Shake Loose My Skin Read online

  For Bernice and Adisa

  CONTENTS

  I. from I’ve Been a Woman 1978

  Homecoming

  Poem at Thirty

  Malcolm

  Personal Letter No. 2

  A Poem for My Father

  Poem No. 3

  Blues

  Haiku

  Sequences

  Haiku

  Poem No. 8

  Present

  Tanka

  Tanka.

  A Love Poem Written for Sterling Brown

  Kwa mama zetu waliotuzaa

  II. from Homegirls and Handgrenades 1984

  “Just Don’t Never Give Up on Love”

  Ballad

  After Saturday Night Comes Sunday

  I Have Walked a Long Time

  On Passing thru Morgantown, Pa.

  On Seeing a Pacifist Burn

  Letter to Ezekiel Mphahlele

  III. from Under a Soprano Sky 1987

  Under a Soprano Sky

  Philadelphia: Spring, 1985

  Haiku

  Dear Mama

  Fall

  Fragment 1

  Fragment 2

  Haiku

  Towhomitmayconcern

  Blues

  Song No. 2

  An Anthem

  Graduation Notes

  IV. from Wounded in the House of a Friend 1995

  Wounded in the House of a Friend

  Catch the Fire

  A Remembrance

  Poem for July 4, 1994

  This Is Not a Small Voice

  Like

  Haiku 1

  Haiku 9

  V. from Does Your House Have Lions? 1997

  Father’s Voice

  VI. from Like the Singing Coming off the Drums 1998

  Dancing

  Haiku

  Tanka

  Blues Haiku

  Blues Haiku

  Haiku

  Love Poem

  VII. NEW WORKS

  Mrs. Benita Jones Speaks

  Morning Song and Evening Walk

  For Sweet Honey in the Rock

  Aaaayeee Babo (Praise God)

  Homecoming

  i have been a

  way so long

  once after college

  i returned tourist

  style to watch all

  the niggers killing

  themselves with

  three-for-oners

  with

  needles

  that cd

  not support

  their stutters.

  now woman

  i have returned

  leaving behind me

  all those hide and

  seek faces peeling

  with freudian dreams.

  this is for real.

  black

  niggers

  my beauty.

  baby.

  i have learned it

  ain’t like they say

  in the newspapers.

  Poem at Thirty

  it is midnight

  no magical bewitching

  hour for me

  i know only that

  i am here waiting

  remembering that

  once as a child

  i walked two

  miles in my sleep.

  did i know

  then where i

  was going? traveling.

  i’m always traveling.

  i want to tell

  you about me

  about nights on a

  brown couch when

  i wrapped my

  bones in lint and

  refused to move.

  no one touches

  me anymore.

  father do not

  send me out

  among strangers.

  you you black man

  stretching scraping

  the mold from your body.

  here is my hand.

  i am not afraid

  of the night.

  Malcolm

  do not speak to me of martydom

  of men who die to be remembered

  on some parish day.

  i don’t believe in dying

  though i too shall die

  and violets like castanets

  will echo me.

  yet this man

  this dreamer,

  thick-lipped with words

  will never speak again

  and in each winter

  when the cold air cracks

  with frost, i’ll breathe

  his breath and mourn

  my gun-filled nights.

  he was the sun that tagged

  the western sky and

  melted tiger-scholars

  while they searched for stripes.

  he said, “fuck you white

  man. we have been

  curled too long. nothing

  is sacred now. not your

  white face nor any

  land that separates

  until some voices

  squat with spasms.”

  do not speak to me of living.

  life is obscene with crowds

  of white on black.

  death is my pulse.

  what might have been

  is not for him/or me

  but what could have been

  floods the womb until i drown.

  Personal Letter No. 2

  i speak skimpily to

  you about apartments i

  no longer dwell in

  and children who

  chant their dis

  obedience in choruses.

  if i were young

  i wd stretch you

  with my wild words

  while our nights

  run soft with hands.

  but i am what i

  am. woman. alone

  amid all this noise.

