The Contract Says: We’d Like the Conversation to be Bilingual

by Ada Limón

When you come, bring your brown-
ness so we can be sure to please

the funders. Will you check this
box; we’re applying for a grant.

Do you have any poems that speak
to troubled teens? Bilingual is best.

Would you like to come to dinner
with the patrons and sip Patrón?

Will you tell us the stories that make
us uncomfortable, but not complicit?

Don’t read the one where you
are just like us. Born to a green house,

garden, don’t tell us how you picked
tomatoes and ate them in the dirt

watching vultures pick apart another
bird’s bones in the road. Tell us the one

about your father stealing hubcaps
after a colleague said that’s what his

kind did. Tell us how he came
to the meeting wearing a poncho

and tried to sell the man his hubcaps
back. Don’t mention your father

was a teacher, spoke English, loved
making beer, loved baseball, tell us

again about the poncho, the hubcaps,
how he stole them, how he did the thing

he was trying to prove he didn’t do.

Ada Limón, “The Contract Says: We’d Like The Conversation To Be Bilingual” from The Carrying. Copyright © 2018 by Ada Limón.

Most Poetry will post a poem by a poet of color, selected by our members, each day through the month of July.

My America (For Hugh Downs)

by Nikki Giovanni

Not a bad country…neither the best nor the worst…just a place
we call home…and we open the door…to the tired and the
poor…to the huddled masses yearning…to be free…to those
in need…because we need…to be needed

Not a bad country…but adolescently indifferent…with time
running out…on our innocence

Not a bad country…but attention must be paid…to how the
bounty came to be ours…to all the people…who make up the
people…that we are

A thought here and there…a “maybe this could have been done
differently”…the patience that is required of those who aspire
to be…if not the best…then at least better

Not a bad country in fact…most likely…the best possible
hope…of human beings…to exemplify differences that:
can share prosperity…can tolerate choices…can respect
individuals…can teach us all…to love

from QUILTING THE BLACK-EYED PEA, HarperCollins © 2002

Most Poetry will post a poem by a Black poet each day through the month of June.

It Was Summer Now and the Colored People Came Out Into the Sunshine

by Morgan Parker

They descend from the boat two by two. The gap in Angela Davis’s teeth speaks to the gap in James Baldwin’s teeth. The gap in James Baldwin’s teeth speaks to the gap in Malcolm X’s Teeth. The gap in Malcolm X’s teeth speaks to the gap in Malcolm X’s teeth. The gap in Condoleezza Rice’s teeth doesn’t speak. Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard kisses the Band Aid on Nelly’s cheek. Frederick Douglass’s side part kisses Nikki Giovanni’s Thug Life tattoo. The choir is led by Whoopi Goldberg’s eyebrows. The choir is led by Will Smith’s flat top. The choir loses its way. The choir never returns home. The choir sings funeral instead of wedding, sings funeral instead of allegedly, sings funeral instead of help, sings Black instead of grace, sings Black as knucklebone, mercy, junebug, sea air. It is time for war.

Copyright © 2018 by Morgan Parker. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on July 2, 2018, by the Academy of American Poets.

Most Poetry will post a poem by a Black poet each day through the month of June.