I enjoy sharing my work--writing, art, pedagogy but I do not like the public performance of it. (Artists be insular as a mug y'all; don't like you ain't know)! So I sometimes correct people when they call me "shy." I'm reticent; quiet; and nope, public presentation is not an activity I particularly enjoy. But I don't think "shy" is precise enough.
Fearful love means sometimes I worry over you because I love you so much (yeah, resulting in that goofy glossy-eyed look--just play along like y'all do). If you know that, then you know that there are no shady hucksters, no mistake you could ever make, no single thing on this side of the river Jordan that could make you any less than loved in my eyes and should not make you any less in your own.
Their fairytale fits an acceptable narrative we are inclined to admire. I cannot imagine the biracial Obama married to a white woman or highlighting--in any definitive way--his primary raising by his white grandparents and his very privileged raising from private schools on through his Harvard days. These choices, too, are parts of the narrative we are fed and need to nourish us, I suppose, considering the moment at which he and his family emerged on the scene. But then there are moments in which I have to wipe clear the glass in this boxed story.
This is a long one. Get some tea.
–d
Last night I learned that a young man from around my way had died. Over the past several weeks, he has been in the hospital largely unresponsive and plainly diminished. There was hope but little. There was discussion of his illness but little. He was just. Dying.
At 28, he will join a list of young men from around my way who. Just. Died. They were all, if not explicitly, homosexual. And this is how they all died. Of some unnamed failure of the body that is always explicitly not one of the common ones: cancer, diabetes, heart disease. The Hush tells all. It is AIDS.
We never say that; we might name the failure that AIDS has authored: pneumonia, meningitis; with the proper inflection even “he was sick” works.
“That boy’s funny” was as close as we got to naming…
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The Boy’s Girl
A Delta flight attendant
Valedictorian
An Alvin Ailey dancer—
Soul Train would do
Stokely Carmichael’s concubine (shh)
The subject of a song, a nice song
21
That sigh
Mama
Cover Girl
A broadcast journalist
on Walden Pond
Finally
A missionary
Carnival Queen
The Black Madonna
Damn
In long skirts
Dramatic
Always
Marva Collins, Assata,
or Maxine Shaw
A scream
Fancy
Encyclopedia Brown
Samba—just samba
Wealthier, selfish
A b-girl
Taller-shorter-skinnier-thicker
Someday (soon)
Bald
Drawn in black ink.
But he has known since he met her that the girl on the other line owns herself. Only you surprise yourself by how much. You worry when he laughs, “Just wondering.” But there is more than wondering you hear.
There is never a question and this, too, you believe appropriate to the narrative. His forcefulness is desire. His kisses, all tongue with nary a preliminary peck, are invitations not to be denied. And why would you deny them? You like him. You like his kisses. You enjoy his touch. What should come next is a part of the narrative you have not been given from The Women. So you wing it with what you believe. They give you onomatopoeia and warnings against Temptation and anecdotes about being Fast. You’re not Fast. And until now are not easily given to Temptation.
I count among the things I suck at performing poetry. I mean, I guess it's all a performance when we present it orally. But despite what pictures may suggest; I've won a slam before even, I see myself as a reader, a storyteller; I don't perform my poetry. As I head back to the mic [...]
Some of y'all--well my twin and my mom mostly--have known the dark side of my last two professional years. When the profession gets out of the way of the work you get your magic. But with the recent consumer-driven model of higher education that magic can fail as it gets flat and stale. Right now [...]
Today, in the middle of the recent struggle which I will just call August because really they have no names, I drifted into a family gathering and it was noisy. No surprise there. My uncle—the one who always reminds me that my greatest investment is in myself—was pleading with me to go back to school [...]
darlene anita scott 