of an hour and a half
and she’s talking at me
like my fifth grade teacher.
More discipline, Patricia.
Stretch yourself.
I mean really!
this be one bold-ass bitch.
If that’s not enough
she ends the visit
if that’s what you call it
I’d call it an earthquake
shake everything that isn’t
nailed down loose
watch it crumble and fall
she tells me to my face
as she goes out my door
“you need to get rid of
your lover –
she no help to you.”
Who is this bitch?
II.
I am
woman
and not white.
A Woman Speaks
You talk to me
like my mother
with your eyes
dark pieces of coal
pierce my words
dare me to be
untruthful
reach beneath the surface
tell you the part
that I hold back.
I have known you forever
been aware that you would come.
My muse sang of you –
watch the sky for
an ebony meteorite
that will pierce
into the darkness
illuminate your fears
hurl them at you
laughing.
Are you quick
enough to survive?
Can I count on you
to be there?
III.
I am often afraid to this day, but even more so angry at having to be afraid, of having to spend so much of my energies, interrupting my work, simply upon fear and worry.
The Cancer Journals
After I read The Cancer Journals
I made love to you
touched your body – pressed
my hands deep into your flesh
and passed my warmth to you.
I kissed the space where
your right breast had been
ran my tongue over your body
to lick away your fear
to lick away my fear.
I felt jealous
wanted to be near you
and to hold you
and to sing you songs
to say I love you
you are not alone
I felt guilt
for all the unsent letters
for all the unwritten poems
for all the “dead air.”
IV.
Every woman I have ever loved has left her print upon me.
Zami: A New Spelling of My Name
“I was ready to give you up”
so much time passed
and no sense of you.
Sister, love
some things are not possible.
I carry you with me
talk with you
ask your opinion
you cannot give me up
I cannot give you up.
We are linked
in
our Blackness
our creativity
our queerness
our muses conspire.
I never promise
to write often
to call often
to be a presence
I promise
to call you
and call you
sister.
Funny
Once upon a time there was a young woman. Her name was Doris, or Sarah, or Sue; I never knew. She walked the streets of Sunnyside, the beaten seashells dusted her feet and she always walked alone. She wore men’s clothing, long before profiteers had developed unisex wear: flannel shirts in fall, covered by an army field jacket in the winter; white T-shirts in summer, and khaki pants. Not blue jeans, which were acceptable for young women after school and on Saturdays, but beige khaki pants. Men’s pants.
Every evening around dusk she walked the three blocks from her house to Mr. Isom’s store. She passed my house with long strides, her arms swinging; a steady rhythm, not too slow, not too fast. Her eyes were always forward. She never turned to the people sitting on their porches, never nodded her head, never said, “How you do?” She always walked straight and purposefully, and she always walked alone.
One day I asked my parents who she was, and they closed around me. My mother, who had taught me to always be nice (“if you can’t say something good about a person, then say nothing at all”) looked embarrassed and told, “You stay away from her – she’s funny.” I didn’t understand. Had never heard anyone called funny except on radio and television as we crowded around the small screen, or box, and watched Amos and Andy, or George Burns and Gracie Allen, or listened to Fibber McGee and Molly.
“What do you mean, funny?”
I should have known better. I had lived with my parents long enough to recognize “the look.” The look that said a subject was closed – no discussion here. You’re too young, or innocent, or female, or Black to learn about this.
“Never you mind, girl. You jist do like your mama say and stay away from her. She’s a disgrace. If I had a daughter like that, I’d kill her.”
My father was not embarrassed. He was angry. The look that he wore when he came home at night. The look he wore when he had to change his plans cause Mr. Jenkins from the Oldsmobile place called and wanted to come retread his tires the very next day, not two days later. The look he wore when he had to wait for an hour to get paid while Mr. Jenkins waited on his customers, even though Daddy was done and needed to get to Mr. James’s Buick place to retread tires that he also had to have done that same day.
I had seen that look, but I had never seen it directed toward a Black person who had said nothing, done nothing to my father and what was his.
So, I didn’t find out what funny meant that day, and I never asked that woman her name or why she always walked alone.
The Fuqua family moved next door to us the year I was seven. There were four children: Joyce, Barbara, Howard, and Anthony, in that order. Joyce was four months younger than me.
