The Tropics of New York by Claude McKay in 2014 Black History Month’s last days.

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For love of all hot dusty roads, and our childhood memories, The Tropics of New York by Claude McKay in 2014 Black History Month’s last days. Thinking of Jamaica.

Bananas ripe and green, and ginger root
Cocoa in pods and alligator pears,
And tangerines and mangoes and grape fruit,
Fit for the highest prize at parish fairs,

Sat in the window, bringing memories
of fruit-trees laden by low-singing rills,
And dewy dawns, and mystical skies
In benediction over nun-like hills.

My eyes grow dim, and I could no more gaze;
A wave of longing through my body swept,
And, hungry for the old, familiar ways
I turned aside and bowed my head and wept.

I am a Black Woman, Tall as a Cypress- Mari Evans. Black History Month.

I am a Black Woman

I am a black woman
the music of my song
some sweet arpeggio of tears
is written in a minor key
and I
can be heard humming in the night
Can be heard
humming
in the night

I saw my mate leap screaming to the sea
and I/with these hands/cupped the lifebreath
from my issue in the canebrake
I lost Nat’s swinging body in a rain of tears
and heard my son scream all the way from Anzio
for Peace he never knew….I
learned Da Nang and Pork Chop Hill
in anguish
Now my nostrils know the gas
and these trigger tire/d fingers
seek the softness in my warrior’s beard

I am a black woman
tall as a cypress
strong
beyond all definition still
defying place
and time
and circumstance
assailed
impervious
indestructible
Look
on me and be
renewed

 

Black History Month- poetry. The Source of the Singing by Marilyn Nelson Waniek

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The Source of the Singing

[…]
Under everything this movement,
stars and wind circle around the smaller
circles of the grass, and the birds caged
in the kitchen sing it over and over,
inexplicably in their sweet chirps.

I feel it like sometimes like today
somewhere in my torso, perhaps
sweet in the belly; this must be
what carrying a child is like.
I sit at the table and feel something
move with the pain of just before tears.
What is it the body says to me,
these tender aches that make me glad?
Not even one syllable is clear,
but if you were near I would tell you,
and you might lay your hand where the talking
starts and the pain, where my life
is still moving[…]
and push your warmth into mine,
here, into the source of singing.

Marilyn Nelson Waniek

Black History Month- poetry.

Black History Month- poetry. Whispers in the Country Church by Alvin Aubert

alvinaubert    Screen Shot 2014-02-25 at 5.26.01 PM

Photos by: unknown and from corridors magazine.org

Alvin_&__Eugene

Photo by JMU Media Services

Whispers in a Country Church.

Who’s that dark woman
Sittin’ next to the preacher
Eyeing at his feet?
Lord, look at her.
Red hat.
Flowers.
Perfume you can smell
From here.
Look. Making a move.
Asking for water.
Clumsy thing–
All over his
Brand new shoes.
Just what she wanted.
Bending down that way,
Wonder that dress don’t split.
Pretty hair though.
Got to give her that.

by Alvin Aubert.

Black History Month- poetry, 2014.

AUBERT, ALVIN BERNARD Born March 12, 1930 in Lutcher, Louisiana, passed away on January 7, 2014.

Black History Month- poetry: Samuel Allen.

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Satchell Paige was one of the best pitchers in baseball. Black.

“Satch”

Sometimes I feel like I will *never* stop
Just go on forever
Til one fine mornin’
I’m gonna reach up and grab me a handful stars
Swing out my long lean leg
And whip three hot strikes burnin’ down the heavens
And look over at God and say
How about that!

by Samuel W. Allen (1917-)
Black History Month.

Black History Month- poetry: Everett Hoagland, ‘the Anti-Semanticist.’

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honeystain…
the rhetoricians of blackness
matters me not
we are black
and you are beautiful

it matters me not whether
your breast are American pumpkin or
African gourds
they are full and you are beautiful

it matters me not be your belly
black or brown
it is soft and you are beautiful

it matters me not be your buttocks
bourgeois or “grass roots”
they are good
and you are beautiful

it matters me not if your bread loaf
thighs are Negro or Afro-American
they are round and so ripe
and you are so beautiful

it matters not whether it is
Victoria falls within your orgasms
instead of Niagara

there is little definition I need
indeed
it matters only that there is
black power
in your loving

this I know
you are beautiful
you are beautiful beyond reference
you are the night interpreted
you are
you…

Everett Hoagland ‘the Anti-Semanticist’

Black History Month

Nikki Giovanni ”The Butterfly- hat tip Kim Crosby.

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“those things
which yo so laughingly call
hands are in fact two
brown butterflies fluttering
across the pleasure
they give my body”

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— Nikki Giovanni ”The Butterfly

 

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