THE BLACK CONNECTION

for Oscar ‘63

“last time,
last time I saw Jeannine
recall when we were 17…”

she would let me call her jean on the nights we danced with fireflies and i kissed the watermelon juice drippin’ from her chin. stiff pin curls soft clouds against my collar. here’s my heart perfumin’ her neck. my hands - gentle waves for jeannine to call to tide on the nights when the world wasn’t nothin’ but me and her dancin’ neath a full summer moon.

we was new young love wrapped in the forever of each other’s smiles and washed of her mama’s talk that she was too young to go steady with some boy -'specially the likes of me. first time i come callin’ for jean her mama took one look at the oil stained rag crawlin’ outta my back pocket, spat in the direction of my scuffed brogans, and slammed the screendoor shut. heard her hollerin’ somethin’ 'bout me lookin’ like one of them "po’ backwoods niggas.” the kind who money only run as long as the spellin’ of they first name. say she wasn’t workin’ all them hours to send jeannine over to miz tinsley’s to learn her manners so she could watch her walk off the porch hand-in-hand wit’ some ol’ broke country boy.

but jean wasn’t nothin’ like her mama. in looks or sensibility.

she had a tenderness to her at 17 that i ain’t seen or felt in no woman since them nights when she would throw her head back and laugh easy with the cicadas whenever i tried to lead.

she say:
hold me close.
pull me in tight.
like you love me.

or like tryin’ to remember those nights with jean long after her mama sent her away
leaving my palms an ocean of dry land.

for Mingus

it takes more than
a ham sandwich
& a starched shirt
to keep a man

a full lunch pail
with a home cooked meal
ain't always the way
to his heart

he say
he want a woman
who ain't afraid to sweat
someplace other
than in the kitchen

can arch her back
for somethin' other
than the scrubbin'
of some white man’s floors

say he want a devil woman

an ol' fast tail huzzy
who wears everything
at least two sizes too small
showin’ all her false curves

a no shame havin' heffa
who will drink anything
slid in her direction
thinkin' her drunken howl
is some sorta music
that charms the night

you know the kind

gotta smell like lilacs
everytime they go to the store
if they even know where the store is

the kinda woman
whose favorite color is red

mouth: matchstick tip red
cheeks: rouged ruby red
fingernails: fire engine red

bet even her underclothes is red
if she even wear any

what she know
about the kinda red
that poured outta me
the night I gave birth
to our first child

the rust red sheets
I had to wash the next day
'cuz they were our only set

the red that fills me up like lava
every time I smell lilacs
on my pillowcase

that kind

that's the kinda woman
he say he want

the kind who don't give a damn
'bout a woman like me
or any of the other wives
whose husbands she fucks

for Melvin

1. Lilly

blue black woman
mouth a rounded story
when back is arched
against wooden skyline

legs:
spontaneous combustion
of skin singed muscle
curved and lined
summoned under composed sheets of night

men call her name
like it's their last memory of sound

2. The Men

cocksure in his stroke
he play God
when straddled

say:
her dance was me Jim
her dance
was
me

the bravado of a good fuck/ from a woman who loves to ball/ claim when he pull her coattail/ she come/ running/ every time/ oven or country style/ she likes it raunchy and wild/ leave the money next to the Bible on the nightstand/ turn the lights off now/ he say:
I make her sweat/ make her scratch and scream/ middle of the night/ 2 o’ clock in the mornin’/ pourin’ down rain/ got Lilly dancing the Zampoughi just for me

like the men before
he play God
when straddled

say: her dance was me

3. The Zampoughi

I ain't
made to be owned.

I am no quiet space
for men to hold their thoughts.

this dance
bawdy juke’d laughter
and moons shined
ain't for the claiming of
nobody
but
me.

for Janis

they say she too young. kissed 17 candles
and fine. coy smile. girlish giggle. gilded lips
janis. sweet little sexy thang to handle
after the dance of teased comfort from too soon hips.
i wanna be your lover pleading each play.
come live with me angel the tempting refrain.
you can have your way, if you decide to stay
devotion promised. fascination remains
janis. kissed 17 candles. sweet little baby
in need of good experienced company who knows all the ways
to ripen tender flesh of blow pop dreams. maybe
she is of the wanting. darling angel ablaze
waiting for the hunter in her own pursuit.
they say she too young. janis. forbidden fruit.

