Bicycles: Love Poems

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Bicycles: Love Poems Page 5

by Nikki Giovanni

Your gills

  So you can’t

  Go back

  To the water

  Yet there is

  No way

  You can live

  On land

  There are cats

  And dogs

  And even robins

  Who might take

  Pleasure

  In capturing

  Something strange

  There are school

  Children

  Who will

  Throw rocks

  And laughter

  At the little

  Fish who

  Floundered

  There is of course

  The memory

  Of the love

  That propelled

  This jet

  And now I sit

  On the beach

  Listening to the waves

  Crash over the rocks

  And wish

  I had seen

  The end of this story

  At the beginning

  Instead of

  At the end

  WE ARE VIRGINIA TECH

  (16 April 2007)

  We are Virginia Tech

  We are sad today

  We will be sad for quite a while

  We are not moving on

  We are embracing our mourning

  We are Virginia Tech

  We are strong enough to stand tearlessly

  We are brave enough to bend to cry

  And sad enough to know we must laugh again

  We are Virginia Tech

  We do not understand this tragedy

  We know we did nothing to deserve it

  But neither does the child in Africa

  Dying of AIDS

  Neither do the Invisible Children

  Walking the night away

  To avoid being kidnapped by a rogue army

  Neither does the baby elephant watching his community

  Be devastated for ivory

  Neither does the Mexican child looking

  For fresh water

  Neither does the Iraqi teenager dodging bombs

  Neither does the Appalachian infant killed

  By a boulder

  Dislodged

  Because the land was destabilized

  No one deserves a tragedy

  We are Virginia Tech

  The Hokie Nation embraces Our own

  And reaches out

  With open heart and mind

  To those who offer their hearts and hands

  We are strong

  And brave

  And innocent

  And unafraid

  We are better than we think

  And not yet what we want to be

  We are alive to imagination

  And open to possibility

  We will continue

  To invent the future

  Through our blood and tears

  Through all this sadness

  We are the Hokies

  We will prevail

  We will prevail

  We will prevail

  We are

  Virginia Tech

  An Excerpt from A Good Cry

  BABY WEST

  Baby West my godmother

  Died

  And left me $50 in

  Her will

  Where would I be

  Without that $50

  Mr. Gray who

  Drove not taxi but private

  Car asked the white man

  He was taking

  To the airport if he could

  Let his “niece” ride

  Up front

  He also dropped me at

  The train station

  $10.50 for a ticket

  to Knoxville

  And a dollar for peppermint

  I purchased a 45 RPM

  But I don’t remember

  Which one

  I spent the summer

  With Grandmother

  And Grandpapa

  Not realizing a man

  On a Latin school teacher’s pension

  And a woman who occasionally cooked

  For white folk

  Could hardly afford

  Another mouth to feed

  More hot water for baths

  Electricity for the Radio WGN until it signed

  Off at midnight

  I had no idea

  Grandmother had to beg

  A white man to let me

  Enroll in Austin High

  Where I needed clothes

  From Millers and Rich’s

  Shoes a coat and stuff

  All I knew then

  Was the sound

  Of my father hitting

  My mother every Saturday

  Night until I heard

  Her say “Gus, please

  Don’t hit me”

  And I knew my choice:

