by Pamela Sneed
and Forest Whitaker in the film The Last King of Scotland, when he played him.
And to see it is again
at rallies, at protests, they show the coat hangers and crude instruments
women were forced to use in back alley abortions
We say never again but taking away women’s choice
and Planned Parenthood, it is again.
Today started out in an argument with someone
who didn’t understand why I mentioned race so much
in my new book
and that white man is not the first/a Black woman
asked too.
I wanted to scream HELLO haven’t you seen the news
Didn’t you see what happened to Stephon Clark
unarmed and shot in the back six times by police
And who even cares what happens to women
Black lesbians, lesbians of color
There’s no public outcry.
A student once wrote to me in an academic paper
that a parent forced her to stop playing sports
because they said sports made her more of a dyke
It killed my student inside because she was an athlete
So the white guy I argued with about my book
said he was just giving me some good advice
from his experience as an empath
I said I don’t need your advice
I have reasons for talking about race and gender in the interpersonal
He said he was just trying to help me.
I’ll offer this nonsequitur
Winnie Mandela died a few years ago
She had great impact on me
I read she was nobility
But then the difference between her and how Princess Diana was treated
Everyone accepted and loved Diana’s silent/passive status
She was allowed to be gorgeous
No one ever associated her with that colonial stain
There are moments in the recent Winnie Mandela documentary
that stand out to me
where she buried her face in her hands and screamed out
I’ve been betrayed
the other moment was when she said she was
the only ANC member brought to TRC
and made to testify
Nelson Mandela forgave a nation
but he could never forgive her.
What was done to Winnie is done to other Black women
and working artists
Black women fighting to give language/resistance
but it only matters when a celebrity says or does it.
At Cape Coast Castle in Ghana after you’ve passed
The Door of No Return
there is a plaque donated to the Castle by Black tribal elders
It reads:
May we never sell ourselves into slavery again
But it is Again.
UNTITLED
Say what you want about my mother/I know
her cruelty knew no bounds
neglect
never a warm hug
kind word
every year when school came/fall
I looked at the flyers of back-to-school clothes
Nothing
I wore rags/hand-me-downs
As soon as I worked she made me pay rent
and that was the message engraved into me
instead of being taught responsibility
I was taught I owed
her rent
the ground I stood on and had no rights
My father’s neglect
The patches put over his eyes
not to see
never a book
nothing
She suffered from mental illness
was selfish
Through blinds
Through stories I get glimpses
Say what you want but she is the greatest fighter
She is going now
She cobbles out a life from the women she watches on housewives shows
Their competition
Her neighbor buys a wreath
My mother buys a bigger one
She tells my father when I visit
Strike up the barbeque
She buys corn
pretends it’s a party
I see she has lost weight this visit
the depression she believes there is a man coming
to destroy things
and there are bugs
She constantly buys poison
I know I can’t talk to her about depression/the drugs
So I say as gently as I can
Keep your spirits up/then you will gain back the weight
On the morning I am leaving
She dresses up in nice clothes
And a pair of coral earrings I gave her
She said she’d been skipping meals
But on the morning before I left
perhaps just as a child to show me
She piled her plate full of scrambled eggs with ketchup
and she ate.
RUTH VICK
I was reticent about posting about my
first mother’s death on FB
We weren’t close
and you know the attention-seeking
nature of it all
But then I felt less bad
when somebody posted about their
missing pet
The condolences concerns
were far reaching
And then I thought another Black woman
died today in agony
Poor Black and alone
My aunt said the wake was pathetic
There was no one there
Said she left after 5 or 10 minutes
Her brother’s first wife
My adoptive mom
My father called me to say she was
Being buried an hour before I went on stage
He needed someone to talk to
I think they said she was cremated
I was surprised I felt as much as I did
Given her life-long absence
I know now in retrospect she was fleeing
for her life
from abuse
She tried to take me
but that failed
If you see your father, she said
Don’t go near him
But I was four and must have
missed him so bad
When I saw the car I screamed Daddy
and ran to him
Get in, he said
and we drove away after he’d
chased her into the house
And said I’m taking her/I’m
taking your daughter away.
