How I Discovered Poetry Read online

  and my five senses, I add to my list:

  Thank you for not stationing us in Mississippi.

  Glow-in-the-Dark

  (Smoky Hill AFB, Kansas, 1956)

  Some TV Negroes have shine-in-the-dark

  white eyes and teeth and are afraid of ghosts.

  I slip out of my twin bed, tiptoe to

  our dresser mirror, and grin in the dark.

  To my relief, my teeth and eyes don’t shine.

  In the no-lights-on-at-midnight mirror,

  I’m a darker outline against darkness.

  Behind my silhouette, my Sunday School

  Attendance Award cross is still glowing

  in the shadowed cubicle of my headboard,

  between my gold plastic music box clock

  and my gold fruitcake tin full of treasures.

  Guided by its dying phosphorescence,

  I slide back into my warm blanket nest.

  Traveling Light

  (Smoky Hill AFB, Kansas, 1956)

  In memory, Pudgy is just a tail

  brushing my thighs as we surveyed the shelves

  in the icebox. “Pudgy,” Daddy explained,

  “went to live with a different family;

  she’s fed and happy.” Lady welcomed us

  to one Officers Housing, where she lived

  under our unit. She was a good dog.

  She seemed almost sad when we drove away

  behind the moving van. And General

  did have a knack for causing us trouble:

  He dug up gardens, dragged whole clotheslines home.

  “He’ll be happier with his new family,”

  Daddy explains. We’ve been transferred again.

  We stand numb as he gives away our toys.

  Just Pick a Name

  (On the Road, 1956)

  The miles enter my eyes and disappear

  like cigarette smoke from the car window.

  The sky seems to be bigger in the West.

  I’m growing bigger inside to take it in.

  The landscape feeds my hungry eyes a feast

  beyond imagining. Who lived before

  in places streaming past like scenery?

  What if I left a note in a mailbox

  out in the boonies, far from any town,

  that said, I know it’s hard. You’re doing fine.

  I wonder: Would that make things different?

  You could just pick a name from the phone book

  of any of these bypassed Podunk towns

  and send a postcard signed, Be happy. God.

  Say It

  (Mather AFB, California, 1956)

  Base Housing is a little ranch house town

  with smooth sidewalks perfect for roller skates.

  I’m the best reader in Mrs. Krull’s class.

  Helene’s parents are Mama and Daddy’s friends

  from way back when both men were cadets;

  now they’re the only Negro officers

  on base. But there are two here, not just one.

  Helene’s a year ahead of me in school.

  She’s going to be a nurse when she grows up.

  We were strolling in the NCO neighborhood

  today, when a blond girl jeered from her yard

  that she could say a word that would make us mad.

  Helene said, “Say it.” And when the girl did,

  Helene thumped a lump on her forehead before she was done.

  Moonlily

  (Mather AFB, California, 1956)

  When we play horses at recess, my name

  is Moonlily and I’m a yearling mare.

  We gallop circles around the playground,

  whinnying, neighing, and shaking our manes.

  We scrape the ground with scuffed saddle oxfords,

  thunder around the little kids on swings

  and seesaws, and around the boys’ ball games.

  We’re sorrel, chestnut, buckskin, pinto, gray,

  a herd in pastel dresses and white socks.

  We’re self-named, untamed, untouched, unridden.

  Our plains know no fences. We can smell spring.

  The bell produces metamorphosis.

  Still hot and flushed, we file back to our desks,

  one bay in a room of palominos.

  Cloud-Gathering

  (Mather AFB, California, 1956)

  Mama makes me close the book and go play.

  Sometimes I join a pack of officers’ kids

  roaming the dry fields around Base Housing

  and making traps for blue-bellied lizards.

  Sometimes I lie among the cornflowers

  and wild poppies, dreaming as clouds unfold:

  Our baby has the Mongolian spot . . .

  I’m glad they don’t make me change his diapers . . .

  White people down South want segregation . . .

  They think brown is a contagious disease . . .

  A mob attacked a girl for going to school . . .

  I’d give anything to have a pony!

  I’d call him Prince and feed him sugar cubes

  and brush his mane and tail and ride bareback!

  Sputnik

  (Mather AFB, California 1957)

  My Base School classmates play musical chairs:

  sudden absences when dads get transferred,

  friends who’ll meet from now on only by chance.

  Tonight might be the last slumber party

  I’ll giggle through with my best friend, Helene.

  Tomorrow I’ll feel lonely as Sputnik.

