Literary Fiction by People of Color discussion

....National Poetry Month.

Here’s one from the current United States Poet Laureate, Tracy K. Smith, with a video to follow.

Solstice -

They're gassing geese outside of JFK.
Tehran will likely fill up soon with blood
The Times is getting smaller day by day.

We've learned to back away from all we say
And, more or less, agree with what we should.
Whole flocks are being gassed near JFK.

So much of what we're asked is to obey—
A reflex we'd abandon if we could.
The Times reported 19 dead today.

They're going to make the opposition pay.
(If you're sympathetic, knock on wood.)
The geese were terrorizing JFK.

Remember how they taught you once to pray?
Eyes closed, on your knees, to any god?
Sometimes, small minds seem to take the day.

Election fraud. A migratory plague.
Less and less surprises us as odd.
We dislike what they did at JFK.
Our time is brief. We dwindle by the day.

https://www.pw.org/content/examining_...

Poetry is not a luxury. It is a vital necessity of our existence.”
—AUDRE LORDE

Yes, April is National Poetry month.

Thanks for the reminder.

While I have not always kept to my poetry reading schedule, I am glad to see that technology has made it easier for more poets to have their voices heard.

Beverly wrote: "While I have not always kept to my poetry reading schedule, I am glad to see that technology has made it easier for more poets to have their voices heard..."

I agree! Although I wonder how the easy internet access to poetry has affected the sale of books of poetry.

Poetry seems to be a forgotten art amongst my generation. Perhaps rap is now our poetry. I just know I’ll never abandon it. I’ve been writing poetry since I learned to write it’s so cathartic...Thank you for sharing this read.

Rap is indeed poetry, and a highly accessible form.

I subscribe to Poem-a-Day and below is today's poem by Tarfia Faizullah:

Poem Full of Worry Ending of My Birth

I worry that my friends
will misunderstand my silence

as a lack of love, or interest, instead
of a tent city built for my own mind,

I worry I can no longer pretend
enough to get through another

year of pretending I know
that I understand time, though

I can see my own hands; sometimes,
I worry over how to dress in a world

where a white woman wearing
a scarf over her head is assumed

to be cold, whereas with my head
cloaked, I am an immediate symbol

of a war folks have been fighting
eons-deep before I was born, a meteor.

In the email, Faizullah includes the following "about the poem" commentary.

“I suspect that worrying is a large and ongoing part of the human experience, but I also try to pretend like I don’t do it. I suppose this is a poem in which I admit that I do; it turns out that what I worry over the most is being misunderstood. I’m also considering proximity, between our physical bodies and the symbols others decide they are, between history and our inheritance of it; I’m trying to complicate and expand how we are seen versus how we see ourselves. I like the idea of a speaker who picks her own symbols, in this case, a meteor: a body from outer space that becomes more and more incandescent, until her arrival into the earth’s atmosphere is announced by a streak of light.”

Kevin Young's Brown, published tomorrow, explores myriad manifestations and shades of brown in American life, including the poet's own experiences from his black boyhood in Kansas. In our moment, when high school students are speaking out and attempting to make history, it's worth remembering, as Young does here, how the subject of American History was served to him and his Midwestern classmates only a generation ago, and by whom.

History

Pillar of my high school, Mr. W
made class by seven a.m., filling
his blackboards with white, using notes

decades old & denture yellow.
I heard he could write any way
you wanted—backward, forward,

left hand or right, even
mirrored. For him History
was what each night

he erased.
He never missed a day. Snow
days drove the man insane—



regular as mail, he said if a letter could reach
the school, so could we, trudging
through bitterest cold to his overwarm room.

