Shake Loose My Skin by Sonia Sanchez Read Free Book Online Page A

United
Nations. Don’t let me die . . . . . . . . . . . .
    And if we nourish ourselves, our communities
our countries and say
    no more hiroshima
no more auschwitz
no more wounded knee
no more middle passage
no more slavery
no more Bosnia
no more Rwanda
    No more intoxicating ideas of
racial superiority
as we walk toward abundance
we will never forget
    the earth
the sea
the children
the people
    For
we the people
will always be arriving
a ceremony of thunder
waking up the earth
opening our eyes to human
monuments.
    And it’ll get better
    it’ll get better
if
we the people
work, organize, resist,
come together for peace, racial, social
and sexual justice
    it’ll get better
    it’ll get better.

This Is Not a Small Voice
    This is not a small voice
    you hear      this is a large
    voice coming out of these cities.
    This is the voice of LaTanya.
    Kadesha. Shaniqua. This
    is the voice of Antoine.
    Darryl. Shaquille.
    Running over waters
    navigating the hallways
    of our schools spilling out
    on the corners of our cities and
    no epitaphs spill out of their river mouths.
    This is not a small love
you hear      this is a large
    love, a passion for kissing learning
on its face.
    This is a love that crowns the feet with hands
that nourishes, conceives, feels the water sails
mends the children,
    folds them inside our history where they
    toast more than the flesh
    where they suck the bones of the alphabet
    and spit out closed vowels.
    This is a love colored with iron and lace.
    This is a love initialed Black Genius.
    This is not a small voice
you hear.

Like
    Listening to the News
    Like
    All i did was
go down on him
in the middle of
the dance floor
cuz he is a movie
star he is a blk/
man “live” rt off
the screen fulfilling
my wildest dreams.
    Like.
    Yeah. All i did
was suck him in tune
to
that’s the way love goes

while boogeying feet
stunning thighs pressed
together in rhythm cuz he
wanted it and i wanted
to be seen with him
cuz he’s in the movies on the
big screen bigger than life
bigger than all of my
hollywood dreams
cuz see
i need to have my say
among all the unsaid
lives i deal with.
    Like.
Yeah.

Haiku 1
    i have died and dreamed
myself back to your arms where
what i died for sleeps.

Haiku 9
    the sprawling sound
of my death sails on the wind
a white butterfly.



FATHER’S VOICE
    the day he traveled to my daughter’s house
    it was june. he cursed me with his morning nod
    of anger as he filtered his callous
    walk. skip. hop. feet slipshod
    from 125th street bars, face curled with odd
    reflections. the skin of a father is accented
    in the sentence of the unaccented.
     
    i was a southern Negro man playing music
    married to a high yellow woman who loved my unheard
    face, who slept with me in nordic
    beauty. i prisoner since my birth to fear
    i unfashioned buried in an open grave
    of mornings unclapped with constant sight
    of masters fattened decked with my diminished light.
     
    this love. this first wife of mine, died in childbirth
    this face of complex lace exiled her breath
    into another design, and i died became wanderlust
    demanded recompense from friends for my heartbreak
    cursed the land for this new heartache
    put her away with a youthful pause
    never called her name again, wrapped my heart in gauze.
     
    became romeo bound, applauded women
as i squeezed their syrup, drank their stenciled
face, danced between their legs, placed my swollen
shank to the world, became man distilled
early twentieth-century black man fossilled
fulfilled by women things, foreclosing on my life.
mother where do i go before i arrive?
     
    she wasn’t as beautiful as my first wife
this ruby-colored girl insinuating her limb
against my thigh positioning her wild-life
her non-virginal smell as virginal her climb
towards me with slow walking heels made me limp
made me stumble, made my legs squint
until i stopped, stepped inside her footprint.
     
    i did not want to leave you son, this flame
    this pecan-colored