"Having everything doesn’t mean doing everything yourself. It’s OK to ask for help."
The Last Word
i would rather my fist be made of steel
than my heel made of iron
i would rather water the earth with my tears
than lose feeling
i would rather walk
than ride the backs of workers
i would rather die fighting
than live slaving
i would rather be criticized for protest poetry
than write lines indifferent to my people
leave me to my ”propaganda”
let my songs call for Freedom
turn down my manuscripts
poem after poem
tell me i’m repetitious
the word oppression is used too much
i would rather complain
than say nothing at all
i hope my last words
call for revolution
i would rather my pen
be at least as mighty as the sword
AMINA BARAKA
We Speak Your Names
by Pearl Cleage
Because we are free women,
born of free women,
who are born of free women,
back as far as time begins,
we celebrate your freedom.
Because we are wise women,
born of wise women,
who are born of wise women,
we celebrate your wisdom.
Because we are strong women,
born of strong women,
who are born of strong women,
we celebrate your strength.
Because we are magical women,
born of magical women,
who are born of magical women,
we celebrate your magic.
My sisters, we are gathered here to speak your
names.
We are here because we are your daughters
as surely as if you had conceived us, nurtured us,
carried us in your wombs, and then sent us out
into the world to make our mark
and see what we see, and be what we be, but better,
truer, deeper
because of the shining example of your own
incandescent lives.
We are here to speak your names
because we have enough sense to know
that we did not spring full blown from the
forehead of Zeus,
or arrive on the scene like Topsy, our sister once
removed, who somehow just growed.
We know that we are walking in footprints made
deep by the confident strides
of women who parted the air before them like the
forces of nature that you are.
We are here to speak your names
because you taught us that the search is always for
the truth
and that when people show us who they are, we
should believe them.
We are here because you taught us
that sisterspeak can continue to be our native
tongue,
no matter how many languages we learn as we
move about as citizens of the world
and of the ever-evolving universe.
We are here to speak your names
because of the way you made for us.
Because of the prayers you prayed for us.
We are the ones you conjured up, hoping we
would have strength enough,
and discipline enough, and talent enough, and
nerve enough
to step into the light when it turned in our
direction, and just smile awhile.
We are the ones you hoped would make you
proud
because all of our hard work
makes all of yours part of something better, truer,
deeper.
Something that lights the way ahead like a lamp
unto our feet,
as steady as the unforgettable beat of our collective
heart.
We speak your names.
We speak your names.
Click here for part 2.
Read more: http://www.oprah.com/entertainment/Excerpt-from-We-Speak-Your-Names-by-Pearl-Cleage#ixzz2UQ2yOrts
GDL Presents Pearl Cleage (Part 1) (by SuperSmileyt)
Source: Uploaded by user via Katherine on Pinterest
»a small bouquet by frank o’hara« by natalie czech
natalie czech uses calligrams in an attempt to confront and intertwine text and image. she reverses the process established for hidden poems of inscribing a poem into an existing text structure. the source material is not a pre-existing text fragment, but a picture poem. natalie czech invited seven writers - andrew berardini, julien bismuth, maia gianakos, leslie-ann murray, mick peter, nathania rubin and alix rule - to each write a text that contains the same calligram by the american poet, frank o’hara (1926 - 66). the texts were precisely composed around the calligram, so as to embed it in their very fabric, and thus dissolve its iconicity. natalie czech presents these texts as photographs of book pages and re-presents the calligram by marking its component words in the photographs.
Another Baraka poem:
WHYS (Nobody Knows
The Trouble I Seen)
Traditional
If you ever find
yourself, some where
lost and surrounded
by enemies
who won’t let you
speak in your own language
who destroy your statues
& instruments, who ban
your omm bomm ba boom
then you are in trouble
deep trouble
they ban your
own boom ba boom
you in deep deep
trouble
humph!
probably take you several hundred years
to get
out!
Split
I see my mother at thirteen
in a village so small,
it’s never given a name.
Monsoon season drying up—
steam lifting in full-bodied waves.
She chops corn for the hogs,
her hair dipping to the small of her back
as if dipped in black
and polished to a shine.
She wears a side-part
that splits her hair
into two uneven planes.
