#AmericanWriters
you did not know you were Afrika When you set out for Afrika you did not know you were going. Because you did not know you were Afrika.
—And when you have forgotten the b… And most especially when you have… When you have forgotten Sunday ha… Or me sitting on the front-room ra… Looking off down the long street
Oh mother, mother, where is happin… They took my lover’s tallness off… Left me lamenting. Now I cannot g… What I can use an empty heart-cup… He won’t be coming back here any m…
What do you think of us in fuzzy e… sterling, whose lunge is straight? Can you make a reason, how can you… Who memorize the rules from your o… Who never quite receive the whistl…
Blackness is a title, is a preoccupation, is a commitment Blacks are to comprehend—
They eat beans mostly, this old ye… Dinner is a casual affair. Plain chipware on a plain and crea… Tin flatware. Two who are Mostly Good.
Now who could take you off to tiny… In one room or in two rooms or in… And cork you smartly, like the fla… You are? Not any woman. Not a wif… You’d let her twirl you, give her…
To Marc Crawford from whom the commission Whose broken window is a cry of ar… (success, that winks aware as elegance, as a treasonable fait…
Say to them, say to the down-keepers, the sun-slappers, the self-soilers, the harmony-hushers,
Carried her unprotesting out the d… Kicked back the casket-stand. But… That stuff and satin aiming to enf… The lid’s contrition nor the bolts… Oh oh. Too much. Too much. Even…
I’ve stayed in the front yard al… I want a peek at the back Where it’s rough and untended an… A girl gets sick of a rose. I want to go in the back yard now
Maud went to college. Sadie stayed home. Sadie scraped life With a fine toothed comb. She didn’t leave a tangle in
Inamoratas, with an approbation, Bestowed his title. Blessed his i… He wakes, unwinds, elaborately: a… Tawny, reluctant, royal. He is fa… And fine this morning. Definite.…
From the first it had been like a Ballad. It had the beat inevitabl… A wildness cut up, and tied in lit… Like the four-line stanzas of the… understood—the ballads they had se…
Rudolph Reed was oaken. His wife was oaken too. And his two good girls and his goo… Oakened as they grew. “I am not hungry for berries.