Your gills
So you can’t
Go back
To the water
Yet there is
No way
You can live
On land
There are cats
And dogs
And even robins
Who might take
Pleasure
In capturing
Something strange
There are school
Children
Who will
Throw rocks
And laughter
At the little
Fish who
Floundered
There is of course
The memory
Of the love
That propelled
This jet
And now I sit
On the beach
Listening to the waves
Crash over the rocks
And wish
I had seen
The end of this story
At the beginning
Instead of
At the end
WE ARE VIRGINIA TECH
(16 April 2007)
We are Virginia Tech
We are sad today
We will be sad for quite a while
We are not moving on
We are embracing our mourning
We are Virginia Tech
We are strong enough to stand tearlessly
We are brave enough to bend to cry
And sad enough to know we must laugh again
We are Virginia Tech
We do not understand this tragedy
We know we did nothing to deserve it
But neither does the child in Africa
Dying of AIDS
Neither do the Invisible Children
Walking the night away
To avoid being kidnapped by a rogue army
Neither does the baby elephant watching his community
Be devastated for ivory
Neither does the Mexican child looking
For fresh water
Neither does the Iraqi teenager dodging bombs
Neither does the Appalachian infant killed
By a boulder
Dislodged
Because the land was destabilized
No one deserves a tragedy
We are Virginia Tech
The Hokie Nation embraces Our own
And reaches out
With open heart and mind
To those who offer their hearts and hands
We are strong
And brave
And innocent
And unafraid
We are better than we think
And not yet what we want to be
We are alive to imagination
And open to possibility
To invent the future
Through our blood and tears
Through all this sadness
We are the Hokies
We will prevail
We will prevail
We will prevail
We are
Virginia Tech
An Excerpt from A Good Cry
BABY WEST
Baby West my godmother
Died
And left me $50 in
Her will
Where would I be
Without that $50
Mr. Gray who
Drove not taxi but private
Car asked the white man
He was taking
To the airport if he could
Let his “niece” ride
Up front
He also dropped me at
The train station
$10.50 for a ticket
to Knoxville
And a dollar for peppermint
I purchased a 45 RPM
But I don’t remember
Which one
I spent the summer
With Grandmother
And Grandpapa
Not realizing a man
On a Latin school teacher’s pension
And a woman who occasionally cooked
For white folk
Could hardly afford
Another mouth to feed
More hot water for baths
Electricity for the Radio WGN until it signed
Off at midnight
I had no idea
Grandmother had to beg
A white man to let me
Enroll in Austin High
Where I needed clothes
From Millers and Rich’s
Shoes a coat and stuff
All I knew then
Was the sound
Of my father hitting
My mother every Saturday
Night until I heard
Her say “Gus, please
Don’t hit me”
And I knew my choice:
Leave or kill him
Both were sad
I am in the hospital
Room
With yellow tulips
From Nancy and Diana
And a beautiful bouquet
From the English Department
I am trying to learn
How to cry
It’s not that my life
Has been a lie
But that I repressed
My tears
We always teach
The youngsters
Don’t cry it will be
All right
But crying cleanses
It will not be
All Right
But we will learn
We can do nothing
About it
I have seizures because
I am thinking of my mother
Being hit by my father
It will not be
All Right
So I must learn
To cry
BIG MAYBELLE
The room was dark
Dank actually
It was . . . after all . . . Newport, KY
Preserver of sin and soul
My boyfriend whom my parents
Trusted though Nate
Did not deserve their trust
Was taking me to a nightclub
George Ratterman would be sheriff
One day
And close Covington and Newport
Down
And Cincinnati would suffer
Cincinnati had gotten the clean money
The Living Room . . . Mark Murphy . . . Les McCann
The mighty Amanda Ambrose fresh from Chicago
Newport had the blues
And gambling
Though your biggest gamble was probably
With your life
I wore high heels then
And dresses just a bit above
My knees
I drank gin fizzes
Because, let’s admit it,
That’s not a drink
Nate said I have a Treat
So Mommy let me go
To a bar that was dark
Down dank steps
Where I coolly walked in
With one of the gamblers
Who knew everybody
We could see through to the back before
The performers came to the mic
The stage jiggled and CANDY
Was belted out
I CALL MY SUGAH CANDY
And there she was
Two tons of incredible womanhood
Balanced on stiletto heels
Wrapped in a black silk dress
Talking ’bout her
CANDY
And I who was born in Knoxville, Tennessee
Met one of Tennessee’s greatest gifts to the world
The Girl from Chattanooga
Shake it, Baby
Shake it
This woman would never sell Girl Scout cookies
Or be seen collecting for Diabetes
She would never make calls for crippled children somewhere in Africa
Nor head up the Blood Drive
In her home town . . . No . . .
