Eva I
the last Sunday
i remember you
in hat
pastels
soft gray hair posing beneath
your HATNESS
(only black women achieve the HAT-NESS)
that I envy you for.
You
Grandmother
African Methodist Episcopal
Missionary
Widowed minister’s wife
Mother of four
grandmother of five
great grandmother of fourteen
HAT-NESS is inherited
it’s in the blood
because I got the Hatness
too—
i can put on your
old silk and taffeta and
linen dresses, petticoats and
suits— and top this little
head w/a panama
and hatness becomes herstorical
enriched w/Her/Your/Our style.
From Breath of the Song: New and Selected Poems (Carolina Wren Press, 2005). Copyright © 2005 by Jaki Shelton Green. Used with the permission of the author.
Jaki Shelton Green
Jaki Shelton Green is the author of eight collections, including I Want to Undie You (Jacar Press, 2017). In 2019, Green was named an Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellow. She currently teaches documentary poetry at Duke University Center for Documentary Studies and serves as the poet laureate of North Carolina.