Read an Excerpt

Kin

Poems

Michigan State University Press

    rhythm

    For The Woman Who Didn't Know My Name

    In some old men there is a softness
    in voice a hint of dust y Alabama
    summers of boyhood & the swagger
    of their walk whispers of past
    glories when their hips carried more
    than bone & their torsos fattened ribs
    & their feet them as small boys in play
    around the spot in town where men once herded
    my people. There were those games too.

    In old men there are wrinkles perfectly placed where drops
    of food & spittle settle. And they'll whisper of spat
    tobacco of dogs of whips in tongues to their sons & girl
    children & they to their sons & girl children.


    music: one

    The Famous Door

    Be-Bop, De-Bop, Be-Bop
    smooooooooth like sass
    n jazz n momma-n-mary
    at the bar n you singin "Route 66."
    You, on the sneak, askin
    momma on a date n the cops followin
    momma-n-mary home 'cause white
    girls didn't hang out in (black) jazz bars
    in 1966. Hell, proper white
    girls probably didn't hang t'all.

    N you at the ivory-n-ebony
    crooning "I Left My Heart ..." to momma,
    winkin n smilin n jazzin n profilin
    n sangin n sangin
    n sangin n soundin
    sweeeeeeeeeeeeeee t.


    Prayer

    for Richard Pinkney Williams 1907–1981

    You were jazz and leather on a rainy day,
    soft and pliable, aged to perfection with wrinkles of little modesty,
    deep and giving of themselves.

    My little hands seemed ridiculous
    as they traced lines relaying all the past laughs
    which bellowed from The Good Place,
    full of music, for only me.

    You were bicycle rides to the park, Kentucky Fried Chicken
    everyday after kindergarten, Slip-n-Slide on birthdays, secret
    sips of beer, songs sung, Alabama skins on my knee.

    Were washing backs, Ivory soap,
    dirty bath water; golf clubs and Palmer Woods, the universe
    around which I ran and skated and danced and swam
    coming always back to you, breathless,
    expectant of the everything and nothing in particular
    only you could give.
    I was your girl.

    You were sickness, seizure, and old—a too worn leather,
    brittle with bruises placed there long ago only now, visible
    and hindering and ugly. You were no speech
    no movement 'cept slow and deliberate.
    Tired and gray, you became a stranger whose eyes
    shone, then only if moon/sun/zodiac/weather permitted.
    You were Sick. Seizure. Dead. Gone. Anger.

    Long ago,
    when I was your girl
    when our house was yellow brick
    and Halloween was the scariest thing to me;
    long ago, before I knew
    of money, jobs, sadness, or loss, I knew you
    Daddy, and Joy.


    The Masked Woman

    Momma is a big-boned woman, stands five-nine
    with a head full of used-to-be auburn hair. Black Irish.
    Years ago she wore a conservative bun. When loose it shimmied
    like oil, was dense as swamp marsh, was the extent of her
    extravagance.

    After her mother died she cared for the brothers, worked
    herself through school, married Daddy. I just loved him.
    Race didn't enter the equation, only age.
    She weighed the 30-year-fault & concluded
    she loved him enough to lose him.

    I have questioned her trying to
    ferret out some rabble-rousing. She was too old
    to be a hippie. Still, some act must account for us.
    Political? No, I wasn't political.

    At five when I asked, "When will the dirt wash off my skin?"
    she searched out the best public school in Detroit.
    Of Roper City & Country Day I remember only
    how white the children were,
    the bubbled domes of classrooms, saying goodbye
    to no one in particular.
    This photo was taken in Alabama, Daddy's folks surrounding us,
    their black skins withered. Their storied music is lost to me.
    I was too young. Just a bright Black
    baby under a southern sky, extending Momma's hip.
    When I ask why the Afro wig & Curtis Mayfield sunglasses,
    she sighs sweet breath on my face,

    That's just how it was. I didn't always
    wear it. In the car ... well ...

    Cover silence and memory snatch at her eyes

    ... down there, Daddy drove up front
    I rode in back with you, hidden.

    This is all she'll say. I take it greedily.

    When friends see the photo, colored folk
    flanking a light-skinned Cleopatra Jones.
    "Who's that pretty, light-skinned lady
    holding you?" they ask.

    My mother.
    She's my mother, I say. Isn't she striking.


    At 25, I Have Already Begun to Like Lou Raws

    When I die
    you will find all my socks light blue,
    my pants bright green, my shoes nothing
    memorable, and you will describe me as
    having been daringly free
    of fashion.

    Even now my disinterest in scarves can be viewed as eccentric.
    When I die
    my manicured hands,
    which have always been plump
    and found keyboards necessary,
    will have a fine layer of dirt under their nails,
    and will be known for their slow and gentle touch.

    I have planted cosmos, asters.

    And, you'll remember the drag of my hips
    swaying with only necessary movement.
    When I die
    I will have just then, emerged.
    Completed at last, having added few originalities.
    This is your legacy.
    When I die,
    I will wear
    the face of my mother,
    gladly.


    Yea, Though I Walk ...

    Yesterday, I stood naked
    Except for a barrette—gold
    And tarnishing at

    The edges—in the mirror.
    How is it that when days are long,
    Obscure, and flee my grip, I
    Understand only that
    Glass and dust gather?
    How is it that when my cat hides herself
    In closets as if her bones

    Cover Will fall apart, recompose themselves
    And dance her into something else, I
    Liken those days to you? Mother, the
    Kitchen is perpetually dirty,
    The bathroom filled with lint balls, the
    House in disrepair. I
    Revolve able to only, finally, sit naked
    On the couch. So
    Unlike you who would clean and
    Grub until your hands were raw.
    How unlike you I am in

    These most mundane matters.
    How dissimilar we are in
    Everything visible. I
    Vacillate over sitcoms
    And books, seldom question
    Luxuries/necessities like cabs or expensive
    Linens. Yet, my
    Eyes, brown and wide, reflect
    Your name.

