when thanks are given
To the man who penetrated my pelvis for 4 years, gave me a black manchild; the light bright damn-near white, fair-skinned type, and told me I was ugly
To the women whose loins bore me, with crack-pipe veins, marijuana lips, too much malt liquor and another pair of undiscovered panties
To the anonymous author of “I hate this house” carved at the bottom of the bathroom door on Walcott St. As I stooped, bottom never touching the toilet – urine venomously spilling out – I realized that I did too, but you were brave enough to WRITE IT!
To the brother who called me a bitch and felt the wrath of a swung chair breaking through wood. !CRACK! “Who you callin’ a bitch, bitch!”
(Yes, I still love you brother)
To the cousin, the first and last, I confessed a dream
(You told me I was too soft to be a teacher)
YOU laughed and chuckled, contended that my student’s would run all over me
To the consequentially absent father who spoke little but gave much with factory hands
One rhythmic whistle
One solo drive around the school parking lot
Peace in resting.
To My Grandmother who gave love, God, fear and pain. Who said that a woman must hold IT all in, keep IT silent and wear a smile despite the need to SCREAM IT out
Do not cry
Do not SHOW pain.
Because there were no rescuers
To the preacher man who said, “women ARE hysterical….that’s why they call it a hysterectomy”
To Lonnie: remember when we played hang man for hours on that egg shelled Family Dollar discounted phone, and in it I confessed:
I L _V E Y _U
you were the first who taught me the game of love and pussy – because they were separate things, but you wouldn’t, no couldn’t have one without the other – or one and not the other. A conqueror of virginities. You missed, I got dissed
to the bi-polar honor’s college bitch that get’s on my nerve…who I attempt to love, yet YOU offer up black writing to black writers…you swore under the oath of psychological theorists that “intellect is hereditary” in my black home on my black sofa
to my neighbor who’s schizophrenic behavior forces me to confront the tragic and disturbed intellectual amidst my own Du- Re-ality. You ask me after you watched her children while she was cell-phone trickin’ and pondering the ethos in ‘I Love New York’-What your roommate meant when she said you “was triflin”
neighbor….
come and suckle. These are breast words. You’ve seen and participated in the barricades of words and eager hands touching your body without proper invitations
bodies using you inappropriately
Heal and Breath: Me… or You?
I see myself now outside of myself…outside of your systems…outside of your words. Inside my own safe house.
I make no room for guests, peepholes, windows, basements, invitations or welcomings of any sort.
I’m always at home in isolation, inside myself.
Thanks.
L. L. Faulk
what about the kennedys 