mercurial: a definition

the mirror of mistakes
looking back at you
kissing the kiss
you kissed into a childhood
mirror
kissing through you to the mirror
of childhood
no mistakes then

The look of things

How do I teach a class when my mouth

Is full of dreams I cannot share.

When a girl in class says “there’s a devil influence” in

Sherman Alexie’s Reservations Blues.

She won’t read it. Doesn’t want it in her head.

I look out the window and back at the nodding class.

They love the love, but can’t take the badmouthing

About religion on the rez.

What do I tell them to read to compare? Shakespeare’s Caliban

Morrison’s Beloved, Ginsberg’s Howl, to help them get it? To see

That once there were others with dreams in their mouths

But those dreams happened on top of what was already there.

And the landscaped turned into the novel Sherman Alexie

Wrote and came to our class in my feather hands.

How does history get told anyway from the loser’s perspective.

I would think a devil, and a gun, some frybread, and maybe background music

Would be involved. And on a reservation, a night creased by winter’s blade

Where babies freeze to death and are buried on top of another sister’s grave.

Where full-grown men cry into whiskey bottles for lost love. For being lost.

Those men whoop and holler at their women; at the moon. At god.

How do I tell my students, eyes new and waiting, I remember that.

National Poetry Month (Can I still participate in NaPoWriMo if I started today?!)

Hatshepsut

Palms sticky sweetmeat in her black swan hands

hands calloused from sword’s hilt, fingers delicate as feathers, sore.

Feet naked and darkened like the boys, but not like them.

They jostled each other, young bronze lions, but kept a distance

Between her awkward body and themselves. Across the cold stone.

Wary of her sloe eyes. Her kohl wings, learning men things.

                               

She was always hungry, her birth father said

Born with mouth open but silent, one eye on wet breast

The other towards the coming sun.

Palace walls expanded with each breath.

Flocks of blackbirds stacked like pyramids in sky.

Shadow crossing the moon. Hittite mothers weeping in their sleep

While babies smiled, ready for the kiss. A perfect Nile dawn

Not seen for one hundred years. Hathor’s temple stairs wet where no one had

Poured water. In the daylight, the girlchild only swam on her back.

At night, her father spelled leader, king, pharaoh on her chest,

Gilded her ears with charms, protection spells: whispered, it will hurt.

Leaving always hurts.

Teaching at every moment; learning in each breath

Yesterday I woke from a dream in which I was teaching a composition class in my bedroom. The students were sitting cross-legged on the bed, on my floor, on chairs. Apparently in the dream, it was the norm--class wherever I designated; the students were attentive, alert, no one was texting or looking at their cells. I was standing in front of them, but really not as an authority figure but just the conduit for their self-discovery. In reality, for the last 12 years of my university teaching, when the weather is nice, in the fall or spring, I do take my classes outside. We sit everywhere on campus that is dry and clean and well-lit. A patch of grass, a hillside, (and at Hampton University) the stairs of historic Ogden Hall, under Emancipation Tree, at Booker T's statue...We held class in Hampton's famous museum a few weeks ago, and one student's reflection said she didn't know images and pictures could speak to her like that. I'm paraphrasing her words here, but her feeling was she was included in the artist's process, but also implicated in the learning. Oh, the joy of reading her reflections. "Teaching" is an interesting word, because few parents asks their child, "what were you taught today," but rather what did you learn? I like to learn at every moment of my life from everyone around me, and though it's not always a lesson I would have asked for, I learned something. Every class, particularly for my freshmen and women, I always want them to come to class thinking "what will I, can I learn today." The location of the class is less important, I have discovered, as Socrates or any Priestess of Egyptian temples would probably concur. Our lives are the classrooms; our encourage and respect are as important as the books. For many students, we are their books. They "study" us as we lecture, move, take roll, share. I studied my favorite teachers like this since kindergarten. Every moment we assume or subsume the roll of the "teacher," what we tell them, direct them to, what we SHOW our students is what they ultimately learn. And I love every minute of it. 

