poems by Tyehimba Jess

Poem of the Week, by Tyehimba Jess

Posted on by alisonmcghee

Our January 6-11, 2025, Write Together session is now open for registration! I’d love to see you in the Zoom room. Click here for more information.

I’ve never been forced to perform for audiences not of my choosing, the way the Black minstrel in this poem was forced to, but this poem (for the second time this year) speaks to everything in me right now. When others think they control you, think they have power over you, declare they know what’s best for you and you’ll do it whether you like it or not, it’s time to become your own full sky.

What the Wind, Rain, and Thunder Said to Tom, by Tyehimba Jess

Hear how sky opens its maw to swallow
Earth? To claim each being and blade and rock
with its spit? Become your own full sky. Own
every damn sound that struts through your ears.
Shove notes in your head till they bust out where
your eyes supposed to shine. Cast your lean
brightness across the world and folk will stare
when your hands touch piano. Bend our breath
through each fingertip uncurled and spread
upon the upright’s eighty-eight pegs.
Jangle up its teeth until it can tell
our story the way you would tell your own:
the way you take darkness and make it moan.

Click here for more information about Tyehimba Jess. This poem is included in his Pulitzer Prize-winning collection Olio, published in 2016 by Wave Books. Olio is an effort to understand the lives of mostly unrecorded African American performers: how they met, resisted, complicated, co-opted, and sometimes defeated attempts to minstrelize them.”


alisonmcghee.com
My podcast: Words by Winter

Poem of the Week, by Tyehimba Jess

Posted on by alisonmcghee

Friends, if you read and liked my new novel Telephone of the Tree, I’d be so grateful if you gave it a good review on Amazon (online reviews are extremely important to a book’s success). You can find the book here. Thank you! 

The psychic asked me if I had any birthmarks on my wrists, and I pulled up my sleeve to show her: two raised bumps on my left wrist. She nodded.

They came with you into this life as a reminder from long ago, she said. Scars from the manacles they used to chain you to the wall. At first you fought and fought, but over time, you grew meek and silent. Your great purpose in this life is to reclaim your voice and your freedom. You’re getting better at it. Don’t ever let anyone abuse you again. The hell with them.

What the Wind, Rain, and Thunder Said to Tom, by Tyehimba Jess

Hear how sky opens its maw to swallow
Earth? To claim each being and blade and rock
with its spit? Become your own full sky. Own
every damn sound that struts through your ears.
Shove notes in your head till they bust out where
your eyes supposed to shine. Cast your lean
brightness across the world and folk will stare
when your hands touch piano. Bend our breath
through each fingertip uncurled and spread
upon the upright’s eighty-eight pegs.
Jangle up its teeth until it can tell
our story the way you would tell your own:
the way you take darkness and make it moan.

Click here to read more about poet Tyehimba Jess. Today’s poem is from his Pulitzer Prize-winning collection Olio, which gives imagined voice to minstrels forced to perform to make money for others, published by Wave Press in 2016.

alisonmcghee.com
My poetry podcast: Words by Winter