Just joined this group: The Ya Basta Collective’s free online writing workshop for girls, women, and gender-non-conforming folks of color on war, militarization and violence in conjunction with the themes of their anthology. So we’re supposed to write a poem a week, so y’all will have to give me feedback on the poems I write. For now, we were given the task to share some of the poems and writings that have inspired us and I am posting a few of the ones that other people posted because they are truly inspiring. Injoy!
—
We begin by speaking directly to the deaths and disappointments. Here
we begin to fill in the spaces of silence between us. For it is
between these seemingly irreconcilable lines- the class lines, the
politically correct lines, the daily lines we run down each other to
keep difference and desire at a distance- that the truth of our
connection lies. -Cherrie Moraga
—
from Ai:
Cuba, 1962
When the rooster jumps up on the windowsill
and spreads his red-gold wings,
I wake, thinking it is the sun
and call Juanita, hearing her answer,
but only in my mind.
I know she is already outside,
breaking the cane off at ground level,
using only her big hands.
I get the machete and walk among the cane,
until I see her, lying face-down in the dirt.
Juanita, dead in the morning like this.
I raise the machete—
what I take from the earth, I give back—
and cut off her feet.
I lift the body and carry it to the wagon,
where I load the cane to sell in the village.
Whoever tastes my woman in his candy, his cake,
tastes something sweeter than this sugar cane;
it is grief.
If you eat too much of it, you want more,
you can never get enough.
—
Affirmation
I believe in living.
I believe in the spectrum
of Beta days and Gamma people.
I believe in sunshine.
In windmills and waterfalls,
tricycles and rocking chairs.
And i believe that seeds grow into sprouts.
And sprouts grow into trees.
I believe in the magic of the hands.
And in the wisdom of the eyes.
I believe in rain and tears.
And in the blood of infinity.
I believe in life.
And i have seen the death parade
march through the torso of the earth,
sculpting mud bodies in its path.
I have seen the destruction of the daylight,
and seen bloodthirsty maggots
prayed to and saluted.
I have seen the kind become the blind
and the blind become the bind
in one easy lesson.
I have walked on cut glass.
I have eaten crow and blunder bread
and breathed the stench of indifference.
I have been locked by the lawless.
Handcuffed by the haters.
Gagged by the greedy.
And, if i know any thing at all,
it’s that a wall is just a wall
and nothing more at all.
It can be broken down.
I believe in living.
I believe in birth.
I believe in the sweat of love
and in the fire of truth.
And i believe that a lost ship,
steered by tired, seasick sailors,
can still be guided home
to port.
–Assata Shakur
—
SECRET TO LIFE IN AMERICA
My brother sits me down and tells me
the secret to life in America.
I’m twelve years old when this happens.
He grabs my shoulders and says:
No one likes an immigrant.
It reminds them of when they fell down
and no one was around to help them.
When they couldn’t talk.
As children when they got lost in public.
Cold and wet, everyone hates an immigrant.
So don’t trust nobody.
The whites, they’ll teach you
to hate yourself for being silent.
They’ll punish you for fighting back.
They’ll love the taste of your food and culture, and sister…
and yet spit you out.
The blacks, at first you’d think they understand loss.
But to them you’re just another cracker with a bad case of jaundice.
Don’t expect shit from them,
they can’t afford to be generous.
Latins laugh at you behind your back.
Do you know this? I’m trying to tell you
how it is in the city,
he says.
I ask my brother if I can go outside now.
No!, he screams. Our father is dead
and now I have to teach you
how to survive
in America.
Fags are everywhere.
And they want you, cuz
to them you’re exotic and cute
and will do all the dirty work.
The Chinese look down on you
for using their alphabet. The Japanese have raped
your women through the centuries
and will do it again. In fact, never
do business with other Asians,
cuz they’re the greediest people alive.
Next to Jews.
Now I’m crying, because my brother
has pulled off his work shirt.
Open your eyes!
This is where that black boy pulled the trigger
over twenty dollars and a candy bar! Here
is where the whites punctured my kidney in a parking lot outside of
Denny’s…
And the Mexicans just kept drinking their beers.
This is the bruise on my soul
where every American girl ever looked at me
like I was still the enemy.
This is where agent orange first set in.
This is where the DMZ line is still drawn!
Taste of barbed wire on my tongue!
See where that fat white teacher called me a freak
for getting a B in math! Feel
my broken immigrant’s throat
that couldn’t tell him to Fuck Off!!!
These are my yellow hands!
This is my cock!
These are my eyes wide open!
This is my heart filled with cigarette smoke!
This my aching back
which brought you here
and buried our father!
This is the cheek mother slapped
for the way that I called her
ignorant.
This is the GQ subscription sister gave me for Christmas.
Here is my blood, which tastes just like tears.
These are my dreams for the future
dead and shriveled in the corner.
This is my broom. This the face
I couldn’t save from myself.
Are you listening to any of this?
Yes, I tell him. I’m listening.
You’re lucky, he says. You’ll go to college
when you grow up.
I don’t know, I tell him.
Work your ass off and move away from this shit hole
out to the suburbs. Maybe marry
a white girl.
I don’t know, I tell him.
Go off and write… poetry.
I won’t, I say.
Yes you will. And when you do,
do me this one favor…
What, I ask.
Lie.
And make our father and me
the heroes…
you always needed us to be
~Ed Bok Lee