My father remarried
and his new wife forbade me
from seeing her
I was six
I know though she was sick with many
things for a long time
I know she adopted another daughter
to replace me
But I know I was part of my first mother’s agony
on her death bed
I know I was that pain aching her bones
Her stomach her head
I was that baby ghost
I was that beloved
I know somewhere she blamed herself
It’s always the woman’s fault
My father was a monster I know
But he was the parent I knew
I didn’t ask for condolences on FB
I asked people instead to say her name
Ruth Vick.
THERE IS ME/THERE IS MY MOTHER
It is courageous/
I am doing that thing now my mother/stepmother could not do.
She tried.
She practiced.
I will never forget the blue suitcase/a square that looked
almost like an attaché case/only larger
It was always the same song and dance routine
whenever she fought wi
th my father
She’d pull the blue suitcase out of her closet
She’d pack the case
Leaving it to sit by the door
She’d scream to my father, I’m leaving you
and then the bullet
I’m also taking your daughter
You’re coming with me right?
I really had no choice
I knew she wouldn’t leave
and I’d be stuck with her wrath
I wanted her to go
I wanted to stay with my father but I couldn’t say that
My mother tried but never made it further than the stairwell
Maybe once she made it down the stairs and
he dragged her back
Call the police, she commanded to my six-year-old self
Maybe once or twice she made it down to the parking lot
and into their car/the emerald green Impala
Maybe he clung to the side of the car door and threatened
As Toni Morrison once described in Beloved
Besides the main character Sethe
There was a girl so traumatized by her sister’s ghost
A baby whose throat was slit by her mother
She could never get past the yard
I imagine how many slaves tried/as opposed to got away
How many made it down to the garden or potato patch
With thoughts and sights on freedom but turned back for fear/
How many as I have got trapped, could never get their foot loose.
My mother practiced but could never escape.
I see the end results/a depression that can’t be overcome.
Mental illness left untreated
That eats away her brain.
She believes there are bugs
and a man who comes to the house and steals from her
She buys poison and puts it down daily
The worst part is that through abuse she’s been made into
a man’s raggedy doll
So I am doing now what my mother could not do
Though it’s late
Though I should have done it long ago
Moving away from abuse
Emptying
Going back to the beginning
It’s frightening to start over
Reshape my own core
What I do have
What my mother and I share is an
Indomitable spirit
Just when you think it’s impossible/an obstacle can’t be overcome
There is me/there is my mother
As in a medical drama when you think the patient
has lost too much blood
Suffered too many wounds
There is me/there is my mother
It’s like an action drama
Where the hero fleeing a villain
Clings for life from a rooftop
Awaiting rescue/there is me/there is my mother.
MYSTI
My mother’s cat Mysti
Spelled M Y S T I
Doesn’t just walk/she strides
black cat/healthy fur/shiny coat looks like bat girl
It isn’t incidental, she is Black, a girl
The great survivor in my parent’s lineage of pets
She although six years old never stops playing and is my mother’s
constant sidekick
like me once but an involuntary one in card games and watching TV
yes this cat strides confident
has never known war or brutality
can’t and doesn’t ingest as humans do the daily injustices
another unarmed Black boy shot twenty times by police
Mysti doesn’t know the violation of girls
Hasn’t had her fur touched in peculiar ways
In fact I was surprised my parents picked her
Given their insanity, racism, and superstition
But she has brought my family so much joy and for that
I love her
Love that she tilts her head at times when you talk as if she’s trying to listen
And comprehend
Sometimes when I visit my father will say to her, “Get in your bed”
And she lays down on a soft spot in my luggage
That she finds a piece of red yarn and drops it at my feet
Inviting me to play
Something I thought only dogs did
That when you are alone and pondering she reaches her paw out
To let you know she is there
That she lays beside me quietly when I make collages
And when I finish she sits squarely in the middle
Once when I was leaving
She was upset and she raced up and down a hallway
From my room to the room where the front door is
And I saw her tiny bat ears peeking above the step
She is my mother’s warrior against all
The pawn that she threatens my father with
If I leave I’m taking my cat
She knows that’s the dagger
I suppose the battle in old age is loneliness
She and the cat miss me
My mother, an artist, has started doing large scale puzzles.