She’d be leaning over the back fence
In a man’s pair of house slippers
With a cigarette just sort of dangling
Between her lips laughing laughing laughing
Yes Ma’am
This was Big Maybelle
I stamped and clapped and shouted
Shake it, Sister Maybelle
Go on, Girl
Like what you just read? Click here to buy A Good Cry.
*because love is magical
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I would like to thank Clinton,
who always seems to make time for me.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Poet, activist, mother, and professor, NIKKI GIOVANNI is a three-time NAACP Image Award winner and the first recipient of the Rosa Parks Woman of Courage Award, and holds the Langston Hughes Medal for Outstanding Poetry. The author of twenty-seven books and a Grammy nominee for The Nikki Giovanni Poetry Collection, she is the University Distinguished Professor/English at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Virginia, and an Oprah Living Legend.
www.nikki-giovanni.com
Discover great authors, exclusive offers, and more at hc.com.
ALSO BY NIKKI GIOVANNI
POETRY
Black Feeling Black Talk / Black Judgement
Re: Creation
My House
The Women and the Men
Cotton Candy on a Rainy Day
Those Who Ride the Night Winds
The Selected Poems of Nikki Giovanni
Love Poems
Blues: For All the Changes
Quilting the Black-Eyed Pea: Poems and Not Quite Poems
Acolytes
The Collected Poetry of Nikki Giovanni
PROSE
Gemini: An Extended Autobiographical Statement on My First Twenty-five Years of Being a Black Poet
A Dialogue: James Baldwin and Nikki Giovanni
A Poetic Equation: Conversations Between Nikki Giovanni and Margaret Walker
Sacred Cows…and Other Edibles
Racism 101
EDITED BY NIKKI GIOVANNI
Night Comes Softly: An Anthology of Black Female Voices
Appalachian Elders: A Warm Hearth Sampler
Grand Mothers: Poems, Reminiscences, and Short Stories About the Keepers of Our Traditions
Grand Fathers: Reminiscences, Poems, Recipes, and Photos of the Keepers of Our Traditions
Shimmy Shimmy Shimmy Like My Sister Kate: Looking at the Harlem Renaissance through Poems
FOR CHILDREN
Spin a Soft Black Song
Vacation Time: Poems for Children Knoxville, Tennessee
The Genie in the Jar
The Sun Is So Quiet
Ego-Tripping and Other Poems for Young People
The Grasshopper’s Song: An Aesop’s Fable Revisited
Rosa
Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass: An American Friendship
Hip Hop Speaks to Children
CREDITS
Front jacket photographs by Jan Cobb
COPYRIGHT
BICYCLES. Copyright © 2009 by Nikki Giovanni. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
EPub © Edition DECEMBER 2008 ISBN: 9780061984099
Version 04072017
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
ABOUT THE PUBLISHER
Australia
HarperCollins Publishers Australia Pty. Ltd.
Level 13, 201 Elizabeth Street
Sydney, NSW 2000, Australia
www.harpercollins.com.au
Canada
HarperCollins Canada
2 Bloor Street East - 20th Floor
Toronto, ON M4W 1A8, Canada
www.harpercollins.ca
New Zealand
HarperCollins Publishers New Zealand
Unit D1, 63 Apollo Drive
Rosedale 0632
Auckland, New Zealand
www.harpercollins.co.nz
United Kingdom
HarperCollins Publishers Ltd.
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF, UK
www.harpercollins.co.uk
United States
HarperCollins Publishers Inc.
195 Broadway
New York, NY 10007
www.harpercollins.com