Kimberly A. Collins

Four Poems by Kimberly A. Collins

Bessie’s Gospel

“Sisters and Bruthas we met heah on some serious bizness. It’s been some back bitin’
going on and the thing I wants to know is whose been doin’ it? It’s a shame! It’s a shame!
It’s a shame! The thing I wants to know is what bit me on mine? I mean, who bit me on my
back?” —Bessie Smith, “Moan Moaners”

Verse 1:

Our blues breaking a black belt of sky disappearing
shards of yellow saved by sunrise stubborn to be gone.
Souls howling our blues of misery Voices strumming one sound

Chorus:

You better get down on your knees
and let the good lord hear your pleas
cause if you want to rest with ease
Moan. You moaners

Verse 2:

A place where mahogany women grow
find whole pieces of themselves in green shrubs and magnolia trees.
A winding street, where brandy colored men scatter
where sistahs lean ovah window sills under a yam colored sun
elbows touching one stone.

Chorus: 

Just bend your head way down and pray
to have the devil chased away
come let your souls be saved today
Moan. You moaners

Verse 3:

Even my death, wasn’t easy. An untethered thing drifting, tumbling
spying abandoned bodies. Daughter of mine. Born of my blues.
Born to risk flight. Stuck in fright. Bessie’s blues. My wings.
The spit that makes me fly pass Union Stockyard. A penned fate.
I have no sympathy for the caged birds that only sing. I am born again.

Chorus:

You better get down on your knees
and let the good lord hear your pleas
cause if you want ta rest with ease
Moan. You moaners

Verse 4:

Even my death was not easy. But there. Beyond Philly.
Beyond Chicago. But there, beyond Jim Crow’s
love for me. Wails ruffle bearded sycamore trees.
Dust covers my landless feet that busk, stomps my blues.
A wooden floor band possesses me. In daddy’s church.
Standing in sanctified tones saved for 13th and Elm St.

Chorus:

Just bend your head way down and pray
to have the devil chased away
come let your souls be saved today
Moan. You moaners

Verse 5:

Whole family. Every Sunday. After church. Grandma’s face a fist. I remember.
On my knees. Askin’ God to hab mercy. On me. Abandoned. Silenced. I’m told.
Her blues be wicked. Bessie is not holy. Bessie’s blues are my glory clothes. I am
the residue of her blues. She tastes me across time. Bessie cradles my blues.
Rocks in me a new religion. Almost as good as whisky.

Chorus:

You betta get down on your knees
and let the good lord hear your pleas
cuz if you wanna ta rest with ease
Moan. You moaners

Just bend your head way down and pray
to have the devil chased away
come let your souls be saved today
Moan. You moaners

Wayson R. Jones, “Witness,” powdered graphite, acrylic medium on paper, 29″ x 41″, 2017. https://waysonjones.com/home.html

Hand Me Down Mean

Aggravatin’ Papa, don’t you try to two-time me/just treat me pretty, be sweet!/I gotta darn forty-four that don’t repeat. – Bessie Smith, Aggravatin’ Papa

Probably ain’t nuthin worse than a hand me down mean.
A mean you can’t even say is wholly yours. A tattered
torn at the seam mean; a you don’t know who owned mean.

A feed my belly mean to keep from crushin me.
It was my momma’s and my momma’s momma’s mean.
A mean to fight. A mean to whip ‘em good if NO was no good.

A two sizes too big mean. A mean I had grown up in before
I had a chance to wean. My daddy’s mean. My man’s mean
dat got no safe place to go ‘cept up in me. A stay alive mean.

“Bessie mean” folks say. They only know a secondhand mean.
My Blues is mean. Folk like Bessie’s blues. The truth is mean.
You gotta be mean to tell the truth and drink the truth most days.

I wish I knew who this overcooked, leftover mean belong to?
I wish I knew how much mean I had up in me.
I wish I knew how to bring ‘em out one by one.

 

Bigger’s Plea to Bessie Mears

Just bend your head way down and pray
to have the devil chased away
come let your souls be saved today
Moan. You moaners
– Bessie Smith, Moan Moaners

Bessie forgive me for battering your flesh.
My crimson stain tatted your skin.
That brick was not meant as treasonous sin.
Cutting Mary’s head made worlds’ mesh.
I burned her for your cries that did not win.
I killed you to cut my noose from all kin.
I beg you rewrite my story make it fresh.

Your wail frozen mid-note not cushioned by blues moan.
I abandoned you to a choir of maggot-faced men.
Tongues joined to lick at the naked dead.
Sharp nails scrape my cement cell wake my weary groan.
My muzzled manhood confined in this pen.
Howling loins haunted, hearing blues echo in my head.

 

Queen Bess

Do you know you have never lived until you have flown? – Bessie Coleman

A shooting star singing through sky
An unfettered falcon without fear of flight
Flapping wings against a Texas one-room shack
Bessie couldn’t jot down her Chicago bound blues

An unfettered falcon without fear of flight
She came perched between clouds daring sons
Bessie couldn’t jot down her Chicago bound blues
She be runnin’ dem browns down

She came perched between clouds daring sons
Swallowing men whole, spitting them out to fly
She be runnin’ dem browns down
Swallowing her wind, she steals their laughter

Swallowing men whole, she spits them out to fly
She wants her men phoenix-like lighting skies
Swallowing her wind, she steals their laughter
Hail Queen Bess! She claims her throne

She wants her men phoenix-like lighting skies
She needs to walk before she flies
Hail Queen Bess! She claims her throne
Barren beds mourn her departure

She needs to walk before she flies
Twirling through rainbows
Barren beds mourn her departure
She teaches Nina to sing Mississippi Goddam!

Twirling through rainbows
Without Jim Crow, up there, everyone is free
She teaches Nina to sing Mississippi Goddam!
Prepares Odetta’s crown continuing freedom’s fight

Without Jim Crow, up there, everyone is free
She is France’s First Lady Liberty chasing wind
She prepares Odetta’s crown continuing freedom’s fight
She came singing about planes and being black and flying

She is France’s First Lady Liberty chasing wind
Her gut speaks about flying to feel alive
She came singing about planes and being black and flying
A shooting star singing through sky

 

Kimberly A. Collins is the author of a book of poems, Bessie's Resurrection (Indolent Books, 2019), and a book of essays, Choose You! Wednesday Wisdom to Wake Your Soul (CreateSpace, 2017). She attended Spelman College and holds a BA from Trinity University, a MA in American and African American literature from Howard University and MFA in poetry from Spalding University. Collins's poems have appeared in Pittsburgh Poetry Review, Black Magnolias, Berkeley Poetry Review, and the Women Artists 2017 Datebook, and in the anthologies Theorizing Black Feminisms: The Visionary Pragmatism of Black Women, Fingernails Across the Chalkboard: Poetry and Prose on HIV/AIDS from the Black Diaspora, The Nubian Gallery, Revise the Psalm: Work Celebrating the Writing of Gwendolyn Brooks, and 50/50: Poems and Translations by Womxn Over 50. Collins is a Callaloo Fellow, and teaches English and creative writing at Morgan State University in Baltimore. Her poem, "Remember My Name" has become a staple of annual Domestic Awareness Month observances.