like during our intimate phone talks, to place my ear against his,
treasure our bond, but in another way,
I had simply wanted to speak.
At the funeral, inside of the church loyalties again were divided
between some of Donald’s activist lesbian and gay family
and his biological one.
Like him Donald’s immediate family was devoutly Christian
at odds with the fact he was gay and purposefully failed to mention
in the program or eulogy one thing most important
Donald lived most of thirty-three years as an out gay man
Like Rory Buchanan, Craig Harris, Alan Williams,
Don Reid, David Frechette, he died of AIDS. Like our elders
Audre Lorde, Pat Parker, and James Baldwin he was a
pioneering figure in a Black lesbian and gay literary movement.
All of them died with dignity, fighting for rights of lesbian and gay people.
They did not die in shame.
This glaring omission ignited our fury and caused
the late great activist and poet Assotto Saint, a brown-skinned man
whose own recent AIDS diagnosis was a ticking time bomb
who stood more than 6' 5" in stocking feet, a self-proclaimed diva
with a French Haitian accent used for effect,
to rise from his pew, saunter down the church’s long aisle like a Parisian
model walking on a runway with determination
speed and attitude, he stormed the pulpit, uninvited
slammed his hand on the bible as done when one wants
to tell truth
to everyone’s shock he screamed, “Donald Woods was a
proud Black gay man, he did not die of heart failure.
He died of AIDS. If you agree with me, stand up.”
As in the way I met Donald without questioning I leapt
to my feet and felt for the first time in a ceremony of
pomp and circumstance—free.
In my peripheral vision I saw a room full of strangers
divided by politics and identity
In the middle stood Donald’s biological sister.
For all of the stated reasons, I felt a strange affinity with her
like between us was an unspoken bond
like distant stars always having shared the same love
from a different proximity.
EPILOGUE:
Twenty years later I received a call from Gregg Bordowitz who asked
me to read poetry at a tribute to Other Countries at the Whitney Museum.
Without knowing our relationship, he asked me to speak about Donald Woods.
“He was one of my best friends,” I said.
At the tribute, I read David Frechette’s poem, “Je Ne Regrette Rien”
as well as Essex Hemphill’s, “When My Brother Fell.”
I also read Donald Woods’s poem, “Prescription.”
I read an inscription Donald had written to me
on the inside cover of Brother to Brother, a Black gay male anthology:
Dear Pamela,
Thank you for appreciating the love of brothers for brothers.
Love is the light of the world.
When I finished there wasn’t a dry eye.
Later in an unfinished poem I would describe that moment
As I imagined a soldier would,
“I had to go back to the warfront, to reconstruct his body parts,
and bring him home.”
And I felt like Alex Haley finally closing a chasm,
a great divide in his soul
having put my brother to proper rest.
There are many things to update, since Rodney King,
at this time the number of police killings has increased against Black men
and reached crisis proportions.
I do not believe as some writers do that this violence is new, only
the cameras are. America is imploding
from crimes of the past.
Those of us who are left from that Black lesbian and gay literary
scene still write.
After a period of silence
we are finally able to process
and writing about that time has begun to flourish.
Documenting the lives of Black lesbians and gays who died
of AIDS and cancer is part of my life’s work.
I am a professor.
I feel often like the daughter of Kizzy in Roots who returns
to the grave of her father the famous runaway
Kunta Kinte.
In defiance, she scratches off his slave name Toby on a wooden marker
and writes his preferred and biological name Kunta Kinte
as if to say as I am saying now, we are still here.
Don’s son Baby Max is a young man like his father
He has become a visual artist.
He still struggles with the loss of his fathers to AIDS.
There is a picture of Donald and me at a gay pride event in March 1991.
He is holding my waist and we are looking out and smiling.
At present, I am in love. One day at a time.
Some days I look at her and wish like Alex Haley after a lifelong
search,
I could shout “I found you. Finally, I found you.”
This piece took fifteen years to write.
I am tired.
I can feel the hands of Donald, Don Reid, David Frechette,
Rory Buchanan, Bert Hunter, Alan Williams, Audre Lorde,
Pat Parker, Marlon Riggs, Essex Hemphill, and Assotto Saint pushing me
across the finish line.
NEVER AGAIN
At the end of every Holocaust film I’ve seen and
there are not many
they show real life survivors and say the words
Never Again
Some of us like me/stare into these films
down the long tunnels of history wondering
how it could have ever happened at all
that a leader and his minions could be so toxic, poisonous
you’d turn against your neighbors
you could be so oblivious, brainwashed, scared
desperate to be superior or to survive
you’d do anything, or almost.
They say never again
but it is again
as I look at the deportations
round-ups
I’m reminded of Idi Amin when he cast out foreigners
and Forest Whitaker in the film The Last King of Scotland, when he played him.
And to see it is again
at rallies, at protests, they show the coat hangers and crude instruments
women were forced to use in back alley abortions
We say never again but taking away women’s choice
and Planned Parenthood, it is again.
Today started out in an argument with someone
who didn’t understand why I mentioned race so much
in my new book
and that white man is not the first/a Black woman
asked too.
I wanted to scream HELLO haven’t you seen the news
Didn’t you see what happened to Stephon Clark
unarmed and shot in the back six times by police
And who even cares what happens to women
Black lesbians, lesbians of color
There’s no public outcry.
A student once wrote to me in an academic paper
that a parent forced her to stop playing sports
because they said sports made her more of a dyke
It killed my student inside because she was an
