STATUS SYMBOL

i
Have Arrived

i
am the
New Negro

i

am the result of
President Lincoln
World War I
and Paris
the
Red Ball Express
white drinking fountains
sitdowns and
sit-ins
Federal Troops
Marches on Washington
and
prayer meetings...

today
They hired me
it
is a status
job...
along
with my papers
They
gave me my
Status Symbol
the
key
to the
White...Locked...
John

---Mari Evans, published in Black Voices: An Anthology of African-American Literature ed. Abraham Chapman (New York, New York: Signet, 2001) ** Note spacing differences in original.

GADGETS

I had no other means of expression than the fibrous grief some suffer bodily but I kept my own humiliation curbed because I was stranded in a lingo I would characterize with only marginal civility as fitting the boycott I administered among paper and dishes.

--Lisa Robertson, The Apothecary (Toronto: Bookthug, 2007). Originally published 1991.

CONTIGUOUS SCHADENFREUDE--AN APOCRYPHAL MEMOIR

Mannered semblance or void aspect,
depose with respect to the nominally manifest.
Under jinxed survey of an all-to0 soi-disant intransigence
that over-fertilizes proscriptive peeks advancing unsustainable habit.
So shall I slink and approximate the implicit of an exhuming decision,
rather than what affords me.

Indemnity, or who I seem.

Signing off w/genteel daisy cleats.

"I remember how fulsome you are and this has sustained me throughout many a necessary condition."

This won't get
any more amusing

--Dorothy Trujillo Lusk, Ogress Oblige (San Fransisco, CA: Krupskaya, 2001)

IN THE BEGINNING

That was not the genesis:
This is the genesis.
That was the impregnation
Of the Mother by her children-to-be

Who in the fluster of forebeing
Cried out in voiceless voice:
'We are the Father!'
Then, voice of voice: 'I am the Father's Son!'

To these it seemed long,
Counting from fathers to sons
To fathers still unborn.
Week on week they have said: 'In seven days!'

The Mother has just begun to count
Her nine days of wonder.
She pauses upon the seventh--
Late on the seventh day is born her daughter.

In the first seven days of the Mother
Her sons are; they implore a Father,
They befoul their birth-places
And would be justified in this.

Late on the seventh day is born the daughter.
'Be you,' the Mother says, 'to them as father.
Absolve them of their flesh:
Do you wear flesh, and find goodness in it.'

The last two days are to the daughter.
She is the Mother become sisterly
To be to the brother-sons as father.
'You have endured a week of you,' she praises.

The seventh eve is therefore celebration.
Heavenly to-morrows lamp the night,
And every man's a universal favourite,
And none's a beggar because all are.

On the eighth day blind-spun spaces
Between man and man close in.
The universe of each and each has passed.
The daughter does not need to shout to be heard.

She opens the heads of her brothers
And lets out the aeroplanes.
'Now,' she says, 'you will be able to think better.'
But their hearts still pump wildness into them.

Then a storm: love-ladies fly
Like empty leaves curled bodily.
From what trees fallen?
What infant gardens in the minds of men?

Then she encourages them to die
As many deaths they fear.
The physician-gods withdraw.
'Illness comes not to the dead.'

Together all inspect the cups, the pencils,
The watches, matches, knives they have.
Some are from Tuesday's country, some from Friday's,
But nothing there from either Sunday.

Which so belabours their week's memories,
They sleep, and to the ninth day wake
In all-forgetful curiosity:
Amazed that they exist.

The daughter of the Mother tells a story.
They gape: can that have been?
Fair episodes they seem to recognize;
The evil part they execrate.

And so the ninth day sets,
Not seriate with an elder tenth
But usher to a younger first,
Unpentateuchal genesis.

--from The Poems of Laura Riding (New York: Persea Books, 2001)

BACK TO THE MOTHER BREAST

Back to the mother breast
In another place--
Not for milk, not for rest,
But the embrace
Clean bone
Can give alone.

The cushioning years
Afraid of closer kiss
Put cure of tears
Before analysis;
And the vague infant cheek
Turned away to speak.

Now back to the mother breast,
The later lullaby exploring,
The deep bequest
And franker singing
Out of the part
Where there is no heart.

from The Poems of Laura Riding (New York: Persea Books, 2001)