June Jordan

At the throat of Soweto a devil language falls slashing claw syllables to shred and leave raw the tongue of the young girl learning to sing her own name Where she would say water They would teach her to cry blood Where she would save grass They would teach her to crave crawling into the grave

Dedicated to Myriam Díaz-Diocaretz 1 I turn to my Rand McNally Atlas. Europe appears right after the Map of the World. All of Italy can be seen page 9. Half of Chile page 29. I take out my ruler. In global perspective Italy amounts to less than half an inch. Chile measures more than an inch and a quarter of an inch. Approximately Chile is as long as China is wide: Back to the Atlas: Chunk of China page 17. All of France page 5: As we say in New York: Who do France and Italy know at Rand McNally? 2 I see the four mountains in Chile higher than any mountain of North America. I see Ojos del Salado the highest. I see Chile unequivocal as crystal thread. I see the Atacama Desert dry in Chile more than the rest of the world is dry. I see Chile dissolving into water. I do not see what keeps the blue land of Chile out of blue water. I do not see the hand of Pablo Neruda on the blue land. 3 As the plane flies flat to the trees below Brazil below Bolivia below five thousand miles below my Brooklyn windows and beside the shifted Pacific waters welled away from the Atlantic at Cape Horn La Isla Negra that is not an island La Isla Negra that is not black is stone and stone of Chile feeding clouds to color scale and undertake terrestrial forms of everything unspeakable 4 In your country how do you say copper for my country? 5 Blood rising under the Andes and above the Andes blood spilling down the rock corrupted by the amorality of so much space that leaves such little trace of blood rising to the irritated skin the face of the confession far from home: I confess I did not resist interrogation. I confess that by the next day I was no longer sure of my identity. I confess I knew the hunger. I confess I saw the guns. I confess I was afraid. I confess I did not die. 6 What you Americans call a boycott of the junta? Who will that feed? 7 Not just the message but the sound. 8 Early morning now and I remember corriendo a la madrugada from a different English poem, I remember from the difficulties of the talk an argument athwart the wine the dinner and the dancing meant to welcome you you did not understand the commonplace expression of my heart: the truth is in the life la verdad de la vida

What will we do when there is nobody left to kill? * 40,000 gallons of oil gushing into the ocean But I sit on top this mountainside above the Pacific checking out the flowers the California poppies orange as I meet myself in heat I’m wondering where’s the Indians? all this filmstrip territory all this cowboy sagaland: not a single Indian in sight 40,000 gallons gushing up poison from the deepest seabeds every hour 40,000 gallons while experts international while new pollutants swallow the unfathomable still: no Indians I’m staring hard around me past the pinks the poppies and the precipice that let me see the wide Pacific unsuspecting even trivial by virtue of its vast surrender I am a woman searching for her savagery even if it’s doomed Where are the Indians? * Crow Nose Little Bear Slim Girl Black Elk Fox Belly the people of the sacred trees and rivers precious to the stars that told old stories to the night how do we follow after you? falling snow before the firelight and buffalo as brothers to the man how do we follow into that? * They found her facedown where she would be dancing to the shadow drums that humble birds to silent flight They found her body held its life dispelled by ice my life burns to destroy Anna Mae Pictou Aquash slain on The Trail of Broken Treaties bullet lodged in her brain/hands and fingertips dismembered who won the only peace that cannot pass from mouth to mouth * Memory should agitate the pierced bone crack of one in pushed-back horror pushed-back pain as when I call out looking for my face among the wounded coins to toss about or out entirely the legends of Geronimo of Pocahontas now become a squat pedestrian cement inside the tomb of all my trust as when I feel you isolate among the hungers of the trees a trembling hidden tinder so long unsolicited by flame as when I accept my sister dead when there should be a fluid holiness of spirits wrapped around the world redeemed by women whispering communion * I find my way by following your spine Your heart indivisible from my real wish we compelled the moon into the evening when you said, “No, I will not let go of your hand.” * Now I am diving for a tide to take me everywhere Below the soft Pacific spoils a purple girdling of the globe impregnable * Last year the South African Minister of Justice described Anti-Government Disturbances as Part of a Worldwide Trend toward the Breakdown of Established Political and Cultural Orders * God knows I hope he’s right.

