June Jordan
June Jordan Poems
well I wanted to braid my hair
bathe and bedeck my
self so fine
so fully aforethought for
...
We didn't always need affirmative action
When we broke this crazy land into farms
...
At least she was riding
beside
somebody going somewhere
fast
...
How do we come to be here next to each other
in the night
Where are the stars that show us to our love
inevitable
...
It’s a sunlit morning
with jasmine blooming
easily
...
I
honey people murder mercy U.S.A.
the milkland turn to monsters teach
...
Because it was raining outside the palace
Because there was no rain in her vicinity
...
I have been enjoying the law and order of our
community throughout the past three months since
...
A few years back and they told me Black
means a hole where other folks
got brain/it was like the cells in the heads
...
Redwood grove and war
You and me talking Congo
gender grief and ash '
...
1
I turn to my Rand McNally Atlas.
Europe appears right after the Map of the World.
...
At the throat of Soweto
a devil language falls
slashing
claw syllables to shred and leave
...
Our own shadows disappear as the feet of thousands
by the tens of thousands pound the fallow land
into new dust that
...
I didn’t know and nobody told me and what
could I do or say, anyway?
...
At least it helps me to think about my son
a Leo/born to us
(Aries and Cancer) some
sixteen years ago
...
You used to say, “June?
Honey when you come down here you
supposed to stay with me. Where
else?”
...
June Jordan Biography
June Millicent Jordan was a Caribbean-American poet, novelist, journalist, biographer, dramatist, teacher and committed activist. Jordan is regarded as one of the most significant and prolific black, bisexual writers of the 20th century.)
The Best Poem Of June Jordan
The Talking Back Of Miss Valentine Jones: Poem # One
well I wanted to braid my hair
bathe and bedeck my
self so fine
so fully aforethought for
your pleasure
see:
I wanted to travel and read
and runaround fantastic
into war and peace:
I wanted to
surf
dive
fly
climb
conquer
and be conquered
THEN
I wanted to pickup the phone
and find you asking me
if I might possibly be alone
some night
(so I could answer cool
as the jewels I would wear
on bareskin for you
digmedaddy delectation:)
"WHEN
you comin ova?"
But I had to remember to write down
margarine on the list
and shoepolish and a can of
sliced pineapple in casea company
and a quarta skim milk cause Teresa's
gaining weight and don' nobody groove on
that much
girl
and next I hadta sort for darks and lights before
the laundry hit the water which I had
to kinda keep an eye on be-
cause if the big hose jumps the sink again that
Mrs. Thompson gointa come upstairs
and brain me with a mop don' smell too
nice even though she hang
it headfirst out the winda
and I had to check
on William like to
burn hisself to death with fever
boy so thin be
callin all day "Momma! Sing to me?"
"Ma! Am I gone die?" and me not
wake enough to sit beside him longer than
to wipeaway the sweat or change the sheets/
his shirt and feed him orange
juice before I fall out of sleep and
Sweet My Jesus ain but one can
left
and we not thru the afternoon
and now
you (temporarily) shownup with a thing
you says' a poem and you
call it
"Will The Real Miss Black America Standup?"
guilty po' mouth
about duty beauties of my
headrag
boozeup doozies about
never mind
cause love is blind
well
I can't use it
and the very next bodacious Blackman
call me queen
because my life ain shit
because (in any case) he ain been here to share it
with me
(dish for dish and do for do and
dream for dream)
I'm gone scream him out my house
be-
cause what I wanted was
to braid my hair/bathe and bedeck my
self so fully be-
cause what I wanted was
your love
not pity
be-
cause what I wanted was
your love
your love
June Jordan Comments
I like June Jordan's honest, outspoken poems, also the occasional tone of anger. She is a genuine poet, not saccharine or shallow.
June Jordan Quotes
... the victim accommodates to power. The victim doesn't want anymore [sic] trouble.
If we lived in a democratic state our language would have to hurtle, fly, curse, and sing, in all the common American names, all the undeniable and representative and participating voices of everybody here.
We are the wrong people of the wrong skin in the wrong continent and what in the hell is everybody being reasonable about?
I am a feminist, and what that means to me is much the same as the meaning of the fact that I am Black: it means that I must undertake to love myself and to respect myself as though my very life depends upon self-love and self-respect.
In America, the traditional routes to black identity have hardly been normal. Suicide (disappearance by imitation, or willed extinction), violence (hysterical religiosity, crime, armed revolt), and exemplary moral courage; none of these is normal.
Body and soul, Black America reveals the extreme questions of contemporary life, questions of freedom and identity: How can I be who I am?
The purpose of polite behavior is never virtuous. Deceit, surrender, and concealment: these are not virtues. The goal of the mannerly is comfort, per se.
I can't think of a single supposedly Black issue that hasn't wasted the original Black target group and then spread like the measles to outlying white experience.
As a child I was taught that to tell the truth was often painful. As an adult I have learned that not to tell the truth is more painful, and that the fear of telling the truth—whatever the truth may be—that fear is the most painful sensation of a moral life.
Like a lot of Black women, I have always had to invent the power my freedom requires ...
Let me just say, at once: I am not now nor have I ever been a white man. And, leaving aside the joys of unearned privilege, this leaves me feeling pretty good ...
Overall, white men run America. From nuclear armaments to the filth and jeopardy of New York City subways to the cruel mismanagement of health care, is there anything to boast about?
... the courts cannot garnish a father's salary, nor freeze his account, nor seize his property on behalf of his children, in our society. Apparently this is because a kid is not a car or a couch or a boat.
June Jordan Popularity
June Jordan Popularity
Delivering Poems Around The World
Poems are the property of their respective owners. All information has been reproduced here for educational and informational purposes to benefit site visitors, and is provided at no charge...
4/18/2024 6:59:56 PM # 1.0.0.1119
y tu vieja queeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee