ChickenBones: A Journal

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I used to believe: / all children lived with roaches
had to be home when the streetlights came on / electric alarm clocks
that made our street empty / like the corner bar after last call
 

 

Books by Mary Weems

Public Education and the Imagination-Intellect: I Speak from the Wound in My Mouth  / Tampon Class

An Unmistakable Shade of Red & The Obama Chronicles

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When I was a girl

By Mary Weems

I used to believe:
the moon left the sky
at dawn like a worker on third shift
picking up the stars
the change in her pocket
going home to a man
waiting with breakfast on the universe
 
pee and babies came
from the same place
babies as rare as Black dolls
breast feeding the eating
of nipples by fathers
at midnight
 
I used to believe:
all children lived with roaches
had to be home when the streetlights came on
electric alarm clocks
that made our street empty
like the corner bar after last call
 
Santa Claus was Black
drove a carriage with a drop top
Rudolph and his boys a reindeer
jazz combo gigging with Miles
in the off season
 
death was an option
a pick one out of three
after a really bad day
“This is Your Life”
a lever that opened
the door to the next room
they entered dressed in a red suit
bought for the occasion
 
I used to believe:
love was something every
body carried around like breath
giving and getting it back
as blood moves from the heart
to the pinky toes
 
I used to believe:
the Creator listened to everything everybody thought
until I stood in our backyard bigger
than the world one morning
started calling the ancestors
out of the sky to talk
 
hate was a disease crazy
people caught who forgot
that one day they will be the ash
in a dustpan
swept by God.

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Mary E. Weems, Ph.D. is an accomplished poet, playwright, author, editor, performer, motivational speaker, and imagination-intellect theorist. Weems has been widely published in journals, anthologies, and several books including Public Education and the Imagination-Intellect: I Speak from the Wound in My Mouth (Lang, 2003), developed from her dissertation which argues for imagination-intellectual development as the primary goal of public education. She won the Wick Chapbook Award for her collection in 1996, and in 1997 her play Another Way to Dance won the Chilcote award for The Most Innovative Play by an Ohio Playwright. Her most recent chapbook Tampon Class (Pavement Saw Press, 2005) is in its second printing. Mary Weems currently teaches in the English and Education departments at John Carroll University, and works as a language-artist-scholar in k-12 classrooms, university settings and other venues through her business Bringing Words to Life. Contact Professor Weems, mweems45@sbcglobal.net, for readings and more information.

Mary Weems is the eldest daughter of four, the mama of one daughter, Michelle E. Weems, and the blessed-to-be-with-him-wife/partner of James Amie. Proud to have been raised by her mama, and to be from a poor, working-class background, Mary started writing poems when she was thirteen to learn to love herself. This took a while. Since then, her creative spirit-eye has turned more and more outward to include her take on the African-American experience from a personal and political perspective as well as the universal complexities of being a woman and anyone alive in the world. Mary E. Weems Table

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posted 26 January 2007

 

 

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