  A Poem for My Father

  how sad it must be

  to love so many women

  to need so many black

  perfumed bodies weeping

  underneath you.

  when i remember all those nights

  i filled my mind with

  long wars between short

  sighted trojans & greeks

  while you slapped some

  wide hips about in

  your pvt dungeon,

  when i remember your

  deformity i want to

  do something about your

  makeshift manhood.

  i guess

  that is why

  on meeting your sixth

  wife, i cross myself

  with her confessionals.

  Poem No. 3

  i gather up

  each sound

  you left behind

  and stretch them

  on our bed.

  each nite

  i breathe you

  and become high.

  Blues

  in the night

  in my half hour

  negro dreams

  i hear voices knocking at the door

  i see walls dripping screams up

  and down the halls

  won’t someone open

  the door for me? won’t some

  one schedule my sleep

  and don’t ask no questions?

  noise.

  like when he took me to his

  home away from home place

  and i died the long sought after

  death he’d planned for me.

  Yeah, bessie he put in the bacon

  and it overflowed the pot.

  and two days later

  when i was talking

  i started to grin.

  as everyone knows

  i am still grinning. />
  Haiku

  did ya ever cry

  Black man, did ya ever cry

  til you knocked all over?

  Sequences

  1.

  today I am

  tired of sabbaths.

  I seek a river of sticks

  scratching the spine.

  O I have laughed the clown’s air

  now my breath dries in paint.

  2.

  what is this profusion?

  the sun does not burn

  a cure, but hoards

  while I stretch upward.

  I hear, turning

  in my shrug

  a blaze of horns.

  O I had forgotten parades

  belabored with dreams.

  3.

  in my father’s time

  I fished in ponds

  without fishes.

  arching my throat,

  I gargled amid nerves

  and sang of redeemers.

  (o where have you been sweet

  redeemer, sharp redeemer,

  o where have you been baroque

  shimmer?

  i have been in coventry

  where ghosts danced in my veins

  i have heard you in all refrains.)

  4.

  ah the lull of

  a yellow voice

  that does not whine

  with roots.

  I have touched breasts

  and buildings answered.

  I have breathed

  moth-shaped men

  without seeds.

  (O indiscriminate sleeves)

  (once upon an afternoon

  i became still-life

  i carried a balloon

  and a long black knife.)

  5.

  love comes with pink eyes

  with movements that run

  green then blue again.

  my thighs burn in crystal.

  Haiku

  if i had known, if

  i had known you, i would have

  left my love at home.

  Poem No. 8

  i’ve been a woman

  with my legs stretched by the wind

  rushing the day

  thinking i heard your voice

  while it was only the nite

  moving over

  making room for the dawn.

  Present

  1.

  This woman vomiting her

  hunger over the world

  this melancholy woman forgotten

  before memory came

  this yellow movement bursting forth like

  coltrane’s melodies all mouth

  buttocks moving like palm trees,

  this honeycoatedalabamianwoman

  raining rhythm of blue/black/smiles

  this yellow woman carrying beneath her breasts

  pleasures without tongues

  this woman whose body weaves

  desert patterns,

  this woman, wet with wandering,

  reviving the beauty of forests and winds

  is telling you secrets

  gather up your odors and listen

  as she sings the mold from memory.

  there is no place

  for a soft/black/woman.

  there is no smile green enough or

  summertime words warm enough to allow my growth.

  and in my head

  i see my history

  standing like a shy child

  and i chant lullabies

  as i ride my past on horseback

  tasting the thirst of yesterday tribes

  hearing the ancient/black/woman

  me, singing hay-hay-hay-hay-ya-ya-ya.

  hay-hay-hay-hay-ya-ha-ya.

  like a slow scent

  beneath the sun

  and i dance my

  creation and my grandmothers gathering

  from my bones like great wooden birds

  spread their wings

  while their long/legged/laughter

  stretches the night.

  and i taste the

  seasons of my birth. mangoes. papayas.

  drink my woman/coconut/milks

  stalk the ancient grandfathers

  sipping on proud afternoons

  walk with a song round my waist

  tremble like a new/born/child troubled

  with new breaths

  and my singing

  becomes the only sound of a

  blue/black/magical/woman. walking.

  womb ripe. walking. loud with mornings. walking.

  making pilgrimage to herself. walking.