How do we come to be here next to each other in the night Where are the stars that show us to our love inevitable Outside the leaves flame usual in darkness and the rain falls cool and blessed on the holy flesh the black men waiting on the corner for a womanly mirage I am amazed by peace It is this possibility of you asleep and breathing in the quiet air

I never thought I’d keep a record of my pain or happiness like candles lighting the entire soft lace of the air around the full length of your hair/a shower organized by God in brown and auburn undulations luminous like particles of flame But now I do retrieve an afternoon of apricots and water interspersed with cigarettes and sand and rocks we walked across: How easily you held my hand beside the low tide of the world Now I do relive an evening of retreat a bridge I left behind where all the solid heat of lust and tender trembling lay as cruel and as kind as passion spins its infinite tergiversations in between the bitter and the sweet Alone and longing for you now I do

Even tonight and I need to take a walk and clear my head about this poem about why I can’t go out without changing my clothes my shoes my body posture my gender identity my age my status as a woman alone in the evening/ alone on the streets/alone not being the point/ the point being that I can’t do what I want to do with my own body because I am the wrong sex the wrong age the wrong skin and suppose it was not here in the city but down on the beach/ or far into the woods and I wanted to go there by myself thinking about God/or thinking about children or thinking about the world/all of it disclosed by the stars and the silence: I could not go and I could not think and I could not stay there alone as I need to be alone because I can’t do what I want to do with my own body and who in the hell set things up like this and in France they say if the guy penetrates but does not ejaculate then he did not rape me and if after stabbing him if after screams if after begging the bastard and if even after smashing a hammer to his head if even after that if he and his buddies fuck me after that then I consented and there was no rape because finally you understand finally they fucked me over because I was wrong I was wrong again to be me being me where I was/wrong to be who I am which is exactly like South Africa penetrating into Namibia penetrating into Angola and does that mean I mean how do you know if Pretoria ejaculates what will the evidence look like the proof of the monster jackboot ejaculation on Blackland and if after Namibia and if after Angola and if after Zimbabwe and if after all of my kinsmen and women resist even to self-immolation of the villages and if after that we lose nevertheless what will the big boys say will they claim my consent: Do You Follow Me: We are the wrong people of the wrong skin on the wrong continent and what in the hell is everybody being reasonable about and according to the Times this week back in 1966 the C.I.A. decided that they had this problem and the problem was a man named Nkrumah so they killed him and before that it was Patrice Lumumba and before that it was my father on the campus of my Ivy League school and my father afraid to walk into the cafeteria because he said he was wrong the wrong age the wrong skin the wrong gender identity and he was paying my tuition and before that it was my father saying I was wrong saying that I should have been a boy because he wanted one/a boy and that I should have been lighter skinned and that I should have had straighter hair and that I should not be so boy crazy but instead I should just be one/a boy and before that it was my mother pleading plastic surgery for my nose and braces for my teeth and telling me to let the books loose to let them loose in other words I am very familiar with the problems of the C.I.A. and the problems of South Africa and the problems of Exxon Corporation and the problems of white America in general and the problems of the teachers and the preachers and the F.B.I. and the social workers and my particular Mom and Dad/I am very familiar with the problems because the problems turn out to be me I am the history of rape I am the history of the rejection of who I am I am the history of the terrorized incarceration of myself I am the history of battery assault and limitless armies against whatever I want to do with my mind and my body and my soul and whether it’s about walking out at night or whether it’s about the love that I feel or whether it’s about the sanctity of my vagina or the sanctity of my national boundaries or the sanctity of my leaders or the sanctity of each and every desire that I know from my personal and idiosyncratic and indisputably single and singular heart I have been raped be- cause I have been wrong the wrong sex the wrong age the wrong skin the wrong nose the wrong hair the wrong need the wrong dream the wrong geographic the wrong sartorial I I have been the meaning of rape I have been the problem everyone seeks to eliminate by forced penetration with or without the evidence of slime and/ but let this be unmistakable this poem is not consent I do not consent to my mother to my father to the teachers to the F.B.I. to South Africa to Bedford-Stuy to Park Avenue to American Airlines to the hardon idlers on the corners to the sneaky creeps in cars I am not wrong: Wrong is not my name My name is my own my own my own and I can’t tell you who the hell set things up like this but I can tell you that from now on my resistance my simple and daily and nightly self-determination may very well cost you your life

