Shake Loose My Skin (8 page)

Me. This Black woman. Staring out at you. You got a neighborhood for her and her three kids? With furniture paid for. With clothes paid for. With a decent job that pays the mortgage and utilities and a few bills. Not enough money for a car payment. But we manage.

Answer me. Where does a Black woman go when she is me, trailed by myths that this country has invented about her? Where to go to, when all of you have been there already, and claimed the turf as your own and you watch the rest of us shipwrecked by circumstance and color, looking. Waiting. Needing.

What?

Am I angry? Angry? About this? Are you angry about this? No. I am surprised again. I am surprised that the good folks in Philadelphia and the country would continue to allow this to happen. I am concerned that my children have seen other children look at ’em like they was dirt. I am alarmed that people didn’t come out in a peace vigil. That the Christians didn’t come out in a Christian vigil. That the educators did not come out to educate. That the athletes did not come to play the real game. I am amazed that God disappeared from their eyes. That God disappeared again in this city with so many churches. So many schools. So many people wanting just to be clean in their own neighborhood.

1.

Tonite in need of you
and God
I move imperfect
through this ancient city.

Quiet. No one hears
No one feels the tears
of multitudes.

The silence thickens
I have lost the shore
of your kind seasons
who will hear my voice
nasal against distinguished
actors.

O I am tired

of voices without sound

I will rest on this ground
full of mass hymns.

2.

You have been here since I can remember Martin
from Selma to Montgomery from Watts to Chicago
from Nobel Peace Prize to Memphis, Tennessee.
Unmoved among the angles and corners
of aristocratic confusion.

It was a time to be born

forced forward a time

to wander inside drums

the good times with eyes like stars

and soldiers without medals or weapons

but honor, yes.

And you told us:
the storm is rising against the

privileged minority of the earth, from which there is no

shelter in isolation or armament

and you told us: the storm will

not abate until a just distribution of the fruits of

the earth enables men (and women) everywhere to live

in dignity and human decency.

3.

All summerlong it has rained
and the water rises in our throats
and all that we sing is rumored
forgotten.

Whom shall we call when this song comes of age?

And they came into the city carrying their fastings
in their eyes and the young 9-year-old Sudanese
boy said, “I want something to eat at nite a
place to sleep.”

And they came into the city hands salivating guns,
and the young 9-year-old words snapped red
with vowels:

Mama mama Auntie auntie I dead I dead I deaddddd.

4.

In our city of lost alphabets

where only our eyes strengthen the children

you spoke like Peter like John

you fisherman of tongues

untangling our wings

you inaugurated iron for our masks

exiled no one with your touch

and we felt the thunder in your hands.

We are soldiers in the army
we have to fight, although we have to cry.
We have to hold up the freedom banners
we have to hold it up until we die.

And you said we must keep going and we became
small miracles, pushed the wind down, entered

the slow bloodstream of America

surrounded streets and “reconcentradas,” tuned

our legs against Olympic politicians elaborate cadavers

growing fat underneath western hats.

And we scraped the rust from old laws

went floor by floor window by window

and clean faces rose from the dust

became new brides and bridegrooms among change

men and women coming for their inheritance.

And you challenged us to catch up with our

own breaths to breathe in Latinos Asians Native Americans

Whites Blacks Gays Lesbians Muslims and Jews, to gather

up our rainbow-colored skins in peace and racial justice

as we try to answer your long-ago question: Is there

a nonviolent peacemaking army that can shut down

the Pentagon?

And you challenged us to breathe in Bernard Haring’s words:

the materialistic growth—mania for

more and more production and more

and more markets for selling unnecessary

and even damaging products is a

sin against the generation to come

what shall we leave to them:

rubbish, atomic weapons numerous

enough to make the earth

uninhabitable, a poisoned

atmosphere, polluted water?

5.

“Love in practice is a harsh and dreadful

thing compared to love in dreams,” said a Russian writer.

Now I know at great cost Martin that as we burn

something moves out of the flames

(call it spirit or apparition)

till no fire or body or ash remain

we breathe out and smell the world again

Aye-Aye-Aye Ayo-Ayo-Ayo Ayeee-Ayeee-Ayeee

Amen men men men Awoman woman woman woman

Men men men Woman woman woman

Men men Woman woman

Men Woman

Womanmen.

I’m gonna stay on the battlefield
I’m gonna stay on the battlefield
I’m gonna stay on the battlefield til I die.

I’m gonna stay on the battlefield
I’m gonna stay on the battlefield
I’m gonna stay on the battlefield til I die.

i had come into the city carrying life in my eyes

amid rumors of death,

calling out to everyone who would listen

it is time to move us all into another century

time for freedom and racial and sexual justice

time for women and children and men time for hands unbound

i had come into the city wearing peaceful breasts

and the spaces between us smiled

i had come into the city carrying life in my eyes.

i had come into the city carrying life in my eyes.

And they followed us in their cars with their computers

and their tongues crawled with caterpillars

and they bumped us off the road turned over our cars,

and they bombed our buildings killed our babies,

and they shot our doctors maintaining our bodies,

and their courts changed into confessionals

but we kept on organizing we kept on teaching believing

loving doing what was holy moving to a higher ground

even though our hands were full of slaughtered teeth
but we held out our eyes delirious with grace.
but we held out our eyes delirious with grace.

