How I Discovered Poetry Read online

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  Text copyright © 2014 by Marilyn Nelson

  Illustrations copyright © 2014 by Hadley Hooper

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  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Nelson, Marilyn, date, author.

  [Poems. Selections]

  How I discovered poetry / Marilyn Nelson ; illustrations by Hadley Hooper.

  pages cm

  ISBN 978-0-8037-3304-6 (hardcover : alk. paper)

  eBook ISBN 978-1-101-63539-1 (epub)

  1. Nelson, Marilyn, date—Poetry. 2. Authorship—Poetry.

  3. Poetry—Authorship. I. Hooper, Hadley, illustrator. II. Title.

  PS35 2013005289

  Designed by Lily Malcom

  The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

  Version_1

  Contents

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Blue Footsies

  Church

  Called Up

  Texas Protection

  Telling Time

  Bomb Drill

  Pink Menace

  A Snake

  Your Own

  Bad Name

  Sonic Boom

  Career Girl

  Making History

  Gold Box

  Kemo Sabe

  Mississippi

  Glow-in-the-Dark

  Traveling Light

  Just Pick a Name

  Say It

  Moonlily

  Cloud-Gathering

  Sputnik

  Darkroom

  Nelsons

  Fieldwork

  Caucasian Dinner

  Ghost

  Attic Window

  Paper Dolls

  Queen of the Sixth Grade

  Aooga

  Beautiful Hair

  Critic

  Parking Lot Dawn

  A Drift of Girlfriends

  Africans

  Bitter Apple

  The History of Tribal Suppression

  Sinfonia Concertante

  Mischievious

  To Miss Jackson

  Let Me Count the Ways

  A Quartet of Geeks

  Dances With Doorknobs

  My Friends

  The Baby Picture Guessing Game

  Safe Path Through Quicksand

  How I Discovered Poetry

  Thirteen-Year-Old American Negro Girl

  Author’s Note

  To my corporeal and soul siblings, Jennifer and Mel, and to my other sisters and brothers

  —M.N.

  Blue Footsies

  (Cleveland, Ohio, 1950)

  Once upon a time. Upon a time?

  Something got on a time? What is a time?

  When it got on a time, could it get off?

  Could it get on a time two times? Three times?

  Three times upon a time . . . Times on a time . . .

  Three times on time . . . Or three times on three times . . .

  I hear Jennifer’s breath. Our room is dark.

  Mama’s voice questions and Daddy’s answers,

  a sound seesaw through the wall between us.

  If there was, once upon a time, a fire,

  and I could only rescue one of them,

  would I save him, or her? Or Jennifer?

  Four-year-old saves three people from hot flames!

  God bless Mama, Daddy, and Jennifer . . .

  Church

  (Cleveland, Ohio, 1950)

  Why did Lot have to take his wife and flea

  from the bad city, like that angel said?

  Poor Lot: imagine having a pet flea.

  I’d keep mine on a dog. But maybe fleas

  were bigger in the olden Bible days.

  Maybe a flea was bigger than a dog,

  more like a sheep or a goat. Maybe they had

  flea farms back then, with herds of giant fleas.

  Jennifer squirms beside me on the pew,

  sucking her thumb, nestled against Mama.

  Maybe Lot and his wife rode saddled fleas!

  Or drove a coach pulled by a team of fleas!

  I giggle soundlessly, but Mama swats

  my leg, holding a finger to her lips.

  Called Up

  (Cleveland, Ohio, 1951)

  Folding the letter and laying it down,

  Daddy says, “Well, Baby, I’ve been called back up.”

  Mama pauses, then puts my bowl of beans

  in front of me. Jennifer eats and hums

  across from me on two telephone books.

  Mama says, “Pray God you won’t see combat.”

  Jennifer, stop singing at the table,

  I hiss. Her humming’s driving me crazy.

  She looks up from her bowl with dreaming eyes:

  Huh? Mama says, “My darling, we’re going, too.”

  Stop singing! “I’ll take a leave from law school,”

  he says, “and you’ll take a leave from your job.”

  We’ve been called up. Our leaves become feathers.

  With wings we wave good-bye to our cousins.

  Texas Protection

  (James Connally AFB, Texas, 1951)

  America goes on and on and on and on,

  and on the land are cities, towns, and roads

  that stream under your wheels like stripy snakes

  and end up in Texas, with new people.

