Listen.

By Patricia Smith

You may have noticed that my voice has been strangely silent, that I haven’t been whispering anything at all into Harriet’s ear. That’s because for the last week, I’ve been teaching at Cave Canem, the intense and inimitable retreat for African-American writers. The only choice we have here is to immerse ourselves in what is offered, to revel in community, to nurture the haven.
Fifty-four writers have lived. wept and laughed together since last Sunday. It is an experience that cannot be measured, something so huge in our lives that we stutter and stammer in our attempts to describe it. Then we stop attempting to describe it. There’s no need.
None of us are fools. We know that the African-American creative voice is not where it most needs to be–in classrooms where no faces mirror ours; on stages that have never known us; in the journals that shape the next days of the canon.
We have much to say. Here’s your chance to listen.

You hear people on the streets braced for loss
and inside us another frozen universe is cracking.
—Khadijah Queen
latchkeys, no key just chains, rusted and heavy—
junked children birthed from baby and single-mother boom,
full houses
—Nicole Sealey
…you are welcome to claim the space
until art is a dying mother,
and we have nothing left to mourn.
—Mitchell Douglas
Memory is a cracked urn,
covering the road back home in ash.
—Tommye Blount
…her fluid bisque bones allow her to shift shape,
stretch long to pluck plums on road hot with sun.
—Carolyn Joyner
I flower you out of this plot of proud anthuriums.
—Tanya Shirley
The breaking down of flesh requires two things:
my experience
and his key.
—Amanda Johnston
Wind whips through my braids and my brown skirt beats about
my busy knees like pleated wings. I will never learn.
—Lauren Alleyne
in a house with a sectional sofa and a panther
on the mantle and china with red flowers and
gold trim and silver plate we would keep
in a chest and I’d be pretty without a neck brace
—Sharon Dennis Wyeth
I have been thrown back
into the world without a hook in my mouth.
—Vievee Fancis
If not separated Lights and Coloreds may run together.
—Qiana Towns
1,000 origami cranes are labyrinths of pleats and tucks, a rush of rice paper vaginas.
—Ashaki Jackson
Into the land, the indifference of the furrows,
the hollow winnowing of the wind against the back,
the beckoning, and the yielding, I yelled.
—Gina Dorcely
The only time I believed in God was at Granma’s house.
—L’Oreal R.J. Snell
a wife, who steps permanently
out of the house, is a kind of bomb
that militaries can’t fuck with.
—Jonathan Moody
Remember how the leaves
are what the branches long for.
—Ana-Maurine Lara
There’s a 100-watt bulb
at the center of my skull.
I can’t throw off this light.
—Hermine Pinson
between we two
there is only cloth
bereft with damp
succor
grime
rage
and the mad haze of this sweet mirage
—Bianca Spriggs
We will never be able to speak
plainly to one another.
—Dante Micheaux
this time, your voice won’t retreat
—Alan King
Imagine rhythm in the palm of your hand.
—Randall Horton
Control is a contraceptive
you forgot to take last night.
—C.M. Archer
…all around him reality is unraveling
into a single thread spooled into a sewing machine
that is stitching a blanket as it frays…
—Jamaal May
I can put on a bad face
and keep from throwing the beer bottle,
keep from pulling the plug.
—Francine Harris
Time is more precise
and unchangeable than pain.
—Marcus Jackson
and my grandmother’s unspoken rage heated her unspilled tears into vapor
and she wore the fog like a shround
—Aya de Leon
Grandbabies die under the soft horizon of hope.
—Billy Coakley
Man—you couldn’t rhyme
even if you got a lap dance from Dr. Seuss.
—James Cagney
So when I tilt my cup at jst
The right angle to let me embrace
The wind, believe I pray for the devil.
—Dwayne Betts
I hope life can tell the difference between vanilla and hell.
—David Mills
These are the words which will save my life.
—Juliet Howard
Have mercy on innocent gardening tools whose names have been used in vain.
—Stacey Tolbert
fixed by tongue-tied conga drums
spinning we move in circles
driven shaken freed
—Marion Bethel
I swallowed the canon–and exploded.
—Deidre R. Gantt
I think of wind rubbing palms Cuba loosing her grip.
She will return soon carrying constellations.
—Myronn Hardy
The M’ssipi used to cover these parts, until they damned it up,
held its tongue like words you choke back in church
to keep your insides from escaping.
—Indigo Moor
She wasn’t trying to be healed.
Just wanted to touch,
and be touched
—Bettina Judd
This off-color morning, Chicago feels like a thin blade
cold enough to slit my throat. I am alone.
—Carolyn Matthews
Some of the bluegrass is black.
—Frank X Walker
Why is it so easy to let the battle in?
—Amber Flora Thomas
The knife it is essential
to someone who takes salt
to cure the weapon.
—Rich Hamilton
both separate
and equal have lost their glamour.
—Lynne Procope
and everybody knows you know a real woman
by how she takes care of her feet
—Hallie Hobson
A man comes to this rapture
of rainfall and flaying winds
a broken thing.
—Delana Dameron
sea mouth, mother of blessings
and ashes tossed, Z summoned
the last immortal to
discover sorrow.
—Charles Lynch
it was where they’d stand–
strong black bodies soulfully erect
—Lolita Stewart-White
an insurgent groan rising, my body a Molotov cocktail,
a spear, a shiny black rock.
—Jane Alberdeston Coralin
Under this cradling clay, under
the roots of a willow oak, lie these stillborn
wastes…
—Janice N. Harrington
Love is black grease oiling
the stiff gears of the mouth.
—Natalie Graham
Rock shadows and silt seams
landlocked, this tectonics fleeting
in the now of absence
—Elen Hairston
Alternately trying to wash out
genetic memory like dirty bed linen.
—Stewart Shaw
If the moon were peeled
thin into necklaces of stainless silk,
this if the sound you would hear.
Listen to it, unfasten, like a prayer.
—Monique-Adelle
I learned to throttle the upright and,
with my small tools, flip off its face
so I could see
—Simone White
for the succor of your throat
the sweet hem of your jawline
shattering
—Roger Bonair-Agard

2007-06-30

Posted in Group Blog, Poems on Saturday, June 30th, 2007 by Patricia Smith.