eves and their countless generations;
Let a new earth rise. Let another world be born. Let a bloody peace be written in the sky. Let a second generation full of courage issue forth; let a people loving freedom come to growth. Let a beauty full of healing and a strength of final clenching be the pulsing in our spirits and our blood. Let the martial songs be written, let the dirges disappear. Let a race of men now rise and take control.
20. Earthseed by Octavia E. Butler
Octavia Butler
Here we are –
Here we are –
Energy,
Mass,
Life,
Shaping life,
Mind,
Shaping Mind
God,
Shaping God.
Consider—
We are born
Not with purpose,
But with potential.
All that you touch
You Change.
All that you Change
Changes you.
The only lasting truth
Is Change.
God
Is Change.
21. Brothers-American Drama by James Weldon Johnson
James Weldon Johnson
(THE MOB SPEAKS🙂
See! There he stands; not brave, but with an air Of sullen stupor. Mark him well! Is heNot more like brute than man? Look in his eye! No light is there; none, save the glint that shines In the now glaring, and now shifting orbsOf some wild animal caught in the hunter’s trap.
How came this beast in human shape and form? Speak man!—We call you man because you wear His shape—How are you thus? Are you not from That docile, child-like, tender-hearted race Which we have known three centuries? Not from That more than faithful race which through three wars Fed our dear wives and nursed our helpless babes Without a single breach of trust? Speak out!
(THE VICTIM SPEAKS🙂
I am, and am not.
(THE MOB SPEAKS AGAIN🙂
Then who, why are you?
(THE VICTIM SPEAKS AGAIN🙂
I am a thing not new, I am as oldAs human nature. I am that which lurks, Ready to spring whenever a bar is loosed; The ancient trait which fights incessantly Against restraint, balks at the upward climb; The weight forever seeking to obey The law of downward pull—and I am more: The bitter fruit am I of planted seed; The resultant, the inevitable endOf evil forces and the powers of wrong.Lessons in degradation, taught and learned, The memories of cruel sights and deeds, The pent-up bitterness, the unspent hate Filtered through fifteen generations have Sprung up and found in me sporadic life. In me the muttered curse of dying men, On me the stain of conquered women, and Consuming me the fearful fires of lust, Lit long ago, by other hands than mine.In me the down-crushed spirit, the hurled-back prayers Of wretches now long dead—their dire bequests. In me the echo of the stifled cryOf children for their battered mothers’ breasts.
I claim no race, no race claims me; I am No more than human dregs; degenerate;The monstrous offspring of the monster, Sin; I am—just what I am. . . . The race that fedYour wives and nursed your babes would do the same Today. But I—
(THE MOB CONCLUDES🙂
Enough, the brute must die! Quick! Chain him to that oak! It will resist The fire much longer than this slender pine. Now bring the fuel! Pile it round him! Wait! Pile not so fast or high! or we shall lose The agony and terror in his face.And now the torch! Good fuel that! the flames Already leap head-high. Ha! hear that shriek! And there’s another! wilder than the first. Fetch water! Water! Pour a little onThe fire, lest it should burn too fast. Hold so! Now let it slowly blaze again. See there!He squirms! He groans! His eyes bulge wildly out, Searching around in vain appeal for help! Another shriek, the last! Watch how the flesh Grows crisp and hangs till, turned to ash, it siftsDown through the coils of chain that hold erect The ghastly frame against the bark-scorched tree.
Stop! to each man no more than one man’s share. You take that bone, and you this tooth; the chain, Let us divide its links; this skull, of course, In fair division, to the leader comes.
And now his fiendish crime has been avenged; Let us back to our wives and children—say, What did he mean by those last muttered words, “Brothers in spirit, brothers in deed are we”?
22. If I Was President by Alice Walker
Alice Walker
The Root / Peter Kramer
If I was PresidentThe first thing I would dois call Mumia Abu-Jamal.No,if I was presidentthe first thing I would dois call Leonard Peltier.No,if I was presidentthe first person I would callis that rascalJohn Trudell.No,the first person I’d callis that other rascalDennis Banks.I would also callAlice Walker.I would make a conference call.And I would say this:Yo, you troublemakers,it is time to let all of usout of prison.Pack up your things:Dennis and John,collect Alice WalkerIf you can find her:In Mendocino, Molokai, Mexico orGaza,& head out to the prisonswhere Mumia and Leonardare waiting for you.They will be travelinglight.Mumia used to own a lotof papersbut they took most of thoseaway from him.Leonardwill probably want to drag alongsome of hiscanvases.Alicewho may well beshoppingin New Delhiwill no doubt want todress up for the occasionin a sparkly shalwar kemeez.My next call is going to beto the Cubansall five of them; so stop worrying.For now, you’re my fish.I just had this long letterfrom Alice and she has begged meto put an endto her suffering.What? she said.You think these men are the only ones who sufferwhen Old Style America locks them up& throws awaythe key? I can’t tell you, she goes on,the changesthis viciousnesshas put me through,and I have had a child to raise& classes to teach& food to buyand just becauseI’m a poetit doesn’t meanI don’t have topay the mortgageor the rent.Yet all these years,nearly thirty or somethingof themI have been running aroundthe countryand the worldtrying to arouse justicefor these men.Tonsillitishasn’t stopped me.Migraine,hasn’t stopped me.Lyme diseasehasn’t stopped me.And why? Becauseknowing the countrythat I’m in,as you are destined to learnit too,I know wrongwhen I see it.If that chair you’re sitting incould speakyou would have it movedto another room.You would burn it.So, amigos,pack your things.Alice and John and Dennisare on their way.They are bringing prayers from Nilak Butler and Bill Wapepah; they are bringing sweet grass and white sagefrom Pine Ridge.I am the presidentat least until the Corporationspurchase the next election,and this is what I chooseto doon my first day.
