WEBVTT

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Here's-- here's a long poem.

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Where's the water?

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OK.

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So a couple of years
ago, Elizabeth Alexander

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asked me and several other
poets to create new poems

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for an exhibition of Jacob
Lawrence's Migration Series.

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And each of us had
to choose a panel,

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and I chose the only one
that had a woman in it.

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I would do that, wouldn't I?

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And it was panel number
57, and it's a strange--

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the caption is very
strange for that panel,

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I'll put it that way.

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I don't write narrative
poems very often.

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This is a narrative poem.

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And when I read it, people came
up to me, all kinds of people

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came up to me and said, that's
my grandmother's story, that's

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my aunt's story,
that's my sister's

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story because a lot of
people have been talking

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about migration at
this conference,

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but one of the
largest migrations

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that took place
in this nation was

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from the south to the north.

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More than three million
Black people left the south

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and went north
between 1917 and 1960.

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That's a whole lot of people.

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And changed communities from New
York, to Chicago, to St. Louis,

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to Detroit, to Los Angeles.

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We need to remember
that there has

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been this internal
migration as well.

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"Lave."

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"Where is the lavender,
the purple scent

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that says the world is
fresh and ready to receive

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the woman who walks into
whatever room she walks into?

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What room will she enter?

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How will the female
worker smell?

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Lemon, mint, roses crushed
for homemade soup--

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soap, no place here
for the boiling recipe.

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There is no room.

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And her extra money,
how will she make it?

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Who will she do for?

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How will she get there?

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Will she find her old
friends, her lovers?

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She is lonely.

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The artist says in panel 57 that
the female worker," in quotes--

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in parentheses, not
Negro, not migrant,

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is the last group
to leave the south.

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One woman is her own group?

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Was she ready to leave
or was she left behind?

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Caring for baby, grandfather,
brother, sister, cousin,

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and elderly aunt?

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Was her garden where the
family sought nurture?

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Were her skills at
picking cotton so great,

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the bosses did all
they could to keep her?

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Was there a fourth
child, not wished for?

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Much about the south
is unseen or not shown.

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The painter understands the
usefulness of obscenity.

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Lynching, hunger,
the crops failing,

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boll weevil, boll weevil.

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And so we see the
cotton ball, but not

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the bleeding hands that pick.

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We see the rope dangling,
we see the meager rations

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of meat and bread, and
the table set, no plenty.

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Is this the start of
a woman's true blues?

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The men go ahead, the women stay
behind, and everyone is lonely.

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In many of the
painting's planes,

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she is not seen
preparing the meals,

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cleaning, sewing, packing
clothes to last for as long

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as they can last in the distant
cities of Chicago, Pittsburgh,

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Detroit.

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She is not seen crying
at the preacher's table,

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or burying her head into the
broad chest of the man who

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gets up before
sunrise to make it

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to the station, ticket in hand.

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The men knew the
hardships ahead,

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others were ignorant enough to
believe the stories of plenty,

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work food, shelter.

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Women put no truck in
these white men's promises.

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They wanted out of
Dixie on a very bad day.

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Wanted out of stuck.

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She will leave for the
north and go to the cities.

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She will find the church where
the Bible meets the preacher's

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holy hollering and
the music sounds

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as sweet as in the backwoods.

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She will find the
kind of dresses

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she wanted to make from
the Butterick patterns

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at the notions counter.

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The same counter where she
finds the yellow ribbons that

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tie the braids of the young
girl in painting 21, who

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arrived early to get on
that northbound train.

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Is this the start of
another woman's blues,

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to journey north and find the
men mired, to journey north

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and find her skills unknown?

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To journey north and discover
an even greater loneliness?

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The female worker
gets that ticket

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and joins that motion forward,
the many shoulders, legs,

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hands stretched across
the painting's frames,

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counting the rails away,
away from Dixieland.

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Head bound, holding
an orange dolly,

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the laundress is
charged with purgation.

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Removing the dust
and dirt and stains

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of city living, the marks,
the many sins, sex, drink,

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the opium den, those
swirling, oblong colors

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rests beneath her gaze
as if she has the power

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to make this job seem better
than picking cotton, or hog

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butchering, or taking in washing
for the old gentleman who

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pinches her breasts
for that extra nickel.

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Last to arrive north but
first to see the way home,

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to make a home, put her skillets
on the hot plate, shelves

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her Mason jars full
of peach preserves,

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pickles, tastes of home.

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Chanel spreads on the lumpy
mattresses, the Chicago

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Defender on a kitchen table,
biscuits rising before sunrise,

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greens found in
an Italian market.

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She stands in this painting,
a cruciform of desire,

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in her center of beauty, dressed
in white, the orange stick

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her cudgel, her sword,
the laundry her step

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on that ladder to the future.

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A migrant from the
back of the bottom,

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or a town just big enough
for the railroad to notice,

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gone to the city and its
bitter possibilities,

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so that church is a hearthstone,
an eau de cologne, lavender,

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roses, vanilla, hints
of a necessity."

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