We became inseparable. We rode bikes, played jacks, football, and paper dolls. Paper dolls were our lives. During the summer we would cut out models from ads in the Houston Chronicle. We had to use summer models because they wore shorts or bathing suits. We pasted cardboard on their backs to make them sturdy. Then we’d draw clothes – hundreds of outfits, many copied from JCPenney catalogs, or just what we thought the well-dressed doll should have.
Each of us had complete families. A mother, a father, a boy, and a girl. All-American nuclear family, and white.
We played paper dolls for hours. If Joyce’s siblings had been good, or her mother insisted, then they were allowed to play with us. More often, we played alone.
The game changed the summer I was fourteen. In the past, we would press the dolls’ faces together for their goodbye-I’m-going-to-work kiss and continue to play. This time it was different. Joyce reached out as the dolls touched and pulled me to her and kissed me. To this day I’m not sure why. Perhaps it was the sexual playing we had begun with the boys in the neighborhood, allowing them to sneak kisses and fast feels during hide-and-seek. Perhaps it was simply the time, as puberty took control of our loins and senses. Perhaps it was Joyce acting out what she had been secretly learning at Mr. Isom’s store from Mrs. Isom. I don’t know why, but we kissed.
From that moment, the games changed. We played paper dolls as often as we could, and we played alone. We never admitted that what we were doing had nothing to do with the paper dolls. We always took them out and dressed them; then we laid them down and took each other.
We kissed long, slow, passionate kisses, mounted each other rubbing our genitalia against one another, feeling our budding breasts.
Our parents marveled at how wond
erfully we got along. We never fought; we cried when we couldn’t spend the night at the other’s house. Yes, we played paper dolls at night, too.
The summer I turned sixteen was the most exciting summer of my life. All my sisters had gone off to college and both my parents worked. That meant our house was mine and Joyce’s. We spent hours each day exploring each other’s bodies – until the day my father came home early.
I don’t know how long my father had been standing there. As Joyce and I pulled apart to say goodbye, I saw him and I died. My heart stopped, my breathing stopped. I was numb. I knew in that instant that my life was over. I wasn’t going to California that next year. I wasn’t going to college. I was never going to see my mother or sisters again. I was never going to ride my bike or wrestle with my dog. I was going to die by my father’s hand.
He didn’t hit me. He told Joyce to go home, and then he turned and walked away. Joyce left immediately. She left her dolls, and left me to face the wrath of my father.
My father, who was known throughout my entire life as crazy, the man who insisted that all boyfriends come to our house and meet him, come pass his test of approval – and no boy ever passed – the man said not one word to me.
My mother came home and the two of them went into their bedroom and talked. Not for long, not more than two minutes. Then they came out. My mother cooked dinner, and I went into my room and prayed. I prayed that it was all a bad dream and I would wake up quickly. I prayed that my father would have a heart attack and die. I prayed that time would suspend itself and I would never have to deal with the next moment.
We ate dinner in complete silence that night. Not one word was said by anyone. I ate trying to pace my meal. I did not want to finish ahead of my folks – no way did I want to ask permission to leave the table. I wanted invisibility. I don’t know what I ate, I only know it was heavy. Tons of rocks being passed down my throat. After dinner I went to bed and lay there, still praying: my father had that look, and my mother was worried.
My mother came into my room the next morning and told me to get dressed. To put on one of my school dresses. I asked no questions. School dress on a Saturday? You got it, Mom. We climbed into my father’s car and drove to Third Ward. My curiosity was being squashed by fear. And my parents said nothing.
They took me to a doctor’s office. I waited outside as they went into an exam room. A few minutes later I was called inside. My father left and my mother watched as this physician had me disrobe and looked at my breasts – not touching, just looking.
Then he had me lie down and looked at my genitals. Again not touching, just looking. I was told to get dressed and wait outside. My father re-entered the exam room. Less than ten minutes later we were out of the doctor’s office and back in the car and headed home.
Still no one had said anything to me.
When we got home, my parents told me to go into the living room and sit down. They walked in together, and finally someone spoke to me. My father.
“The doctor says you are alright. You’re not funny, so I don’t ever expect you to do what I saw you and Joyce doing again.”