  Tanka

  i kneel down like a

  collector of jewels before

  you. i am singing

  one long necklace of love my

  mouth a sapphire of grapes.

  Tanka

  autumn. a bonfire

  of leaves. morning peels us toward

  pomegranate festivals.

  and in the evening i bring

  you soup cooled by my laughter.

  A Love Poem Written for Sterling Brown

  (after reading a New York Times article re

  a mummy kept preserved for about 3000 years)

  I’m gonna get me some mummy tape for your love

  preserve it for 3000 years or more

  I’m gonna let the world see you

  tapping a blue shell dance of love

  I’m gonna ride your love bareback

  on totem poles

  bear your image on mountains

  turning in ocean sleep

  string your sighs thru the rainbow

  of old age.

  In the midst of desert people and times

  I’m gonna fly your red/eagle/laughter ’cross the sky.

  Kwa mama zetu waliotuzaa*

  death is a five o’clock door forever changing time.

  and it was morning without sun or shadow;

  a morning already afternoon. sky. cloudy with incense.

  and it was morning male in speech;

  feminine in memory.

  but i am speaking of everyday occurrences:

  of days unrolling bandages for civilized wounds;

  of gaudy women chanting rituals under a waterfall of stars;

  of men freezing their sperms in diamond-studded wombs;

  of children abandoned to a curfew of marble.

  as morning is the same as nite death and life are one.

  spring. settling down on you like

  green dust. mother. ambushed by pain in

  rooms bloated with a century of cancer.

  yo/face a scattered cry from queequeg’s wooden bier.

  mother. i call out to you

  traveling up the congo. i am preparing a place for you:

  nite made of female rain

  i am ready to sing her song

  prepare a place for her

  she comes to you out of turquoise pain.

  restring her eyes for me

  restring her body for me

  restring her peace for me

  no longer full of pain, may she walk

  bright with orange smiles, may she walk

  as it was long ago, may she walk

  abundant with lightning steps, may she walk

  abundant with green trails, may she walk

  abundant with rainbows, may she walk

  as it was long ago, may she walk

  at the center of death is birth.

  in those days when amherst fertilized by

  black myths, rerouted the nile.

  you became the word. (shirley, graham, du bois

  you were the dance

  pyramidal sister.

  you told us in what egypt our feet

  were chained

  you. trained in the world’s studio

  painted the day with palaces

  and before you marched the breath

  of our ancestors.

  and yo/laughter passing
<
br />   through a village of blacks

  scattered the dead faces.

  and yo/voice lingering

  like a shy goat fed our sad hungers.

  and i. what Pennsylvania day was i sucking dry

  while you stuttering a thousand cries

  hung yo/breasts on pagodas?

  and i. what dreams had i suspended

  above our short order lives

  when death showered you with bells.

  call her back for me

  bells. call back this memory

  still fresh with cactus pain.

  call her name again. bells.

  shirley. graham. du bois

  has died in china

  and her death demands a capsizing of tides.

  olokun.†

  she is passing yo/way while

  pilgrim waves whistle complaints to man

  olokun.

  a bearer of roots is walking inside

  of you.

  prepare the morning nets to receive her.

  before her peace, i know no thirst because of her

  behind her peace, i know beauty because of her

  under her peace, i know no fear because of her

  over her peace, i am wealthy because of her

  death is coming. the whole world hears

  the buffalo walk of death passing thru the

  archway of new life.

  the day is singing

  the day is singing

  he is singing in the mountains

  the nite is singing

  the nite is singing

  she is singing in the earth

  i am circling new boundaries

  i have been trailing the ornamental

  songs of death (life

  a strong pine tree

  dancing in the wind

  i inhale the ancient black breath

  cry for every dying (living

  creature

  come. let us ascend from the

  middle of our breath

  sacred rhythms

  inhaling peace.

  *for our mothers who gave us birth

  †Goddess of the sea