for Miles & Love Jones

dear future lover,

let this poem be
a brother to the night

a failed attempt to impress
punctuated by a sax solo
& shoutouts to Yemoja and Osun

let it be chocolate lips
& a smooth diss in front of yo friends

a long day:
a Gurl, I need an Isley Brothers cd badly
& a melancholy Bird

let it be
a knock on the door
an Isley Brothers cd
the promise of Prince cds everyday
if you say no

let it be
a friend’s get together
the heat of red lights
& how good it feels
to press your body against someone else’s
after a couple of glasses of chardonnay

let it be omelets the morning after

girl talk in the back of a cab
& talkin’ with yo boy over a game of pool

let it be it was all good
until the past makes itself present

let it be it was all good
until some bad advice from a good friend
foolish pride
& a girl named Lisa

let it be a hearse & a house party
a side eye
a cold shoulder & a cold walk

let it be a phone call
on a rainy night
to apologize for the house party (& the hearse)

let it be
your best dress shirt & my best dress
cause we steppin’ tonight

let it be
an introduction to Trane and Duke
a slow dance in a bedroom
a shared cigarette & darkroom laughter

let it be it was all good
until the past makes itself present
& a phone rings at 5 am

let it be what we can’t seem to get over

let it be space & distance needed
years that pass & memories that won’t fade

the dedication to your first novel
the poem I thought you didn’t hear

let it be urgent like a muthafucka

let it be all these things
until I find my way
to you

seven for Yusef

1.

how can I explain
the changing
of your hands
at times
as delicate
as Yusef bending notes
into the stillness of dawn
and others
a tornado of touch
billowing seven shades of blue
across my back

their palms
as smooth as the whispers
before our first kiss

as unwavering
as my belief
in love poems
& your heart

2.

wrapped around the candy sheen of your smile
Yusef's melodies are a sweet surrender
a night's offering
the magic of something conjured

Yusef's melodies are a sweet surrender
a bouquet of honeyed flowers
the magic of something conjured
from promise and prayer

a bouquet of honeyed flowers
a night's offering
wrapped around the candy sheen of your smile

3.

baited and whole note
our breath gives shape to silence
when lips and fingers
are too tired to speak of
the world that has been made here

4.

tongue
taste my skin
etch half moons of wanting
on claimed landscape

taste my skin
leave violet scorched kisses
on claimed landscape
defiantly breaking treaties of the invisible

leave violet scorched kisses
unearth raw soil
this is how I want you
defiantly breaking treaties of the invisible

this land is yours to conquer

5.

there are scars here
that do not matter
places where desert terrain
becomes silken skin
and blackened flesh
atop collarbone & eyelids
in the crevasses of elbows & knees
become beautiful stained glass
in your eyes of wonder

6.

I taste
the music of the day
on your neck
the sun salted Adam's apple
the spice of cologne
gathered at the nape
the particles of cotton
quietly settled in the ridges
where your shoulders meet
each lick
a welcomed reminder
of the two hour pilgrimage
to a place
I want you
to call home

7.

this is how
you hold a woman
into thoughts of forever
how you make her hunger
for what the heart cannot taste

for Black Star

1.

You don’t remember exactly when it started – the whisper that is. If you had to guess, it would be sometime after the summer of ’93. For the six years up until then, you, gap-toothed, chubby, and brown were blissfully unaware that you would soon begin to look in the mirror and count all the ways you thought everything about the way you looked was wrong.

Perhaps it begins as you sit in between the comfort of your mother’s legs. As she takes down the two-strand twists you constantly tug at to stretch into a ponytail, you silently plead for her not to cornroll your hair. You want it hot-combed or blow-dried straight so it can cascade down your back just like Abigail’s – even if afterwards it will look nothin’ like Abigail’s whose burnt ginger skin and jet black curls make her different than you, Nicole, Dominique or any of the other brown skinned girls you’d ever seen before.

Or maybe it’s the first time you meet your godsister. Her sandy brown hair obediently swooping across her forehead Aaliyah style with hazel eyes that flicker specks of green depending on where the sun falls upon her face. Her skin tone is sweetly described by rappers of the day as if it were ice-cream– she is Butter Pecan and French Vanilla. She looks nothing like you, and like everything you wish you were.

It could be when you finally notice what is not said aloud - how you are never the star of any of the schoolyard rumors about being Omar or Jamil or Jason or Kenneth’s latest crush. How your first dance offered by Raymond Pinkston to Ice Cube’s “We Be Clubbin’” was an unspoken act of mercy orchestrated by a friend.

Had to be the night of the 6th-grade talent show. You arrive unsure – the shiny, cloud colored lycra skirt with an age-appropriate slit is tighter than the cuffed boot cut jeans you normally wear, but you have a desperate need to be noticed. When Antoine cuts across the classroom and walks towards you, you believe this will be your moment. Though he is not your first choice, he is a boy and that’s all that matters. From the glint in his eyes as you stand across from one another, you believe you have finally been noticed. It’s all you’ve ever wanted until he opens his mouth and says:

Damn Nia, I didn’t know you had a fat ass.
I would date you if you wasn’t so ugly.