Never let kids eat, or talk in class, or take
down just what he wrote on the board—
Listen to what I'm telling you, he'd say,

synthesize, don't record. Some days he'd launch
into an anecdote about the War or
what's wrong with kids today—

you're not moral or immoral, just
amoral. Even his jokes grown older
than he was, the trap door he wished he owned



would send kids crashing into spikes
simply for walking during class
without a pass. At breaks he began to bend

to pick up stray trash. He despised the boom
boom boom of the radios black kids wore,
he swore, or tugged his eyes at the corners

to imitate a Chinaman on the rail.
Ah, so. Brilliant is what everyone
dubbed him, but by the time we got there

Mr. W had started to slip,
missing most of the May before—
rumors went round



our school had tried stopping
his return—Take the year off,
you earned it—even he

told us that—but here he was,
stonewalling, aged twenty years
over the summer, back like MacArthur

or the Terminator to teach us
all. Some seniors from last year's class
brought him steel tension balls

that September—tinny things
he clutched in his palm & clanked past
each other like cymbals



tolling stress. We
stayed silent. Fifty pounds
shed over the summer, his wrists jutted out

from the frayed cuffs
of his Crayola cardigans.
He'd turn & tune

those chiming spheres like the globe
his classroom never had—
his walls held only Old Glory

& a fading photo of the flag
raised at Iwo Jima. Mr. W let us know
he never got to fight in the War



more often as the year wore
away with his sweater's elbows,
till his yellow shirt shone

through like yolk. That year
the Depression & World
War took all winter

& knowing time was short, his own,
Mr. W spent nights transcribing
to transparencies words

water could wipe away,
numbering each palimpsest to match
his crumbling notes. Just in case,



he'd say, above the overhead
projector's buzz—you could manage
without me. He never

could forget a past
only we would remember—
his teacher telling him at graduation

You know you're only seventeen
& who knows how long this Pacific
Theater might last—They have this new

GI Bill. Get some college first,
Wayne, his name all alliteration,
a tone poem. How



could he know
we'd drop the bomb
& end it all? He tried serving

later, even went
to enlist in Korea but was foiled
by a bad back & luck. I tried,

he'd plead the air. How to soothe
a man who woke his whole life
at five & could silence kids

not his own? Who once
drove 45 on the highway he told us
cause Nixon asked



his fellow Americans to, counting
each unpatriotic car that passed him
along the way? Like history he saved

& scored the immeasurable—
with years-worth of sick days
hoarded & never spent, illness

came to fetch him
from the only other home he knew.
Wearing black now, pointing out

where other kids once sat long before
we were born—future
governors, a crook or two—



each chair a ghost. You're my kids,
he'd tell us, we built or broke
his heart. Next day

he was gone. We never did make it
to Vietnam—rest
of the year in silence we took down

the words he'd written
projected on the wall
like any man's promises to himself.

The latter half of the twentieth century
felt a bit too cold, winter
lingered too long—Mr. W's words,



unchanged, awaited
us coloreds & women libbers
half-hoping for him

to return—for the world not to be
as cruel as we'd learned.
We spent the Sixties

minus Malcolm X, or Watts,
barely a March on Washington—
all April & much

of May we waited for Woodstock
& answers & assassinations
that would never come



among the steady hum
& faint bright
of flickering fluorescent lights.

Just a second while I get this speck of dust out if my eye ....

Whoa! That’s wonderful! Thank you for posting that.

I read a review of Migritude by Shailja Patel, this morning and was stunned, and thought other members here would appreciate it, too.

Here's the first quote, retyped here:

We overdress, we migrants.
We care too much how we
look to you.
We get it wrong.
We ought to look like we
don't give a fuck.
We show up ridiculously groomed,
bearing elaborate gifts.
We are too formally grateful.


We cringe in silent shame for you when you don't offer
food or drink.
Eat before us without sharing.
Serve yourselves first.
Insult us without knowing.

Two white Americans said to me, when I shared my
doughnut with them:

We've never seen anyone cut a doughnut into three pieces.

We calibrate hunger precisely.
Define enough differently from you.
Enough is what's available,
shared between everyone present.
We are incapable of saying,
as you can so easily:

Sorry, there's not enough for you.

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

That's incredible, Carol. Thank you for sharing.

