Elizabeth Alexander

 

Toomer

(Jean Toomer) 

I did not wish to "rise above" 
or "move beyond" my race. I wished

to contemplate who I was beyond 
my body, this container of flesh.

I made up a language in which to exist. 
I wondered what God breathed into me. 

I wondered who I was beyond 
this complicated, milk-skinned, genital-ed body. 

I exercised it, watched it change and grow. 
I spun like a dervish to see what would happen. Oh, 

to be a Negro is-is?- 
to be a Negro, is. To be.

Jean Toomer

 

Alfred Stieglitz

A Portrait In Georgia

Hair-braided chestnut, 
coiled like a lyncher's rope, 
Eyes-fagots, 
Lips-old scars, or the first red blisters, 
Breath-the last sweet scent of cane, 
And her slim body, white as the ash 
of black flesh after flame.

Jean Toomer

 

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from Cane

Seventh Street

Money burns the pocket, pocket hurts,

          Bootleggers in silken shirts,

          Ballooned, zooming Cadillacs,

          Whizzing, whizzing down the street-car tracks.

  

   Seventh Street is a bastard of Prohibition and the War. A crude-boned, soft-skinned wedge of nigger life breathing its loafer air, jazz songs and love, thrusting unconscious rhythms, black reddish blood into the white and whitewashed wood of Washington. Stale soggy wood of Washington. Wedges rust in soggy wood. . . Split it! In two! Again! Shred it! . . the sun. Wedges are brilliant in the sun; ribbons of wet wood dry and blow away. Black reddish blood. Pouring for crude-boned soft-skinned life, who set you flowing? Blood suckers of the War would spin in a frenzy of dizziness if they drank your blood. Prohibition would put a stop to it. Who set you flowing? White and whitewash disappear in blood. Who set you flowing? Flowing down the smooth asphalt of Seventh Street, in shanties, brick office buildings, theaters, drug stores, restaurants, and cabarets? Eddying on the corners? Swirling like a blood-red smoke up where the buzzards fly in heaven? God would not dare to suck black red blood. A Nigger God! He would duck his head in shame and call for the Judgement Day. Who set you flowing?

          Money burns the pocket, pocket hurts,

          Bootleggers in silken shirts,

          Ballooned, zooming Cadillacs,

          Whizzing, whizzing down the street-car tracks.

Photograph by Marjorie Content, 1934

Jean Toomer

                                                                         Martin Puryear, woodcut, 2000

Beehive

Within this black hive to-night

There swarm a million bees;

Bees passing in and out the moon,

Bees escaping out the moon,

Bees returning through the moon,

Silver bees intently buzzing,

Silver honey dripping from the swarm of bees

Earth is a waxen cell of the world comb,

And I, a drone,

Lying on my back,

Lipping honey,

Getting drunk with that silver honey,

Wish that I might fly out past the moon

And curl forever in some far-off farmyard flower.

 

Jean Toomer

 

                                                                                                                        Winold Reiss

Reapers

Black reapers with the sound of steel on stones

Are sharpening scythes. I see them place the hones   

In their hip-pockets as a thing that’s done,   

And start their silent swinging, one by one.   

Black horses drive a mower through the weeds,   

And there, a field rat, startled, squealing bleeds.   

His belly close to ground. I see the blade,   

Blood-stained, continue cutting weeds and shade

William Edward Burghardt Du Bois

 

from The Souls of Black Folk (1903)

The Forethought

 

Herein lie buried many things which if read with patience may show the strange meaning of being black here at the dawning of the Twentieth Century. This meaning is not without interest to you, Gentle Reader; for the problem of the Twentieth Century is the problem of the color line. I pray you, then, receive my little book in all charity, studying my words with me, forgiving mistake and foible for sake of the faith and passion that is in me, and seeking the grain of truth hidden there.