books books books - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SKVcQnyEIT8&feature=share

first stew of winter...

at 4am, i woke to the sound of winter arm wrestling with spring and its lingering warmth. the clouds rushed past a crisp wolf moon...this morning, so cold in hampton. wind blessed every piece of skin as i ran to meeting...later my husband and i ran errands and on the way into the house he says, "this is the weather for a good stew." i nod. i measure the contents of our fridge in my head.

i come inside and pull everything out, fill silver pot with water, seasoning salt, dried red pepper, dried rosemary, sage, tumeric, onion...as i cut i find myself thanking the potatoes and the cabbage for its white heart, i take a bit of the turnip and sweet orange of carrot, dropping them in the already seasoned and boiling water...a half of green bell pepper? never added that to my winter stews, but why not. and a can of creamed corn. can of peas. a dash of cumin. lastly, as the smells rise and their faces turn and leap in the now soup, i add a can of tomato paste...stir with wooden spoon i've had for twenty years, as long as i've had my daughter...this is what i have time for in my life. writing. cooking. praying to things and people who give back to me a goodness i couldn't have withing knowing them...this is what i have time for, a peaceful friday afternoon, sun on my fingers jealous of chilly kiss of the day, and my house smelling like i imagine my grandmother's would if she cooked a special stew for her husband without taking measure of things, but with the health of the world in mind.

Do we really change? In ourselves or the blood?

I've been thinking all week about my "list of things I like to do," posted last Sunday. I wrote this list when I was 15, which minus 43...what's that? (getting calculator...) 28 years ago. Wow. I didn't know that one of the entries, "Discovering more about my Indian heritage" would be a life-long journey, leading me from Kalamazoo, Michigan to the mountains of Californian (where I started on the serious path of ceremony, self-discovery and healing,) and back to Hampton, Virginia where I unearthed all the bones of the family, and all the Indian and Free Persons of Color heritage. At 15, no one in my family talked about the past, and definitely not being Indian in public. It was a nostalgic private knowing, spoken of at family reunions and while washing dishes. This knowing was something that connected us smart-mouth kids to the old timey homesteaders. Those old people were country as the day was long, long Os and sharp "Ain'ts." I clearly remember asking "what's our tribe?" and my sassy mother quipping, "you've got some black, some Indian, some white, French, maybe German and a little bit of black." My ears burned that day b/c I was raised black, but culturally I knew our swampland blood came from somewhere else. That murky door of the past seemed to mock me.
 
Years later, and my eyes are bad now from the painstaking research, hovering over Census books, historical accounts and computer screens, I discovered the trail we took: My great-grandmother was the daughter of Willis Roberts, Jr. (who is buried in our family cemetery in Almena, MI). Willis, Jr. decided to leave his father and uncles in Indiana, where several mixed blood communities from Greenville, NC and Northhampton County, and Virginia, settled. They were escaping the changing times in the south. Both my grandparents' people were born in North Carolina and are listed as Indian, Colored, Free Persons of Color and Black, on tax records and the Census, over a 2-300 year span. Since the first Census in 1790. Okay, I didn't mean for this entry to be a history lesson (and I am on my way to a poetry reading at 2pm), but this is the story of my family. This is in my memoir. Reclaiming that Indian/Person of Color story. I started writing about this b/c I wanted to know, do we every really change, from who we are in the beginning, as a person? I didn't. I still, after years of silliness, having a beautiful daughter, and making too many mistake in my life, am hungry for my legacy. And then, I lay this same lens upon my roots and heritage, did we ever really change, in the blood, from being Indian, just because the titles and labels and some loyalties changed? I don't think so. Isn't this why those who can trace their lineage back to Kings and Queens, even by marriage, are proud? I am proud to be all of it, everything I have found and everything I still don't know. Indian, black, white, the French and German my mother said we are; I am proud to be a curious little tri-racial girl having lived up to some of the things I put forth for myself. No matter how many (generations, wars, marriages, laughter, walking) years later. What I found of our tribes is Cherokee, Coharie/Neusiok, Choctaw (father's side), and some others. But just because I am not fully sure of our tribes' names, who from what tribe married into another, I know who I am. Do you?  http://www.accessgenealogy.com/native/tribes/neusiokhist.htm

New thoughts for a New Year...

