Rosa Parks by Nikki Giovanni

Rosa Parks

This is for the Pullman Porters who organized when people said

they couldn’t. And carried the Pittsburgh Courier and the Chicago

Defender to the Black Americans in the South so they would

know they were not alone. This is for the Pullman Porters who

helped Thurgood Marshall go south and come back north to fight

the fight that resulted in Brown v. Board of Education because

even though Kansas is west and even though Topeka is the birth-

place of Gwendolyn Brooks, who wrote the powerful “The

Chicago Defender Sends a Man to Little Rock,” it was the

Pullman Porters who whispered to the traveling men both

the Blues Men and the “Race” Men so that they both would

know what was going on. This is for the Pullman Porters who

smiled as if they were happy and laughed like they were tickled

when some folks were around and who silently rejoiced in 1954

when the Supreme Court announced its 9—0 decision that “sepa-

rate is inherently unequal.” This is for the Pullman Porters who

smiled and welcomed a fourteen-year-old boy onto their train in

1955. They noticed his slight limp that he tried to disguise with a

doo-wop walk; they noticed his stutter and probably understood

why his mother wanted him out of Chicago during the summer

when school was out. Fourteen-year-old Black boys with limps

and stutters are apt to try to prove themselves in dangerous ways

when mothers aren’t around to look after them. So this is for the

Pullman Porters who looked over that fourteen-year-old while

the train rolled the reverse of the Blues Highway from Chicago to

St. Louis to Memphis to Mississippi. This is for the men who kept

him safe; and if Emmett Till had been able to stay on a train all

summer he would have maybe grown a bit of a paunch, certainly

lost his hair, probably have worn bifocals and bounced his grand-

children on his knee telling them about his summer riding the

rails. But he had to get off the train. And ended up in Money,

Mississippi. And was horribly, brutally, inexcusably, and unac-

ceptably murdered. This is for the Pullman Porters who, when the

sheriff was trying to get the body secretly buried, got Emmett’s

body on the northbound train, got his body home to Chicago,

where his mother said: I want the world to see what they did

to my boy. And this is for all the mothers who cried. And this is

for all the people who said Never Again. And this is about Rosa

Parks whose feet were not so tired, it had been, after all, an ordi-

nary day, until the bus driver gave her the opportunity to make

history. This is about Mrs. Rosa Parks from Tuskegee, Alabama,

who was also the field secretary of the NAACP. This is about the

moment Rosa Parks shouldered her cross, put her worldly goods

aside, was willing to sacrifice her life, so that that young man in

Money, Mississippi, who had been so well protected by the

Pullman Porters, would not have died in vain. When Mrs. Parks

said “NO” a passionate movement was begun. No longer would

there be a reliance on the law; there was a higher law. When Mrs.

Parks brought that light of hers to expose the evil of the system,

the sun came and rested on her shoulders bringing the heat and

the light of truth. Others would follow Mrs. Parks. Four young

men in Greensboro, North Carolina, would also say No. Great

voices would be raised singing the praises of God and exhorting

us “to forgive those who trespass against us.” But it was the

Pullman Porters who safely got Emmett to his granduncle and it

was Mrs. Rosa Parks who could not stand that death. And in not

being able to stand it. She sat back down.

 

Boy at the Paterson Falls by Toi Derricotte

Boy at the Paterson Falls

 

I am thinking of that boy who bragged about the day he threw

     a dog over and watched it struggle to stay upright all

     the way down.

I am thinking of that rotting carcass on the rocks,

and the child with such power he could call to a helpless

     thing as if he were its friend, capture it, and think of

     the cruelest punishment.

It must have answered some need, some silent screaming in

     a closet, a motherless call when night came crashing;

it must have satisfied, for he seemed joyful, proud, as if he

     had once made a great creation out of murder.

That body on the rocks, its sharp angles, slowly took the shape of

     what was underneath, bones pounded, until it lay at the bottom

     like a scraggly rug.

Nothing remains but memory—and the suffering of those who

     would walk into the soft hands of a killer for a crumb of bread. 

 

Journey Into the Interior by Theodore Roethke

Journey Into the Interior

In the long journey out of the self,

There are many detours, washed-out interrupted raw places

Where the shale slides dangerously

And the back wheels hang almost over the edge

At the sudden veering, the moment of turning.

Better to hug close, wary of rubble and falling stones.

The arroyo cracking the road, the wind-bitten buttes, the canyons,

Creeks swollen in midsummer from the flash-flood roaring into the narrow valley.

Reeds beaten flat by wind and rain,

Grey from the long winter, burnt at the base in late summer.

-- Or the path narrowing,

Winding upward toward the stream with its sharp stones,

The upland of alder and birchtrees,

Through the swamp alive with quicksand,

The way blocked at last by a fallen fir-tree,

The thickets darkening,

The ravines ugly. 

