“Let a race of men now rise and take control” – Theme for Week #4, April 22 thru April 29 DevotionReader Series: 30 Ways of Looking at Black Poetry From a Black Feminists Conference Reflections on Margaret Walker: Poet - Sonia Sanchez chicago/october 1977/saturday afternoon/margaret walker walks her red clay mississippi walk into a room of feminists. a strong gust of a woman. raining warm honeysuckle kisses and smiles. and i fold myself into her and hear a primordial black song sailing down the guinea coast. Her face. ordained with lines. confesses poems. halleluyas. choruses. she turns leans her crane like neck on the edge of the world, empha- sizing us. in this hotel/village/room. heavy with women. ournames be- come known to us. there is an echo about her. of black people rhyming. of a woman cele- brating herself and a people. words ripen on her mouth like pomegran- ates. this pecan/color/woman. short limbed with lightning. and I swal- low her whole as she pulls herself up from youth, shaking off those early Chicago years where she and wright and others turned a chicago desert into a well spring of words. eyes. brillant/southern eyes torpedoing the room with sun. eyes/dressed like a woman. seeing thru riddles. offering asylum from ghosts. she stands over centuries as she talks. hands on waist. a feminine memory washed up from another shore. she opens her coat. a light col- ored blouse dances against dark breasts. her words carved from ances- tral widows rain children and the room contracts with color. her voice turns the afternoon brown. this black woman poet. removing false veils, baptizes us with syllables. woman words. entering and leav- ing at will: Let a new earth rise. Let another world be born. Let a bloody peace be written in the sky. Let a second generation full of courage issue forth, let a people loving freedom come to growth. Let a beauty full of healing and a strength of final clenching be the pulsing in our spirits and our blood. Let the martial songs be written, let the dirges disappear. Let a race of men now rise and take control.*
walking back to my room, I listen to the afternoon. play it again and again. scatter myself over evening walls and passageways wet with her footprints. in my room I collect papers. breasts. and listen to our mother hummmmming * “For My People” by Margaret Walker Sonia Sanchez, homegirls and handgrenades, Thunder’s Mouth Press, 1984
Devotionreader.com 30 Days of Looking at Black Poetry -- Day: One O Black and Unknown Bards Two Listen Children Three For the Record Four Ballad of Birmingham Five Six The Idea of Ancestry Seven I Want to Write Eight A Grandfather Poem Nine Sweet Sound Ten My Brother is Homemade Eleven Those Winter Sundays Twelve SOS Thirteen Resurrections Fourteen Jessie Mitchell's Mother Fifteen April Rain Song Sixteen I've Got A Home in that Rock Seventeen Earth Screaming Eighteen Returning Spring Nineteen Newark, for Now [68] Twenty Dawn Twenty-One Fir Twenty-Two Comin Strong Twenty-Three From a Black Feminists Conference Reflections on Margaret Walker: Poet Twenty-Four My Africa Twenty-Five Strong Men Twenty-Six Today's News Twenty-Seven My Guilt Twenty-Eight Forward, Always Forward Twenty-Nine The Seven Principles of Kwanzaa Thirty What Harriet Said
