From Pirate Jenny’s Conspiracy

Yolanda Wisher

And the ship

The Black Freighter

Disappears out to sea

And

On

It

Is

Me

—from "Pirate Jenny” by Nina Simone

i come from women who used eyelashes as flyswatters. an old guard who wore small rags at their waists like quarterbacks to clobber a fly stop-motion style, to wipe tear from cheek or milk from upper lip. tender assassins who left no mark or stain. walked away from the massacre as if it were nothing.

everybody comes from somebody. even those apathetic little white boys sprung from some void hitler shat into. bastards become imperialists run the world into the ground. they inhale devilishness like ether. smell principles & feel spat upon. quickly run to get their antibacterial nuclear weapons to rid themselves & the planet of you. i hate little white boys so full of themselves. think they run shit straight out of they mama’s pussy. just want to stomp them out before they have the chance to do more damage. how would you kill them? with kindness, you say? jemima & nell carter had that one covered: gimme some sugar, chile. we die a slow death from the sugar we pour in this poisoned bowl of a world. 

when i was 9, my mother told me a truth. we sat on a king-sized bed. my stepfather was out of the house. she said something like he isn’t your real father. a piece of love fell away. when she told me, i started to become an un-fist, no longer his knuckle & bone. later in corners of time, i would sneak & ask where’s my real dad? & she would say, i don’t know. it don’t matter. but i would really hear her saying: i am your mother zeus/isis/oshun & you are my baby-girl athena/hatshetsup/harriet sprung from a migraine or a blow to the head… deep down dahomey, we live free in the jungle of our minds…you & me not made from bodies, we are made from madness, mad dogs, mad love…we are made without men 

i have a lot of rage about becoming black in america. i want my son to know my rage, to understand it, to steep in it, like some kind of vampire’s tea bag. i want him to see my rage unhinged, transparent, throbbing with its own placenta coming close behind. 

but i don’t want him to own my rage, to carry it, to inherit it. he’s got to get his own black rage. 

there’s plenty to go around.

i wake up in the dark of my feelings / but i stay in bed / wait for the dark to disintegrate / break into brittle pieces / the dark behind eyes / behind my back / under the bed / is vast / a dark ocean that covers all land / i contend with my blues every morning / they are my blues / but they are also the blues of the world / blues that ride you all night / take you down into the deepest dark there is 

i remember being on the back of a big boy / i didn’t know how to swim / he took me into the deep end / he took me under / i remember the stinging in my nose / the blue beaming / white tiles / my small arms holding his neck / i rode him into the deep / 

happiness is so overrated / so over-fabricated / so over-medicated / mediated / we need our blues / can’t smoke or shop them all away / when you write your own blues / you begin to hear the score of the people’s blues / this blues that delivered us here / this indigenous melancholy / on our brows.

when you bring your own blues in the room / it leaves an aroma of myrrh lingering on people’s necks / we should wear our blues once or twice a week / take them out and show them off around town / blues ain’t about anti-happiness / blues is grownfolks happiness / the joy you find despite paying bills / getting your heart broke /  watchin someone you love die / worryin about your baby / but still gettin up out of bed / steppin through that dark water like you jesus, moses or ibo / we need your blues, baby / won’t you sing it?

mama

i remember hills and a place you wouldn’t call home. voices echoing in my ears. my mom and her boyfriend saying “get her out of here. she’s too black. the sound of flesh being slapped. the ride seemed long leaving. 

once we get there, this brown strong black woman with a streak of gray in her head. mom is saying, “please take her.” my mom had gotten pregnant at sixteen. wore a girdle for six months to hide me. christine kept saying she didn’t want a small kid around. sitting in the corner was this man who didn’t have but one leg and a gentle smile. he said, “let’s keep her.” and this lady named christine listened to him. gave in and said yes. it was getting late, and i just wanted to lay down. 

during the week, christine worked at night cleaning the school while i watched the majorettes practice throwing their batons in the air again and again. i would watch them in the gym wishing i had a baton like that and maybe a pair of those stupid boots with the tassels on them. 

jenny/janie/precious/beloved/sapphire/celie. a name like a destiny or feeling, not a real woman. hope/faith/imagine/charity/shug. black daughters in abstract. ephemeral concepts beyond this world. that is a black girl. she’s the cutpurse that keeps the subway afloat in the tunnel. pick-pocket rockin this geography of tongue, this ballroom dance of privilege. a black freighter tuggin this expensive literacy. bitches pull their hair out cuz of me. i am faith and molly ringwald’s nightmare. i am a glimpse of dorothy dandridge’s high-waisted brief, the dot of diamond cum on her thigh. the pearl of breast milk piercing grace jones’ nipple. you say i’m nasty, but i’m just the funky, the pungent, the dry breath and chapped beginnings. you there in the oversized animal hide, let me fuck you with this typewriter and leave you in a time warp. this is a hoochie’s lit (hey, how did she get in here?) and i’m spreadin crabs like a reckoning. dodging the noose with a ribbon in my hair.

this is a psychosis. no one should hate white people. they are good and kind and charitable and classic. this is an evil obsession. a form of domestic terrorism. hate fiction speech. some white lady is getting up to leave right now. a white man in iowa is writing a letter to his senator. a boy is loading a rifle to kill any black woman who looks like me. they have no idea who they’re talkin to. 

fuck that, i roll up and smoke them all. nigger nigger burning slights…what the…what the… yeah, i’m a black bitch. i like to fuck and suck and cuss and carry on. i use the old weapons on them. i slay them with menstrual blood of wolves who live deep in the forest and speak seven languages. they don’t tell me my measure. the stars and mud do. the ancestors as houseguests in my dreams do. my naps at the moment of my scalp do. you and your world peace too late.  too late with your multiculturalism and diversity, yes we can-ness. too damn late. now i’m pissed and i’m threading your noose with a ribbon in my hair. 

the church said, “know thyself.” the rappers and black intellectuals said, “knowledge is power.” understand to overstand. peel back a layer of self-hate borrowed from textbooks and not-so-“micro-aggressions.” unfeel/unthink being minor. i wore red, black and green, africa medallions, dashikis, combat boots, headwraps, ankhs, cowries and kente cloth, to prove it. i longed for the duty of crossing the ocean now and again to walk upon a homeland that hadn’t given me up. i’m still searching for the part of me that was on one of those packed boats, full of seeds.