Nineties (Monday Poem)

 by Angela Johnson

 

 

Had to leave the South

to hear somebody call me a nigger

for the first time.

Had to have my head 

out the window in

a west side neighborhood

in Cleveland

to hear a girl about my age

scream that knifing word

at my mama's car.

Had to make Mama stop

so I could look at the

face of somebody who

dressed just like me

and probably

wanted what I did

from the world,

bu would never live in

mine.

 

 

from The Other Side: Shorter Poems

by Angela Johnson

Orchard Books, 1998  

 

Counters (Monday Poem)

 by Angela Johnson

 

 

My Uncle Fred has a slash

across his face from

some redneck

trying to

stop him from ordering

a lemonade from a lunch counter

in Montgomery.

When the weather changes, it

aches him, he says,

but smiles when

he says it, whenever he says it.

All my mama could remember

was how Grandmama had

screamed and 

talked about 

leaving the South.

 

All I can think is

how terrible it was

and how beautiful

it made him.

 

 

from The Other Side: Shorter Poems

by Angela Johnson

Orchard Books, 1998  

 

Crazy (Monday Poem)

 by Angela Johnson

 

 

You'd have to be 

crazy

to want to live

your life in

a place like Shorter, Alabama.

The heat,

the red ants, and 

twenty miles to 

any mall.

You'd have to be crazy

to want to live

in a place where

every other person is

related to you

and thinks they know

everything about your

life.

 

You'd have to be crazy

to want to wake

up every morning to sweet

magnolia and moist red

dirt.

You'd have to be 

crazy.

 

 

from The Other Side: Shorter Poems

by Angela Johnson

Orchard Books, 1998  

 

 

Dancing in the Moonlight (Monday Poem)

by Angela Johnson

 

 

Me and Kesha Cousins used to dance to hip-hop music in the woods.

Boom box blasting through the trees.

We had to do it in the woods 'cause her parents

got saved and didn't allow it.

Kesha just wanted to dance.

In a video maybe one day, she said.

Figured she could still get in heaven if dancing was her only sin.

 

Kesha met a boy at the revival in Waugh,

then we stopped dancing in the moonlight.

Next time I saw her she was slipping

out of the Blue and Gray Club in high heels.

I guess she figured after she'd sinned

more than once heaven was closed to her.

 

 

 

from The Other Side: Shorter Poems

by Angela Johnson

Orchard Books, 1998