i remember saying
boo
to a volvo on the westside
filled with frightened white faces
who was i to be afraid of, anyway
a 20 something, veggie, westside girl
fighting the good fight of inclusion and voice
at a predominately white community college by the beach
where my best friends sold jewelry and fell in love
boo
and i became their worst fear
and what must that fear look like
a skirt made of watermelon rinds
my face blackened with coal
each braid secured with tiny white bows
my head tilted to one questioning angle
ooga, booga, booga boo
and i am the minstrel show
the kill whitey of nightmares
the organizing, uppity type
the well-read new negro with all the answers
a revolution over my right shoulder
an army of fatigued nappy babies in black berets to my left
and my man, my king
festooned in armory of red, black and green
kwanzaa baskets brimming with fruit and ears of corn
habari gani, my sister
as my brown fist eclipses all traces of light
let me explain:
i know what it’s like to be called nigger
to favor the fairer without knowing why
to fold my lips inward, suck them smaller than they are
i remember fresh permanent relaxers
and leaving the salon
a southland breeze feathering all the shiny
scabbed crown of me
as i got in the car and sang songs
on the wrong side of the f.m. dial
remembering the anorexic, ditto and candies clad white girls
of hale jr. high who taught me how to hate my body
this rage comes from somewhere
i remember finding out about the harlem renaissance
at a bookstore on the westside
all big and glossy
like, of course you know about these painters
and posers for james van der zee
of course you marveled at the way he captured light
on smoke and bourgeois ladies
how he made up allegories with children
superimposed in wedding portraits
and angels in still lifes of the dead
there is a scream that occurs
when you are left out of something
a dying happens
to blacks who don’t want you to acknowledge them
at a westside gathering
the dread who favors the white girls
the way candy favors sweet
i mean without one, there is no other
there is a place where silence comes from
i remember tanks on palms boulevard
counting the flame twisters of south central
the day we learned our lives were cheaper than we suspected
all i wanted to do
was to make sure my brother was safe
that my mama got home from the valley
that we were together
that we could survive this
praying that it would pass
and hearing over and over
that quote from a place i have forgotten
you know you will be ready for a revolution
when you are ready to eat rats
the grocery store on the corner
sold out of every bag of bread and gallon of milk
we watched newscasters call us names
finding a place for their rage
we watched interviewers on tv
asking the poor why they were taking baby formula and diapers
from abandoned markets
i suppose i never felt so small
so silent
because i wasn’t ready for no bloody revolution
wasn’t ready to eat rats
and the fist i held up on la brea and wilshire that first night
was to protect myself from a brother
standing in the middle of the street
looking for a place to put his bullets, his rage
i do what i am supposed to do
learn to look beyond the signifiers of class and color
understand that beyond every revolution
is another story, another oppression
one summer in south central on a schoolyard
i noticed that everyone was brown
each african, cambodian, chicano child
looked a bit like me
i couldn’t make out their races as they played
and i realized that we shared something
that i couldn’t exactly name
i get the same feeling
when my friend jeff writes an enlightened poem
about the violation of white privilege
and owns his own peculiar benefit
doled out by the slave trade, centuries ago
it will be impossible to pay the debt
to rub smooth the relief of slavery from our backs
there may always be a time
when we favor our hair as smooth and glassy as michael jackson’s
look at the toll colonization and self-hatred
has taken on his face
i believe in love
and i will believe in it
until i am gone
until my scars are ash
and i am the sum of my journals
besides
how are you gonna hold hands with anyone
with your fists all balled up
like that
Imani Tolliver has been a featured performer at the Smithsonian Institution, Beyond Baroque Literary Arts Center, World Stage Performance Gallery, University of Southern California, California State University at Long Beach, California State University Los Angeles, and the Los Angeles Central Library. She served as the 2007-08 Poet Laureate for the Watts Towers Arts Center and was awarded a Certificate of Appreciation by the City of Los Angeles for her work promoting the literary arts in Southern California. A graduate of Howard University, tolliver was a Cave Canem Fellow in 1997, 1999, and 2003. Her poems are included in the anthologies Corners of the Mouth: A Celebration of Thirty Years at the Annual San Luis Obispo Poetry Festival, Beyond the Frontier, and Bum Rush the Page.