For the next 10 years, you hear it– the whisper that is. Though faint, it’s a persistent refrain that houses itself in the every day of your thoughts.

You hear it every time you look in the mirror and obsessively pick at your skin, then dot your face with your momma’s peeling tube of Ambi Cream.

You hear it every time you set the blow dryer to the highest heat setting and turn your edges into ashes.

You hear it every time you shamefully bring two sizes into the dressing room because you know, no matter how much you want it to, the smaller size won’t fit.

You hear it when you purposefully fail the vision test in the nurse's office so you can get a prescription to wear glasses that you hope will hide your hyperpigmented eyelids.

You hear it when you rip up the professional pictures you and your cousin took at the winter dance – when he asks you about them, you say they never came.

You hear it when you decide not to take high school or college graduation photos. In yearbooks, if it were not for your name there would be no proof of your attendance.

You hear it…you hear it…you hear it...you always hear it.

Girl you ugly.

2.

At 16, I am a blossoming insecure flower cast in the starring role of chubby, loudmouth best friend. I am crass jokes and not above a well-timed cuss word just to get a laugh.

I am smart. I am A’s in every subject except math. I am staying up until 2 am to perfect poster boards and presentations that should be no more than 7 minutes long. I am hardworking. I am confident that I will get out of Oakland.

I am busy. Afterschool peer health educator meetings busy. Afterschool and weekend shifts at Cold Stone Creamery busy. Diversity Works meetings busy. College counseling sessions busy. Aimlessly walking up and down Telegraph Ave with Tyresa and/or Michelle busy. Over at Clarissa’s house busy.

Anything to keep me out of the house and out of my head for as long as possible busy.

I am alternating crushes on Christian, David, and Robbi with a forever crush on Jason. I am 3 to 4-page odes to these boys scrawled in black or blue bubble-shaped letters in my journal. I am lovelorn stanzas like:

"I want to be your "Soul Sista" and you can be Bilal/ allow me to express this "Love" I have bottled up inside like Musiq Soulchild" or “I know I ain’t too much for looks but I could surely stimulate your mind.”

I am a size 36-inch waist that shops for jeans in Old Navy’s men’s section and never wears shirts tucked in. I am waking up at 5:30am to quietly sweat through Tae-Bo in the living room before I get ready for school. I am Kanekalon kinky twists or t-shirts worn as headwraps because I refuse to wear my hair out.

I am brown. Not Mahogany. Not Sienna. Not Burnt Ginger. Not Caramel. Not Butter Pecan. Not French Vanilla. Just plain brown.

I am a deep, aching, unspoken sadness.

I am looking for anyone to tell me I am beautiful and am hoping to one day believe it.

3.

The night you told me I was beautiful I was far from home.

Concrete sidewalks gave way to fresh dirt roads and tall oak trees etched the skyline. The air was fresh.

I, along with a group of several other teens - each of us wrestling with ourselves in our own way -had been shepherded into the woods for a weekend of icebreakers and trust circles. We were on our annual Peer Health Educator retreat.

It was the first time I had known the word to have any other meaning than locking myself in my room, turning off the lights, and playing Stevie’s “Creepin’”on repeat.

As night crawled to twilight, a few of us camped out in the living room drowning the silence with the low rumble of indistinct basslines from someone’s speakers and the hushed whispers of secrets not to be repeated when we returned to the city.

I laid on the couch stubbornly fighting sleep.

Then I heard you, as faint as the whisper:

Brown skin lady
Where you goin'?

Brown skin lady
What you doin’?

Brown skin lady
How do you feel?

I knew you were talking to me. And to Nicole. And to Dominque. And to all us brown skin girls soon to be women who had yet to lay claim to all you said made us beautiful. I didn’t know there was a song for us – no one had told me there was a song for us – a praise poem in 4/4 time to turn to when the world told us and we told ourselves we were the exact opposite of everything you said we were.

At the time I didn’t need to know from who or where you came. It was simply enough to know you existed– the chorus of your admiration the only whisper I heard that night as I fell asleep.

Time and repeated listens would tell me your origin story. How you were crafted in some far-away place called Brooklyn by two lean faced men with youth edging their jawlines. How your sample - carved from the melody of a man whose name I knew from my daddy’s record collection- was a rumination for what we almost lost turned reclamation.

It would be a lie if I told you that as I twisted my tongue on “Coppertone owe you copyright infringement” I always believed you. That on some days, the whisper rose above my ability to press repeat. But when I did, you were always there to tell me what it would take years to finally tell myself.

All I can say is all praise due I thank you God for a song like you.