America In 4 Minutes (Official Video) || Spoken Word

White Lies

By Natasha Trethewey
 

The lies I could tell,

when I was growing up

light-bright, near-white,

high-yellow, red-boned

in a black place,

were just white lies.

I could easily tell the white folks

that we lived uptown,

not in that pink and green

shanty-fled shotgun section

along the tracks. I could act

like my homemade dresses

came straight out the window

of Maison Blanche. I could even

keep quiet, quiet as kept,

like the time a white girl said

(squeezing my hand), Now

we have three of us in this class.

But I paid for it every time

Mama found out.

She laid her hands on me,

then washed out my mouth

with Ivory soap. This

is to purify, she said,

and cleanse your lying tongue.

Believing her, I swallowed suds

thinking they'd work

from the inside out.

Water Water Water Wind Water

By Juan Felipe Herrera

for New Orleans and the people of the Gulf Coast

water water water wind water

across the land shape of a torn heart

new orleans waves come louisiana the waves come

alabama wind calls alabama

and the roofs blow across red clouds

inside the divine spiral

there is a voice

inside the voice there is light

water wind fire smoke the bodies float

and rise

kind flames bow down and move across

the skies never seen blackish red bluish bruised

water rises houses fall the child

the elders the mothers underwater

who will live who will rise

the windows fill with the howling

where is the transfusion where is the lamp

who who in the wet night jagged in the oil

waves come the lakes loosen their sultry shape

it is the shape of a lost hand a wing broken

casinos in biloxi become carnations across the sands

and the woman in the wheelchair descends

her last breath a rose in the razor rain

uptown on mansion hill even the million dollar house bows

in the negative shade someone is afloat

a family dissolves the nation disappears

neighborhoods fade across lost streets the police

dressed in newspapers flutter toward nothingness moons

who goes there

under our floors filtered wooden stars

towels and glass gasoline coffins

the skin of trees and jalopy tires fish

bebop dead from the zoo the dogs half drag

ward number nine miss Symphony Spikes and

mrs. Hardy Johnson the new plankton new

algae of the nameless stroll in the dark ask

the next question about kindness

then there is a bus a taxi a hearse a helicopter

a rescue team a tiny tribe of nine year olds

separating the waters the oils and ashes

hear the song of splinters and blood tree sap

machine oil and old jazz trumpeters z's and x's

raffia skirts and jujube hats and a father man

holds the hand of his lover saying take care of the children

let me go now let me stumble stumble nowhere drink this

earth liquor going in petals

stadiums and looters

celebrities cameras cases more water cases

again and again a new land edge emerges

a new people emerges where race and class and death

and life and water and tears and loss

and life and death destruction and life and tears

compassion and loss and a fire stolen bus

rumbles toward you all directions wherever

you are alive still

Juan Felipe Herrera, "Water Water Water Wind Water" from Half the World in Light: New and Selected Poems. Copyright © 2008 by Juan Felipe Herrera.  Reprinted by permission of University of Arizona Press.


Source: Half the World in Light: New and Selected Poems (University of Arizona Press, 2008)

The Wreck

By Don Paterson
 

But what lovers we were, what lovers,

even when it was all over—

the bull-black, deadweight wines that we swung

towards each other rang and rang

like bells of blood, our own great hearts.

We slung the drunk boat out of port

and watched our sober unreal life

unmoor, a continent of grief;

the candlelight strange on our faces

like the tiny silent blazes

and coruscations of its wars.

We blew them out and took the stairs

into the night for the night's work,

stripped off in the timbered dark,

gently hooked each other on

like aqualungs, and thundered down

to mine our lovely secret wreck.

We surfaced later, breathless, back

to back, and made our way alone

up the mined beach of the dawn.

Don Paterson, "The Wreck" from The White Lie: New and Selected Poetry. Copyright © 2001 by Don Paterson.  Reprinted by permission of Graywolf Press.


Source: The White Lie: New and Selected Poetry (Graywolf Press, 2001)

This Is My Last Report

By Juan Felipe Herrera
 

This is my last report:

I wanted to speak of existence, the ants most of all,

dressed up in their naughty flame-trousers, the exact jaws,

their unknowable kindnesses, their abyss of hungers,

and science, their mercilessness, their prophetic military

devotions, their geometry of scent, their cocoons

for the Nomenclature,

I wanted to speak of the Glue Sniffers

and Glue Smoothers who despise all forms

unbound, loose in their amber nectars, I wanted

to point to their noses, hoses and cables and networks,

their tools, if I can use that word now—and scales and

scanners and Glue Rectories.

I wanted you to meet my broom mother

who carved a hole into her womb

so that I could live—

At every sunset she stands

under the shadow of the watchtowers

elongating and denying her breath.

I wanted to look under the rubble fields

for once, for you (if you approved), flee

into the bullet-riddled openness and fall flat,

arched, askew, under the rubble sheets

and let the rubble fill me

with its sharp plates and ripped dust—

alphabets incomplete and humid. You,

listen,

a little closer

to the chalk dust—this child swinging her left arm,

a ribbon, agitated by unnamed forces, devoured.

Juan Felipe Herrera, "This Is My Last Report" from Half the World in Light: New and Selected Poems. Copyright © 2008 by Juan Felipe Herrera.  Reprinted by permission of University of Arizona Press.


Source: Half the World in Light: New and Selected Poems (University of Arizona Press, 2008)

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