WE A Poem

Books by Mona Lisa Saloy

Red Beans and Ricely Yours: Poems

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WE: A Poem

By Mona Lisa Saloy

Not you, not me, not he, not she, just us

We the people. We the brave.

We the heart. We the folk.

Not Republican, not Democrat

Not Independent.

Not Christian, not Jew,

Not Muslim, not Catholic

Not Bahai, not Buddhist

Not Mormon, not Methodist

Not Lutheran, not Anglican.

We, together for

Our greater good,

Not upper class

Not lower class, not middle class,

Not white, not Black,

Not Red, Not Brown,

Not Yellow like the sun,

Only us, a

Force against ignorance, a

Coat of We

To comfort the afflicted.

We, wrapped in together

A brace for cold or war or wind

A shelter against poverty and pain,

We, bread for a nation of neighbors,

A foundation for our future,

Neighbors to the world,

To work against poverty

Defend the helpless

Promote justice

Advance liberty.

We the people

Must remember:

"America! America!

God sheds His Grace on thee

And crown thy good

In brotherhood . . . ." [1]

America, it is to us this land

of black and brown and red and white, yellow

from sea to shining face to hug our faith

our parents made as firm as bold past strain

not prejudice not poor, but our future,

our folk to build a safe big world, and free

our land, the world, neighbors, all of us, forever.

We, all of us--

Actors to carpenters, cooks to caregivers, bakers to farmers, postal workers to fishermen, artists to engineers--

We the people

Are one nation

Here to honor

The good, the great

Our leaders who work

To wake us--

We, sometimes, drunk

From the muck

Of the world--

To make life better,

You, who show courage

In the face of cowardice

To save the world.

Liberty Medal Recipients:

We honor your Work.

"Lift every voice and sing

‘Till earth and heaven ring

Ring with the harmonies

Of liberty . . . ." [2]

We honor your work,

How you call us

How you urge us

Into one people

For our greater good.

President George H.W. Bush and

President William J. Clinton,
We honor your work.

We the people, honor your work:

for our nations: Yes

for our peace: Na’m[3]

for our world: Shi [4]

for our hopes: Oui [5]

for our good: Kayn [6]

for our future: Hi [7]

for our neighbors: Ja [8]

for one world: Neah [9]

for our posterity: Si [10]

for our common good: Oh Oh.[11]

We give thanks.

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End Notes

[1]. From the song "America the Beautiful." Words by Katharine Lee Bates; melody by Samuel Ward.

[2]. From the song "Lift Ev’Ry Voice and Sing," also known as "The Black National Anthem." Words by James Weldon Johnson; melody by J. Rosamond Johnson.

[3]. Arabic for yes.

[4]. Chinese for yes.

[5]. French for yes.

[6]. Hebrew for yes.

[7]. Japanese for yes.

[8]. German, Swedish for yes.

[9]. Korean for yes.

[10]. Spanish and Italian for yes.

[11]. Tagalog for yes. Tagalog is one of the major languages of the Philippines, has a close affinity with Malay languages [Bahasa Indonesia/Malay], and is the second most commonly-spoken Asian language (after Chinese) in the United States, according to the 2000 United States Census. It is also the sixth non-English language spoken in America. 6 http://www.seasite.niu.edu/Tagalog/Tagalog_mainpage.htm.

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First Published in Ishmael Reed’s Konch Magazine http://www.ishmaelreedpub.com/

posted 29 October 2006

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Mona Lisa Saloy is associate professor of English and Director of creative writing at Dillard University (before Katrina). She won the 2005 T.S. Eliot Prize for Poetry for this collection. She has also won fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities and from the United Negro College Fund/Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Her poems have appeared in anthologies, magazines, journals, and film. She received her PhD in English and MFA in creative writing from Louisiana State University and her MA in creative writing and English from San Francisco State University. Displaced by hurricane Katrina, Saloy is a visiting associate professor of English and creative writing at the University of Washington for the 2005/2006 academic year. Mona Lisa Saloy Bio

Dillard University's Creative Writing Program

Study with Published Awarded Writers

Mona Lisa Saloy and Dedra Johnson

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1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus Created

By Charles C. Mann

I’m a big fan of Charles Mann’s previous book 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus, in which he provides a sweeping and provocative examination of North and South America prior to the arrival of Christopher Columbus. It’s exhaustively researched but so wonderfully written that it’s anything but exhausting to read. With his follow-up, 1493, Mann has taken it to a new, truly global level. Building on the groundbreaking work of Alfred Crosby (author of The Columbian Exchange and, I’m proud to say, a fellow Nantucketer), Mann has written nothing less than the story of our world: how a planet of what were once several autonomous continents is quickly becoming a single, “globalized” entity.

Mann not only talked to countless scientists and researchers; he visited the places he writes about, and as a consequence, the book has a marvelously wide-ranging yet personal feel as we follow Mann from one far-flung corner of the world to the next. And always, the prose is masterful. In telling the improbable story of how Spanish and Chinese cultures collided in the Philippines in the sixteenth century, he takes us to the island of Mindoro whose “southern coast consists of a number of small bays, one next to another like tooth marks in an apple.” We learn how the spread of malaria, the potato, tobacco, guano, rubber plants, and sugar cane have disrupted and convulsed the planet and will continue to do so until we are finally living on one integrated or at least close-to-integrated Earth. Whether or not the human instigators of all this remarkable change will survive the process they helped to initiate more than five hundred years ago remains, Mann suggests in this monumental and revelatory book, an open question.

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Ratification

The People Debate the Constitution, 1787-1788

By Pauline Maier

A notable historian of the early republic, Maier devoted a decade to studying the immense documentation of the ratification of the Constitution. Scholars might approach her book’s footnotes first, but history fans who delve into her narrative will meet delegates to the state conventions whom most history books, absorbed with the Founders, have relegated to obscurity. Yet, prominent in their local counties and towns, they influenced a convention’s decision to accept or reject the Constitution. Their biographies and democratic credentials emerge in Maier’s accounts of their elections to a convention, the political attitudes they carried to the conclave, and their declamations from the floor. The latter expressed opponents’ objections to provisions of the Constitution, some of which seem anachronistic (election regulation raised hackles) and some of which are thoroughly contemporary (the power to tax individuals directly). Ripostes from proponents, the Federalists, animate the great detail Maier provides, as does her recounting how one state convention’s verdict affected another’s. Displaying the grudging grassroots blessing the Constitution originally received, Maier eruditely yet accessibly revives a neglected but critical passage in American history.—Booklist

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The White Masters of the World

From The World and Africa, 1965

By W. E. B. Du Bois

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

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Ancient African Nations

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Negro Digest / Black World

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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

The Haitian Declaration of Independence 1804 / January 1, 1804 -- The Founding of Haiti

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BLACK CLASSIC BOOKS

BCP Digital Printing

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update 20 October 2011