Cheryll Y. Greene is longtime New York editor who has worked with all kinds of writers, taught writing and organized literary events. She has been executive editor of Essence Magazine and played leadership roles in major projects on Malcolm X and his times. Her life’s work has focused on history, arts and culture, women and social justice issues. Of this poem she said: “This piece was sparked during a wonderful 2008-09 Revson Fellowship at Columbia University. It laid dormant until the end of last year, when it demanded caring attention. I love photography, and that 1970 pitcture of myself just called out to me.” She is writing other memoir pieces inspired by family photographs.
That’s Cheryll with 2 ll’s Greene with an e on the end
August 1970
I sit in San Francisco
wearing purpleSmoking
Feeling free to be
YoungGifted and Black
Afro-ed
(despite Mom’s disgust)Hugging the future
I have come from
somewhere else
a convert
from
white supremacy
in search of
a new landand I have
found itAll is possible
Love passion justice
PaybackAngela’s still in hiding
They’re tracking her
on streets I walkMississippi Detroit
Cape Coast Oakland
Chained
Hunted
Harriet
Malcolm
MartinThe dead ones
are speaking to meThey
assail me
from the bone bed of
the AtlanticI hear them
I want
Henry Dumas’s
Afro horn
to pulverize our enemiesI want to tear down
this blood-soaked
empire
and build up
a sun-drenched
place for us allI want to
love that man
and still be
Cheryllwith 2 ll’s
He is blind
to the difference
between 1 and 2 ll’s
and I can’t tell
if I want
him to
see itImmersed
in the delights of
drowning
in love
I balk
straining
for breath
against the
expected
demands of
couplingAs Aretha’s R-e-s-p-e-c-t
spars with those
My-man-he-don’t-love-me
bluesTrane and Monk
play duets in my heart
and soothe the confusion
though not
the fear of
suffocating in
those deep watersI sang jazz
in another life
a tough broad
hung with Billie
in Harlem
and danced all nightWhat could be
better than
Ernest Byrd singing
smooth falsetto in my ear
in this life
as we slow-dragged
across the red-lit
basement floor
in junior high?Imagining
full-grown
pleasureIgnoring discomfort
in all the realms
too tall till then
mouth full of
metal braces
too smart
reads too much
too bloody
(my bad periods
coursing through
pads
and pants
onto the kitchen floor
shocking
my little brother)In 8th grade
they called me
Frenchie
but I still didn’t
fit inI had survived
braces
silly short boys
mute shyness
culture shock
among the unruly 4th graders
at PS 36
when we moved from
the magical sidewalks
of Bed-Stuy
to the boring backyards
of Jamaica
in the Negro version of
upward mobilityAn I in waiting
taught to please others
numb to roiling lonelinessblooming when
that darkskinned doowop
claimed me—
Ooo wee!Now
a grown
woman
testing
freedom
I shake shake shake
my mini-skirted
booootyDancing in the streets
with signs and shouts
hope
and furyEntranced
Captivated
by music and history
and Blacknessby Revolution
Certain of
the newness
of the land
we are
remaking.But the landscape
disappears in a
whiplash turn
it seemsIs that us?
gagging on
greed
shoulder pads
beggars
jheri curlsthe Reagan 8 Bush 4
AIDS agonies
crack’s obscenitiesTryin’ times
Roberta had warned usI push out a 9 lb boychild
when that man’s out of sighttaken my love and gone
we spelled
the names
all wrongme and that big-head boy
create some joyous music
on Convent Ave
some discordant
peppery tunes
on upper RSD
as he gasps past asthma
allergies
and sullen
Black boy bluesI war
for him
and usin hospitals
(soon to be
my turn)
with landlords
and schoolboards
scared
uncertain
resolvedoverburdened
at workplaces
on committees
taking it
to the streets
to Free Mandela!
and ourselvesburrowing
to get lost
in warm
and misunderstood
embracesIn soulless times
this mother and child
trudge througheach journeying
seeking balm from
some time or place
just out of reachAll around us
a waning empire
lulled into
delusions of
perpetually smooth excessI have become
middle aged
plump
hiding in
big loose clothes
my body
sending me signals
I no longer
understand
unmooring me
from familiar
territoryI turn away
smooth
inviting
caresses
feel ugly
and sadI try red hair
The Artist’s Way
discover my boy
has dropped LSD
has ADD
smokes cigarettes
credits his father
for his love of
musica child of these times
creating
his own kind of memoriesI war
for a
sense of
firm groundThe Clinton 8 Bush 8
soil
the planet
all around usDisrupted
South Centrals and NewArks
mired in
the stench of
corrupted hope
spew out jail-dressed
prison-bound
childrendancing to a beat turned
mean and furious
without melodyWe fight our way
back to
light
and airchastened
hollowed outexhausted
by the uglinessYet
the strong ones do keep comin’
(Sterling Brown sang)
and I listen for themBut cancer has come
for me
back then and then againI have been
chastened
and hollowed outtaught fragility
once:
younger
tamping down
terror
I willed recovery
to ensure
my child
his mothertwice:
stunned
dislocated
15 years laterI live
with endless doubtmy flesh sliced
bone
and tissue
incised
my
2 ll’s
now
scarsbelly
and
backI am
pushed
implacably
to learn
patience
for my
every part
and actNow here I am
Mom & Dad just gone
Brother and I bereft orphans
at this late age
struggling to comprehend
those empty spacessitting in Harlem
as my ground
and
the American earth
shift
againNovember 5 2008
(a harbinger?)salt-and-pepper afro
cut clean
to scalp
a still-warrior
woman
mustering
my battered
body and soulRefashioning
fear and outrage
to forge community
for everyday small acts
and big daring momentsWresting from the bone bed
a love-filled lifeI hear
the music
and the words
still speaking
for us
and the dead onesI see
the young woman
in purple
her cigarette
long since
extinguishedreaching out
and I take her hand.
Beautifully profound.
Cheryll, I was so moved by your poem. Your imagery of our youth prison-bound is so clear that I flashed to images seen daily on our streets of nyc. Oh, if only there was a blueprint to stop this madness. Thank you for your provocative words.
Thank you, Women’s Voices for Change, for sharing my work with your cyberworld. And I’m sending my deep appreciation to the readers who’ve posted and sent me their comments. –Cheryll
Thanks for a grown up woman poem!!! For sharing the light and the dark of your life. I am in awe that you squeeze like four decades in this one poem. I love it!
Cheryll, Your words are poignant and piercing embracing as they mirror all of our trials and tribulations in sharing yours. You say it so well.
Cheryl, thank you for sharing in such an elegant,eloquent, intimate and honest fashion. I am sending this on quickly, as balm for those of us who could use something of your brand. I so love the image you end with….Martha Mae.
Cheryll,
I’m so proud of you baby. You brought tears to me today. Thank you for going there and taking me and coming back. You still amaze me.
Love you,
Lex.
Wow. Breath taking/giving piece. Thanks so much for the
reflections and reminders, much needed and deeply appreciated.
Cheryll,
The words that paint the picture of warrior past and make visible these painful and poignant memories of loss and suffering that you describe are leading you to the place of transition and transformatiom, once again. Your words will stay with me forever.
Patricia Yarberry Allen
Loved it, the propulsive, historical intensity captured what it means to be a woman alive now and to have lived through, made, and believed so in social change.