She gives a great introduction, doesn't she?
Wow.
Social problems poetry.
Has she read through--
Yeah, I know.
How's everybody doing?
Good.
Yeah.
Great.
All right?
Good.
We'll do a mixture-- thank you very much.
That was wonderful.
We'll do a mixture of some old stuff and some new stuff.
God you guys are intimidating.
[LAUGHTER]
I start all my readings out with the same poem.
I used to teach a residency to a group
of sixth graders in Miami.
And when I first came bounding in saying,
well I'm here to teach you poetry.
I realized that the area I was in
had a high incidence of drug use.
So a lot of the kids had lost parents or siblings to AIDS.
And it was a little girl in the class whose mother had just
died the week before and she was already back in school.
So I do this poem because it reminds
me of how powerful poetry is.
How it can take you from one place in your head
to a safer place.
And this is little girl who came up to me
and asked me to teach her to write a poem about her mother
so that she had something to remember.
So this is dedicated to the sixth grade class
at Lillie C. Evans Elementary School, Dade County Miami,
which they made me promise to say every time I did the poem.
And they would know.
I am astonished at their mouthful names.
Lakinishia, Chevellanie, Delayo, Fumilayo--
Their ragged rebellions and lip gloss pouts,
and all those pants drooped as drapery.
I rejoice when they kiss my face, whisper wet and urgent
in my ear.
Make me their obsession because I have brought them poetry.
They shout me raw.
Bruise my wrist with their pulling and brashly
claim me as Mama as they cradle my head in their little laps,
waiting for new words to grow in my mouth.
You, you, you.
Angry, jubilant, weeping poets.
We are all saviors.
Reluctant hosannas in the limelight but you knew that,
didn't you?
So let us bless the sixth grade class.
40 cracking voices.
40 nappy heads and all of them raise their hands when I ask.
They've all seen the Reaper, grim in his heavy robe,
pushing the button for the dead project elevator,
begging for a break at the corner pawnshop,
cackling wildly in the back pew of the Baptist church.
I ask the death question.
And 40 fists punch the air.
Me!
And O'Neal, matchstick crack child,
watched his mother's body become a claw.
And 9-year-old Tiko Jefferson, barely big
enough to lift the gun, fired a bullet into his throat
when mama bended his back with a lead pipe.
Tamika cried into a sofa pillow when daddy blasted mama
into the north wall of their cluttered one-room apartment.
Donya's cousin, gone in a drive by.
"Dark window, click, click, gone."
says Donya.
Her tiny finger a barrel, the thumb a hammer.
I am astonished at their losses.
And yet, when I read a poem about my own heart eyed
teenager, Jeffrey asks, "Is he dead yet?"
Can that be comprehended?
An 18-year-old still pushing and pulling his own breath?
And 40 faces pity me knowing that I will soon
be as they are, numb to our bloody histories,
favoring the Reaper with a thumbs up and a wink,
hearing the question and shouting, "Me!
Me, Miss Smith.
I know somebody dead."
"Can poetry hurt us?"
they ask me before crawling into my words to sleep.
"I love you."
Nicole says.
Nicole, wearing my face.
Pimples peppering her nose and she is as Black as angels are.
Nicole's braids kissed with match flame to seal them.
"And can you teach me to write a poem about my Mama, Miss Smith?
I mean, you write about your daddy and he's dead.
Can he teach me to remember my mama?"
A teacher tells me this is the first time Nicole has admitted
that her mother is gone.
Murdered by slim silver needles and a stranger
rifling through her blood, the virus pushing her skeleton
through for Nicole to see.
And now this child with rusty knees and mismatched shoes
sees poetry as her scream.
And asks me for the words to build her mother again,
replacing the voice, stitching on in the lost flesh.
So poets, as we take the stage, as we
flirt and sin and rejoice behind microphones, remember Nicole.
She knows that we are here now.
And she is an empty vessel waiting to be filled.
And she is waiting.
And she's waiting.
And she waits.
[APPLAUSE]