First Tour of Duty and Other Poems

Baring My Soul

By Stacey Tolbert

* * * * *

First Tour of Duty

By Stacey Tolbert

carefully packs

paytriotism in the

duffle bag.

hospital corner folds

uniform shirts

cradles them like

new born babies

carrying his name.

she

watches. tells the

anger rising to

please go

away.

get the fear & pain

out of the attic of

her heart.

fuck you. tour. of. duty.

coats the tip of clitoris.

tour of duty sex

is not like in the movies.

is angry because some how

the time

crept up on him. time.

he thought he had time.

she

discovered today

she likes to dip fries

in mayo.

something about being

married/alone

makes you try things.

live life left

& why not?

try dipping them in horse radish,

honey mustard.

what the fuck? be brave.

be soldierish dip the

fries in pickle juice

make your kids

think you're gross.

make them increase the

laughter to replace

the patch

that’s

missing.

* * * * *

Did You See That?

By Stacey Tolbert

i keep looking for you in twisted refrains

sifting through stripper directions

& slave salutations

i keep waiting for you to

remove the earth’s gems from the dwelling place

of your sheared tongue

is it cultural amnesia?

did you leave it

there

between Swahili and auction block

is your soul in ocean purgatory

bits/pieces salt possession

is the reason

brown baby lips burn with

bitches oil and bundled money

i keep waiting for you to rise up out in over those pants

hold you tight in braided knowledge

have you never seen a plantain fry?

i know they took it from you

point. of. reference.

i keep looking for you in hospital morgues

riffling through

gang signs/bootcamps/red/blue white

i dream of you

a son flower

freshly cut clean baby boy

bleeding affirmations and ancestor talk remembering

i see you walking tall

playing jimbe drums

clasping cowry shells

happy sweat beads crocheting

butterflies in your mountainous hair

pickture that

i dream of

who you used to be is am was could be

Anastacia Tolbert Table

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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

From The World and Africa, 1965

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

* * * * *

Ancient African Nations

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The Death of Emmett Till by Bob Dylan / The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll / Only a Pawn in Their Game

Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson Thanks America for Slavery / George Jackson / Hurricane Carter

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The Journal of Negro History issues at Project Gutenberg

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posted 28 May 2008 / update 1 January 2012