All fathers in Western civilization must have
a military origin. The
ruler,
governor,
yes,
he is
was the
general at one time or other.
And George Washington
won the hearts
of his country – the rough military man
with awkward
sincere
drawing-room manners.
My father;
have you ever heard me speak of him? I seldom
do. But I had a father,
and he had military origins – or my origins from
him
are military,
militant. That is, I remember him only in uniform. But of the navy,
30 years a chief petty officer,
Always away from home.
It is rough/hard for me to
speak now.
I’m not used to talking
about him.
Not used to
naming his objects/
objects
that never surrounded me.
A woodpecker with fresh bloody crest
knocks
at my mouth. Father, for the first
time I say
your name. Name rolled in thick Polish parchment scrolls,
name of Roman candle drippings when I sit at my table
alone, each night,
name of naval uniforms and name of
telegrams, name of
coming home from your aircraft carrier,
name of shiny shoes,
name of Hawaiian dolls, name
of mess spoons, name of greasy machinery, and name of
stencilled names.
Is it your blood I carry in a test tube,
my arm,
to let fall, crack, and spill on the sidewalk
in front of the men
I know,
I love,
I know, and
want? So you left my house when I was under two,
being replaced by other machinery, and
I didn’t believe you left me.
This scene: the trunk yielding treasures of
a green fountain pen, heart-shaped mirror,
amber beads, old letters with brown ink, and
the gopher snake stretched across the palm tree
in the front yard with woody trunk like monkey skins,
and a sunset through the skinny persimmon trees. You
came walking, not even a telegram or post card from
Tahiti. Love, love, through my heart like ink in
the thickest nubbed pen, black and flowing into words.
You came to me, and I at least six. Six doilies
of lace, six battleship cannon, six old beerbottles,
six thick steaks, six love letters, six clocks running
backwards, six watermelons, and six baby teeth, a six
cornered hat on six men’s heads, six lovers at once
or one lover at sixes and sevens; how I confuse
all this with my
dream
walking the tightrope bridge
with gold knots
over
the mouth of an anemone / tissue spiral lips
and holding on so that the ropes burned
as if my wrists had been tied
If George Washington
had not
been the Father
of my Country,
it is doubtful that I would ever have
found
a father. Father in my mouth, on my lips, in my
tongue, out of all my womanly fire,
Father I have left in my steel filing cabinet as a name on my birth
certificate, Father, I have left in the teeth pulled out at
dentists’ offices and thrown into their garbage cans,
Father living in my wide cheekbones and short feet,
Father in my Polish tantrums and my American speech, Father, not a
holy name, not a name I cherish but the name I bear, the name
that makes me one of a kind in any phone book because
you changed it, and nobody
but us
has it,
Father who makes me dream in the dead of night of the falling cherry
blossoms, Father who makes me know all men will leave me
if I love them,
Father who made me a maverick,
a writer
a namer,
name/father, sun/father, moon/father, bloody mars/father,
other children said, ‘My father is a doctor,’
or
‘My father gave me this camera,’
or
‘My father took me to
the movies,’
or
‘My father and I went swimming,
but
my father is coming in a letter
once a month
for a while,
and my father
sometimes came in a telegram
but
mostly
my father came to me
in sleep, my father because I dreamed in one night that I dug through the ash heap in back of the pepper tree and found a diamond shaped like a dog and my father called the dog and it came leaping over to him and he walked away out of the yard down the road with the dog jumping and yipping at his heels,
my father was not in the telephone book
in my city;
my father was not sleeping with my mother
at home;
my father did not care if I studied the
piano;
my father did not care what
I did;
and I thought my father was handsome and I loved him and I
wondered
why
he left me alone so much,
so many years
in fact, but
my father
made me what I am
a lonely woman
without a purpose, just as I was
a lonely child
without any father. I walked with words, words, and names,
names. Father was not
one of my words.
