The Glory Gets. Honorée Fanonne JeffersЧитать онлайн книгу.
the glory gets
WESLEYAN POETRY
the glory gets
HONORÉE FANONNE JEFFERS
Wesleyan University Press | Middletown, Connecticut
Wesleyan University Press
Middletown CT 06459
© 2015 Honorée Fanonne Jeffers
All rights reserved
Manufactured in the United States of America
Designed by Mindy Basinger Hill
Typeset in Calluna
Wesleyan University Press is a member of the Green Press Initiative. The paper used in this book meets their minimum requirement for recycled paper.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
[Poetry. Selections]
The glory gets / Honorée Fanonne Jeffers.
pages cm. — (Wesleyan Poetry series)
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 978-0-8195-7542-5 (cloth: alk. paper) —
ISBN 978-0-8195-7543-2 (ebook)
I. Title.
PS3560.E365A6 2015
811'54—dc23 2014043920
This project is supported in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts.
5 4 3 2 1
Cover illustrations: Woman: If I stand in my window, by upfromsumdirt. Swirled fabric pattern © Ka2shka | Dreamstime.com.
FOR MISS LUCILLE
Out in the open wisdom calls aloud,
she raises her voice in the public square …
PROVERBS 1:20
CONTENTS
Draft of an Ex-Colored Letter Sent Home from the Post-Race War Front 6
My Father as Walter Lee Younger 9
Try to Hide 11
Mammy Know 15
Portrait D’une Négresse 17
Light 19
Magdalene Brings 27
Magdalene Begins to See Jesus 28
What Jesus Said to Magdalene at Their Last Meal 29
Magdalene’s Wait 31
Magdalene on the Third Day 32
Memory of a Vision of Marie Laveau, the Voodoo Queen of New Orleans (1996) 35
Memory of an Ancestral Vision (2006) 36
Angry Black Woman in Root Worker Drag 37
After, We’ll Read the Bible 39
Job to His Daughter Jemima 40
[Faith is a virgin wrist] 41
[Today You spoke to me] 42
[Before I came to You] 43
[And how does God come] 44
[There is only] 45
[I recall four words] 46
[There is some blessedness] 47
The Glory Gets 51
Female Surgery 52
My 4:15pm Shrink’s Appointment on Thursday 54
Memory of One Day in a Kitchen 56
Birthright 58
Patience 59
If Free, Then 61
Publication Acknowledgments and Credits 69
fear
SINGING COUNTER
after Hayes and Mary Turner, Valdosta, Georgia, May 1918
The rope, the tree,
the tired comparison to Jesus on the Cross. Avoid the tropes.
The metaphors.
This stands for that, but if no one black ever says that, how would
someone white learn
this? How would any of us? I desire the surprise of intellectual,
fractured lyrics.
Yet here I am, refusing refusal. Calling the mob out by name.
Not even safely—
as with an anonymous South—but uncomfortably. As with white
man by white man.
(I’m scared just saying it.) And locating each in case
you have trouble.
(My People are exceedingly patient.) There: the expected
poor, drunk one,
neck darkened in the field. He’s a nice cliché. But not the next:
a churchgoer
and father. A man who believes in Christ and the love of a virtuous
woman who fries
chicken for picnics and stirs up lemon cakes. After the lynching
he will