I have sought here to sketch, in vague, uncertain outline, the spiritual world in which ten thousand thousand Americans live and strive. First, in two chapters I have tried to show what Emancipation meant to them, and what was its aftermath. In a third chapter I have pointed out the slow rise of personal leadership, and criticized candidly the leader who bears the chief burden of his race to-day. Then, in two other chapters I have sketched in swift outline the two worlds within and without the Veil, and thus have come to the central problem of training men for life. Venturing now into deeper detail, I have in two chapters studied the struggles of the massed millions of the black peasantry, and in another have sought to make clear the present relations of the sons of master and man. Leaving, then, the white world, I have stepped within the Veil, raising it that you may view faintly its deeper recesses,—the meaning of its religion, the passion of its human sorrow, and the struggle of its greater souls. All this I have ended with a tale twice told but seldom written, and a chapter of song.

Alice Dunbar-Nelson

You! Inez!

Orange gleams athwart a crimson soul

Lambent flames; purple passion lurks

In your dusk eyes.

Red mouth; flower soft,

Your soul leaps up—and flashes

Star-like, white, flame-hot.

Curving arms, encircling a world of love,

You! Stirring the depths of passionate desire!

Notes:
from a Holograph manuscript, dated February 16, 1921

Georgia Douglas Johnson

 

Common Dust 

And who shall separate the dus

What later we shall be:

Whose keen discerning eye will scan

And solve the mystery?

The high, the low, the rich, the poor, 

The black, the white, the red, 

And all the chromatique between, 

Of whom shall it be said:

Here lies the dust of Africa; 

Here are the sons of Rome; 

Here lies the one unlabelled, 

The world at large his home!

Can one then separate the dust? 

Will mankind lie apart, 

When life has settled back again 

The same as from the start?

Richard Bruce Nugent

from 

SMOKE, LILIES AND JADE

he wondered why he couldn’t find work…a job…when he had first come to New York he had…and he had only been fourteen then…was it because he was nineteen now that he felt so idle…and contented…or because he was an artist…but was he an artist…was one an artist until one became known…of course he was an artist…and strangely enough so were all his friends…he should be ashamed that he didn’t work…but…was it five years in New York…or the fact that he was an artist…when his mother said she couldn’t understand him…why did he vaguely pity her instead of being ashamed…he should be…his mother and all his relatives said so…his brother was three years younger than he and yet he had already been away from home a year…on the stage…making thirty-five dollars a week…had three suits and many clothes and was going to help mother…while he…Alex…was content to lay and smoke and meet friends at night…to argue and read Wilde…Freud…Boccacio and Schnitzler…to attend Gurdjieff meetings and know things…Why did they scoff at him for knowing such people as Carl…Mencken…Toomer…Hughes…Cullen…Wood…Cabell…oh the whole lot of them…was it because it seemed incongruous that he…who was so little known…should call by first names people they would like to know…were they jealous…no mothers aren’t jealous of their sons…they are proud of them…why then…when these friends accepted and liked him…no matter how he dressed…why did mother ask…and you went looking like that…Langston was a fine fellow…he knew there was something in Alex…and so did Rene and Borgia…and Zora and Clement and Miguel…and…and…and all of them…if he went to see mother she would ask…how do you feel Alex with nothing in your pockets…I don’t see how you can be satisfied…Really you’re a mystery to me…and who you take after…I’m sure I don’t know…none of my brothers were lazy and shiftless…I can never remember the time when they weren’t sending money home and when your father was your age he was supporting a family…where you get your nerve I don’t know…just because you’ve tried to write one or two little poems and stories that no one understands…you seem to think the world owes you a living…you should see by now how much is thought of them…you can’t sell anything…and you won’t do anything to make money…wake up Alex…I don’t know what will become of you……..

Wallace Thurman

 

from The Blacker the Berry (1929)

Emma Lou

More acutely than ever before Emma Lou began to feel that her luscious black complexion was somewhat of a liability, and that her marked color variation from the other people in her environment was a decided curse. Not that she minded being black, being a Negro necessitated having a colored skin, but she did mind being too black. She couldn't understand why such should be the case, couldn't comprehend the cruelty of the natal attenders who had allowed her to be dipped, as it were, in indigo ink when there were so many more pleasing colors on nature's palette. Biologically, it wasn't necessary either; her mother was quite fair, so was her mother's mother, and her mother's brother, and her mother's brother's son; but then none of them had had a black man for a father. Why hadher mother married a black man? Surely there had been some eligible brown-skin men around. She didn't particularly desire to have had a "high yaller" father, but for her sake certainly some more happy medium could have been found.