Father was not
one of my names. But now I say, George you have become my father,
in his 20th century naval uniform. George Washington, I need your
love; George, I want to call you Father, Father, my Father,
Father of my country,
that is
me. And I say the name to chant it. To sing it. To lace it around me like
weaving cloth. Like a happy child on that shining afternoon in the
palmtree sunset with her mother’s trunk yielding treasures,
I cry and
cry,
Father,
Father,
Father,
have you really come home?
Charles Simic 1938–
Poem without a Title
I say to the lead
Why did you let yourself
Be cast into a bullet?
Have you forgotten the alchemists?
Have you given up hope
Of turning into gold?
Nobody answers.
Lead. Bullet. With names
Such as these
The sleep is deep and long.
Brooms
I
Only brooms
Know the devil
Still exists
That the snow grows whiter
After a crow has flown over it
That a dark dusty corner
Is the place of dreamers and children
That a broom is also a tree
In the orchard of the poor
That a roach there
Is a mute dove.
2
Brooms appear in dreambooks
As omens of approaching death.
This is their secret life
.
In public they act like flat-chested old maids
Preaching temperance.
They are sworn enemies of lyric poetry.
In prison they accompany the jailer,
Enter cells to hear confessions.
Their short-end comes down
When you least expect it.
Left alone behind a door
Of a condemned tenement
They mutter to no one in particular
Words like virgin wind moon-eclipse
And that most sacred of all names:
Hieronymus Bosch.
3
And then of course there’s my grandmother
Sweeping the dust of the nineteenth century
Into the twentieth and my grandfather plucking
A straw out of the broom to pick his teeth.
Long winter nights.
Dawns thousand years deep.
Kitchen-windows like heads
Bandaged for toothache.
The broom beyond them sweeping
Tucking in the lucent grains of dust
Into neat pyramids
That have tombs in them
Already sacked by robbers
Once, long ago.
Haki R. Madhubuti (Don L. Lee) 1942–
But He Was Cool or: He Even Stopped for Green Lights
super-cool
ultrablack
a tan/purple
had a beautiful shade.
he had a double-natural
that wd put the sisters to shame.
his dashikis were tailor made
& his beads were imported sea shells
(from some blk/country i never heard of)
he was triple-hip.
his tikis were hand carved
out of ivory
& came express from the motherland.
he would greet u in swahili
& say good-by in yoruba.
woooooooooooo-jim he bes so cool & ill tel li gent
cool-cool is so cool he was un-cooled by other niggers’ cool
cool-cool ultracool was bop-cool/ice box cool so cool cold cool
his wine didn’t have to be cooled, him was air conditioned cool
cool-cool/real cool made me cool – now ain’t that cool
cool-cool so cool him nick-named refrigerator
cool-cool so cool
he didn’t know,
after detroit, newark, Chicago &c.,
we had to hip
cool-cool/ super-cool/ real cool
that
to be black
is
to be
very-hot.
Alta 1942–
I Never Saw a Man in a Negligee
i’m frigid when I wear see thru negligees
my almost good figure looks good half hidden,
nipples the only hard bumps on my body & men
are sposed to sigh and go ooh & rub their hands
all over the filmy thing recalling norman mailer
& raquel welch & god knows who.
it never occurred to me to dress that way for women.
we’d pull off our cotton pants & go to it. so i figured,
if women can want the Real Me, men have to too. 2 times
i wore special fucky gowns, you know the type, one look
& he turns off the football game (but they never do)
& i was so busy being dainty & smelling fresh i couldnt
hump, couldnt wiggle, couldnt sweat, couldnt scream & you know
damn well i couldnt come.
but when i romp ass in a wrinkly blue shirt smelling like printers ink
or slightly soggy slacks after playing with babies,
then the happy human of me wants lovins, & rolls around with glee
rolling up, under, over&over o whee.
