Shoshanna Johnson is a single, Black mother who was one of the first Prisoners of War in the immoral and illegal invasion of Iraq.
I.
There are no lack of
affirmative action programs
on the front lines
of the U.S. military,
there is full equality
in killing and in death.
II.
Had you sent your resume
to a Fortune 500 company
there would have been
no calls back.
There is a strict policy
against Tamikas,
Takiyas,
Shakiyas,
Shaquannas,
Laquanna,
Latishas
and Shoshanna Johnsons.
Too scared that
your nappy-headed children
will be tagging along
to work each day,
climbing on office furniture
running from cubicle to cubicle,
begging for candy and for spare change.
III.
And still along
the Park Places,
Madison Avenues,
and Broadways
of the world,
Brown-skinned women
push designer strollers,
with bright, white babies,
on sunny days,
down tree-lined blocks
to parks and museums,
while theirs pack
into day care centers,
ten, fifteen, twenty at a time,
in dimly lit rooms,
wearing mismatch socks,
playing with mismatch block sets.
IV.
And you, single mother,
yr brown skin and bent smile
made the picture of
welfare and broken homes.
The photographs of you,
hoe in hand,
child tied to your back,
sweating from your brow,
dripping milk from yr swollen breasts,
still go undeveloped.
V.
When have mothers
not been single?
Nuclear families are more
destructive than nuclear weapons.
When children have no
grandmothers, aunts, sisters,
other mothers
then mothers will remain
single and alone.
VI.
Mother is not an occupation
so you enlist,
to put food on yr children’s bones
now helping to bomb your sisters,
whose voices have been silenced
by bombs and men,
and drowned out
by the tears of their dying children.
VII.
Maybe yr children’s father,
or his father,
or yr father,
or some man
will see yr photograph
printed on the cover of
U.S. newspapers
and find a way
to take care of yr children,
his children, their children too,
and spark a generation
of fathers who will raise fathers,
fathers to sons
and fathers to daughters.
VIII.
As if birthing civilization,
nurturing generations
of the world’s children,
allowing white babies
to suck your breasts dry
while yrs went hungry
was not enough,
now, you are being asked
to fight for “Our Freedoms,�
freedoms that you have
only heard about
in myths, lawbooks
and in ancient words
whispered by the ocean’s waves.
IX.
What more will man
ask of you?
I have no more requests.
If the world spent the next
five thousand years at your feet
in reconciliation and worship
it would not be enough.
X.
You are closer to
a savior than a prisoner,
closer to a crucifixion
than a casualty,
African woman,
you are closer to Jesus
than Jesus ever was,
you have died
and been reborn
more times than be
counted or imagined.
XI.
Take with you
as you always have,
the sun,
the earth
and the waters,
they will have to be enough,
as an oppression
as old as memory
have not been able to
take these from you.
XII.
Yr coming home
has been covert, quiet
sneaking back into the country
beneath media radar.
Yr life as a single, Blk mother
will not make any front page news.
Kahlil Almustafa won first place in the Nuyorican Poetry Slam 2002 and is a member of the Uptown YCL Club
|
Top level
Dynamic Magazine
