The Bungler
You glow in my heart
Like the flames of uncounted candles.
But when I go to warm my hands,
My clumsiness overturns the light,
And then I stumble
Against the tables and chairs.
Amy Lowell
The Taxi
When I go away from you
The world beats dead
Like a slackened drum.
I call out for you against the jutted stars
And shout into the ridges of the wind.
Streets coming fast,
One after the other,
Wedge you away from me,
And the lamps of the city prick my eyes
So that I can no longer see your face.
Why should I leave you,
To wound myself upon the sharp edges of the night?
Amy Lowell
The Pike
In the brown water,
Thick and silver-sheened in the sunshine,
Liquid and cool in the shade of the reeds,
A pike dozed.
Lost among the shadows of stems
He lay unnoticed.
Suddenly he flicked his tail,
And a green-and-copper brightness
Ran under the water.
Out from under the reeds
Came the olive-green light,
And orange flashed up
Through the sun-thickened water.
So the fish passed across the pool,
Green and copper,
A darkness and a gleam,
And the blurred reflections of the willows on the
opposite bank
Received it.
Amy Lowell
Aubade
As I would free the white almond from the green husk
So would I strip your trappings off,
Beloved.
And fingering the smooth and polished kernel
I should see that in my hands glittered a gem beyond
counting.
Amy Lowell
"The perfect journey is no need to go."
- A. A. Ammons
.....has become a code phrase for African or Asian youth who are in combat situations, sometimes against their will. It is never used to describe Europeans or youth from the USA, many of whom have only just reached their 18th birthday. Anyone over the age of 30 realizes that these youth are still children by any meaningful definition, and will remain so until about the age of 27. And by "child," I mean " has no experiences that qualify them to determine who lives and who dies."
Please visit www.harlotssauce.com, a really wonderful magazine, with a poem of mine and my first published photo! The magazine's main theme this month is life, god and the universe. I believe in God, or an "invisible friend." I have often struggled with this faith, forged in childhood. I need my God like I need a safety blanket. I carry God around with my everywhere. In my poem, I am exploring how I feel about God. Many good poems and articles in this issue of Harlot's Sauce, so please read and comment. I plan to do so.
Catholic Girl
The supposed buoyancy of Jesus in water
Used to obsess me as a child
Was Mary unable to bathe her baby?
Once at the end of a Sunday
I realized I had a bit of Jesus
Caught between molars
I hadn’t felt godly all day
And had fought with my sister
In the choir balcony
I squeezed shut my anus
My vagina
To avoid fouling the air
Sweat poured off me
I grew dizzy and saw lights
At the moment of transubstantiation
Red mist poured from the priest
And a low hum like a lion’s growl
Swirled about me
I had nightmares about the church
Running between pews
After a little devil dressed
In yellow rain coat and galoshes
Like the Morton Salt Girl
When I caught her
I saw myself at five
Laughing and bewildered
At the same moment
I had nightmares
About the Cat in the Hat
Damning me to fiery hell
He was not natural
A six-foot tall cat
Wearing a hat
He was Satan
Later when my sex swelled
And I had thoughts
Of women and men
I had dreams of coupling
In the depths of the sea
Mermaid beautiful me
I came upon the shore of the bed
In waves, in spume
I dreamt I was a lime-white lady
In a brocaded gown
a scary medieval Madonna
I came to the church
And was met by knights
Wearing those silly duckbill helmets
They told me
Though I was queen of the land
I was not ruler of the church
And could not enter
I’ve even dreamt I was the
Whore of Babylon
Riding a seven-headed dragon
Who was actually quite nice
Everywhere I went
I withered crops
Unintentionally
It wasn’t my fault
There were some saints
I could kind of have
I always felt that Joan of Arc was hot
I’d go with her
I’d be in her club
And Mary Magdalene
Was almost stoned
Till a long-haired Jesus
Saved her
She was worth saving
Worth fighting a crowd for
I think I’ve found my Mary
the scared girl at the back of the class
Something god-like in her
I want to help her fight
Lucy Simpson, Seattle, 12/2009
Submitted to Diverse Issues in Higher Education 11/30/09
©2009 Rev. Dr. E-K. Daufin
Stop in the Name of Love and Legality: HBCU Fat Discrimination
I am a plump African American professor at the oldest HBCU in the country and a national expert on media weight discrimination and people of color in the professoriate. I am concerned about some of the statements in Dr. Marybeth Gasman’s response to the Historically Black University Lincoln’s policy that penalizes its students who are “heavy” in body as well as mind by forcing them to pass an additional “Fitness for Life” course or refusing to graduate them. The policy is certainly unethical, probably illegal and ironically racist, sexist classist AND counter-productive.
