Poetry
Winter 1994
Far Rockaway
After “The Pyramids to the Projects,” Charles Burchette We follow dried spots of blood. We’re dressed in African prints. Our hair shines like fire. This is the eighth floor. The […]
Poetry
Winter 1994
Clarinets
Below is shadow where any blasé thing takes place: clarinets and lovemaking, fists and the voices of sorrowful women. TONI MORISSON, Jazz It’s the inevitable namelessness, all that drum-accompanied yet […]
Poetry
Winter 1994
White Dancing
Basically what I’m trying to say is black people are pissed at whites and white people don’t see it because well white people figure we’re clean since the Civil War […]
Poetry
Winter 1992
Candles
I’m her mother. I go down to Manhattan to clean and resurrect the room she pays for weekly on 88th Street; uncover $8.00 worth of quarters, five tokens, numerous lipsticks, […]
Poetry
Winter 1992
Pulse
Men in frayed wool jackets frighten me in July. Am I out of touch? It’s 90 degrees today. 92. If I wore wool, I’d collapse, and they stroll by, fingering […]
Poetry
Winter 1992
I’m Not Black but I Dreamed This Poem
I My grandfather is slick as a brown trout—he sweeps them from the river with bare hands. When the river swells inside the dream it carries us away—can you imagine […]