Black West
.
There is a violence to how this ocean faces the land
An edge of the world where we turned bitter, cold,
The words of each hymn eaten before and after supper
Slipped from the back teeth of an eldest sister’s mouth
Until a choir in the oldest black church, west of
the Mississippi, was but a lineup of robbery suspects
Black boys turned inside out, the gold that lined their necks–
rich nigga nooses–became a year’s worth of 1st month deposits
on a multistory, million dollar,
mixed use commercial property,
now vacant and for lease
Their cups once overfloweth,
now drowning in this third quarter drought
Not that it matters
The boys I used to date, now they’re
moving to Stockton, Manteca
And the ones who never had me,
have already gone to.……………………………………………………………..Houstatlantavegas
“You better eat what’s left on that plate
before I give you a reason to cry.”
Minimum wage work at the red circle, red dot
is no longer enough to pay the rent
And so we had to learn quick:
what isn’t tethered to a lease agreement is taken back by the bay
what isn’t subsidized by the government is reconsumed by the marsh
There was never a time when our mother’s milk
didn’t taste brackish
We, the blacks who came to prefer pumpkin over sweet potato
We, the blacks without accents
We, the blacks who owed the movement nothing
would create an entirely different vernacular for living
and being in this world:
How two pelicans flying are a gun pointed west
How the Golden Gate Bridge is no longer the highest point
from which to jump
Wendy M. Thompson is an Associate Professor of African American Studies at San José State University. Her creative work has most recently appeared in Juked, Hayden’s Ferry Review, and Obsidian: Literature & Arts in the African Diaspora. Her first poetry book, Black California Gold, is forthcoming from Bucknell University Press.
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