Preview #10, Journal of Pan African Studies, Poetry Issue, Guest Editor, Marvin X

Preview #10,

Journal of Pan African Studies, Poetry Issue

Guest Editor, Marvin X

Ishmael Reed, Berkeley CA

Bay Area artists celebrate release of Reed’s Book on Obama, The Jim Crow Media and the Nigger Breakers: Painters Dewey Crumpler, Arthur Monroe; poets Ishmael Reed, Conyus, Marvin X, Al Young. Photo Tennessee Reed

Night Rider

I don’t look like no

Klansman but I think like

One

Though I still wear a Dashiki

My heart is covered with

A white sheet

I have fantasies involving

Lillian Gish

I struggle with these

Me and my white hooded

Friends share the same

Obsession

You know the one

I don’t look like no slave

But I think like one

I hold Caucasians to

Higher standards than I

Hold myself

I’m incapable of

Reaching such moral

Heights.

I call them bigots

But what have I

begotten?

In my soul there

Are cross burnings

desecrated cemeteries

in Prague

I’m hip to the

Protocols

But to the public

I’m holier than thou

Blacker than thou

Blacker than even

Myself

I scare myself with

My Blackness

I know the theory

Of Kawaida backwards

Wussy cowardly

Negroes tolerate

My hatred

Too chicken to object

wolves have a pack

lions have a lair

I have a claque

they clap at my

every word

They give me plaques

Celebrate my birthdate

Three times a year

Name rooms in black

Studies departments after

Me

I make them sweat

If I asked

They would lick the

fungi between my toes

If I asked they would

push a peanut with their noses

When I cursed the O’Hara’s

They gave me a buck

Brought me to Tara

And fed me wild duck

Had me stay over

For a long leisurely sleep over

I swam in their heated pool

Even though I linked

them to Yacub

( How did they know about

My cravings for strawberries

And ice cream).

They gave me donations

So I could further

Their Damnation

They gave me a down

Payment on their trip

To hell

Guilt sells better than

Cheap hair gel

During the day I

Was critical of the “traitors”

Downtown

But when nobody

Was looking

I was downtown too

Heh heh

You might call me

A night rider

Ishmael Reed

copyright©2010

Ishmael Reed is an American literary legend, novelist, poet, playwright, essayist, musician, publisher, winner of a MacArthur Genius Award, professor emeritus at UC Berkeley.

J. Vern Cromartie, Richmond CA

Street Spirits

(For Marvin X)

under a red sky
you have roamed
the streets of San Francisco
rapping about homeless blues
in your poetry
in your life
in your spirit

under a red sky
i saw you
once selling the Poetry Flash
to rich tourists and wondered
whether you would become
the next Bob Kaufman

under a red sky
you have roamed the beaches
of the Golden State
praying here and there
remembering your sweet Sherley
confessing your sins and mistakes

under a red sky
you have remembered
that a poet is full
of great feelings
of love
for God
for self
for others
whether the poet
is homeless
or not

under a red sky
you have helped me
to embrace
the street spirits
and the rays
of a red sun
with your poetry
with your life
with your spirit.

--J. Vern Cromartie
© 2005

Dr. J. Vern Cromartie is a former student of Marvin X’s, now a Marvin X scholar, who recently delivered a paper at a sociology conference on X’s brief tenure at the University of California, Berkeley. Aside from his poetic duties, Dr. Cromartie is head of the Sociology department at Contra Costa College in Richmond CA.

Dr. Tracey Owens Patton, Wyoming

To the Beat

Brown suburban dancer, the downtown beat of the bongos play no more.

The rhythm of manicured lawns vibrating in her soul and white picket fences has replaced the hip hop harmonies of long ago.

Brown suburban dancer electrified by the magnetic pulse of the city.

Her band plays here no more.

Big city lights, the pace of life, the hum.

The hum that used to course through your veins, now a meandering pace.

Brown suburban dancer with your wanna be ghetto fabulous rides with gold-rimmed wheels, your thumping pumping base makes you legit?

Drag queen of the planned community.

White youth consume you.

Frenzied hyena feeding on a culture that no longer exists.

White adults want to control you.

Go back to the plantation of the Black reservation.

We’ll call you when we need you.

Black suburban dancer clap your hands and tap to the beat.

Feel the vibration in your soul.

Color mixing, blurred realities, parallel lines intersecting,

Police watching, neighborhood watch conspiring.

Produce your passport on demand.

There can only be one of you.

Brown suburban dancer hips shaking, urban romance thrusting in her soul

Working the margins of life; gerrymandered existence.

White flight migration.

We like you on T.V., but we don’t want to live near you.

Think of our property.

Brown suburban dancer gyrations forced to beat softly in her soul.

Her feet are tired from doing the shuffle.

Haunted to a hushed hyper-visibility

The poacher needs no license.

Live below the radar.

Your color is too stunning.

--

Suburban color requested on demand.

Dr. Tracey Owens Patton is Director of African American & Diaspora Studies as well as an Associate Professor of Communication in the Department of Communication and Journalism at The University of Wyoming. Her area of expertise is critical cultural communication and rhetorical studies. Her work is strongly influenced by critical theory, cultural studies, womanist theory, and rhetorical theory. Her research focuses on the interdependence between race, gender, and power and how these issues interrelate culturally and rhetorically in education, media, and speeches. Dr. Patton presents her research at numerous academic conferences and her articles include publications in Communication Teacher, Howard Journal of Communications, International/Intercultural Communication Annual, Journal of Black Studies, The National Women’s Studies Association Journal, Transformations: The Journal of Inclusive Scholarship and Pedagogy, Visual Communication Quarterly, Women’s Studies in Communication, and book chapters in The Spike Lee Reader and Opposite forces: Issues and conflicts in American journalism.

Eugene Redman, East St. Louis IL

Upbringing: The Pedagogy of East Boogie*

(Three Kwansabas)

#1 Grandmother’s Soulversity

whether churnin’ lye into soap, earth into

produce, clabber into butter, sass into whippin,

snow into ice cream, sermon into succor,

hair into plait, body-ash into glisten,

theory into thimble, remnant into quilt, kitchen

into sparkle—or what-not into feast—

her edict was, “get some learnin’, boy.”

#2 School of Weavin’ & Bobbin’

every boy/girl a garden of dreams:

croonin’ like Nat Cole, Eckstine, Johnny Ace;

chirpin’/beltin’ like Billie, Ella, Big Mama;

bobbin’/jabbin’like Brown Bomber; slinkin’ silkily

like Eartha & Katherine; coppin’ cool like

Miles; swingin’ low like dues howlin’ ‘neath

Wolf’s blues, like granma’s chariot—home-gone.

#3 Academy of Low Heights

swingin’ low—fetchin’ sky; saddlin’ moanin’ noon’s

evening sun; ark-eye-texts of black

studies ridin’ hair trigger of double-being

into an all-night palaver & hearin’

blood-shot sages scream, “we’re schizophrenics with

split personalities!”; mountin’ new courses--ala Olaudah,

Sojourner & Malcolm--back to East Boogie.

*Nickname for East St. Louis, Illinois

ebr @ 11 15 2008

Eugene B. Redmond, poet laureate of East St. Louis, IL (1976), meshes “Arkansippi” sounds/beliefs with formal training. Professorships (Oberlin College, Cal State U-Sacramento, SIUE), books (The Eye in the Ceiling), fellowships (NEA), journals (Drumvoices Revue), and a Pushcart Prize led to retirement in 2007. Email: eredmon@siue.edu; Website: www.siue/ENGLISH/dvr/