"If Black English isn't a language,

then tell me what it is."

— James Baldwin (1934 - 1989)

Sunday Morning

Sun's up

they say it's Sunday

come to us again
Bacon and egg smells

float over from Master's House

somebody's smoking cigars

maybe two somebodies
Cigars they come here

by big riverboats

breakfast china dishes

they come too

and ice for fancy get-togethers
Cost lots of money
Last Sunday

they traded Jubilee

my grownup cousin

and Vashti my little sister

to pay for all the cigars

and all the breakfast china

but not for all the ice
They said too much

had melted on the way
(for Octavia Butler)


Fingers

I want to see fingers/ fingers flying across piano

keys/ fingers strolling over black notes & blue

notes & sharp notes & flat notes & get up in

the morning notes/ fingers/ I want to see

BB King fingers hitting Lucille's guitar strings
UM ain't that some stuff/ Nina Simone Queen

of Soul fingers backing up The King of Love/

Martin Luther King fingers & hands pounding

on America's pulpit/ yesterday & now I Have
 
A Dream fingers/ fingers/ my great grandfather's 

CC Rider fingers taking the Bible to Black folks

using their fingers to read/ my grandfather's

chef fingers shaping fancy pastry & roasting

duck & making people lick their fingers
UM ain't that some stuff/ fingers/ my mother's

fingers/ my father's fingers/ all theses fingers

pushing me into circles of light/ my fingers/

this poem


Mirror Woman

Mirror, mirror on the wall,

who is the fairest of them all?

— Brothers Grimm, "Snow White"

Let me tell you something.

I'm a woman of African descent

and that isn't just something.

You hear me.

It is some thing.

Yes! I am a woman of African descent.
In a public library restroom

caught a sistah standing behind me

staring in the mirror at me.

"Are you mixed?" she says

at the back of my head.
I say to the mirror "What!"

as in — What's wrong with you, Sistah!

"Are you mixed?" she says

one more time

giving me the once-over

as though she'd paid admission

and was entitled.
Now I shake my hands dry.

I say to the sistah in the mirror,

"What!" as in

What manners did yo Mama

not teach you.
She blinks hard like I'm some

kind of puzzle. "Mixed," she says,

"You know, as in mixed!"

"No No No!" I say.
"I am not mixed. I am nobody's

mixed anything!" I hear my voice

rising . "I am a woman of African
 
descent. Just like you!"
"Passing," she says interrupting.

"Do you ever think of passing?"

"Why?" I say without thinking. "Why would

a woman of African descent want to pass?"
"Easier," she says. "Life would be easier,"

she says. "Easier for what?" I almost say.

"The Price of the ticket," I say. "That's

what James Baldwin would say."
"Who's he?" she says.

"Pass. You could do it." 
I want to hug her. Yes. Maybe I

even want to give her my skin.
I move away

leaving her free to talk with that

other woman in the mirror.


Say My Name

Say my name please.

Please say my name. Look at me when you say

my name. My name. You put it in a bag and

tied it with wires at the top where the paper, the

parchment was peeling in little threads. Threads

like my mother used when she hemmed my

dress. Gauze. Gauze. Strips of gauze covered

with mericrome and witchhazel and in the 

medicine cabinet with all those little bottles —

amber, blue-cobalt blue — where she put my

name before she closed the door, the mirror.
Wiped it clean.

I wrote my name in the steam on the mirror. She

wiped it clean, took my name away, this mirror

woman who polished what was left of the

light, the long could-be-singing nights with my

name. Here in the twilight of the sighs and long

meter hymns and someone breathing long and

low and heavy in the dark of my name. I hear it

low and sweet so sweet and hear, yes, the carry-

me-back-words of my name riding in a boat

with the gold leaf of its name Muerte — Muerte.
And on its sides,

this ship with its polished wooden sides, this

wooden carved maiden leading it in its name,

this wooden carving with its long green hair,

green sea waves... carry-me-back-waves/ carry
 
me back... Its rough lips wooden and pouting

and half open, taking in the blue-green ocean

waves and the foam, lips parted/ bared to the

blue wind as if to say my name, to sing it into

the blue-black wind.
Amazing Grace.

And who was that woman! Say it. Spit it Out.

Weave if from long colored banners from soft —

as spring wool, from cotton, yes cotton. Cotton

mouth. Poison. sssssssssssss. Please. Please say

my name. Please.
Look at me.
JT Stewart is the Seattle Review of Books Poet in Residence for February. Previously: "Invocation" and "FOLKS: 'Many Rivers to Cross'"


    Citations & notes:




    "Sunday Morning" — Published in Strange Matings: Science Fiction, Feminism, African American Voices, and Octavia E. Butler (Aqueduct Press, 2014)


    "Fingers" — Reprinted as a broadside (2011 - designed by Graphic Artist John D. Berry from JT Stewart's chapbook Promised Lands: Poems from the sovereign of dishpan sonnets (Lamaya Press, 2010 (3rd edition).


    "Mirror Woman" — Published in Stone Telling 5 — The Magazine of Boundary Crossing Poetry (2011, with an accompanying MP3 from Jack Straw Productions).


    "Say My Name" — Published in The Moment of Change: An Anthology of Feminist Speculative Poetry (Aqueduct Press, 2010), also from Promised Lands: Poems from the sovereign of dishpan sonnets (Lamaya Press, 2010 (3rd edition).