Lata wrote: "That's incredible, Carol. Thank you for sharing."

You're welcome, Lata. I'm still thinking about it .....

Really enjoying or rather becoming awakened to poetry with all these brilliant posts and poems. We need more Aprils!!

Very nice, Carol. Thanks!

Jean wrote: "Very nice, Carol. Thanks!"

You’re very welcome, Jean!

Carol wrote: "I read a review of Migritude by Shailja Patel, this morning and was stunned, and thought other members here would appreciate it, too.

Here's the first quote, retype..."

Wow - thanks for sharing.

That was powerful!

Beverly wrote: "Carol wrote: "I read a review of Migritude by Shailja Patel, this morning and was stunned, and thought other members here would appreciate it, too.

Here's the first..."

I’m heartened to read poetry that’s about something other than love and recovery from heartbreak. Not that those topics aren’t important, but this felt so fresh, pertinent, spot-on. I’m glad you felt so , too.

Enough is what's available,

Thank you so much, Carol. That poem is perfect and moving. I saw it last night and it's been swirling around in my head and heart since.

It made me think about other words defined differently. I'd like to nominate the word "need."

Ella wrote: "Enough is what's available,

Thank you so much, Carol. That poem is perfect and moving. I saw it last night and it's been swirling around in my head and heart since.

It made me think about other ..."

Ella, you remind me of a Gandhi quote I first read here a couple of years back. “Earth provides enough to satisfy every man’s needs, but not every man’s greed.”

That's a great quote, Carol.

I do think some people feel they "need" many things that those of us who have ever lived in poverty see more as luxuries. People always get upset with my refrigerator (it's never very stocked) but I'm sure that's because I still carry the lessons of poverty every time I shop for anything. I have a hard time allowing myself to buy something if I already own a working version. I buy a loaf of bread and split it - freezing half so it doesn't go bad, etc. I can afford food, but the guilt I feel if it is wasted is overwhelming. I remember being hungry. I have been arguing with myself for years about replacing my 1995 Honda. Others say I "need" to, but it's running, and I can't get myself to make the jump - especially because I'm not even sure I "need" a car at all. (though Baltimore public transport is horrific and I can admit, I want a car.)

OK - Another Tracy K Smith post.

Tracy K. Smith, the Poet Laureate of the United States, is the author, most recently, of the collection Wade In the Water and the memoir Ordinary Light. In the passage below, she remembers the comfort, along with the subtleties of language, that she absorbed at her mother's side as a young girl; and, beneath the prose, a poem from her new collection evokes the mother-daughter dance in her current life, a generation later.
from Ordinary Light: A Memoir
When the air force sent our father out of town on temporary duty, I'd crawl into bed at night beside my mother. My brothers and sisters had done the same thing until they got too big to do so, by which time I was just starting to toddle around underfoot. Sometimes, I'd wonder if my mother had had me so long after she'd given birth to the others simply because she'd wanted another baby around the house, someone to cuddle up with and coo to and carry around like a living doll. When she was mine like that, I'd sit up against the pillows beside her, wanting to chat and giggle, zooming through the details of my afternoon and my wishes for the days and weeks ahead. Or I'd lie beside her and listen while she talked on the phone with one of her sisters back East—conversations during which her voice took on a different timbre, where she'd suck her teeth or let out a quick guttural hmph or burst into throaty laughter at a comment that would have struck me as nonsense. When that other voice coaxed her to travel the distance back to the old days down South, she'd let slip a phrase like "ain't that a blip," and then, anticipating my reproach, cast me a look meant to say, Don't worry; I know ain't isn't a word. After she hung up, if I asked, she'd give me enough of a synopsis so that I could understand some of what they'd been talking about, even if my grasp of who was who in her enormous family remained loose. And then she'd lead me in a bedtime prayer for all of them in her great big raucous clan. Perhaps she wanted to make sure I learned all of their names, or perhaps she would have done so silently anyway: Please bless Aunt Evelyn, Aunt Ursula, Aunt Gladys, and Aunt Lucille and Aunt June and on and on until, eventually, their names became a kind of song.


