It's all about the word!

I woke up this morning with poetry on mind. This being poetry month a time when we make ceremony to bow to the power of words, I decided to share to give space and praise to Toni Morrison one of the most dynamic word smiths I have ever had the pleasure to read and to meet. What writer or writers will your pen sing praise for this month? Here’s my salute:

PROSE FOR TONI

In this here place, we flesh; flesh that weeps, laughs; flesh that dances on bare feet in grass. Love it. Love it hard. Baby Suggs without practiced hymnal or choir. Sermons, praise dancers leaping from weeping trees, crimson streamers in hand, casting spells lifted off tongues of world weathered, naked belly women, sliding around life on flattened slipper backs or no shoes at all, chewing, always chewing, gnashing on wisdom wet tales, tilting bodies into lean, posting up at Furnaces hot with memory. A Paradise lost. Browning blue-eyed wishes dyed in communal longing, worrying, worrying, worrying about the edges of their hair; their kookleberries kneeling in perms, worshiping love weary Black men: Everybody want the life of a black man. Everybody... And black women, they want your whole self. Can’t she criticize whom she loves? It is about love. Songs sobbing, soughing into brisk winds, stinging creased skins. Our survival needing Seven Days to right it. Flight being an acceptable option, homemade papier mache, super-man cloak wings ascending claw foot spirits, ancestral myths wrapping damp, drooping dreams for departure homeward bound.

Toni was just cool. ‘Round mid-night, words to a Monk melody- Cool. Talkin, walkin’ NY streets down a soul-train line bumpin’ afros with Angela Davis- Cool. Smooth talking Guitar cool: You think because he doesn’t love you that you are worthless … that he’s correct…You can’t lose what you don’t own? Sula cool. Sitting there with that yellow ribbon in her hair getting chumped by love cuz she forgot it can snuggle, pinch, move on without clamps, wrenches or screws keepin’ it in place. Shadrack said “Always” bow legged, walking madness, treading water enough to quench thirst, too much to avoid suicide. Always a vigil on present dangers. She was so cool, she didn’t need clay or crayons to make her own self, letting it drop like a plate if it must. She was a signifying shape shifter, loosening operatic high notes, disrupting sound, with love, she reached under America’s skirt to pull up her umber hem.

FairyTales

I’m not sure what the impetus was for me to throw away my harlequin romance books and declare: “ain’t no prince riding on a white horse in the ghetto down 52nd St., not even on a ten-speed bike, to save me.”  I then promptly threw all my romance books in the trash. Perhaps I need to consult my old diaries to find out what shook me out of my Cinderella fantasies. I just remember being mad and empowered at the same time. It was for this reason that I never introduced my daughter to Cinderella, Snow White or any of those “fair maidens” from my childhood. Not only did they not look like me, but the narrative damaged my psyche with the belief in a dream that someone will rescue and take care of me. The damage was already done; because even though I threw away the books, I did not totally dismiss the possibility of the fairytale coming true.

Anyone who knows me, knows I love—love. I have never given up on love; it just needs to be focused in some concrete reality that does not require me to give up myself. Whenever I shifted from this truth and slipped into a fairytale, I found myself in relationships where I was scuffling back to reclaim me or short changing the dreams I had for myself. The fairy dust made my eye sight blurry. I couldn’t see what I gave up by letting someone else take care of my needs and not my wants. I lost the focus on me.

My favorite book after I left Harlequin was James Baldwin’s If Beale St. Could Talk. I could wrap my mind and heart around these characters who found love in the midst of urban decay. Their love was a ride or die kind of love made from struggle and one which let each person grow and discover the self. Once I made it to Spelman, I was turned on by Paule Marshall, Rosa Guy, Toni Cade Bambara before falling head over heels for Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God. I wanted Teacake. A man so sweet he wasn’t afraid to let me discover and to kiss myself. I wanted a man who did not want me to show up as someone else or try to change me into his ideal once he believed he claimed me. I needed to be whole like Janie grew to be. A self-actualized woman, which is why I love me some Sula.  I teach this novel by Toni Morrison every year for my young women to learn the importance of loving your sisters and loving yourself and for my young men to learn why it is important for women to learn this lesson in order for men to be loved. I want to encourage them to be like Ajax, a free man who loved a woman he believed to be brilliant and did not confuse love with possession.

I gave my daughter both of these books. I informed her possession is antithetical to love and that a person must be free enough to love themselves to have some love to share.

Love is not a commodity to be bartered or bought. Once love is up for sale then so is the self, which means the purchaser reserves the right to dismantle or decide to return it if it does not act right. I let her know: I don’t come with a return label or any other kind of label or warranty. I am too valuable to be bought, which is why I had to disallow any thoughts of knights in shining armor.

So when my daughter decided to marry, I informed her and her husband that in order for their marriage to work a space must be created and respected for her to become a self-actualized woman. I let her husband know that his happiness rested on her knowing she is more than a mother and more than a wife. It means, before either of those roles emerged, the Creator put her here with a plan and a purpose which exceeds those roles. It means it is her duty to find that thing that brings her personal joy beyond a man or a baby. It is a mandate for her to live on purpose in order to earn her space on this planet. She has something unique to bring that has never been seen before, and I am sitting on the edge of my seat waiting for her to discover it and to share it.

I made sure from the time she was born that she had all the “paints and clay” she needed to paint and mold her world. This is not to say love is not necessary or needed; it is to say, loving up on her is mandatory and everything and anyone else that comes after is what makes the best fairytale.

I'M HER

I am her, that woman who is part of a line of bad, bodacious women. Except for my Aunt Bea, who was the publisher and editor of Sepia magazine, most of their names are not highlighted in history books or a PBS special.

My grandmother, who is 106, continues to wake up and be present in her world, although she no longer has sight. This propels me to get up when I want to sit down. She told me when she was living in Wilmington, North Carolina, that she sat in the front of a bus before Rosa Parks. The white bus driver told her: “you might as well get used to it” because of the civil unrest that was happening in her southern, segregated town. My grandmom is a trailblazer and entrepreneur who had a sandwich stand and a childcare business.

My Nana was a tiny woman in stature who had the spunk of a giant and the heart of a lion. She protected and provided comfort and rest for a world of women and men in her home. My mother continues Nana’s work to offer me and others who need her home a respite against a world that too often can be mean. It is my mother who taught me how to be a sister to other sisters.

I am part of women like Momma Emma who nurtured a neighborhood of children including her own and who told me: “Tell ‘em you don’t come in body parts.” I belong to that tribe of teachers and poets like Sonia Sanchez who told me not to gossip, but instead help a sister or brother to improve their condition. She continues to teach me what it means to be human and a Black woman in this world. Momma Sonia often reminds me of how some are surprised by our contributions like those showcased in the book, I Dream A World, which was produced by photojournalist, Brian Lanker and documents a range of Black women that editor Barbara Summers notes had a “fist up, death-defying love that challenged the unfair conditions of life and muscled in on injustice as it nursed both sides of a nation.” Without reparations, this nation has nursed our tits dry.

Recently, Gwyneth Paltrow noted how she learned about self-love from her Black friends. She says, “It’s like from the deepest part of their souls all the way to the tips of their fingers.” My question to this is if we don’t love us, who will? This is the muscle earned when we are not put on pedestals, when we have to fight white women, white men, and our men too, to claim our femininity, brilliance, and space. I am her!