A Bullfight, a Revolution, and a Langston

by Indigo Moor

Fondling a gin flask, Hemmingway quips, “we should live
In the ring, not die on our butts.” The matador executes
Verónica, wiping the brow of a two-ton Christ. Today
There are no Nationalists, no Loyalists, only Spaniards.

Ernest believes the Negro will have his day. That all
Locked doors shatter their frames when kicked open.
Three barbed flags dive like swimmers into the bull.
All poetry should be that direct, merciless to marrow.

Tercio de Muerte: The beast sways, cattail in a zephyr.
I wonder if he can taste his ancestors’ screams in the air?
We could hollow his horns and trumpet two civil wars:
America to Spain, his sacrifice uniting our struggles.

There’s a devil in the matador’s patience Sword
& muleta: the cape, red, not for the bull, but to hide
The blood. Every revolution needs a martyr. Mules
Pull the carcass around the ring like Hector’s at Troy.

Ernest says muleta and mulatto were meant to sound
Alike. Both carry a man’s hard choices locked in skin.

“A Bullfight, a Revolution, and a Langston” is from In the Room of Thirsts & Hungers, Main Street Rag Publishing Company, © 2017.

MoSt Poetry Center will post a poem a day by a Black poet through the month of June.

The Tradition

by Jericho Brown

Aster. Nasturtium. Delphinium. We thought
Fingers in dirt meant it was our dirt, learning
Names in heat, in elements classical
Philosophers said could change us. Star Gazer.
Foxglove. Summer seemed to bloom against the will
Of the sun, which news reports claimed flamed hotter
On this planet than when our dead fathers
Wiped sweat from their necks. Cosmos. Baby’s Breath.
Men like me and my brothers filmed what we
Planted for proof we existed before
Too late, sped the video to see blossoms
Brought in seconds, colors you expect in poems
Where the world ends, everything cut down.
John Crawford. Eric Garner. Mike Brown.

Originally published in Poem-a-Day on August 7, 2015, by the Academy of American Poets.

Please consider donating to Split This Rock, an organization fostering a national network of socially engaged poets.

MoSt Poetry will post a poem by a Black poet every day through the month of June.

a song in the front yard

by Gwendolyn Brooks

I’ve stayed in the front yard all my life.
I want a peek at the back
Where it’s rough and untended and hungry weed grows.
A girl gets sick of a rose.
I want to go in the back yard now
And maybe down the alley,
To where the charity children play.
I want a good time today.
They do some wonderful things.
They have some wonderful fun.
My mother sneers, but I say it’s fine
How they don’t have to go in at quarter to nine.
My mother, she tells me that Johnnie Mae
Will grow up to be a bad woman.
That George’ll be taken to Jail soon or late
(On account of last winter he sold our back gate).
But I say it’s fine. Honest, I do.
And I’d like to be a bad woman, too,
And wear the brave stockings of night-black lace
And strut down the streets with paint on my face.

Originally published in Selected Poems by Gwendolyn Brooks. Copyright 1963 by Gwendolyn Brooks.

Please consider becoming a patron of Noname’s Book Club, which uses cash flow to support Black-owned bookstores and provide monthly reads to incarcerated folks.

MoSt Poetry will post a poem by a Black poet through the month of June.

ode to my blackness
by Evie Shockley
 
you are my shelter from the storm
			    and the storm

my anchor
			    and the troubled sea 

                        * * *

nights casts you warm and glittering
upon my shoulders              some would
say you give off no heat       some folks
can’t see beyond the closest star  

			* * *

you are the tunnel john henry died
	 to carve
i see the light
             at the end     of you     the beginning 

			* * *

i dig down deep and there you are        are at the root of my blues
you’re all thick and dark, enveloping     the root of my blues
seem like it’s so hard to let you go        when i got   nothing    to lose 

			 * * *

without you, I would be just
          a self of my former shadow


Evie Shockley
the new black, 2011, Wesleyan University Press.

MoSt Poetry Center will post a poem a day by a Black poet through the month of June.

I, Too

By LANGSTON HUGHES

I, too, sing America.

I am the darker brother.
They send me to eat in the kitchen
When company comes,
But I laugh,
And eat well,
And grow strong.

Tomorrow,
I’ll be at the table
When company comes.
Nobody’ll dare
Say to me,
“Eat in the kitchen,”
Then.

Besides,
They’ll see how beautiful I am
And be ashamed—

I, too, am America.

*** MoSt Poetry Center will post a poem a day by a Black poet through the month of June.