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Toomer

Elizabeth Alexander

1962 –

(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.

Elizabeth Alexander was born in 1962 in Harlem, New York, and grew up in Washington, D.C. She currently serves as a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets.

About Elizabeth Alexander

Occasion

Black History Month

Themes

Ancestry

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More by this poet

Equinox

Now is the time of year when bees are wild
and eccentric. They fly fast and in cramped
loop-de-loops, dive-bomb clusters of conversants
in the bright, late-September out-of-doors.
I have found their dried husks in my clothes.

They are dervishes because they are dying,
one last sting, a warm place to squeeze
a drop of venom or of honey.
After the stroke we thought would be her last
my grandmother came back, reared back and slapped

Elizabeth Alexander

2016

Butter

My mother loves butter more than I do,
more than anyone. She pulls chunks off
the stick and eats it plain, explaining
cream spun around into butter! Growing up
we ate turkey cutlets sauteed in lemon
and butter, butter and cheese on green noodles,
butter melting in small pools in the hearts
of Yorkshire puddings, butter better
than gravy staining white rice yellow,
butter glazing corn in slipping squares,
butter the lava in white volcanoes
of hominy grits, butter softening
in a white bowl to be creamed with white
sugar, butter disappearing into

Elizabeth Alexander

2017

The African Picnic

World Cup finals, France v. Brasil.
We gather in Gideon’s yard and grill.
The TV sits in the bright sunshine.
We want Brasil but Brasil won’t win.
Aden waves a desultory green and yellow flag.
From the East to the West to the West to the East
we scatter and settle and scatter some more.
Through the window, Mamma watches from the cool indoors.

Elizabeth Alexander

2017

Poems

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Toomer

More by this poet

Equinox

Butter

The African Picnic

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