Jewelle Gomez

I imagine one of the reasons people cling to their hates so stubbornly is because they sense, once hate is gone, they will be forced to deal with pain.—James Baldwin

…but we are going down.

Y’all been drifting through history,

dancin’ on waves, clingin’ to a piece of

junk left over from the ship meetin’ up

with—not an iceberg—but reality.

Sure is a winter night layin’ hard on you boys.

That cold froze your brain like

one of those science things 

kept in a jar, waitin’ to be sliced.

There ain’t no ship comin’ to save you

this time. No Natives gonna

teach you how to cook a turkey.

‘Course there might be a group hug 

at the end. But we so far from 

the end we can’t even see the letter

e. 

Remember how you used to apologize

to your daddy for being bad? Then

he told you to go out to the alley and 

bring him back a switch. That’s 

where we at right now. 

So let go that piece of wood floating by,

whatever it used to be. Go on, 

slip down in the icy water. Swim 

like crazy afore it freeze your butt.

If that happen, they got to break 

your legs to put you in a box. 

Come on now, you can do it.

Maybe the iciness keep you woke

not put you to sleep. Everything depends

on you keep moving.

It’s not going to be pretty. 

There’s gonna to be some crying. 

And yeah, there gonna

be pain.

***

*Eleanor Bumpurs, an elderly, disabled Black woman, was killed in October 1984 by police with a twelve-gauge shotgun when she resisted being evicted from her flat in the Bronx.