--from Captivity?
I grew up in a neighborhood that was--
well, I think I'll read "Blackbottom" first of all,
and then you'll see what happened in my family
in the early 1940s.
"Blackbottom."
"When relatives came from out of town,
we would drive down to Blackbottom.
Drive slowly down the congested main streets,
Beubien and Hastings trapped in the mesh of Saturday night.
Freshly escaped, Black middle class.
We snickered and were proud.
The louder the streets, the prouder.
We laughed at the bright clothes of a prostitute, a man sitting
on a curb with a bottle in his hand.
We smelled barbecue cooking and dented wash tubs
and our mouths watered.
As much as we wanted it, we couldn't take the chance.
Rhythm and blues came from the windows, the throaty voice
of a woman lost in the bass and the drums in the dirty
down and out, the grind.
I love to see a funeral, then I know it ain't mine.
We rolled our windows down so that the waves rolled over us
like blood.
We hope to pass invisibly, knowing on Monday
we would return safely to our jobs, the post office,
and classrooms.
We wanted our suffering to be offered up
as tender meat and our triumphs to be belted out
as raucous song.
We had lost our voice in the suburbs,
in Conant Gardens, where each brick house delineated
offensive silence.
We had lost the right to sing in the streets and damn creation.
We returned to wash our hands of them,
to smell them whose very existence tore us down
to the human."