The essential June Jordan

Wide in scope and singular in their articulation of atrocities, Jordan's poems shine in this thoughtfully curated volume. Ordered so that each era of her work speaks to the next, her poems contemplate war ("What will we do/ when there is nobody left/ to kill?") on a national, interpersonal, and intergenerational scale, and suggest that struggle may be inextricable from the human experience. Jordan (1936--2002) stands against established power in poems that reckon with colonialism and the police state through her distinctive use of cataloging, repetition, and linguistic play. She implicates the self in depictions of historical violence as a basis for the cultivation of empathy: "I am a stranger/ learning to worship the strangers/ around me." As she contemplates land, borders, race, and gender, the reader, too, is invited to look closely at the world around them. In these rich, generous poems, to hold and accept divisive truths is an act of love and solidarity. "I am black alive," she writes, "and looking back at you." (May)

I Must Become a Menace to My Enemies Dedicated to the Poet Agostinho Neto, President of The People's Republic of Angola: 1976 1 I will no longer lightly walk behind a one of you who fear me: Be afraid. I plan to give you reasons for your jumpy fits and facial tics I will not walk politely on the pavements anymore and this is dedicated in particular to those who hear my footsteps or the insubstantial rattling of my grocery cart then turn around see me and hurry on away from this impressive terror I must be: I plan to blossom bloody on an afternoon surrounded by my comrades singing terrible revenge in merciless accelerating rhythms But I have watched a blind man studying his face. I have set the table in the evening and sat down to eat the news. Regularly I have gone to sleep. There is no one to forgive me. The dead do not give a damn. I live like a lover who drops her dime into the phone just as the subway shakes into the station wasting her message canceling the question of her call: fulminating or forgetful but late and always after the fact that could save or condemn me I must become the action of my fate. 2 How many of my brothers and my sisters will they kill before I teach myself retaliation? Shall we pick a number? South Africa for instance: do we agree that more than ten thousand in less than a year but that less than five thousand slaughtered in more than six months will WHAT IS THE MATTER WITH ME? I must become a menace to my enemies. 3 And if I if I ever let you slide who should be extirpated from my universe who should be cauterized from earth completely (lawandorder jerkoffs of the first the terrorist degree) then let my body fail my soul in its bedeviled lecheries And if I if I ever let love go because the hatred and the whisperings become a phantom dictate I o- bey in lieu of impulse and realities (the blossoming flamingos of my wild mimosa trees) then let love freeze me Out. I must become I must become a menace to my enemies. I guess it was my destiny to live so long Death chase me down death's way uproot a breast infest the lymph nodes crack a femur rip morale to shreds Death chase me down death's way tilt me off-kilter crutch me slow nobody show me how you make a cup of coffee with no hands Death chase me down death's way awkward in sunlight single in a double bed at night and hurtling out of mind and out of sight Don't chase me down down down death chasing me death's way And I'm not done I'm not about to blues my dues or beg I am about to teach myself to fly slip slide flip run fast as I need to on one leg It's Hard to Keep a Clean Shirt Clean Poem for Sriram Shamasunder And All of Poetry for the People It's a sunlit morning with jasmine blooming easily and a drove of robin redbreasts diving into the ivy covering what used to be a backyard fence or doves shoving aside the birch tree leaves when a young man walks among the flowers to my doorway where he knocks then stands still brilliant in a clean white shirt He lifts a soft fist to that door and knocks again He's come to say this was or that was not and what's anyone of us to do about what's done what's past but prickling salt to sting our eyes What's anyone of us to do about what's done And 7-month-old Bingo puppy leaps and hits that clean white shirt with muddy paw prints here and here and there And what's anyone of us to do about what's done I say I'll wash the shirt no problem two times through the delicate blue cycle of an old machine the shirt spins in the soapy suds and spins in rinse and spins and spins out dry not clean still marked by accidents by energy of whatever serious or trifling cause the shirt stays dirty from that puppy's paws I take that fine white shirt from India the threads as soft as baby fingers weaving them together and I wash that shirt between between the knuckles of my own two hands I scrub and rub that shirt to take the dirty markings out At the pocket and around the shoulder seam and on both sleeves the dirt the paw prints tantalize my soap my water my sweat equity invested in the restoration of a clean white shirt And on the eleventh try I see no more no anything unfortunate no dirt I hold the limp fine cloth between the faucet stream of water as transparent as a wish the moon stayed out all day How small it has become! That clean white shirt! How delicate! How slight! How like a soft fist knocking on my door! And now I hang the shirt to dry as slowly as it needs the air to work its way with everything It's clean. A clean white shirt nobody wanted to spoil or soil that shirt much cleaner now but also not the same as the first before that shirt got hit got hurt not perfect anymore just beautiful a clean white shirt It's hard to keep a clean shirt clean. Excerpted from The Essential June Jordan by June Jordan All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.