  This girl in my class, Joanne, is pretty nice.

  She invited me over after school.

  But as soon as we got in her room, she closed the door,

  opened the window, lit a cigarette,

  and passed it to me. What’s the point of that?

  The grown-ups smoke: So what? I’d rather talk.

  Helene talks about the kids in Little Rock:

  how brave they are, how lonely they must feel.

  Darkroom

  (Mather AFB, California, 1957)

  Tonight with Daddy in the dark bathroom,

  I held my breath, watching science magic.

  From white paper bathed in developer,

  Jennifer and I on the piano bench

  in a cloud of crisp, frothy crinolines

  and other Easter finery emerged:

  our hands in white gloves folded in our laps,

  our patent Mary Janes and crossed anklets,

  our temporary curling-iron curls.

  After the stop bath and fixer, we hang

  with clothespins on a line over the tub,

  living colors reduced to black-and-white,

  a lived moment captured in memory

  Mama will put in the photo album.

  Nelsons

  (On the Road, 1957)

  Daddy’s handsome: uniform, new haircut.

  But the travel baby bed in our seat

  crowds me and Jennifer. We kept asking,

  “Are we there yet?” every few endless miles,

  until Daddy shouted, “HEY!” and braked. We braced

  ourselves. We skidded, turned, and spit gravel

  up a long driveway ending at a barn.

  Barking dogs. Mama whispered Daddy’s name.

  A light-haired man came out. He calmed the dogs,

  and looked at Daddy with inquiring eyes.

  Daddy called, “Hello! We saw your mailbox!

  We’re Nelsons, too! I fly B-52s!

  Would you mind letting my girls see your farm?”

 
That’s why I’m here petting this stupid cow.

  Fieldwork

  (Portsmouth, New Hampshire, 1957)

  Before he was sent to England for training,

  Daddy said, “Let’s pretend we’re researching

  an unknown civilian Caucasian tribe.”

  We live in a town apartment building

  with shouting children clattering on the stairs.

  For school lunch, they bring baked-bean sandwiches.

  Some families eat for dinner only pie.

  The sixth-grade boy next door is named Carrol;

  his favorite lunch is onion on rye bread.

  They say tonic for pop and pock for park.

  They say our baby’s cunning, meaning cute.

  They say I look like Althea Gibson,

  the First Negro to win the Wimbledon,

  so I should start taking tennis lessons.

  Caucasian Dinner

  (Kittery Point, Maine, 1958)

  Mama’s rented a colonial house

  a block from the ocean, in a village

  where we’re the First Negroes of everything.

  We’re the First Negro Family in Town,

  the First Negro Children in the Town’s School.

  The Baylisses live in the house next door;

  their mantel has photos of dead people

  in their coffins. Uncle Ed sits all day

  in their bay window with binoculars,

  then comments on what we had for dinner.

  Aunt Flossie asks us over for cookies.

  Sometimes Mama lets me and Jennifer cook.

  Tonight we made a Caucasian dinner:

  cauliflower, broiled cod, mashed potatoes.

  Ghost

  (Kittery Point, Maine 1958)

  This house in Kittery Point has felt like home

  since the first night I slept in my own room,

  furnished with bed, dresser, a vanity,

  and framed art museum reproductions

  of Renaissance paintings. It feels like home:

  the first time I’ve felt like this in my life.

  The deep front lawn perfect for badminton,

  the wallpaper’s somber floral designs,

  the town library just across the street,

  the Atlantic close enough to walk to:

  It really feels like home. My one complaint

  is that, on full-moon nights, a ghost appears.

  She’s hovering right now, near my closet,

  daring me to call Jennifer again.

  Attic Window

  (Kittery Point, Maine, 1958)

  Sweet Land of Liberty. Home of the Free.

  The Melting Pot. The American Dream.

  The Tooth Fairy. Adam and Eve. The Virgin Birth.

  The more time I spend in the library,

  the less sure I am about everything.

  Did the Indians invite the Pilgrims

  to their Thanksgiving feast? If so, I bet

  the Pilgrims went home with the leftovers.

  I read by the window in the attic,

  and things people believe in are unmasked

  like movie stars whose real names are revealed

  in their obituaries. Jennifer

  is such a baby, with her stuffed tiger

  and that letter she’s writing to Santa.

  Paper Dolls

  (Kittery Point, Maine, 1959)

  I keep my area neatly policed

  and always pass Saturday inspections.

  You can’t see the floor of Jennifer’s room,

  for all her clutter and her paper dolls.

