Explore Poems: Class

You may find her behind 

         Rowan Oak, a shadow 

              of fortress where then now 

         you find no real entry place. 

v.
Isn’t it dangerous to be a woman? Surrounded by men, questions
about risk-taking, parenting (I’m childless…

My Mickey Mouse ears are nothing like sonar. Colorado is far less rusty than Walt's lyric riddles. If…

I’m here
             to tell you 
                             an old story. 
                             This
Appears to be
                 my work.
                                I live
                                in the world,
Walk
         the streets…

The rich report greater levels of happiness,
                                          & the study goes on to demonstrate
how we humans use money to save...

Marita, don’t tell me to pick one.
           I am either barefoot or wearing six-inch Pleasers—
my gender is dirty-soled and naked or
       ...

I come from the kidnapped,
                                    the assaulted—
my country’tis of reparations as in-store credit
                     ...

In springtime, chief of all seasons,
        in May when new joys rise and flourish,
                the sun is lord and messenger at once and sends down to us
        to rouse our bodies and be merry:
humankind to...

In this life, there are stars
and there are stunt doubles.

Before I became one of those fathers
obsessed with memorizing his lines,
making peace with the Big Director
in the sky who doesn’t like ad libs,
before all that, I was the star
of my own...

Oh give me a home
with a big landscaped lawn
four cars, a boat and a kitty.
For my heart yearns to be
any place that is free
of the urban decay of this city.
I’ll do my shopping at Gucci’s and Sak’s,
spend all of my...

Delirium in the downtown mall today:
      Burt Reynolds! All the henna-haired girls
            sneer, while their mothers, enthralled, say,

“I saw you in this, I saw you in that–
      you were marvelous, simply...

                                                            Hunger like her mama
                                                            Most strong in White gaze as in
                                                            a Cowbird’s flirtation
                                                            Sprouted in eyes to tongues
                                                            to bellies pregnant with stolen milk
                                                            to restless hands
                                                            These fingernails filled with Black body,

Because I should’ve wrote this years ago, I’m crying. So what my slow failure pass the years
      Make me be crying. So what in Bethlehem I tried to push so much against it, where the Wall is checkpoint...

you know I ain’t mess w/you ’cause of yo’ friends
wouldn’t have you caught slummin’
know you hood 'cause you said

I look the same
and I said
you look the same

and I said “it don’t crack, doit?
and you said “Uh, OKAY?”

that’s that thing right...

Mama birthed me, Papa sold me in the land of weeping willows
Traces of sin trail miles across skin, I go by Never Forget
My body’s evidence of daddy’s pestilence spread across the land

His sin traces my skin, a path never forgotten
Nameless,...

For my people everywhere singing their slave songs
     repeatedly: their dirges and their ditties and their blues
     and jubilees, praying their prayers nightly to an
     unknown god, bending their knees humbly to an
     unseen power; For my people lending their strength to the years, to the
    gone years and the now years and the maybe years,
    washing ironing cooking scrubbing sewing mending

Nine women at brunch all order eggs
benedict. I laugh at how boring my fury.

This ambition to feel myself closer to an art:
what distinguishes me from the people

who order their ribeyes well done.
I want to tell the rich girls I once...

melting glaciers      
                       frighten me when      
appearing on      
my street as      
downpours      
a feeling I send      
                     ...

Growing up in a rural factory town I watched my creative family extend the grind oft monotonous jobs outside the factory walls and into their lives until they were no longer capable of accessing their artistic abilities. The factory essentially...