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Making History

1946 –

Blue and White Orlon Snowflake Sweater, Blue Snowpants, Red Galoshes
—Smoky Hill AFB, Kansas, 1955

Somebody took a picture of a class
standing in line to get polio shots,
and published it in the Weekly Reader.
We stood like that today. And it did hurt.
Mrs. Liebel said we were Making History,
but all I did was sqwunch up my eyes and wince.
Making History takes more than standing in line
believing little white lies about pain.
Mama says First Negroes are History:
First Negro Telephone Operator,
First Negro Opera Singer At The Met,
First Negro Pilots, First Supreme Court Judge.
That lady in Montgomery just became a First
by sqwunching up her eyes and sitting there.

Marilyn Nelson was born in Cleveland on April 26, 1946, to Melvin M. Nelson, a U.S. serviceman in the Air Force and a member of the last class to graduate from air cadet training at Tuskegee Institute. Nelson’s mother, Johnnie Mitchell Nelson, was a teacher. Brought up first on one military base and then another, Nelson started writing while still in elementary school. She earned her BA from the University of California, Davis, and holds postgraduate degrees from the University of Pennsylvania (MA, 1970) and the University of Minnesota (PhD, 1979).

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Moonlily

(Mather AFB, California, 1956)

When we play horses at recess, my name
is Moonlily and I’m a yearling mare.
We gallop circles around the playground,
whinnying, neighing, and shaking our manes.
We scrape the ground with scuffed saddle oxfords,
thunder around the little kids on swings
and seesaws, and around the boys’ ball games.
We’re sorrel, chestnut, buckskin, pinto, gray,
a herd in pastel dresses and white socks.
We’re self-named, untamed, untouched, unridden.
Our plains know no fences.

Marilyn Nelson

2017

Last Mattress

This $1,600 slice of foam,
if it stays firm, will be the last mattress
I’ll ever buy. It’s comfortable enough
for years of sleeps, for the long, thwarted hours
of scribbling sentences, or to step from
into the surrey with the fringe on top.
Given the choice between flat-lining here,

Marilyn Nelson

2022

Realization

Three-quarter size. Full size would break the heart.
She, still bare-breasted from the auction block,
sits staring, perhaps realizing what
will happen to them next. There is no child,
though there must be a child who will be left
behind, or who was auctioned separately.
Her arms are limp, defeated, her thin hands

Marilyn Nelson

2021

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Making History

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Moonlily

Last Mattress

Realization

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