  I’ve heard her whispering voices for them,

  tabbing on their cut-out paper outfits

  and turning them into a puppet play.

  She’s too old to still be playing with dolls.

  Besides, her mess drifts across the border

  into my room, and she won’t pick it up.

  Today I took her stupid paper dolls

  out to the burn-barrel in the backyard.

  Daddy was burning documents and trash.

  The flames rose in me as the dolls caught fire.

  Queen of the Sixth Grade

  (Kittery Point, Maine, 1958)

  There was an accident in school today.

  I shudder when I remember the crunch

  of tibia and fibula and wood

  as Jamie tried to get off the seesaw

  and got her forearm accidentally

  caught under her own weight and the up-kick

  on the other end, increased by the force

  Ellie and I used pushing her end down

  so her seesaw seat slammed the blacktop hard

  two or three times before she realized

  what a mistake it was to say that name

  she learned in some civilian school down South

  before they got transferred and she came here

  to this school, where I’m Queen of the Sixth Grade.

  Aooga

  (Kittery Point, Maine, 1958)

  Visiting, Daddy found a Model T

  buried under old furniture and junk

  in Uncle Ed and Aunt Flossie’s red barn,

  in the meadow between their house and ours.

  Uncle Ed said, “That cah’s been dead for yee-ahs.”

  Daddy thought they might bring it back to life.

  After several weekends of tinkering,

  its sputter sparked into a miracle.

  Now we chug off, Daddy behind the wheel,

  on Sunday afternoon drives on back roads.

  Uncle Ed and Aunt Flossie smile and wave

  to neighbors generations intertwined.

  Aunt Flossie wipes tears with her handkerchief.

  Her veiny cheeks flush pink. Her white hair flows.

  Beautiful Hair

  (Kittery Point, Maine, 1958)

  Second week of two at a summer camp

  in the Maine woods somewhere, where there’s a lake,

  a lodge, sleeping cabins, and outhouses.

  (The less you eat and drink, the less you go.)

  I haven’t seen Jennifer very much:

  Our cabins are in different divisions.

  I brought books, but there isn’t time to read

  because we’re all so busy having fun.

  My cabin-mates say they wish they were tan

  like me. They say, “Your hair is beautiful;

  can I touch it?” None of us understand

  why integrating schools is a big deal.

  When Mama and Daddy came on Parents’ Day,

  Mama screamed quietly, “My God! Your hair!”

  Critic

  (Kittery Point, Maine, 1959)

  Daddy pulled a puppy from the pocket

  of his flight jacket, and we imprinted

  like a gosling to a goose. Speida’s my dog,

  though he’s impartially affectionate.

  Either he likes poems, or he likes my voice:

  I read aloud from the anthology

  I found with Daddy’s other college books

  and he sits, cocks his head, and wags his tail.

  My teacher, Mrs. Gray, told me about

  the famous poetess who lived near here.

  She says I’ll be a famous poet, too.

  Today I read Speida one of my poems.

  His face got a look of so much disgust

  I laughed and forgot we’re being transferred.

  Parking Lot Dawn

  (On the Road, 1959)

  After the cousins came the long drive west.

  Car games, sing-alongs, and conversat
ion,

  alternating drivers, meals in the car.

  Gas station restrooms, or behind a tree.

  Daddy corrects white men who call him boy.

  Even when they’re in police uniforms.

  Even though the radio updates news

  of sit-ins and white citizens’ councils.

  I ride behind his beautiful close-cropped head,

  my window slightly cracked for Speida’s nose.

  Last night, awake alone, he parked the car

  in the Grand Canyon visitors’ parking lot.

  And this morning, he woke us up to dawn.

  There’s more beauty on Earth than I can bear.

  A Drift of Girlfriends

  (Sacramento, California, 1959)

  We’ve moved to a neighborhood of new homes

  being built to be sold to Negro families.

  Mama said she’s proud we’re landowners now,

  like her papa was in Oklahoma,

  his red dirt farm stretching fertile acres.

  Daddy plowed our bare yard in the Lincoln,

  breaking up the clods with its white-walled tires.

  I walk to and from school, books to my chest,

  with a drift of girlfriends, none of them mine.

  I’m learning that Negro is a language

  I don’t speak. And I don’t know how to dance.

  At home, we listen to Miles and Coltrane,

  Tchaikovsky and Chopin. I get good grades

  because I’m curious and I like to read,

  and NOT because I’m “trying to be white.”