  Leave or kill him

  Both were sad

  I am in the hospital

  Room

  With yellow tulips

  From Nancy and Diana

  And a beautiful bouquet

  From the English Department

  I am trying to learn

  How to cry

  It’s not that my life

  Has been a lie

  But that I repressed

  My tears

  We always teach

  The youngsters

  Don’t cry it will be

  All right

  But crying cleanses

  It will not be

  All Right

  But we will learn

  We can do nothing

  About it

  I have seizures because

  I am thinking of my mother

  Being hit by my father

  It will not be

  All Right

  So I must learn

  To cry

  BIG MAYBELLE

  The room was dark

  Dank actually

  It was . . . after all . . . Newport, KY

  Preserver of sin and soul

  My boyfriend whom my parents

  Trusted though Nate

  Did not deserve their trust

  Was taking me to a nightclub

  George Ratterman would be sheriff

  One day

  And close Covington and Newport

  Down

  And Cincinnati would suffer

  Cincinnati had gotten the clean money

  The Living Room . . . Mark Murphy . . . Les McCann

  The mighty Amanda Ambrose fresh from Chicago

  Newport had the blues

  And gambling

  Though your biggest gamble was probably

  With your life

  I wore high heels then

  And dresses just a bit above

  My knees

  I drank gin fizzes

  Because, let’s admit it,

  That’s not a drink

  Nate said I have a Treat

  So Mommy let me go

  To a bar that was dark

  Down dank steps

  Where I coolly walked in

  With one of the gamblers

  Who knew everybody

  We could see through to the back before

  The performers came to the mic

  The stage jiggled and CANDY

  Was belted out

  I CALL MY SUGAH CANDY

  And there she was

  Two tons of incredible womanhood

  Balanced on stiletto heels

  Wrapped in a black silk dress

  Talking ’bout her

  CANDY

  And I who was born in Knoxville, Tennessee

  Met one of Tennessee’s greatest gifts to the world

  The Girl from Chattanooga

  Shake it, Baby

  Shake it

  This woman would never sell Girl Scout cookies

  Or be seen collecting for Diabetes

  She would never make calls for crippled children somewhere in Africa />
  Nor head up the Blood Drive

  In her home town . . . No . . .

  She’d be leaning over the back fence

  In a man’s pair of house slippers

  With a cigarette just sort of dangling

  Between her lips laughing laughing laughing

  Yes Ma’am

  This was Big Maybelle

  I stamped and clapped and shouted

  Shake it, Sister Maybelle

  Go on, Girl

  Like what you just read? Click here to buy A Good Cry.

  *because love is magical

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I would like to thank Clinton,

  who always seems to make time for me.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Poet, activist, mother, and professor, NIKKI GIOVANNI is a three-time NAACP Image Award winner and the first recipient of the Rosa Parks Woman of Courage Award, and holds the Langston Hughes Medal for Outstanding Poetry. The author of twenty-seven books and a Grammy nominee for The Nikki Giovanni Poetry Collection, she is the University Distinguished Professor/English at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Virginia, and an Oprah Living Legend.

  www.nikki-giovanni.com

  Discover great authors, exclusive offers, and more at hc.com.

  ALSO BY NIKKI GIOVANNI

  POETRY

  Black Feeling Black Talk / Black Judgement

  Re: Creation

  My House

  The Women and the Men

  Cotton Candy on a Rainy Day

  Those Who Ride the Night Winds

  The Selected Poems of Nikki Giovanni

  Love Poems

  Blues: For All the Changes

  Quilting the Black-Eyed Pea: Poems and Not Quite Poems

  Acolytes

  The Collected Poetry of Nikki Giovanni

  PROSE

  Gemini: An Extended Autobiographical Statement on My First Twenty-five Years of Being a Black Poet

  A Dialogue: James Baldwin and Nikki Giovanni

  A Poetic Equation: Conversations Between Nikki Giovanni and Margaret Walker

  Sacred Cows…and Other Edibles

  Racism 101

  EDITED BY NIKKI GIOVANNI

  Night Comes Softly: An Anthology of Black Female Voices

  Appalachian Elders: A Warm Hearth Sampler

  Grand Mothers: Poems, Reminiscences, and Short Stories About the Keepers of Our Traditions

  Grand Fathers: Reminiscences, Poems, Recipes, and Photos of the Keepers of Our Traditions

  Shimmy Shimmy Shimmy Like My Sister Kate: Looking at the Harlem Renaissance through Poems

  FOR CHILDREN

  Spin a Soft Black Song

  Vacation Time: Poems for Children Knoxville, Tennessee

  The Genie in the Jar

  The Sun Is So Quiet

  Ego-Tripping and Other Poems for Young People

  The Grasshopper’s Song: An Aesop’s Fable Revisited

  Rosa

  Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass: An American Friendship

  Hip Hop Speaks to Children

  CREDITS

  Front jacket photographs by Jan Cobb

  COPYRIGHT

  BICYCLES. Copyright © 2009 by Nikki Giovanni. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

  EPub © Edition DECEMBER 2008 ISBN: 9780061984099

  Version 04072017

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

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