***
4 1/2

Morning finds her curled like a prawn
Around a stuffed blue Pegasus, or the smallest
Prawn-pink lion. Or else she's barging
Into my room, and leaning in close so
It's her hair I wake to—that coarse, dark
Heaven of knots and purple fluff. And
She's hungry, but first she has to pee—
"Pee! Pee!" she sings, hopping in place, trying
To staunch off the wild ravenous river
She carries, until I'm awake for real, saying
"Go! Go! Hurry before you wet the floor!"
And then she tries, and succeeds, or else stands
Bereft, relieved, as a pool trickles out
Around her feet. She's like an island
Made of rock, with one lone tree at the top
Of the only mountain. She's like the sole
Incongruous goat tethered to the tree,
Smiling almost as you approach, scraping
The ground with its horns, and then—
Lickety split—lurching hard, daring
The rope to snap. She's hungry. She wants
"Bread, toasted, with no skin." And enough butter
To write her name in. Or a bowl of cereal ("But
Not the noisy kind"). She wants a movie, or maybe
Just the tussle of her will against mine,
That scrape and crack. Horn on rock. Rope
Relenting one fiber at a time. "I want that," she says,
Punctuating what she just said she wanted.

This one blew me away.

Upon Reading That Eric Dolphy Transcribed Even the Calls of Certain Species of Birds,
BY JOHN MURILLO

I think first of two sparrows I met when walking home,
late night years ago, in another city, not unlike this — the one

bird frantic, attacking I thought, the way she swooped
down, circled my head, and flailed her wings in my face;

how she seemed to scream each time I swung; how she
dashed back and forth between me and a blood-red Corolla

parked near the opposite curb; how, finally, I understood:
I spied another bird, also calling, its foot inexplicably

caught in the car’s closed door, beating its whole bird
body against it. Trying, it appeared, to bang himself free.

And who knows how long he’d been there, wailing. Who
knows — he and the other I mistook, at first, for a bat.

They called to me — something between squawk and chirp,
something between song and prayer — to do something,

anything. And, like any good god, I disappeared. Not
indifferent, exactly. But with things to do. And, most likely,

on my way home from another heartbreak. Call it 1997,
and say I’m several thousand miles from home. By which

I mean those were the days I made of everyone a love song.
By which I mean I was lonely and unrequited. But that’s

not quite it either. Truth is, I did manage to find a few
to love me, but couldn’t always love them back. The Rasta

law professor. The firefighter’s wife. The burlesque dancer
whose daughter blackened drawings with ms to mean

the sky was full of birds the day her daddy died. I think
his widow said he drowned one morning on a fishing trip.

Anyway, I’m digressing. But if you asked that night — 
did I mention it was night? — why I didn’t even try

to jimmy the lock to spring the sparrow, I couldn’t say,
truthfully, that it had anything to do with envy, with wanting

a woman to plead as deeply for me as these sparrows did,
one for the other. No. I’d have said something, instead,

about the neighborhood itself, the car thief shot a block
and a half east the week before. Or about the men

I came across nights prior, sweat-slicked and shirtless,
grappling in the middle of the street, the larger one’s chest

pressed to the back of the smaller, bruised and bleeding
both. I know you thought this was about birds,

but stay with me. I left them both in the street — 
the same street where I’d leave the sparrows — the men

embracing and, for all one knows (especially one not
from around there), they could have been lovers — 

the one whispering an old, old tune into the ear
of the other — Baby, baby, don’t leave me this way. I left

the men where I’d leave the sparrows and their song.
And as I walked away, I heard one of the men call to me,

please or help or brother or some such. And I didn’t break
stride, not one bit. It’s how I’ve learned to save myself.

Let me try this another way. Call it 1977. And say
I’m back west, South Central Los Angeles. My mother

and father at it again. But this time in the street,
broad daylight, and all the neighbors watching. One,

I think his name was Sonny, runs out from his duplex
to pull my father off. You see where I’m going with this?