I Don’t Have No Bunny Tail on My Behind
i don’t have no bunny tail on my behind.
i’m a sister of the blood taboo.
my throat’s too tight to swallow.
must be because i’m scared to death. i’m scared to live.
how do i get thru the day? the night?
guts, fella. that’s how
what are your perversions to me?
what do i care you want sadistic broads in black boots,
cigarettes up your asshole?
what do i care?
that’s our child sleeping in that blue crib
how did it feel:
that cigarette up my nose?
how did it feel?
you grimacing ‘does it hurt, baby? does it hurt?’
how did it feel to curse your pretty smile,
pray blindness strike your ice blue eyes?
how did it feel to curse: may you never know joy.
i hate your very soul.
i swore to avenge all the wasted dead, the caged wives.
what vengeance could answer our pain, our fury?
i hope i find out before i die.
in my cunt is blood & i always want it to be your blood.
i hope you bleed 5 days every month, i hope your strength drains down the toilet.
you’re afraid of me.
you laugh, you hit me.
you’re running scared, man.
our voodoo dolls are all worn out.
yes i hate you.
yes i want your cock
off.
yes i want your blood & balls to spill
like my monthly payment in blood.
yes i want you to beat off in shame,
afraid to call me.
yes i want you dead.
when i was married i prayed to be a widow.
there are still wives, they are still praying.
yes i want you to flinch when i laugh
flinch when i laugh
my teeth tearing your heart, knowing your love is poisoned,
you cannot wash clean,
knowing the earth & i will outlive you.
you are a dying breed, you & your penis guns,
your joyless fucks, you are dying,
you are dying,
the curse of every wicked witch be upon your heart.
i could not hate you more if hatred were my bones.
Nikki Giovanni 1943–
Nikki-Rosa
childhood remembrances are always a drag
if you’re Black
you always remember things like living in Woodlawn
with no inside toilet
and if you become famous or something
they never talk about how happy you were to have your mother
all to yourself and
how good the water felt when you got your bath from one of those
big tubs that folk in Chicago barbecue in
and somehow when you talk about home
it never gets across how much you
understood their feelings
as the whole family atended meetings about Hollydale
and even though you remember
your biographers never understand
your father’s pain as he sells his stock
and another dream goes
and though you’re poor it isn’t poverty that
concerns you
and though they fought a lot
it isn’t your father’s drinking that makes any difference
but only that everybody is together and you
and your sister have happy birthdays and very good christmasses
and I really hope no white person ever has cause to write about me
because they never understand Black love is Black wealth and they’ll
probably talk about my hard childhood and never understand that
all the while I was quite happy
Woman Poem
you sec, my whole life
is tied up
to unhappiness
its father cooking breakfast
and me getting fat as a hog
or having no foo
d
at all and father proving
his incompetence
again
i wish i knew how it would feel
to be free
its having a job
they won’t let you work
or no work at all
castrating me
(yes it happens to women too)
its a sex object if you’re pretty
and no love
or love and no sex if you’re fat
get back fat black woman be a mother
grandmother strong thing but not woman
gameswoman romantic woman love needer
man seeker dick eater sweat getter
fuck needing love seeking woman
its a hole in your shoe
and buying lil sis a dress
and her saying you shouldn’t
when you know
all too well – that you shouldn’t
but smiles are only something we give
to properly dressed social workers
not each other
only smiles of i know
your game sister
which isn’t really
a smile
joy is finding a pregnant roach
and squashing it
not finding someone to hold
let go get off get back don’t turn
me on you black dog
how dare you care
about me
you ain’t got no good sense
cause i ain’t shit you must be lower
than that to care
its a filthy house
with yesterday’s watermelon
and monday’s tears
cause true ladies don’t
know how to clean
its intellectual devastation
of everybody
to avoid emotional commitment
‘yeah honey i would’ve married
him but he didn’t have no degree’
its knock-kneed mini skirted
wig wearing died blond mamma’s scar
born dead my scorn your whore
rough heeled broken nailed powdered
face me
whose whole life is tied
up to unhappiness
cause its the only
for real thing
know
James Tate 1943–
The Blue Booby
The blue booby lives
on the bare rocks
of Galápagos
and fears nothing.
It is a simple life:
they live on fish,
and there are few predators.
Also, the males do not
make fools of themselves
chasing after the young
ladies. Rather,
they gather the blue
objects of the world
and construct from them
a nest – an occasional
Gaulois package,
a string of beads,
The Penguin Book of American Verse Page 47