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a June Jordan portfolio
- from Who Look at Me
- If You Saw a Negro Lady
- What Would I Do White
- These Poems
- One Minus One Minus One
- I Must Become a Menace to My Enemies
- Poem for South African Women
- Alla Tha's All Right, but
- Poem about My Rights
- Poem for Nana
- First Poem After Serious Surgery
- The Bombing of Baghdad
- Poem to Take Back the Night
- It's Hard to Keep a Clean Shirt Clean
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Poem for Nana
What will we do when there is nobody left to kill? * 40,000 gallons of oil gushing into the ocean But I sit on top this mountainside above the Pacific checking out the flowers the California poppies orange as I meet myself in heat I’m wondering where’s the Indians? all this filmstrip territory all this cowboy sagaland: not a single Indian in sight 40,000 gallons gushing up poison from the deepest seabeds every hour 40,000 gallons while experts international while new pollutants swallow the unfathomable still: no Indians I’m staring hard around me past the pinks the poppies and the precipice that let me see the wide Pacific unsuspecting even trivial by virtue of its vast surrender I am a woman searching for her savagery even if it’s doomed Where are the Indians? * Crow Nose Little Bear Slim Girl Black Elk Fox Belly the people of the sacred trees and rivers precious to the stars that told old stories to the night how do we follow after you? falling snow before the firelight and buffalo as brothers to the man how do we follow into that? * They found her facedown where she would be dancing to the shadow drums that humble birds to silent flight They found her body held its life dispelled by ice my life burns to destroy Anna Mae Pictou Aquash slain on The Trail of Broken Treaties bullet lodged in her brain/hands and fingertips dismembered who won the only peace that cannot pass from mouth to mouth * Memory should agitate the pierced bone crack of one in pushed-back horror pushed-back pain as when I call out looking for my face among the wounded coins to toss about or out entirely the legends of Geronimo of Pocahontas now become a squat pedestrian cement inside the tomb of all my trust as when I feel you isolate among the hungers of the trees a trembling hidden tinder so long unsolicited by flame as when I accept my sister dead when there should be a fluid holiness of spirits wrapped around the world redeemed by women whispering communion * I find my way by following your spine Your heart indivisible from my real wish we compelled the moon into the evening when you said, “No, I will not let go of your hand.” * Now I am diving for a tide to take me everywhere Below the soft Pacific spoils a purple girdling of the globe impregnable * Last year the South African Minister of Justice described Anti-Government Disturbances as Part of a Worldwide Trend toward the Breakdown of Established Political and Cultural Orders * God knows I hope he’s right. from Passion (1980) and from Directed by Desire. The Collected Poems of June Jordan. Copyright 2005 by the June M. Jordan Literary Estate Trust |