My mother crying out, fragile as a sparrow. Sonny
fighting my father, fragile as a sparrow. And me,

years later, trying to get it all down. As much for you — 
I’m saying — as for me. Sonny catches a left, lies flat

on his back, blood starting to pool and his own
wife wailing. My mother wailing, and traffic backed,

now, half a block. Horns, whistles, and soon sirens.
1977. Summer. And all the trees full of birds. Hundreds,

I swear. And since I’m the one writing it, I’ll tell you
they were crying. Which brings me back to Dolphy

and his transcribing. The jazzman, I think, wanted only
to get it down pure. To get it down exact — the animal

racking itself against a car’s steel door, the animals
in the trees reporting, the animals we make of ourselves

and one another. Stay with me now. Don’t leave me.
Days after the dustup, my parents took me to the park.

And in this park was a pond, and in this pond were birds.
Not sparrows, but swans. And my father spread a blanket

and brought from a basket some apples and a paring knife.
Summertime. My mother wore sunglasses. And long sleeves.

My father, now sober, cursed himself for leaving the radio.
But my mother forgave him, and said, as she caressed

the back of his hand, that we could just listen to the swans.
And we listened. And I watched. Two birds coupling,

one beating its wings as it mounted the other. Summer,
1977. I listened. And watched. When my parents made love

late into that night, I covered my ears in the next room,
scanning the encyclopedia for swans. It meant nothing to me — 

then, at least — but did you know the collective noun
for swans is a lamentation? And is a lamentation not

its own species of song? What a woman wails, punch drunk
in the street? Or what a widow might sing, learning her man

was drowned by swans? A lamentation of them? Imagine
the capsized boat, the panicked man, struck about the eyes,

nose, and mouth each time he comes up for air. Imagine
the birds coasting away and the waters suddenly calm.

Either trumpet swans or mutes. The dead man’s wife
running for help, crying to any who’d listen. A lamentation.

And a city busy saving itself. I’m digressing, sure. But
did you know that to digress means to stray from the flock?

When I left my parents’ house, I never looked back. By which
I mean I made like a god and disappeared. As when I left

the sparrows. And the copulating swans. As when someday
I’ll leave this city. Its every flailing, its every animal song.

Source: Poetry (February 2016)

The son of an African-American father and a Mexican mother, poet and playwright John Murillo grew up in Los Angeles. He was educated at Howard University and New York University, where he earned an MFA. Murillo makes use of both formal and free verse as he engages themes of family history and personal identity. In a Q&A with the Poetry Society of America, Murillo states, “I write, first of all, in the tradition of the witness.”

@wilhelmina, thanks so much for sharing this. I was unfamiliar with Murillo and his work, and am so glad to have had an opportunity to read this and learn about him.

Today, a lesson in female geography—or, perhaps, a poet's self-portrait.

From Sandra Cusneroes

By Way of Explanation

There is—
I suppose—
a bit of
Madagascar
in me
I never mention.

And somehow
Amazons
have escaped
your rapt
attention.

The nose
is strictly
Egypt
for your
information.

The heart
a cruel
white circle—
pure Bengali.

Here are the knees
you claim are yours—
devout Moroccans.

The breasts
to your surprise,
Gauguin's Papeete.

Pale moon of belly—
Andalusian!

The hands—
twin comedies
from Pago Pago.

The eyes—
bituminous
Tierra del Fuego.

Odd womb.
Embalmed.
Quintana Roo.

11 Spoken Word Poets Beyoncé Should Feature on Her Next Visual Album

Nobody knows when Beyoncé might drop another surprise visual album—they just have to descend fully-formed from the sky—but we’d love to see her spread the love around. Here are eleven sharp, brilliant, and socially conscious spoken-word poets who deserve to be 800 percent more well-known.

https://electricliterature.com/11-spo...

Has links of the poets reading their work.

Enjoy!

Thank you, Beverly. Amazing!