Before you know what kindness really is
you must lose things,
feel the future dissolve in a moment
like salt in a weakened broth.
What you held in your hand,
what you counted and carefully saved,
all this must go so you know
how desolate the landscape can be
between the regions of kindness.
How you ride and ride
thinking the bus will never stop,
the passengers eating maize and chicken
will stare out the window forever.

Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness
you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho
lies dead by the side of the road.
You must see how this could be you,
how he too was someone
who journeyed through the night with plans
and the simple breath that kept him alive.

Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,
you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.
Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,
only kindness that ties your shoes
and sends you out into the day to gaze at bread,
only kindness that raises its head
from the crowd of the world to say
It is I you have been looking for,
and then goes with you everywhere
like a shadow or a friend.

I’m sick and tired of being sick and tired 

           She meant

                      No more turned cheek

                      No more patience for the obstruction

                      of black woman’s right to vote

                      & plant & feed her family

           She meant

                      Equality will cost you your luxurious life

                      If a Black woman can’t vote

                      If a brown baby can’t be fed

                      If we all don’t have the same opportunity America promised

           She meant

                      Ain’t no mountain boulder enough

                      to wan off a determined woman

           She meant

                      Here

           Look at my hands

                      Each palm holds a history

                      of the 16 shots that chased me

                      harm free from a plantation shack

           Look at my eyes

                      Both these are windows

                      these little lights of mine

           She meant

                      Nothing but death can stop me

                      from marching out a jail cell still a free woman

           She meant

                      Nothing but death can stop me from running for Congress

           She meant

                      No black jack beating will stop my feet from working

                      & my heart from swelling

                      & my mouth from praying

           She meant

                      America! you will learn freedom feels like

                      butter beans, potatoes & cotton seeds

                      picked by my sturdy hands

           She meant

           Look

           Victoria Gray, Anna Divine & Me

           In our rightful seats on the house floor

           She meant  

                      Until my children

                      & my children’s children

                      & they babies too

                      can March & vote

                      & get back in interest

                      what was planted

                      in this blessed land



           She meant

                      I ain’t stopping America

                      I ain’t stopping America

Not even death can take away from my woman’s hands

what I’ve rightfully earned

^{A translation of Konstantin Cavafy’s “I was asking about the quality” 
 
         For Felicia, Kipper, Oscar, and Kevin. 
         And for Ted and Barron, in memoriam}

I came out 
of the office

where I had been 
hired in another shitty, low-paying job

(My weekly pay was nothing more 
than fifty dollars a week, most from tips).

With my waitress shift over, I came out 
at seven and walked slowly. I fell out

into the street, handsome, but compelling. 
It felt as if I had finally reached the full potential

of my own beauty (I’d turned 
sixteen the previous month).

I kept wandering all around 
the newly-cemented streets,

the quiet and old black alleys, past 
the cemetery leading to our home.

But then, as I’d paused in front of a clothing store
where some skirts were on sale

(polyester, cheap), I saw this face 
inside—a girl—whose eyes urged me

to come inside. So, I entered—
pretending I was looking

for embroidered handkerchiefs.
I was asking about the quality—

of her handkerchiefs—how much
they cost—in a whispery voice breaking open

with desire—and accordingly came her
shop-girl answers—rote, memorized—but beneath her

words, her eyes kept ablaze: Yes.
Mine, too, were a psalm of consent.

We kept talking about the handkerchiefs,
but all the while our one and only goal was this:

to brush each other’s hands—quickly—
over the handkerchiefs—to lean

our faces and lips
nearer to each other, as if

by accident. We moved quickly,
cautiously, yet deliberately—

in case her grandfather—sitting in 
the back—were to suspect something.