They come to watch her,
Americans, Marines, just boys,
eighteen or nineteen.
With scissor-fingers,
they snip the air,
repeat cut,
point at their helmets
and then at her hair.
All they want is a small lock.
What does she say
to her mother
to make her so afraid?
Days later
she will be sent away
to the city for safekeeping.
She will return home
only once to be given away
to my father.
Her hair
was dark, washed,
and uncut.
-Cathy Linh Che
Used by permission.
Cathy Linh Che is a Vietnamese American poet from Los Angeles, CA. Her first book of poems, winner the 2012 Kundiman Poetry Prize, is forthcoming from Alice James Books in 2014. She has received fellowships from Poets & Writers, The Fine Arts Work Center at Provincetown, Hedgebrook, and Poets House. She is also co-editing an anthology of poetry and prose from the children of the Vietnam War called Inheriting the War.
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But you made every
delicate, elegant wrist
& glistening ankle.
But you made them
beautiful
in braided rope
& dime store gold.
But you made every
necklace clasp.
But you made them
caress the nape
like an errant wind
after a shower.
But you made every
eyelash erotic. Every
single strand of hair
soft.
But you made them
from dust & bone.
Made every glorious
singing thigh. Every
button nose.
But you made them
with holes—
wide open
to the faintest hints
of salt
in a sea breeze, salt
in the sweaty mouth
of a navel, salt
in the blood, sweet
in every wrong way.
Source: Poetry (November 2011).
“Mary, called Magdalene, from whom seven devils had been cast out” —Luke 8:2.
The first was that I was very busy.
The second — I was different from you: whatever happened to you could
not happen to me, not like that.
The third — I worried.
The fourth — envy, disguised as compassion.
The fifth was that I refused to consider the quality of life of the aphid,
The aphid disgusted me. But I couldn’t stop thinking about it.
The mosquito too — its face. And the ant — its bifurcated body.
Ok the first was that I was so busy.
The second that I might make the wrong choice,
because I had decided to take that plane that day,
that flight, before noon, so as to arrive early
and, I shouldn’t have wanted that.
The third was that if I walked past the certain place on the street
the house would blow up.
The fourth was that I was made of guts and blood with a thin layer
of skin lightly thrown over the whole thing.
The fifth was that the dead seemed more alive to me than the living
The sixth — if I touched my right arm I had to touch my left arm, and if I
touched the left arm a little harder than I’d first touched the right then I
had
to retouch the left and then touch the right again so it would be even.
The seventh — I knew I was breathing the expelled breath of everything that
was alive and I couldn’t stand it,
I wanted a sieve, a mask, a, I hate this word — cheesecloth —
to breath through that would trap it — whatever was inside everyone else that
entered me when I breathed in
No. That was the first one.
The second was that I was so busy. I had no time. How had this happened?
How had our lives gotten like this?
The third was that I couldn’t eat food if I really saw it — distinct, separate
from me in a bowl or on a plate.
Ok. The first was that I could never get to the end of the list.
The second was that the laundry was never finally done.
The third was that no one knew me, although they thought they did.
And that if people thought of me as little as I thought of them then what was
love?
The fourth was I didn’t belong to anyone. I wouldn’t allow myself to belong
to anyone.
The fifth was that I knew none of us could ever know what we didn’t know.
The sixth was that I projected onto others what I myself was feeling.
The seventh was the way my mother looked when she was dying—her mouth wrenched into an O so as to take in as much air… The sound she made — the gurgling sound — so loud we had to speak louder to hear each other over it.
And that I couldn’t stop hearing it—years later—
grocery shopping, crossing the street —
No, not the sound — it was her body’s hunger
finally evident.
—what our mother had hidden all her life.
For months I dreamt of knucklebones and roots,
the slabs of sidewalk pushed up like crooked teeth by what grew underneath.
The underneath —that was the first devil.
It was always with me.
And that I didn’t think you — if I told you — would understand any of this —
New York poet laureate Marie Howe reads her poem “Magdalene—The Seven Devils by Marie Howe” during an interview with Krista Tippett. This poem is included in On Being’s show “The Poetry of Ordinary Time.”
Copyright © 2008 by Marie Howe. Used with the permission of the author.
