The Penguin Book of American Verse

by Geoffrey Moore

  All fathers in Western civilization must have

  a military origin. The

  ruler,

  governor,

  yes,

  he is

  was the

  general at one time or other.

  And George Washington

  won the hearts

  of his country – the rough military man

  with awkward

  sincere

  drawing-room manners.

  My father;

  have you ever heard me speak of him? I seldom

  do. But I had a father,

  and he had military origins – or my origins from

  him

  are military,

  militant. That is, I remember him only in uniform. But of the navy,

  30 years a chief petty officer,

  Always away from home.

  It is rough/hard for me to

  speak now.

  I’m not used to talking

  about him.

  Not used to

  naming his objects/

  objects

  that never surrounded me.

  A woodpecker with fresh bloody crest

  knocks

  at my mouth. Father, for the first

  time I say

  your name. Name rolled in thick Polish parchment scrolls,

  name of Roman candle drippings when I sit at my table

  alone, each night,

  name of naval uniforms and name of

  telegrams, name of

  coming home from your aircraft carrier,

  name of shiny shoes,

  name of Hawaiian dolls, name

  of mess spoons, name of greasy machinery, and name of

  stencilled names.

  Is it your blood I carry in a test tube,

  my arm,

  to let fall, crack, and spill on the sidewalk

  in front of the men

  I know,

  I love,

  I know, and

  want? So you left my house when I was under two,

  being replaced by other machinery, and

  I didn’t believe you left me.

  This scene: the trunk yielding treasures of

  a green fountain pen, heart-shaped mirror,

  amber beads, old letters with brown ink, and

  the gopher snake stretched across the palm tree

  in the front yard with woody trunk like monkey skins,

  and a sunset through the skinny persimmon trees. You

  came walking, not even a telegram or post card from

  Tahiti. Love, love, through my heart like ink in

  the thickest nubbed pen, black and flowing into words.

  You came to me, and I at least six. Six doilies

  of lace, six battleship cannon, six old beerbottles,

  six thick steaks, six love letters, six clocks running

  backwards, six watermelons, and six baby teeth, a six

  cornered hat on six men’s heads, six lovers at once

  or one lover at sixes and sevens; how I confuse

  all this with my

  dream

  walking the tightrope bridge

  with gold knots

  over

  the mouth of an anemone / tissue spiral lips

  and holding on so that the ropes burned

  as if my wrists had been tied

  If George Washington

  had not

  been the Father

  of my Country,

  it is doubtful that I would ever have

  found

  a father. Father in my mouth, on my lips, in my

  tongue, out of all my womanly fire,

  Father I have left in my steel filing cabinet as a name on my birth

  certificate, Father, I have left in the teeth pulled out at

  dentists’ offices and thrown into their garbage cans,

  Father living in my wide cheekbones and short feet,

  Father in my Polish tantrums and my American speech, Father, not a

  holy name, not a name I cherish but the name I bear, the name

  that makes me one of a kind in any phone book because

  you changed it, and nobody

  but us

  has it,

  Father who makes me dream in the dead of night of the falling cherry

  blossoms, Father who makes me know all men will leave me

  if I love them,

  Father who made me a maverick,

  a writer

  a namer,

  name/father, sun/father, moon/father, bloody mars/father,

  other children said, ‘My father is a doctor,’

  or

  ‘My father gave me this camera,’

  or

  ‘My father took me to

  the movies,’

  or

  ‘My father and I went swimming,

  but

  my father is coming in a letter

  once a month

  for a while,

  and my father

  sometimes came in a telegram

  but

  mostly

  my father came to me

  in sleep, my father because I dreamed in one night that I dug through the ash heap in back of the pepper tree and found a diamond shaped like a dog and my father called the dog and it came leaping over to him and he walked away out of the yard down the road with the dog jumping and yipping at his heels,

  my father was not in the telephone book

  in my city;

  my father was not sleeping with my mother

  at home;

  my father did not care if I studied the

  piano;

  my father did not care what

  I did;

  and I thought my father was handsome and I loved him and I

  wondered

  why

  he left me alone so much,

  so many years

  in fact, but

  my father

  made me what I am

  a lonely woman

  without a purpose, just as I was

  a lonely child

  without any father. I walked with words, words, and names,

  names. Father was not

  one of my words.