The policy is racist because African Americans whose ancestors survived slavery – i.e. were able to work 12 hours a day on little more than a single chittlin’ and a biscuit under horrific psychological stress – have a very efficient metabolism and for a many reasons tend to be fatter than other Americans. Most of these reasons don’t have to do with being lazy or pigging out. We are constantly facing so much discrimination based on our body size already that it is a scary second (third, fourth…) slap in the face to have an HBCU that has a concentration of African American women, should discriminate against us too when the students are supposed to be showing intellectual rigor to graduate rather than be punished by an extra course to pass than those who were born with a luckier genetic draw from the deck.
The policy is sexist because African American women tend to weigh more than all other race women in the country and Understanding Gender At Public HBCUs reports that females are 63% of the students enrolled at HBCUs. It’s also physiologically harder for women to lose weight than it is for men.
The policy is counterproductive because fat people, especially fat women, are already under full attack on every front. We know we are fat. Others who feel they have the right to openly harass big people, just as it used to be okay to harass us because we are Black, wouldn’t let us forget it even if the media did. Just last week, as an HBCU African American full, tenured professor, a male student screamed repeatedly at me from an open dorm window “Dr. D - Fat Ass!” The female students are under even MORE harassment.
The policy is classist because as a group, students who go to HBCUs are more likely to be first-generation college students; poorer than any other 4-year college student; often overscheduled and over working to earn part or all of their way through university, usually with no financial help from their impoverished parents. Lincoln’s policy places greater time AND financial demands on students who are struggling with far more than their weight. Also poor people are more likely to be bigger too because they have less access to affordable, tasty, healthy food.
Preventing students, no matter how brilliant, from graduating from college just because they are big is counterproductive. It only adds to their humiliation and stress, increasing the likelihood that they will exercise less and, if they do compulsively eat – eat more of the wrong kinds of foods.
If Lincoln University really cares about the obesity epidemic in the Black community it ought to require ALL students, not just the ones with “more bounce to the ounce,” to complete their Fitness for Life class as they do (or as part of) Freshman Orientation or any physical education requirement. The thinner students may be as unhealthy as some of the fatter students or worse. Notice I said, “SOME” of the fat students because one can be fit and fat. I eat a well-balanced, health oriented diet, exercise 5 times a week and I am still a plus-sized woman. I refuse to use the “O” word because I am NOT a walking disease or symptom for that matter. I am not alone. Many of our thinner counterparts are couch potatoes and eat far more so-called bad foods. Also thinner students who eat poor diets and don’t exercise regularly will find themselves slipping in to the discriminated size range as their youthful metabolisms age.
I hope Lincoln University stops this ugly size discrimination before a big student with deep pockets successfully sues them for a gigantic number of dollars and contributes to the demise of another precious HBCU. Gasman is wrong when she says physical education has long been part of our intellectual development. It’s part of our physical development that, in the effort to attract more students with faster-to-complete programs, most colleges have dropped. Also at a time when colleges are offering more online degrees, ending physical education and even exit exam requirements, Lincoln University should be ashamed of their nasty fat phobic fitness course. I would implore them that as their namesake “freed the slaves,” may Lincoln University let my chubby people go. Let freedom ring and let my chubby people graduate if they’ve got the grades… to go.
To see Gasman’s story go to: http://diverseeducation.com/blogpost/183/1.php
Marina
Quis hic locus, quae
regio, quae mundi plaga?
What seas what shores what grey rocks and what
islands
What water lapping the bow
And scent of pine and the woodthrush singing through
the fog
What images return
O my daughter.
