| Native Dancer |
Immediate, political and powerfully crafted poetry from the winner of a National Endowments for the Arts poetry grant.
Excerpts
What Burns Will Not Return
Naked in the early Philadelphia morning the oldest
child steps out: among the broken barricades
and glass, past smiling cops who aim for him who point
their pistols at the naked chest: who crouch
together, ludicrous and deadly: armed
terror: the heat
And the heat is rising, half a dozen
cities to the north: a train of fire
through Newark, Trenton, past children clothed
or dreaming, sleepy, who waking
into summer count
the catalog of damage
Up to this damaged island where I rise now
at my window looking out at what
will not return: the burn: the kid
with her kid on the stoop, staring
twenty feet away to where no stars are.
And so the stars are spinning or have lost
their way: I pray each morning underneath
this sign that says what burns
will not return: beneath lost galaxies at night
I pray the children fan the flames, and stand
and fight: I pray the children
wake alive
and walk out into light.
Reviews
She sings! She invents a North American language that we can trust to carry us without lies and without mistakes.
--June Jordan