A few years back and they told me Black means a hole where other folks got brain/it was like the cells in the heads of Black children was out to every hour on the hour naps Scientists called the phenomenon the Notorious Jensen Lapse, remember? Anyway I was thinking about how to devise a test for the wise like a Stanford-Binet for the C.I.A. you know? Take Einstein being the most the unquestionable the outstanding the maximal mind of the century right? And I’m struggling against this lapse leftover from my Black childhood to fathom why anybody should say so: E=mc squared? I try that on this old lady live on my block: She sweeping away Saturday night from the stoop and mad as can be because some absolute jackass have left a kingsize mattress where she have to sweep around it stains and all she don’t want to know nothing about in the first place “Mrs. Johnson!” I say, leaning on the gate between us: “What you think about somebody come up with an E equals M C 2?” “How you doin,” she answer me, sideways, like she don’t want to let on she know I ain’ combed my hair yet and here it is Sunday morning but still I have the nerve to be bothering serious work with these crazy questions about “E equals what you say again, dear?” Then I tell her, “Well also this same guy? I think he was undisputed Father of the Atom Bomb!” “That right.” She mumbles or grumbles, not too politely “And dint remember to wear socks when he put on his shoes!” I add on (getting desperate) at which point Mrs. Johnson take herself and her broom a very big step down the stoop away from me “And never did nothing for nobody in particular lessen it was a committee and used to say, ‘What time is it?’ and you’d say, ‘Six o’clock.’ and he’d say, ‘Day or night?’ and and he never made nobody a cup a tea in his whole brilliant life! and [my voice rises slightly] and he dint never boogie neither: never!” “Well,” say Mrs. Johnson, “Well, honey, I do guess that’s genius for you.”

no more the chicken and the egg come one of them before the other both be fadin (steady) from the supersafeway/a&p/giant circus uh-huh the pilgrim cornucopia it ain’ a pot to pee in much (these days) gas is gone and alka seltza runnin gas a close race outasight/you name it toilet paper halfway honest politicians there’s a shortage folks/please step right up

Dear Sirs: I have been enjoying the law and order of our community throughout the past three months since my wife and I, our two cats, and miscellaneous photographs of the six grandchildren belonging to our previous neighbors (with whom we were very close) arrived in Saratoga Springs which is clearly prospering under your custody Indeed, until yesterday afternoon and despite my vigilant casting about, I have been unable to discover a single instance of reasons for public-spirited concern, much less complaint You may easily appreciate, then, how it is that I write to your office, at this date, with utmost regret for the lamentable circumstances that force my hand Speaking directly to the issue of the moment: I have encountered a regular profusion of certain unidentified roses, growing to no discernible purpose, and according to no perceptible control, approximately one quarter mile west of the Northway, on the southern side To be specific, there are practically thousands of the aforementioned abiding in perpetual near riot of wild behavior, indiscriminate coloring, and only the Good Lord Himself can say what diverse soliciting of promiscuous cross-fertilization As I say, these roses, no matter what the apparent background, training, tropistic tendencies, age, or color, do not demonstrate the least inclination toward categorization, specified allegiance, resolute preference, consideration of the needs of others, or any other minimal traits of decency May I point out that I did not assiduously seek out this colony, as it were, and that these certain unidentified roses remain open to viewing even by children, with or without suitable supervision (My wife asks me to append a note as regards the seasonal but nevertheless seriously licentious phenomenon of honeysuckle under the moon that one may apprehend at the corner of Nelson and Main However, I have recommended that she undertake direct correspondence with you, as regards this: yet another civic disturbance in our midst) I am confident that you will devise and pursue appropriate legal response to the roses in question If I may aid your efforts in this respect, please do not hesitate to call me into consultation Respectfully yours,

Washington, D.C. At least it helps me to think about my son a Leo/born to us (Aries and Cancer) some sixteen years ago in St. John’s Hospital next to the Long Island Railroad tracks Atlantic Avenue/Brooklyn New York at dawn which facts do not really prepare you (do they) for him angry serious and running through the darkness with his own becoming light