I love Christmas.
I watched Frosty the Snowman with my mother over the holiday
But then politics came in.
I started questioning if the relationship between Frosty
and the little girl who loved him was age-appropriate.
Why did they hug so fucking much?
I know he’s supposed to be snow but just why was he so fucking white
Like hundreds of years of patriarchy you can’t get out from under.
My new accountant has ton of jokes, he’s a Black man
He said the revolution is coming and
To those who say they don’t serve Blacks,
it’s okay because we don’t eat ’em
LOL
Anyway, today, TBH I feel like Patsy in Twelve Years a Slave
Beaten for picking cotton.
I mean I like someone who is white.
Their partner is white.
They have stocks, trust funds, and a retirement plan
And I feel like fucking Patsy in Twelve Years a Slave
Alternately known as Mammy.
TWIZZLERS
Size color class I was never allowed to be little
by little I mean innocent
by little I mean allowed to play
make mistakes
If anything occurred in whatever setting
I was always blamed
I was mistaken constantly for being older than I was
At six when my stepmother came she refused to
allow me alone time with my father
If a moment occurred she asked
What were you doing with him?
As if I at six were molesting my father
I was caught once through an open bathrobe
trying to see my father’s penis
My stepmother never forgot
You were trying to look at him, she said.
I was not given toys books anything
Stuffed animals
Bows ribbons anything that may be attached to a little girl
I was also my mother’s sounding board for her adult problems
with my Dad
Constantly instructed to call the police
when he hit her
The only thing my parents could figure out to do together
for some small infraction was to give me punishment
Two weeks
So I never knew the nurturance
that girls got
My adult life has duplicated this
always to blame
always outside
refusing to see my little girl
On occasion my mother sent me to the store to get candy
Things that she liked
Fire balls
Reese’s peanut butter cups
Kit Kat bars
Black licorice
Sometimes red which I liked
Twizzlers
I remember once chewing a pack of red Twizzlers as an adult
the red stem hung out of my mouth
A friend at the time exclaimed
You’re such a little girl …
And once when I was with a woman
Someone looked on and said, Oh
your little girl is out
In relationships too I was never
the little girl
In fact in most of them I rescued radically immature women
I was their mother caretaker
the one with all responsibility
And of course when it ended I was always to blame
Everything to me lies around class race gender lines
Even in so-called evolved communities
Even with POC
I always know no one would treat a white-skinned woman
or a man the way I’ve been treated
In colleges where I teach
I’m always aware of the hierarchy
People screaming about diversity
I moan complain
How the AIDS narrative only belongs to men
They never ask women
Black women
As if AIDS didn’t happen to us
Our fathers brothers sons nephews
cousins acquaintances
The Black gay boys in the choir
became our disappeared
I remember a pair of Black gay men
who were spiritual
would act as ministers
and bury the dead Black boys
families wouldn’t recognize
These men showed up as the priests
and gave last rites
And what of the women
A mother nursing a grown son
returned to a baby
ravaged by AIDS
Me being young myself going into sick wards
like leper colonies
seeing those abandoned by society
I never forgot
Even my era did not allow me to be little
innocent
A threat if I spoke up
A competitor for middle class white girls
who had the world handed to them
And resented me/you for surviving
thriving despite all odds.
PARABLE OF THE SOWER
If you want to know the ending
How it’s all gonna turn out
The aftermath of Trump’s presidency
Don’t turn to analysts, Wall Street, or CNN
For an accurate portrait of where it’s all going
what it’s gonna look like
reread Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower
set in California in 2027
People in fear/behind walls/gated communities
a woman raped so much
she can’t stand
gun violence/addiction/fires that can scarcely
be put out
people scavenging for food/trying not to become prey
compassion is gone
the main character named Lauren is a hyper-empath
she can feel others’ pain
which I think is a metaphor for artists
whatever you think of Marina Abramovic
her show title is right
The Artist is Present
from the beginning of time until now
Look again at the Hunger Games, the districts are
actually concentration camps with gray garb and barbed fences
that nod to Nazi Germany
Humans are pitted against each other to survive
Sometime after Trayvon Martin was shot, I finally understood
something deep about Star Wars
I’ve always rooted for good guys/always
Once I heard a friend at the movies rooting for Poison Ivy/
Batman and Bat Girl’s nemesis
I was shocked that anyone could root for a bad girl
But after Trayvon was killed by George Zimmerman
who walked free
I finally understood what could turn a character’s eyes dark
You could become so disillusioned
And then I understood in the Star Wars franchise
what made Darth Vader—Vader
I felt that again after Trump’s election
No more green, blue light
Only gray, dark drab, white bones, war
Last week, I worked with a class I hadn’t met before
On the subject of Black Lives Matter
I repeated something Gregg Bordowitz said to a group of students
“What if the only justice we have right now is here in this room?”
One student said, “Nothing ever changes.”
So I responded by asking, “Are you telling me then
you can’t change?”
They were all surprised, shocked by my question.
At the end, I asked the class, “What have you learned today?”
A Black girl answered as if she were channeling Octavia herself,
“Change,
is up to us.”
PARABLE OF THE SOWER 2
Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler is a dystopian science fiction novel
set in Los Angeles 2027
the protagonist is a sixteen-year-old Black girl named Lauren Olmeeda.
She is a hyper-empath who amongst war, hunger, gun violence, rape, and addiction,
builds a new faith called Earthseed where she reinvents God,
says God is change.
I’ve taught this book for many semesters at college
I think it’s profound and prophetic and the students, mainly students of color
aren’t used to Black girl protagonists.
I ask my students how they feel about a Black girl protagonist
who creates and practices her own religion,
which I think is sheer genius.
I ask, “Is anyone allowed