  Father was not

  one of my names. But now I say, George you have become my father,

  in his 20th century naval uniform. George Washington, I need your

  love; George, I want to call you Father, Father, my Father,

  Father of my country,

  that is

  me. And I say the name to chant it. To sing it. To lace it around me like

  weaving cloth. Like a happy child on that shining afternoon in the

  palmtree sunset with her mother’s trunk yielding treasures,

  I cry and

  cry,

  Father,

  Father,

  Father,

  have you really come home?

  Charles Simic 1938–

  Poem without a Title

  I say to the lead

  Why did you let yourself

  Be cast into a bullet?

  Have you forgotten the alchemists?

  Have you given up hope

  Of turning into gold?

  Nobody answers.

  Lead. Bullet. With names

  Such as these

  The sleep is deep and long.

  Brooms

  I

  Only brooms

  Know the devil

  Still exists

  That the snow grows whiter

  After a crow has flown over it

  That a dark dusty corner

  Is the place of dreamers and children

  That a broom is also a tree

  In the orchard of the poor

  That a roach there

  Is a mute dove.

  2

  Brooms appear in dreambooks

  As omens of approaching death.

  This is their secret life
.

  In public they act like flat-chested old maids

  Preaching temperance.

  They are sworn enemies of lyric poetry.

  In prison they accompany the jailer,

  Enter cells to hear confessions.

  Their short-end comes down

  When you least expect it.

  Left alone behind a door

  Of a condemned tenement

  They mutter to no one in particular

  Words like virgin wind moon-eclipse

  And that most sacred of all names:

  Hieronymus Bosch.

  3

  And then of course there’s my grandmother

  Sweeping the dust of the nineteenth century

  Into the twentieth and my grandfather plucking

  A straw out of the broom to pick his teeth.

  Long winter nights.

  Dawns thousand years deep.

  Kitchen-windows like heads

  Bandaged for toothache.

  The broom beyond them sweeping

  Tucking in the lucent grains of dust

  Into neat pyramids

  That have tombs in them

  Already sacked by robbers

  Once, long ago.

  Haki R. Madhubuti (Don L. Lee) 1942–

  But He Was Cool or: He Even Stopped for Green Lights

  super-cool

  ultrablack

  a tan/purple

  had a beautiful shade.

  he had a double-natural

  that wd put the sisters to shame.

  his dashikis were tailor made

  & his beads were imported sea shells

  (from some blk/country i never heard of)

  he was triple-hip.

  his tikis were hand carved

  out of ivory

  & came express from the motherland.

  he would greet u in swahili

  & say good-by in yoruba.

  woooooooooooo-jim he bes so cool & ill tel li gent

  cool-cool is so cool he was un-cooled by other niggers’ cool

  cool-cool ultracool was bop-cool/ice box cool so cool cold cool

  his wine didn’t have to be cooled, him was air conditioned cool

  cool-cool/real cool made me cool – now ain’t that cool

  cool-cool so cool him nick-named refrigerator

  cool-cool so cool

  he didn’t know,

  after detroit, newark, Chicago &c.,

  we had to hip

  cool-cool/ super-cool/ real cool

  that

  to be black

  is

  to be

  very-hot.

  Alta 1942–

  I Never Saw a Man in a Negligee

  i’m frigid when I wear see thru negligees

  my almost good figure looks good half hidden,

  nipples the only hard bumps on my body & men

  are sposed to sigh and go ooh & rub their hands

  all over the filmy thing recalling norman mailer

  & raquel welch & god knows who.

  it never occurred to me to dress that way for women.

  we’d pull off our cotton pants & go to it. so i figured,

  if women can want the Real Me, men have to too. 2 times

  i wore special fucky gowns, you know the type, one look

  & he turns off the football game (but they never do)

  & i was so busy being dainty & smelling fresh i couldnt

  hump, couldnt wiggle, couldnt sweat, couldnt scream & you know

  damn well i couldnt come.

  but when i romp ass in a wrinkly blue shirt smelling like printers ink

  or slightly soggy slacks after playing with babies,

  then the happy human of me wants lovins, & rolls around with glee

  rolling up, under, over&over o whee.