I’m gonna treat everybody right
I’m gonna treat everybody right
I’m gonna treat everybody right til I die.

I’m gonna treat everybody right
I’m gonna treat everybody right
I’m gonna treat everybody right til I die.

come. i say come, you sitting still in domestic bacteria

come. i say come, you standing still in double-breasted mornings

come. i say come, and return to the fight.

this fight for the earth

this fight for our children

this fight for our life

we need your hurricane voices

we need your sacred hands

i say, come, sister, brother to the battlefield

come into the rain forests

come into the hood

come into the barrio

come into the schools

come into the abortion clinics

come into the prisons
come and caress our spines

i say come, wrap your feet around justice

i say come, wrap your tongues around truth

i say come, wrap your hands with deeds and prayer

you brown ones

you yellow ones

you black ones

you gay ones

you white ones

you lesbian ones

Comecomecomecomecome to this battlefield
called life, called life, called life. . . .

I’m gonna stay on the battlefield
I’m gonna stay on the battlefield
I’m gonna stay on the battlefield til I die.

I’m gonna stay on the battlefield
I’m gonna stay on the battlefield
I’m gonna stay on the battlefield til I die.

1.

There are women sailing the sky
I walk between them

They who wear silk, muslin and burlap skins touching mine

They who dance between urine and violets

They who are soiled disinherited angels with masculine eyes.

This earth is hard symmetry
This earth of feverish war
This earth inflamed with hate
This patch of tongues corroding the earth’s air.
Who will journey to the place we require of humans?
I grow thin on these algebraic equations reduced to a final

common denominator.

2.

I turn away from funerals from morning lightning
I feast on rain and laughter

What is this sound I hear moving through our bones
I breathe out leaving our scent in the air.

3.

I came to this life with serious hands
I came observing the terrorist eyes moving in and out of

Southern corners

I wanted to be the color of bells

I wanted to surround trees and spill autumn from my fingers
I came to this life with serious feet—heard other footsteps

gathering around me

Women whose bodies exploded with flowers.

4.

Life.
Life is

from curled embryo
to greed
to flesh
transistors

webpages obscuring butterflies.

Our life

is a feast of flutes
orbiting chapels
no beggar women here
no treasonous spirit here
just a praise touch

created from our spirit tongues

We bring the noise of mountain language

We bring the noise of Sunday mansions

We enter together paddling a river of risks

in order to reshape This wind, This sea,

This sky, This dungeon of syllables

We have become nightingales singing us out of fear

Splashing the failed places with light.

We are here.

On the green of leaves

On the shifting waves of blues,

Knowing once that our places divided us

Knowing once that our color divided us

Knowing once that our class divided us

Knowing once that our sex divided us

Knowing once that our country divided us

Now we carry the signature of women in our veins

Now we build our reconciliation canes in morning fields

Now the days no longer betray us

and we ascend into wave after wave of our blood milk.

What can we say without blood?

5.

Her Story.

Herstory smiles at us.

Little by little we shall interpret the decorum of peace
Little by little we shall make circles of these triangular stars
We Shall strip-mine the world’s eyes of secrets
We shall gather up our voices
Braid them into our flesh like emeralds
Come. Bring us all the women’s hands
Let us knead calluses into smiles
Let us gather the mountains in our children’s eyes
Distill our unawakened love
Say hello to the mangoes

the uninformed men

the nuns

the prostitutes

the rainmothers

the squirrels

the clouds

the homeless.

Come. Celebrate our footsteps insatiable as sudden breathing

Love curves the journey of these women sails

Love says Awoman. Awoman to these tongues of thunder

Come celebrate this prayer
I bring to our common ground.
It is enough

to confound the conquistadores
it is enough to shape our lace,
our name.

Make us become healers

Come celebrate the poor

the women

the gays

the lesbians

the men

the children

the black, brown, yellow, white
Sweat peeling with stories

Aaaaayeee babo.
I spit on the ground
I spit language on the dust
I spit memory on the water
I spit hope on this seminary

I spit teeth on the wonder of women, holy volcanic women
Recapturing the memory of our most sacred sounds.

Come

where the drum speaks

come tongued by fire and water and bone

come praise God and

Ogun and Shango and

Olukun and Oya and

Jesus

Come praise our innocence
our decision to be human

reenter the spirit of morning doves
and our God is near
I say our God is near
I say our God is near

Aaaayeee babo Aaaayeee babo Aaaayeee babo
(Praise God).

Grateful acknowledgment is made for the permission to reprint the following:

Material from
I’ve Been a Woman
by Sonia Sanchez copyright © 1978 by Sonia Sanchez. Reprinted by permission of Third World Press, Inc., Chicago, Illinois.

Material from
homegirls & handgrenades
by Sonia Sanchez copyright © 1984 by Sonia Sanchez. Appears by permission of the publisher, Thunder’s Mouth Press.

Permission granted by the publisher Africa World Press, Inc. for reprinting the following poems from Sonia Sanchez’s
Under a Soprano Sky
copyright © 1987 by Sonia Sanchez, all rights reserved: “Under a Soprano Sky”; “Philadelphia: Spring, 1985”; “Haiku (for the police on Osage Ave.)”; “Dear Mama”; “Fall”; “Fragment I”; “Fragment 2”; “Haiku”; “Towhomitmayconcern”; “Blues”; “Song No. 2”; “An Anthem”; and “Graduation Notes.”