  Our dog, Pudgy, found a new family.

  Mayflower School feels like something I dreamed

  before I woke up wanting cowboy boots

  and craving the cap pistol’s puff of smoke.

  Mama says, “We’re walking on eggshells here.”

  Daddy returns the faceless men’s salutes.

  But I would tiptoe in my cowboy boots,

  I promise, without breaking any eggs!

  And if I had a gun and a holster

  I could protect us from the Communists!

  Telling Time

  (James Connally AFB, Texas, 1951)

  Mama reminds me I’m a big girl now:

  I’m five years old. I can watch Jennifer

  for five minutes; they’ll just be down the street.

  They tuck us in. I hear the door lock click.

  Five minutes. “Just five minutes,” Daddy said.

  My first-grade class is learning to read clocks,

  so I know minutes are the little lines

  between numbers. Clocks are how you tell time.

  Past is before now; future is after.

  Now is a five-minute eternity,

  Jennifer and I howling in pajamas

  in the front yard of the housing unit,

  surrounded by concerned faceless strangers />
  who back away, now our parents are here.

  Bomb Drill

  (Lackland AFB, Texas, 1952)

  Nothing belongs to us in our new house

  except Mama’s piano and our clothes.

  I’m the new girl in Dick and Jane country,

  the other children faceless as grown-ups.

  I read through recess and take some books home.

  I read to Jennifer while Mama plays.

  I read while the television talker

  talks about career and the hide drajen bomb.

  Mama says she’s going to vote for Ike.

  Daddy says, “Woman, you just think he’s cute!”

  We ducked and covered underneath our desks,

  hiding from drajen bombs in school today.

  Maybe drajens would turn into butter

  if they ran really fast around a tree.

  Pink Menace

  (Lackland AFB, Texas, 1952)

  The Bomb Drill bell is not the Fire Drill bell

  or the Tornado bell or the Recess

  bell or the bell that says Time to Go Home.

  Everybody’s motto is Be Prepared,

  so we practice Tragic Catastrophes,

  hoping they won’t come. (Keep your fingers crossed.)

  My many secret good-luck rituals

  seem to be working okay. (Knock on wood.)

  I never step on cracks in the sidewalk:

  America’s safe from The Red Menace.

  I touch a finger to the car window

  whenever we drive over railroad tracks:

  the Menace turns pink and fuzzy. At night,

  I’m asleep before the end of my blessing list.

  A Snake

  (Lowry AFB, Colorado, 1953)

  As soon as we got here, we turned around

  and drove back through the no-guardrail mountains,

  connecting the dots of farm mailboxes

  to towns and faceless people who don’t count.

  Mama hugged Aunt Carma and Uncle George.

  Daddy wiped his tears with his handkerchief.

  Oneida wasn’t in her pink bedroom.

  She wasn’t in the hospital, either.

  They said she was in that box. She was dead.

  We drove back through the frightening mountains.

  Jennifer and I chanted There’s a snake!

  to keep ourselves from looking at the huge

  and scaredy-fying emptiness.

  When you die, you go to a different school.

  Your Own

  (Smoky Hill AFB, Kansas, 1953)

  Our new house, Officers’ Quarters 42,

  connects to other quarters and mowed yards

  connecting to wheat fields and wilderness

  waiting to be explored by kids and dogs.

  Sometimes we don’t come in until we’re called

  by someone’s mom. They say Mom, not Mama.

  Hazel, Charlotte, Jeannie, Tommy, and Charles:

  as soon as we hear the School’s Over bell

  we flock together like migrating birds,

  catching grasshoppers, gathering bouquets,

  or just plain running into breathlessness.

  I don’t know why Mama looked sad tonight

  while I was washing up, or why she said,

  “Be careful: Don’t like them more than your own.”

  Bad Name

  (Smoky Hill AFB, Kansas, 1954)

  The dishes washed and dried, my homework done,

  and Amos ’n’ Andy still an hour away,

  I kneel with crayons at the coffee table,

  drawing and coloring. Round head, round eyes,

  half-circle eyebrows, and half-circle mouths.

  Segregation means people are kept apart

  and integration means they’re together.

  TV is black-and-white, but people aren’t.