For the last few weeks, as we all have probably done, I've been thinking about what I should focus on for the new year. I found myself returning to things from the past, wondering about childhood things, what I was like, what I thought and why…how I got this way, curious, a writer, teacher, poet. What made me first write and what was I writing when I first put pen to paper to understand, explain and explore what I saw in the world around me, in Kalamazoo, on Southworth Terrace, on the East Side. On Grandpa Stafford’s farm in Michigan.

So, I pulled the heavy black chest from the hallway and struggled it to the floor. The smell rushed up when I flipped it open, cardboard and old paper. Old ink, faded pencil. My journals. I found an entire set from 1985. I was fifteen and the silliest of girls. I hoped I’d find something profound, but no such luck, instead I found this:

“Things I Like to Do”  5-16-85

1. Singing, 2. Baking, 3. Reading 4. Writing (mostly poems) 5. Laughing, 6. Clothes, 7. People watching, 8. Sleeping, 9. Swimming, 10. Basketball, 11. Tennis, 12. Kissing (the right person), 13. Arguing (the right person), 14. Being alone, 15. Filing, painting my nails, 16. Taking showers (for hours), 17. Thinking, 18. Flirting, 19. Learning history, 20. Mysteries, 21. Travel, 22. Hugging my nephew! 23. Magazines, 24. Sitting Indian style, 25. Getting dressed up for something special, 26. Dressing comfortable (bummy), 27. Hearing gossip (not spreading it), 28, Talking with my sister, Rochelle, 29.  Talking with my best friend, Jayda, 30. Irritating my mother, 31. Putting on make-up, 32. Taking make-up off, 33. Doing good things for my body (when I do), 34. Dancing (creative, ballet, jazz, soul), 35. French (language, country, people, kissing), 36. Learning about another country, 37. Getting rid of a dude trying to rap (if I don’t like him), 38. Watching little kids fight, (what fun!) 39. Listening to sounds like water (streams), 40. Listening to storms (my favorite sound in the whole world), 41. Watching storms, 42. Watching animals in their every day life, 43. Making people feel special, wanted and needed, 44. Learning about my Indian heritage, 45. Sitting and observing everything, 46. Getting Bs and Cs, at least, 47. Exploring the unknown (that’s just about everything), 48. Biographies and autobiographies, 49. Acting shy!, 50. The smell of freshly baked bread, 51. The smell of freshly baked cinnamon rolls, 52. The smell of hay, 53. The smell of old libraries and books, 54. Just added today, being with someone special.  

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I just turned 43 in December. Looking back, I can't help but cringe, thinking "Are these the ingredients of a writer?" Apparently. Go figure. I spent several hours going through a few years of journals with my daughter and laughing at myself, my weirdness and honesty. My daughter, a college grad in May, laughed especially hard.  

So, if I can keep this New Year’s Resolution, every Sunday, or every other Sunday, I will try to blog about beginnings. Maybe it will, no, it will change and become about everything, because that's the fluidity of language. You start someplace, like in a poem, and end up where you actually are supposed to be--not where you thought you should be.

I want to focus on how that 15-year old girl became this adult. And how we become our adult selves. Is it pressure? Solitude? Friends? What really causes one person to be a stock broker and another a kindergarten teacher? So, if I’m brave enough, maybe I will post the best of it, editing my spelling. Hopefully, you’ll laugh too and think about your own beginnings. Share them with your child, young or older, who will be figuring things out for themselves soon enough. Happy New Year!