Elvis at the dinner party

By Stacey Tolbert

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Elvis at the dinner party
By Stacey Tolbert

Once upon a time on a Friday night…

Elvis kept calling my cellie

Cuz everybody knows He’s not dead right?

asked me where he could trade in

His white blue suede shoes for

new black red Kicks

dred his hair

Botox his lips

And get this?

Said

He

Had

Mandingo

DICK

Tatorship going on in Texas and now he’s drivin’ a lexus

And of course

He has the utmost respect for us

Who made him

The jazziest/blusiest/swinginest/palest/bojangles

He is/was

Was/is

Still in bizz

And I’m like

Elvis pleaassee I’m in the middle of dinner

To which he replied

"LOVE …me…ten….der….."

and surrender to my

afro stealin

charm

I told him enough was enough

He already done walked away with all

Of our stuff

I put away my cell walked over to my table

He left another message cuz he startin his own label..

As I sat at the table like a holyghost mouse I

Was Mmmmesermerized and full of emmmmoootion while I sat back and enjoyed

A small amount of commotion

See I was havin dinner with M’s

Marley/Marcus/Malcolm/Martin

The waitress was so confused by all the vibes she was getting

Marcus asked her straight up and down if we could have a space of our

Own

To which she replied

"you mean, in this restaurant or in this town?"

Malcolm asked her

How could she see with all that make up covering her natural beauty and why wasn’t

she proud of real kinky hair?

To which she replied

"I have to wear make up or I look plain my hair done gone back to African cuz I was in

the rain."

Marley was slightly upset cuz there was no vegetarian dish so he asked for some

plantains and what was her wish?

To which she replied

"These days I neva really thought about my wish but I guess I would want to get me a

new satellite dish cuz mine is on the brinks and so I cant watch TV…and I guess also

to spend more time with V…that’s my daughter, she 3 and look like me…she gonna be

just like me."

Martin said nothing but extended his hand

The waitress just looked at the eyes of every man

And there I was with all the M’s

Waiting for the Evolution to begin

The waitress left

And as she walked away

She ran her fingers through her hair

And started wiping her make up away

Gandhi came over and wished us peace

And a few slaves stopped by drenched in ocean breeze

The four girls from the bomb gently kissed me on my cheek

Still dressed in church clothing and Sunday school speak

And Elvis still kept callin my cellie

Leaving me numeric messages of urgency

Last thing he said was he was makin a movie

Bout the return of his legend

And that it was groovy

I left quietly

And tossed out my cell phone

And the M’s told me to

Live the movement, be the movement, spread the movement as I journeyed home . . .
Anastacia Tolbert Table

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Salvage the Bones

A Novel by Jesmyn Ward

On one level, Salvage the Bones is a simple story about a poor black family that’s about to be trashed by one of the most deadly hurricanes in U.S. history. What makes the novel so powerful, though, is the way Ward winds private passions with that menace gathering force out in the Gulf of Mexico. Without a hint of pretension, in the simple lives of these poor people living among chickens and abandoned cars, she evokes the tenacious love and desperation of classical tragedy. The force that pushes back against Katrina’s inexorable winds is the voice of Ward’s narrator, a 14-year-old girl named Esch, the only daughter among four siblings. Precocious, passionate and sensitive, she speaks almost entirely in phrases soaked in her family’s raw land. Everything here is gritty, loamy and alive, as though the very soil were animated. Her brother’s “blood smells like wet hot earth after summer rain. . . . His scalp looks like fresh turned dirt.” Her father’s hands “are like gravel,” while her own hand “slides through his grip like a wet fish,” and a handsome boy’s “muscles jabbered like chickens.” Admittedly, Ward can push so hard on this simile-obsessed style that her paragraphs risk sounding like a compost heap, but this isn’t usually just metaphor for metaphor’s sake. She conveys something fundamental about Esch’s fluid state of mind: her figurative sense of the world in which all things correspond and connect. She and her brothers live in a ramshackle house steeped in grief since their mother died giving birth to her last child. . . . What remains, what’s salvaged, is something indomitable in these tough siblings, the strength of their love, the permanence of their devotion.—WashingtonPost

* * * * *

Sister Citizen: Shame, Stereotypes, and Black Women in America

By Melissa V. Harris-Perry

According to the author, this society has historically exerted considerable pressure on black females to fit into one of a handful of stereotypes, primarily, the Mammy, the Matriarch or the Jezebel. The selfless Mammy’s behavior is marked by a slavish devotion to white folks’ domestic concerns, often at the expense of those of her own family’s needs. By contrast, the relatively-hedonistic Jezebel is a sexually-insatiable temptress. And the Matriarch is generally thought of as an emasculating figure who denigrates black men, ala the characters Sapphire and Aunt Esther on the television shows Amos and Andy and Sanford and Son, respectively.

Professor Perry points out how the propagation of these harmful myths have served the mainstream culture well. For instance, the Mammy suggests that it is almost second nature for black females to feel a maternal instinct towards Caucasian babies.

As for the source of the Jezebel, black women had no control over their own bodies during slavery given that they were being auctioned off and bred to maximize profits. Nonetheless, it was in the interest of plantation owners to propagate the lie that sisters were sluts inclined to mate indiscriminately.

* * * * *

The White Masters of the World

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W. E. B. Du Bois’ Arraignment and Indictment of White Civilization (Fletcher)

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Ancient African Nations

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