  There’s a bad name mean people might call you,

  but words aren’t sticks and stones. At school today,

  James told Mrs. Liebel he didn’t say

  that name at me. He said he said, “Don’t be

  a noogie-hitter.” That’s when you just poke

  the tetherball instead of punching it.

  Sonic Boom

  (Smoky Hill AFB, Kansas, 1954)

  My best friend’s name is Tommy Avery.

  His mom talks funny because she’s English.

  They have a little toy Winston Churchill

  that puffs real smoke when she lights its cigar.

  She made Tommy’s fancy birthday dinner

  from a recipe in a magazine:

  Fiesta Peach Spam Loaf with canned string beans.

  Eight candles on his chocolate birthday cake.

  Lieutenant Avery was in uniform

  and Tommy was wearing his Cub Scout neckerchief.

  His mom said, “We can all sleep well at night,

  safeguarded by such good-looking soldiers.”

  While we were singing, a jet made a sonic boom,

  like a hammer on an iron curtain.

  Career Girl

  (Smoky Hill AFB, Kansas, 1954)

  Mama’s what people call a “career girl.”

  That’s a mother that doesn’t stay at home.

  She teaches second grade in the base school.

  Her all-white class may be a Negro First.

  School days start when she zips on her girdle

  and calls, “Good morning, chickadees, rise and shine!”

  We race to get dressed. Mama braids our hair

  as we spoon our cornflakes. The other moms

  cook scrambled eggs, pack their kids’ lunch boxes

  with crustless sandwiches and homemade treats.

  They don’t shoo their kids out of the kitchen.

  They don’t frown over red-penciled papers.

  They don’t say they’re too busy for checkers.

  They don’t care about Making History.

  Making History

  (Smoky Hill AFB, Kansas, 1955)

  Somebody took a picture of a class

  standing in line to get polio shots

  and published it in the Weekly Reader.

  We stood like that today. And it did hurt.

  Mrs. Liebel said we were Making History,

  but all I did was sqwunch up my eyes and wince.

  Making History takes more than standing in line

  believing little white lies about pain.

  Mama says First Negroes are History:

  First Negro Telephone Operator,

  First Negro Opera Singer at the Met,

  First Negro Pilots, First Supreme Court Judge.

  That lady in Montgomery just became a First

  by sqwunching up her eyes and sitting there.

  Gold Box

  (Smoky Hill AFB, Kansas, 1955)

  I list things I’d take to a bomb shelter

  if we had a bomb shelter, which we don’t,

  so why would I keep working on my list

  except because it holds the things I love

  so tightly in my mind, they can’t fall out?

  I keep the list in my gold fruitcake tin.

  Jennifer has one for her treasures, too.

  I’d take my gold box to a bomb shelter,

  but we don’t have one. Nobody we know

  has a bomb shelter. But they still make bombs.

  There’s TV talk about them every night

  before the good shows come on, and I laugh

  at I Love Lucy and Sergeant Bilko

  or lose myself in The Ed Sullivan Shew.

  Kemo Sabe


  (Smoky Hill AFB, Kansas, 1955)

  We’re watching The Lone Ranger on TV.

  I’d like to marry Tonto when I grow up:

  He’s so handsome. I love how he says how.

  Mama grew up in Indian Country.

  “Your grandmother taught in a Creek-Seminole school,”

  she says. Blah, blah . . . “As a matter of fact,

  for a while in high school, a Creek boy was sweet on me.”

  Daddy says, “Lucky you got out of there

  and met me! Marilyn, you could have been

  named Pocahontas!”

  The room disappears.

  A me with another name? An Indian me?

  Could I be someone else, but think my thoughts?

  How different could I be, and still be me?

  The music throbs. They ride toward the sunset.

  Mississippi

  (Smoky Hill AFB, Kansas, 1955)

  Over the river and through the woods, for miles

  of four-lane highways, slowed by blowing snow,

  through towns named for long-vanquished Indians,

  to Aunt Charlie’s house in Omaha we go.

  Hypnotized by the rhythm of tire chains,

  I eat a sandwich passed from the front seat,

  where Mama and Daddy are talking about a boy

  named Emmett. Jennifer, whispering to her doll,

  crosses the line between her side and mine,

  and when I poke her just a little bit,

  she howls as if it hurts, out of sheer spite.

  “BEHAVE!”

  Lost again in the inwardness of thought