Kevin Powell

you are magic—a remix for Miss Sonia Sanchez, on the occasion of her 90th birthday

Like the singing
Coming off the drums
Sonia Sanchez
you are magic
you can do anything
you can moon-walk
your bare feet on fire
you can tongue-tie
hustlers with your haikus
and taste sunrise
when others
cannot taste at all
you were born
the same year
as Audre Lorde
and Amiri Baraka
emancipated Pullman Porters
on the freedom train
like you
Wilsonia Benita Driver
Birmingham, Alabama moon-catcher
Begat during the dingy days
of the Great Depression
and the chain-gang lynching
of the Scottsboro Boys
Your momma died a year later
And your grandmomma and them
Growed you
Like you were they own
Because you were
A black-and-berry flower of the Deep South
Spoon-fed with grits and segregation
And hanging trees and your shotgun imagination
Until your daddy shipped you
And your sister to Harlem
In the middle of World War II
‘cept no one told you
That the Harlem of Zora and Langston
Of jazz and jitterbuggers
Was also at war with
Colonizers with plastic skin
And blood-frozen hands
That Harlem for colored folks
Was an un-buried Harriet Tubman doll
from above the Underground Railroad
where Blacks and Puerto Ricans
wounded in the house of a friend
Back-slapped the flesh of the Apollo Theater
Like they on a porch in
Old San Juan or Old Charleston
Words became your best friend
Begat a Puerto Rican husband
Begat Sonia Sanchez
And your daughter Anita
New York City
Where James Baldwin
And Malcolm X
Were your revolutionary dance partners
As you played the number runners
And finger-pointed American history
In its ashen face
Civil Rights
Human Rights
Women’s Rights
The fire, right on time
Malcolm, down at the Audubon
Black Studies
San Francisco
Power-to-the-people rhythm and shoes
Made for marching
To the skin-beats
Of Motown
Of Stax
Of Sam Cooke and Aretha Franklin
Of The Black Arts Movement
A home coming of
super fly afros
tent-wide bell bottoms
and soul-trained symphonies
with tightened fists jabbing
and counterpunching
red-white-blues-song tomorrows
Miss Sonia Sanchez
You are magic
you were corn-rolled
where cowboys
are heavy-lidded gladiators
slow smoking the ghosts
of devil he-men
who took Martin Luther King away
don’t say your family gone
been gone
you been a momma now
Anita plus Mungu and Morani
a princess and two princes
don’t matter
you had to rock and climb
your ancestors’ cracked souls
to find yourself
between the lines of
blue poems
for we blues people
what matters
is that Black girls
chocolate-brown-redbone and true like you
make music with your
movements
before you even kiss
the universe hello
because
for months of Sundays
you are your late momma’s
greatest dream
you sit in a chair
next to your liberation list
and you ego trip
and draw
for-coloreds-lonely poetry
like Nikki Giovanni
and howl we a baddddd people
for months of Sundays
you are your momma’s
greatest dream
you sit in a chair
next to your liberation list
and you protest
and wait to exhale
slavery and four women like
Nina Simone
for months of Sundays
you are your momma’s
greatest dream
you sit in a chair
next to your liberation list
and cause blind rebels
to explode inside their heads
like Eartha Kitt and Megan Thee Stallion
and you say:
i am magic
i can do anything
i can moon-walk
my bare feet on fire
and taste sunrise
when others
cannot taste at all
i have many names
like woman or girl
dancer-warrior
stolen from herself
through african doors
of no return
i pen and paint
art at the bottom
of them boats
i braid escape
routes in my hair
while swallowing
a trumpet full of cotton
in them fields
i can sing
and i can dance
lawd knows i can sing
and i can dance
like your momma
Sister Sonia
Lena Jones Driver
Like Gwendolyn Brooks
Like Margaret Walker
Like Toni Morrison
Like June Jordan
Like Jayne Cortez
Like Ntozake Shange
Like Mari Evans
Like Maya Angelou
Like the way
Pearl Primus and
Katherine Dunham
sang with their bodies
reversing slave ships
with their fingers
burning plantations
with their elbows
un-knotting nooses
with their necks
lifting traumatized eyes
with their legs
and reviving
Sandra Bland
and Breonna Taylor
with their hips
because
Black women
Black girls
you, Miss Sonia Sanchez
so dope
you can
sing and dance
and sew and paint
and act and mime
and cook and spit
hymns for a nation
of billions
like Billie Holiday or Beyoncé
or the women
who taught you to
fly
as the little girl
who lost her mother
because that is
what Black women
do
teach each other to fly
with no wings and no money
and you understood right then and
there
that
art
poetry
learning
Black girl magic
be like
Cicely Tyson
Sarah Vaughan
Ella Fitzgerald
Lorraine Hansberry
Angela Davis
Ursula Rucker
Jill Scott
Lauryn Hill
Erykah Badu
Viola Davis
April Silver
Mahogany Browne
Amanda Gorman
Sheryl Lee Ralph
Quinta Brunson
Kamala Harris
be making a way out of no way
be Black women and Black girls
strutting under a soprano sky
even when your wings
are barely taped together
because
ain’t no humanly love like Philadelphia
no families
no communities
no possibilities
no church
no holy ghost
no get-out-the votes
if  y’all ain’t here
if y’all do not have
homegirls and hand grenades
sticking out your pocketbooks
if your house does not have lions
who say
re-sist
re-sist
re-sist
re-sist
re-sist
re-sist
re-sist
re-sist
reeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee-siiiiiiiiiiiist
resist racism
resist sexism
resist classism
resist able-ism
resist homophobia
resist transphobia
resist age-ism
resist Islamophobia
resist anti-Semitism
resist hurting yourself
resist hurting others
resist us men setting women on fire
resist us men setting each other on fire
resist us men setting the world on fire
resist us men not seeing women as human and equal
re-sist
re-sist
re-sist
like
Miss Sonia Sanchez been teaching us
because
she is magic
she can do anything
she can moon-walk
her bare feet on fire
and taste sunrise
when others
cannot taste at all

Monday, September 9, 2024

12:35am

Kevin Powell is a GRAMMY-nominated poet, filmmaker, activist, NEWSWEEK opinion writer, and author of 17 books, including his new poetry collection, A POEM FOR EVANGELINE, AND OTHER SONGS (Get Fresh Books Publishing). He is based in Brooklyn, New York.