WEBVTT

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I'm going to read a
little old, a little new.

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And I thought I had
to start with a poem

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that I wrote in Iowa
while surrounded

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by a lot of negativity but a few
positive forces, many of whom

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are in this room right now--

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my colleagues, my compadres.

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Joy, Sandra, Mary
Jane, and Jeff--

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thank you for being who you are.

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And I thank all of
you for believing

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that poetry can change
the world because it can,

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but only if you believe it.

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Only if you believe it.

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This poem was written at Iowa.

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It was one of the first ones
that I wrote that I finally saw

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the path that I wanted to take.

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And I remember when I
read it in workshop--

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an early version of it--

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one of my classmates said
"I'd rather have an apple,

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and you've given me castor oil."

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That was Iowa.

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How did we survive that sucker?

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I don't know.

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I really don't know.

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"The House Slave".

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"The first horn lifts its
arm over the dew-lit grass.

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And in the slave quarters
there is a rustling.

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Children are
bundled into aprons.

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Cornbread and water
gourds grabbed.

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A salt pork breakfast taken.

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I watched them driven into
the vague before dawn,

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while their mistress
sleeps like an ivory

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toothpick, and Massa dreams
of asses, rum, and slave funk.

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I cannot fall asleep again.

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At the second horn, the
whip curls across the backs

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of the laggards.

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Sometimes my sister's voice,
unmistaken, among them.

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'Oh pray,' she cries.

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'Oh pray.' Those days, I lie on
my cot shivering in the early

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heat.

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And as the fields
unfold to whiteness,

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and they spill like bees
among the fat flowers, I weep.

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It is not yet daylight."