 

Too Many Cooks Spoil the Broth by Aimee Nezhukumatathil

Too Many Cooks Spoil the Broth

 

Too many needles spoil the cloth.

Too many parrots spoil the talk.

Too many chapped lips spoil the gloss.

Too many teasel burs spoil the paw.

Too many bubbles spoil the froth.

Too many doorbells spoil the knock.

Too many seeds spoil the floss.

Too many feathers spoil the claw.

Too many lightbulbs spoil the moth.

Too many holes spoil the sock.

Too many sunbeams spoil the moss.

Too many kisses spoil the jaw.

Too many wolves spoil the flock.

Too many necks spoil the block. 

 

The Moose by Elizabeth Bishop

The Moose

From narrow provinces   

of fish and bread and tea,   

home of the long tides

where the bay leaves the sea   

twice a day and takes

the herrings long rides,

where if the river

enters or retreats

in a wall of brown foam   

depends on if it meets   

the bay coming in,

the bay not at home;

where, silted red,

sometimes the sun sets   

facing a red sea,

and others, veins the flats’   

lavender, rich mud

in burning rivulets;

on red, gravelly roads,

down rows of sugar maples,   

past clapboard farmhouses   

and neat, clapboard churches,   

bleached, ridged as clamshells,   

past twin silver birches,

through late afternoon

a bus journeys west,

the windshield flashing pink,   

pink glancing off of metal,   

brushing the dented flank   

of blue, beat-up enamel;

down hollows, up rises,   

and waits, patient, while   

a lone traveller gives   

kisses and embraces

to seven relatives

and a collie supervises.

Goodbye to the elms,   

to the farm, to the dog.   

The bus starts. The light   

grows richer; the fog,   

shifting, salty, thin,

comes closing in.

Its cold, round crystals   

form and slide and settle   

in the white hens’ feathers,   

in gray glazed cabbages,   

on the cabbage roses

and lupins like apostles;

the sweet peas cling

to their wet white string   

on the whitewashed fences;   

bumblebees creep

inside the foxgloves,

and evening commences.

One stop at Bass River.   

Then the Economies—

Lower, Middle, Upper;   

Five Islands, Five Houses,

where a woman shakes a tablecloth   

out after supper.

A pale flickering. Gone.   

The Tantramar marshes   

and the smell of salt hay.   

An iron bridge trembles   

and a loose plank rattles   

but doesn’t give way.

On the left, a red light   

swims through the dark:   

a ship’s port lantern.   

Two rubber boots show,   

illuminated, solemn.   

A dog gives one bark.

A woman climbs in

with two market bags,   

brisk, freckled, elderly.   

“A grand night. Yes, sir,   

all the way to Boston.”   

She regards us amicably.

Moonlight as we enter

the New Brunswick woods,   

hairy, scratchy, splintery;   

moonlight and mist

caught in them like lamb’s wool   

on bushes in a pasture.

The passengers lie back.   

Snores. Some long sighs.   

A dreamy divagation   

begins in the night,

a gentle, auditory,

slow hallucination....

In the creakings and noises,   

an old conversation

—not concerning us,

but recognizable, somewhere,   

back in the bus:

Grandparents’ voices

uninterruptedly

talking, in Eternity:

names being mentioned,   

things cleared up finally;   

what he said, what she said,   

who got pensioned;

deaths, deaths and sicknesses;   

the year he remarried;

the year (something) happened.   

She died in childbirth.

That was the son lost

when the schooner foundered.

He took to drink. Yes.

She went to the bad.

When Amos began to pray   

even in the store and

finally the family had

to put him away.

“Yes ...” that peculiar   

affirmative. “Yes ...”

A sharp, indrawn breath,   

half groan, half acceptance,   

that means “Life’s like that.   

We know it (also death).”

Talking the way they talked   

in the old featherbed,   

peacefully, on and on,

dim lamplight in the hall,   

down in the kitchen, the dog   

tucked in her shawl.

Now, it’s all right now   

even to fall asleep

just as on all those nights.   

—Suddenly the bus driver   

stops with a jolt,

turns off his lights.

A moose has come out of

the impenetrable wood

and stands there, looms, rather,   

in the middle of the road.

It approaches; it sniffs at

the bus’s hot hood.

Towering, antlerless,   

high as a church,

homely as a house

(or, safe as houses).

A man’s voice assures us   

“Perfectly harmless....”

Some of the passengers   

exclaim in whispers,   

childishly, softly,

“Sure are big creatures.”   

“It’s awful plain.”   

“Look! It’s a she!”

Taking her time,

she looks the bus over,   

grand, otherworldly.   

Why, why do we feel   

(we all feel) this sweet   

sensation of joy?

“Curious creatures,”

says our quiet driver,   

rolling his r’s.

“Look at that, would you.”   

Then he shifts gears.

For a moment longer,

by craning backward,   

the moose can be seen

on the moonlit macadam;   

then there’s a dim

smell of moose, an acrid   

smell of gasoline.