They left the room. That was it. I was still alive, and now I knew what funny was.
The following day, after morning church service, my father took me to all of our neighbors’ houses. I had to sit while he told each neighbor what he had caught Joyce and me doing. I didn’t understand then that he was employing their aid in watching the two of us while he was at work. I thought the man had lost his mind and simply wanted to see me die from humiliation. Yet it didn’t make sense because he had already told me I was alright – not funny.
Joyce and I still saw each other, still explored each other. We continued to do so until I left for college.
We didn’t know the name for what we were and what we were doing, but we did know it had to be a secret. We had received our first closet keys. But faith, or time, or the goddess placed us in an era where closet doors would at first creak, then slide, then blast open. And unlike Doris, or Sarah, or Sue, or whatever her name was, we would not have to walk alone.
Jonestown
& Other Madness
foreword
This book came about because we have become too quiet. We go to our jobs and raise our families and turn our minds away from the madness that surrounds us.
The tragedy of Jonestown occurred in 1978. It is amazing to me that we have not demanded better explanations of what happened. As I travel and talk with people, I find that most of them do not believe what they have been told. Yet we still know very little. I must ask the question: If 900 white people had gone to a country with a Black minister and ‘committed suicide,’ would we have accepted the answers we were given so easily?
I find it difficult to accept the answers of Jonestown. I find it equally difficult in the case of Priscilla Jones, or to realize that in 1984, straight people remain sufficiently terrified by the gay lifestyle that a gay rights bill protecting against job discrimination needs to be ‘studied’ by the governor of California.
Most of all, it is frightening to me that we live with the madness, that we continue to move through our lives as if these—and more—were normal occurrences. We are a nation in great trouble. It is time for those with vision to speak out loudly before the madness consumes us all.
Pat Parker
March 10, 1984
Oakland, California
love isn’t
I wish I could be
the lover you want
come joyful
bear brightness
like summer sun
Instead
I come cloudy
bring pregnant women
with no money
bring angry comrades
with no shelter
I wish I could take you
run over beaches
lay you in sand
and make love to you
Instead
I come rage
bring city streets
with wine and blood
bring cops and guns
with dead bodies and prison
I wish I could take you
travel to new lives
kiss ninos on tourist buses
sip tequila at sunrise
Instead
I come sad
bring lesbians
without lovers
bring sick folk
without doctors
bring children
without families
I wish I could be
your warmth
your blanket
All I can give
is my love.
I care for you
I care for our world
if I stop
caring about one
it would be only
a matter of time
before I stop
loving
the other.
bar conversation
Three women were arrested for
assault recently after they beat
up a woman who put a swastika
on another woman’s shoulder during
a S & M encounter
It’s something you should write about.
If you talk about it
then women will listen
and know it’s ok.
Now, envision one poet sitting in a bar
not cruising
observing the interactions
and then sitting face to face
with a young woman
who wants a spokesperson for
sado-masochism
among lesbians.
The first impulse is to dismiss
the entire conversation as more
ramblings of a SWG
(read Silly White Girl:
derogatory
characterization
used by minorities for
certain members of the
caucasian race.)
The second is to run rapidly
in another direction.
Polite poets do not run,
throw up, or strike
the other person in a conversation.
What we do is let our minds ramble.
So nodding in the appropriate places
I left the bar
traveled
first to the sixties
back to the cramped living rooms
activist dykes
consciousness-raising sessions
I polled the women there
one by one
Is this what it was all about?
Did we brave the wrath of threatened bar owners.
so women could wear handkerchiefs in their pockets?
one by one I asked.
Their faces faded
furrows of frowns on their brows
I went to the halls
where we sat hours upon hours
arguing with Gay men
trying to build a united movement
I polled the people there
one by one
Is this why we did it?
Did we grapple with our own who hated us
so women could use whips and chains?
The faces faded
puzzled faces drift out of vision.
I returned to the jails
where women sat bruised and beaten
singing songs of liberation
through puffed lips
I polled the women there
one by one
Is this why we did it?
Did we take to the streets
so women can carve swastikas on their bodies?
Hundreds and hundreds of women
pass by
no, march by
chant, sing, cry
I return to the voice
the young voice in the bar
and I am angry
the vision of women playing
as Nazis, policeman, rapists