They always worked in the basement of the house
When I call my mother says, “Guess what?”
“Me and Mysti are now doing puzzles in your room”
I start to laugh
I thought about visual artists, how they use the phrase
Activating the space
I imagine Mysti and my mother activating the space
of my family bedroom
Keeping me there in spirit
Bringing me home.
SIDEWALK RAGE
I’m not sure why but it’s taken forever for me to write this poem
I hope to remember all the pieces
But I’ve developed a new condition
One that’s come from age/I can no longer take the shit I once did
And there’s a part of my condition that comes from gentrification
And cell phone use
Living amidst tech zombies
And their general fear and hatred of POC
My condition is called sidewalk rage
Kind of like road rage
But comes when walking down the street and there’s some millennial
Who has just moved into the neighborhood
who thinks it’s theirs
a white girl who in broad daylight feels a dark presence
walking behind her
It’s me/minding my own business and she gets so panicked and paralyzed
she stops walking and holds her purse
with my new condition I yell
If you don’t want to live around Black people get the fuck out of the neighborhood!
She is shocked.
Or in another scenario
You see random white women on their phones
Standing in a doorway completely blocking it
Because you know only they exist
And you’re like HELLO, HELLO
Yes, all these years I thought I was still a small town girl and then suddenly
with my sidewalk rage, I’m a bonafide New Yorker
like the ones you’ve seen on bicycles banging on the hood
of a taxi cab that tries to cut them off
My person with sidewalk rage is a character of their own
Where once I was silent
Recently I confronted a man who was blocking my path/crossing the street
He had his head down and almost rammed into me
I sucked my teeth loud and shouted HELLO, HELLO, MOVE
He was so angry I’d confronted him, he yelled, Suck my dick
I started to yell something profane but I stopped myself
And then I was in the subway/going downstairs and a white man rammed into me
On the phone
My sidewalk rage kicked in and thought fo
r a second to sneak behind him
And kick him down the stairs
That’s my sidewalk rage/I stopped myself.
I don’t know who this person is in me who would never speak up for herself
Was always soft and vulnerable
Who’s been at various times pickpocketed, blasphemed,
body-slammed, ransacked, ridiculed
Who now has a voice
Who now lets rage show
Who couldn’t express herself
Has now become all angles and sharp edges.
YOU CAN’T GET OUT FROM UNDER
I may attach this to another poem and
I may not
This may stand on its own
But these are my jokes
If you happen to go outside and see some lady/some bitch
on the street/50-ish
coat open/it’s under 20 degrees
don’t yell, Are you fucking crazy?
Leave her alone, she’s in menopause.
Zero degrees/hot flash
And that shit feels good
Also, if you’re on a bus or a train and you
really need to sit down/find a Black man
A big Black man/next to him
the seat is always empty
Next to big Black women too.
Sometimes on a crowded bus to Boston
The seat next to me is completely empty
And just so you know I’m in a rage about crudité
FUCK crudité
Who eats crudité except for starving first-year college students
at a book party
Really what middle-aged person do you know is gonna chew hard
on a carrot stick at a party
It’s not a barn.
You’re not a sheep or some shit.
I mean, what about sensitivity to people with fake-ass teeth
I looked over recently at an event and saw some Brussel sprouts
on a platter of crudité at a party
Raw ass/hard ass Brussel sprouts
No one is going to eat raw Brussel sprouts at a party.
To my point, no one touched them.
And politics has ruined my ability to enjoy Christmas or escape.
I love Christmas.
I watched Frosty the Snowman with my mother over the holiday
But then politics came in.
I started questioning if the relationship between Frosty
and the little girl who loved him was age-appropriate.
Why did they hug so fucking much?
I know he’s supposed to be snow but just why was he so fucking white
Like hundreds of years of patriarchy you can’t get out from under.
My new accountant has ton of jokes, he’s a Black man
He said the revolution is coming and
To those who say they don’t serve Blacks,