And I think some of these subjects,
that we need to tackle, are very difficult.
I think Toni Morrison did it in Beloved.
I don't know if you've read Beloved
but the mother in Beloved kills her baby, kills her child.
And it's about remembering, bringing that child back.
This poem is called "Dead Baby Speaks."
And I begin with a quote from Toni Morrison from Beloved.
"Everybody knew what she was called
but nobody anywhere knew her name.
Disremembered and unaccounted for,
she can not be lost because no one is looking for her.
And even if they were, how could they call her
when they don't know her name?"
"I am taking in, taking in, like a lump
of a dead baby on the floor.
Mama kicks me.
I don't feel anything.
I am taking in, taking in.
I am reading newspapers.
I am seeing films.
I am reading poetry.
I am listening to psychiatrists, friends.
Someone knows the way.
Someone will be my mother and tell me what to think.
The dead baby wants to scream.
The dead baby wants to drink warm milk.
The dead baby wants to go to lunch with her mother,
woman to woman, say, I can't always say the right thing.
Sometimes I've got to say what feels best.
I'm not perfect but I will not be a lump on the floor.
The dead baby wants to kick her mother.
The dead baby wants her mother to lie down and let
herself be kicked.
Why not?
She let father do it.
How to separate me from the dead baby, my mother from me,
my mother from the dead baby?
Nothing is expected.
Nothing is expected of you.
You don't have to do this or say that.
Nothing is known.
Be who you are.
A little defiance, a little defense.
Say if you want.
I lifted up a little.
There is that stunned moment when she shuts up
and lets me speak.
I have nothing to say.
Then I say, rotten mother, who opened
your legs like iron gates and forced me into this prison.
Who lay among lilies and pressed me to your breasts, saying,
I will never be alone again.
Who wanted my soul for company, used my body
in the place of your soul.
Who brought me up to the surface by straining off
the rich dark broth until what remained
was as vaporous as the shadow of a shadow.
Whose breasts were bruised fruits, whose legs
were swollen tree trunks.
But when you were shaken, only one red apple fell.
Whose genitals hold me tethered, a string like a primate's tail
so that I am your monkey in the red suit.
You are my organ grinder.
Cease your desperate paid music.
If you say, do not write about me, I will write more.
There are many more mouths to feed than yours.
My life is juice pouring out of me.
Let it find a channel.
I could knuckle under and be good.
I could pray for her and turn the other cheek.
I could live in her house with her sickness,
like a stinking body in the stairwell.
I could bake bread until my hands puff up.
I could sweep the floor.
I could suck misery out of my teeth like stringy meat.
I could poison her with a plate of sorrow.
I could leave the door open on her corpse
so that no breath would warm her back to resurrection.
I could throw myself at her feet.
I could languish, like a whore in colored rags.
I could lie as still as a still life.
I could be cut up and served on her table.
I could go to my father and beg for her life.
I could dance the seven veils while she escapes.
I could give to the poor.
I could close my legs like a hardened corpse.
I could grow into a hag and compare myself to her pictures.
I could eat her while she's sleeping.
I could put her in the oven and burn her into a lace cookie.
I could roar like a gored dragon.
I could come crawling like a sexless husband.
I could beg her to touch the scratch between my legs, which
should open in a flower.
Every time I question myself, I say, mother did not believe me.
She thought I was making up my life to torture her.
I take off the layers of pain for her
to see the teeth marks in my soul.
She thinks I can be born fresh once my rotten desires are
removed, the desire to touch, the desire to speak.
I could clean house until it is empty.
I could put everything in the right place.
[AUDIO OUT] --weeping in church with a light on her face.
I could love her stinking on the cot of Ben Gay,
waiting for my father to come.
I could love her roaming from room
to room in the dark with a blanket on, trying to be quiet.
I could love her eating at night, hungrily,
slowly going back for seconds.
I could love her white breasts.
I could love her belly of scars.
I could love her insides, which are half of a woman's.
I could love her with a dead baby in her.
I could love her, though the dead baby could be me.
I could love her, even if she wants some part of me dead,
some part that invades her with sorrow.
She never understands.
For the mystery of her childhood.
For being too white and too Black.
For being robbed of a father.
For wearing the cast-off clothes of the rich.
For eating figs and cream on silver that wasn't hers.
For putting the comb and brush neatly in place because they
were the only things she owned.
For learning to make up lies and make everything pretty.
She never believed her own body.
I could love her ocean-black hair.
I could love it in a braid like a long black chain.
I could love her kneeling over the tub,
cleaning the scum out with a rag.
I could love her trying to hit the flying roach with a shoe.
I could love her standing in the doorway,
thinking she's made the wrong choice.
I could love her as I love myself, imperfect mother.
Worse was done to me, she said, and I never told.
I always told in the body, out the mouth.
Everything from insults to penises
needed words to make it real.
Be still, you make me suffer.
I thought it was me who would die.
I thought silence was a blessing and I was a saint.
I was prepared for a higher calling.
I have the key in my hand.
The breath goes in and out.
Sever the mother.
Blow her away like talc.
The breath, the body, this is where I begin.
We are fighting for my silver soul, like Jacob and the angel.
You are the angel, I am the young boy fighting for my life.
I am the angel, you are the young boy
fighting for your life.
We mirror each other like a beautiful face in the river.
Half of us is drowned, half of us is light.
I reach into your soul and pull out the bone of my life.
My mother is on my mouth like a gold frog.
Be good, be good.
She points her finger, that old spinster teacher.
She points her stick at my tongue.
She knocks some sense into it across its red knuckle.
Half of my tongue hangs like a limp dick,
a flag of my mother's country.
Half rises like a bridge.
Words might leap across that great divide.
A daredevil driver.
But I am the driver, and my mother
is peeping out of the back like a baby, her eyes big and black
with fear.
My mother is on my mouth like a gold frog.
She is sparkling and quick as sin,
with terrible humped breasts that nothing can suck at.
The black spots on her are universes you could walk on,
if she were flat and sound as a board.
I take her on my tongue like a lozenge and roll her around.
Then I bite down."
[APPLAUSE]
Thank you.
Wow.
Thank you very much.
That's a hard poem.
Wow.
Thank you.
I think I'm writing some more and I'm
starting to understand that poem better now.