  I Don’t Have No Bunny Tail on My Behind

  i don’t have no bunny tail on my behind.

  i’m a sister of the blood taboo.

  my throat’s too tight to swallow.

  must be because i’m scared to death. i’m scared to live.

  how do i get thru the day? the night?

  guts, fella. that’s how

  what are your perversions to me?

  what do i care you want sadistic broads in black boots,

  cigarettes up your asshole?

  what do i care?

  that’s our child sleeping in that blue crib

  how did it feel:

  that cigarette up my nose?

  how did it feel?

  you grimacing ‘does it hurt, baby? does it hurt?’

  how did it feel to curse your pretty smile,

  pray blindness strike your ice blue eyes?

  how did it feel to curse: may you never know joy.

  i hate your very soul.

  i swore to avenge all the wasted dead, the caged wives.

  what vengeance could answer our pain, our fury?

  i hope i find out before i die.

  in my cunt is blood & i always want it to be your blood.

  i hope you bleed 5 days every month, i hope your strength drains down the toilet.

  you’re afraid of me.

  you laugh, you hit me.

  you’re running scared, man.

  our voodoo dolls are all worn out.

  yes i hate you.

  yes i want your cock

  off.

  yes i want your blood & balls to spill

  like my monthly payment in blood.

  yes i want you to beat off in shame,

  afraid to call me.

  yes i want you dead.

  when i was married i prayed to be a widow.

  there are still wives, they are still praying.

  yes i want you to flinch when i laugh

  flinch when i laugh

  my teeth tearing your heart, knowing your love is poisoned,

  you cannot wash clean,

  knowing the earth & i will outlive you.

  you are a dying breed, you & your penis guns,

  your joyless fucks, you are dying,

  you are dying,

  the curse of every wicked witch be upon your heart.

  i could not hate you more if hatred were my bones.

  Nikki Giovanni 1943–

  Nikki-Rosa

  childhood remembrances are always a drag

  if you’re Black

  you always remember things like living in Woodlawn

  with no inside toilet

  and if you become famous or something

  they never talk about how happy you were to have your mother

  all to yourself and

  how good the water felt when you got your bath from one of those

  big tubs that folk in Chicago barbecue in

  and somehow when you talk about home

  it never gets across how much you

  understood their feelings

  as the whole family atended meetings about Hollydale

  and even though you remember

  your biographers never understand

  your father’s pain as he sells his stock

  and another dream goes

  and though you’re poor it isn’t poverty that

  concerns you

  and though they fought a lot

  it isn’t your father’s drinking that makes any difference

  but only that everybody is together and you

  and your sister have happy birthdays and very good christmasses

  and I really hope no white person ever has cause to write about me

  because they never understand Black love is Black wealth and they’ll

  probably talk about my hard childhood and never understand that

  all the while I was quite happy

  Woman Poem

  you sec, my whole life

  is tied up

  to unhappiness

  its father cooking breakfast

  and me getting fat as a hog

  or having no foo
d

  at all and father proving

  his incompetence

  again

  i wish i knew how it would feel

  to be free

  its having a job

  they won’t let you work

  or no work at all

  castrating me

  (yes it happens to women too)

  its a sex object if you’re pretty

  and no love

  or love and no sex if you’re fat

  get back fat black woman be a mother

  grandmother strong thing but not woman

  gameswoman romantic woman love needer

  man seeker dick eater sweat getter

  fuck needing love seeking woman

  its a hole in your shoe

  and buying lil sis a dress

  and her saying you shouldn’t

  when you know

  all too well – that you shouldn’t

  but smiles are only something we give

  to properly dressed social workers

  not each other

  only smiles of i know

  your game sister

  which isn’t really

  a smile

  joy is finding a pregnant roach

  and squashing it

  not finding someone to hold

  let go get off get back don’t turn

  me on you black dog

  how dare you care

  about me

  you ain’t got no good sense

  cause i ain’t shit you must be lower

  than that to care

  its a filthy house

  with yesterday’s watermelon

  and monday’s tears

  cause true ladies don’t

  know how to clean

  its intellectual devastation

  of everybody

  to avoid emotional commitment

  ‘yeah honey i would’ve married

  him but he didn’t have no degree’

  its knock-kneed mini skirted

  wig wearing died blond mamma’s scar

  born dead my scorn your whore

  rough heeled broken nailed powdered

  face me

  whose whole life is tied

  up to unhappiness

  cause its the only

  for real thing

  know

  James Tate 1943–

  The Blue Booby

  The blue booby lives

  on the bare rocks

  of Galápagos

  and fears nothing.

  It is a simple life:

  they live on fish,

  and there are few predators.

  Also, the males do not

  make fools of themselves

  chasing after the young

  ladies. Rather,

  they gather the blue

  objects of the world

  and construct from them

  a nest – an occasional

  Gaulois package,

  a string of beads,