Those who sharpen the tooth of the dog, meaning
Death
Those who glitter with the glory of the hummingbird,
meaning
Death
Those who sit in the stye of contentment, meaning
Death
Those who suffer the ecstasy of the animals, meaning
Death
Are become unsubstantial, reduced by wind,
A breath of pine, and woodsong fog
By the grace dissolved in place
What is this face, less clear and clearer
The pulse in the arm, less strong and stronger--
Given or lent? more distant than stars and nearer
than the eye
Whispers and small laughter between leaves and
hurrying feet
Under sleep, where all the waters meet.
Bowsprit cracked with ice and paint cracked with heat.
I made this, I have forgotten
And remember.
The rigging weak and the canvas rotten
Between one June and another September.
Made this unknowing, half conscious, unknown, my
own.
The garboard strake leaks, the seams need caulking.
This form, this face, this life
Living to live in a world of time beyond me; let me
Resign my life for this life, my speech for that un--
spoken,
The awakened, lips parted, the hope, the new ships.
What seas what shores what granite islands towards my
timbers
And woodthrush calling through the fog
My daughter.
T. S. Eliot
NPR stories on how race is no longer an issue in our country are frustrating personally and misleading to the public. Rather than political strategizing, one of the reasons African Americans often object to notions of “diversity” and “multiculturalism” rather than curing the ills of racism, more accurately white supremacy – is that so many people of color have to deal with some form of unearned white privilege or racial discrimination every day.
Comedian Chris Rock’s recently released documentary Good Hair wouldn’t have been controversial if Black women weren’t pressured on so many fronts to repeatedly do what is for so many an expensive, painful and shame-full ritual of chemically straightening our hair at the root just to be considered acceptable socially, professionally and psychologically. For example, at the eve of 2010, a White doctor I visited for the first time clowned around in his reception area in his imitation of what he thought was a Black man’s voice talking about how some Black people didn’t have “good hair.” When I objected to his unprofessional, disrespectful behavior, he told me maybe I wasn’t a “good fit” for his practice.
A few years ago I left the Montgomery (Alabama) Area Black Journalists Association because a black woman executive editor with chemically straightened short hair verbally attacked me and a few male and female student journalists for wearing our natural kinky hair. She said that our hair wasn't "professional," and that if White subjects we were interviewing called us, "The N-Word," it would be our fault because we wore our neat, clean kinks.
Also a few years ago, a white television news director, with the blessings of an older black female reporter who straightens her hair, sent a national award-winning black female communications student out of the room crying because they verbally attacked her neatly styled kinky hair as "unacceptable." Afterward the victimized, dark skinned student returned to my class, in a white-scalped, pin-straight “Tina Turner – Rollin’ on the River” type wig because her self-esteem was so wounded from that, not-the-first, attack on her blackness.
As an African American journalist and media scholar who studies white supremist notions of beauty in the media, including good hair, I am the author of "What I Dreaded." It's one of the chapters in the book, Children of the Dream: Our Own Stories of Growing Up Black in America, about the dramatic change for the better it can make to stop the painful, time-consuming, expensive, shame-full experience of straightening our hair. “Dreading” my hair into Nubian locs allowed me to stop dreading my natural self.
I also belong to a local group of Black women who wear our hair kinky and support each other in that powerful self-esteem promoting decision that sometimes makes us the target of racial discrimination whether from people of other races or those of our own suffering from their own internalized racism. Learning how to love our naturally kinky hair can be painful but in the frizzy end is … as good as it gets!
Rev. Dr. E-K. Daufin is a professor of communication at the nation’s oldest public Historically Black University, Alabama State.
Black Friday is the unofficial kickoff to the holiday shopping season. When are you planning on beginning your holiday shopping?
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I start my holiday shopping the day after Christmas. If I see something throughout the year that I know a loved one would want I pick it up and store it in the 'gift closet' until it's time to pull out the Christmas paper and wrap it all up.
That being said. This year I bought stuff that will just stay in the closet until next year. I found some puzzles on clearance and picked them up as little 'hey Mom, saw this and was thinking about you' gifts. But, Mom has decided that we are not buying for anyone other than the great-grandkids this year. So, Mom doesn't get her puzzles and Jordan gets left out, too.
We may just stay in Tuscaloosa for Christmas this year. bah humbug!!
