Now I'm going to go back to the cultural panorama
and talking about that sniper moment.
This poem is also a poem about a cultural moment 10 years old
now probably, the cultural moment.
It's about that moment when Venus and Serena
Williams suddenly materialized in the very white sport
of tennis like something that had never been seen before.
And it was one of those moments where
you know that something has changed
but you don't know what it is.
Maybe nobody knows, maybe the everybody's
afraid to sort of say what it is,
but you could feel the vibration go through the culture.
You knew something had changed.
And so the poem is, the poem, I say
the poem is about Venus and Serena
Williams who are disguised and different names are used.
But what it's really about is it's sort of about the White
reaction to that, the sort of ripple
through one part of the social scene in reaction
to another to a change because change is always scary.
And I wanted to in a way write a poem about racial fear
which is so much of a part of American life.
Without apologizing for it or in a way explaining it,
I wanted to actually to embody it.
So if you hear funny things in the poem,
it's meant to vocalize those kinds of anxieties
in the speaker's voice.
And that's over explaining it, but it's called "The Change".
"The season turned like the page of a glossy fashion magazine.
In the park, the daffodils came up, and in the parking lot
the new car models were on parade.
Sometimes I think that nothing really changes.
The young girls show the latest crop of tummies,
and the new president proves that he's a dummy.
But remember that tennis match we watched that year?
Right before our eyes some tough little European blond
pitted against that Black girl from California.
Cornrowed hair and the Zulu bangles on her arms.
Some outrageous name like Vondella Aphrodite.
We were just walking past the lounge
and got sucked in by the TV screen above the bar.
And pretty soon we started to care
about who won, putting ourselves into each whacked return
as the volleys went back and forth and back like
some contest between the old world and the new.
And you loved her complicated hair,
and her to hell with everybody stare.
And I couldn't help wanting the White girl to come out
on top because she was one of my kind,
my tribe with her pale eyes and thin lips.
And because the Black girl was so big, so black,
so unintimidated, hitting the ball
like she was driving the Emancipation Proclamation
down Abraham Lincoln's throat, like
she wasn't asking anyone's permission.
There are moments when history passes you so close,
you can smell its breath.
You can reach your hand out and touch it on its flank.
And I don't watch all that much Masterpiece theater,
but I could feel the end of an era
there in front of those bleachers full of people
in their Sunday tennis watching clothes as that Black girl wore
down her opponent then kicked her ass good,
then thumped her once more for good measure,
and stood up on the red clay court
holding her racket over her head like a guitar.
And the little pink judge had to climb up on a box
to put the ribbon on her neck.
Still managing to smile into the camera
flash even though everything was changing.
And in fact, everything had already changed.
Poof, remember.
It was the 20th century almost gone.
We were there, and when we went to put it back
where it belonged, it was past us, and we were changed."