Poem of the Week, by Langston Hughes
My poems podcast, Words by Winter, can be found here.
Here in my neighborhood, in the wake of another shooting of a Black man, choppers circle nightly, protests happen nightly, and stores and restaurants keep their window plywood boards on standby.
Tension runs high. I scan the streets for cars and trucks with out of state plates driving erratically, zipping the wrong way down my one-way street, the way they did a year ago, when under cover of darkness men searched through our gardens for incendiaries planted earlier.
There’s plenty of racism to go around in Minnesota and there are also nationwide white supremacy groups happy to help the movement. I loved Langston Hughes’s poems as a child and I love them still. Last night I walked past a SWAT car filled with police officers at the end of my block and thought of this poem.
I, too, sing America
– Langston Hughes
I am the darker brother.
They send me to eat in the kitchen
when company comes,
but I laugh,
and eat well,
and grow strong.
Tomorrow,
I’ll be at the table
when company comes.
Nobody’ll dare
say to me,
“Eat in the kitchen,”
then.
Besides, they’ll see how beautiful
I am
and be ashamed–
I, too, am America.
For more information about Langston Hughes, please click here.
alisonmcghee.com
From my porch, which is all windows, people walk by in pairs or threes or solo. Some of them stop by my poetry hut and take a poem. Some keep their heads down and never look up. Some are slow and wandery, holding hands and scuffing their feet. Others stare straight ahead and laugh while they chatter to the person on the other end of their earbuds.
Quite a year we just had. A year that drove that poor little garden gnome in the photo on the right to drink, not to mention me with my cabinet full of gin. So many poems feel like possibilities to greet the new year, but this one by Langston Hughes feels the most possible. It’s strange, because if asked I would never list Langston Hughes on my Favorite Poet list, but lines from his poems come drifting through my mind almost every day. Like this one: Hold fast to dreams, for if dreams go, life is a barren field frozen with snow. And this one: They’ll see how beautiful I am and be ashamed– I, too, am America. And this one: I’ve known rivers: Ancient, dusky rivers. My soul has grown deep like the rivers. And most of all, I see that my own hands can make the world that’s in my mind. Goodbye, 2016. Here’s to the baby new year.
I’ve sat in silent, exhausted rage around dinner tables listening to men and women argue about rape and which factors that lead up to it are under a woman’s control. Sometimes I leave the room and go into the kitchen to bang my head against a hot stove, because that feels better than listening to good men, many of whom I like and respect, explain with care and patience how women shouldn’t get so drunk, especially late at night, how they shouldn’t walk alone, shouldn’t wear certain outfits, that it just is not safe, how they wish so much the world wasn’t like that for women, but it is. What a revelation, I think, thanks for solving that whole rape thing.
Alison McGhee 