    Cover On days, when I am confused,
    Fretting, or

    Decided, I see your green/gray
    Eyes peering back through the dust
    And am quieted.
    To outsiders, our skins different as this day.
    Here, though, where the pounding is soft as your hand on my cheek, no.
    Salvation/sameness grows in soft hushed tones, like flutters, like wings.


    Order of Adoption in the Matter of Minor #44478

    for Altheia? Moore?
    At four days old, light brown and borrowed,
    like sugar from a neighbor,
    they opened their door and drew me
    in. Wrapped their arms around the smile
    momma says has always been larger than the Joe
    Louis Arena and taught me to walk,
    my wings becoming shoes, Easter
    bonnets, pink Huffy's.

    Woman, do your arms get cold and concave
    with the coming of September 26th?
    Did the other six children, their brown eyes
    longing, look just over your shoulder
    to the clear sky? Have they asked my name?
    Surely they have asked my name ...

    Have you imagined
    me?
    How
    have you imagined
    me?
    I will tell you
    my hips are rounded and wide
    my nails grow askew
    my hair is fine and abundant
    my eyes are alert.
    I am happy
    I am known as:
    Marilyn-Theresa,
    Richard-Pinkney,
    Crystal-Ann
    Williams.

    music: two

    Rites of Passage

    for Harold Neal

    Would you remember an imposing man with little to no gleam in his eye,
    seriously tall and narrow, who reminded you of all the jive hip cool
    jazz men (side swept tam included)
    your father brought to the house
    whose language was the richness being Black required
    in the time and place they learned to be
    bop?

    Would you recall his gaze as it revealed your most
    unadorned self, made you feel
    a specimen.

    Surely you would wonder how time had settled on him;
    what mischief he was causing; for whom he was making things unpleasant.

    During the years you found no beauty in the mirror
    you'd invoke, with fondness, that day. In fact, would replay
    the scene in which you were surrounded by sun/wind/pavement,
    hiding behind the shoulder of your friend, as his father, the man with
    the Black Bottom eyes said dryly,
    "You are a beautiful young lady."
    You would revisit those words; would struggle with them, pulling
    and tugging, understanding, misunderstanding, until finally,
    time allowed that—if nothing else—a compliment should be
    accepted/acknowledged with grace,
    as somehow (with uncharacteristic meekness)
    you think you did.


    Poem for My Sisters

    Rob, just out of prison, caught my scent
    while I was on that gig where I'd mastered the direct ambush,
    selling sucker's faces on muscled bodies, wanted posters, anything
    they weren't. An American phenomenon, I've decided.
    His hollow eyes scavenged the curves I'd gained by shedding.
    I wanted chicken. He insisted on steak.
    I wanted Diet Coke. He ordered wine.
    I wanted no dessert. He made me eat pie.
    That summer I learned to
    use an answering machine offensively,
    be thankful for intuition, he didn't know where I lived,
    grow eyes in the back of my head.
    And I learned to curse his name
    for making me, at that table, on that night,
    feel like only a woman
    and his eyes,
    which made me feel like the woman I wanted to be,
    fleeting as it was.

    A,

    (I am so hungry for you my stomach
    bloats and I am the glazed eyes of starvation./

    Cover Listened for you, saw movement on tv,
    inhaled ten chickens, eight pizzas, six
    pounds of grain, gulped down
    this nocallnocallnocall until
    my stomach bloated.

    Could be I came on too subtly.
    I take back everything I didn't
    say, hear? I take it all back, hunch over,
    dig my nails into the earth, raise,
    dust blowing from my arms—
    a pregnant-lipped lumberjack-woman
    with arms full of all I've taken back.

    Cover Squeaked when you wanted squawk.
    I am a lion. I am an elephant. I am a two
    hundred voice gospel choir—with glazed eyes.
    Could be tomorrow, if I rise into
    sanity, I'll inhale two less pizzas,
    one less pound of grain.
    Could be the day after, if I rise into
    sanity, I will not flick the channel, will
    search the tearful eyes of Zaire—an absurd mirror
    of starvation.

    Cover In preparation, I've begun gathering
    the fragments of your name
    from the broken windows and
    bloodied ears of my neighbors.
    I gather and gorge. I am gathering
    and gorging.

    Hey A,

    (Mr. Sausage Lips/

    for Daryl Francine Garrett

    so when your lips slathered
    & then stuck to my neck
    like maple syrup & butta
    greasin me all up
    wuz that like some fat man
    sneakin a second plate
    when he ain't done wit the first?
    & when u floated them soft
    sweeter-n-a-buttermilk-biscuit-dipped-in-honey
    words my way
    what wuz u offerin?

    Cover cuz, just days later
    like some rude Thanksgiving guest
    u up & said, "I'm full
    so no thankya, kindly, ma'am"
    tell ya what:
    don't be sneakin seconds
    when u ain't done wit the first
    don't be offerin biscuits
    to folk who ain't hungry &
    keep them sausage lips
    on your face & offa my neck.

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Excerpted from Kin by Crystal Williams. Copyright © 2000 Crystal Williams. Excerpted by permission of Michigan State University Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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