Claude McKay

 

 “If We Must Die,”

 

If we must die—let it not be like hogs

Hunted and penned in an inglorious spot,

While round us bark the mad and hungry dogs,

Making their mock at our accursed lot.

If we must die—oh, let us nobly die,

So that our precious blood may not be shed

In vain; then even the monsters we defy

Shall be constrained to honor us though dead!

Oh, Kinsmen! We must meet the common foe;

Though far outnumbered, let us show us brave,

And for their thousand blows deal one deathblow!

What though before us lies the open grave?

Like men we’ll face the murderous, cowardly pack,

Pressed to the wall, dying, but fighting back! 

(1919)

Claude McKay

 

Photograph by Berenice Abbott

If We Must Die

If we must die, let it not be like hogs

Hunted and penned in an inglorious spot,

While round us bark the mad and hungry dogs,

Making their mock at our accursèd lot.

If we must die, O let us nobly die,

So that our precious blood may not be shed

In vain; then even the monsters we defy

Shall be constrained to honor us though dead!

O kinsmen! we must meet the common foe!

Though far outnumbered let us show us brave,

And for their thousand blows deal one death-blow!

What though before us lies the open grave?

Like men we’ll face the murderous, cowardly pack,

Pressed to the wall, dying, but fighting back!

Langston Hughes

 

                                Photograph by Edward Weston, 1932

Detectives from the vice squad

with weary sadistic eyes

spotting fairies.

Degenerates,

some folks say.

But God, Nature,

or somebody

made them that way.

Police lady or Lesbian

over there?

Where?

Countee Cullen

 

Countee Cullen for Harold Jackman

Love Tree
Come, let us plant our love as farmers plant
A seed, and you shall water it with tears,
And I shall weed it with my hands until
They bleed. Perchance this buried love of ours
Will feed on goodly ground and bear a tree
With fruit and flowers; pale lovers chancing
May pluck and eat, and through their veins a sweet
And languid ardor play, their pulses beat
An unimagined tune, their shy lips meet
And part, and bliss repeat again. And men
Will pilgrimage from far and wide to see
This tree for which we two were crucified,
And, happy in themselves, will never know
‘Twas break of heart that made the Love Tree grow.

portrait by Carl Van Vecten, 1932

 

Countee Cullen to Alain Locke

 

---

COUNTEE CULLEN TO ALAIN LEROY LOCKE

234 W. 131 St.,
New York City
March 3/[19]23

My dear friend,
          I am feeling as miserable at this writing as I can imagine a person feeling. Let me explain – The Monday following our Saturday evening together I secured Carpenter's "Iolaüs" from the library. I read it through at one sitting, and steeped myself in its charming and comprehending atmosphere. It opened up for me Soul windows which had been closed; it threw a noble and evident light on what I had begun to believe, because of what the world believes, ignoble and unnatural. I loved myself in it, and thanked you a thousand times as as many delightful examples appeared, for recommending it to me. Tuesday young Loeb was to have come to see me. He did not come. I was keenly disappointed. He wrote no letter. Thursday morning I wrote to him, asking him to attend a concert with me to-morrow (Sunday) afternoon. It is now Saturday night and, although there has been time a-plenty, I have not heard from him. So what I had envisioned as a delightful and stimulating comaraderie is not to be. I believe the cause may be defined as parental, for I feel certain that the attraction was as keenly felt by Loeb as by me. I know you will understand how I feel. But I suppose some of us erotic lads, vide myself, were placed here just to eat our hearts out with longing for unattainable things, especially for that friendship beyond understanding. If you wish to write Ralph Loeb his address is 39–41 West 129 St. – But don't mention me! Speak for yourself.
          I have just written to Langston asking him to come here for that Poetry recital on March 21. I told him you would be here on that night (I am not sure of that, but I ask you to bend every effort to be here on that date. Your presence will be helpful; some will be there for curiosity, but I want someone there who is interested in me for my self's sake.) And besides, Langston might come.
          May I not hear from you before then? And in your own handwriting?
                    Yours most sincerely,
                              Countée P. Cullen
P.S. – Sentiments expressed here would be misconstrued by others, so this letter, once read, is best destroyed.
P.P.S. – Send your poem when you write.
                    Countée P. Cullen