| "Epistolary Dream Poem After Finding a Schoolbook Map," the last poem in "Teeth," a collection of poetry by Aracelis Girmay, speaks of the multitude carried on the shoulder of one sojourner. "Re-discovering a fold-out map from an old geography book, the sojourner/ poet/narrator (re)traces the departure from Mexico of her granddaddy, Francisco Vargas who stops in Georgia where his "Dumas-Davis woman," "tall & wide as a mountain" is found. They take a train to Chicago where later "their six long babies" bloom. In Puerto Rico, another granddaddy journeys to California, falls in love with "La Santa Barbara" who "could dance / sweet & strong as azucena" and who could "make / a red dress look holy at Sunday Mass ..." Beyond the Americas, "my people come from Eritrea, mountains / tumble into valleys, desert, sea. See / how it swells & how it booms ..." We are everywhere and somewhere in particular all at once. We are a multitude, now. Thus, Girmay, born in Santa Ana, California, recalls a "Santa Ana of Cambodia, Viet Nam, Aztlan ... ... Santa Ana of polka-dots, chicharonnes, Aztecs, African Fields' colombianas, sun's children ... My people come from Eritrea, mountains / tumble into valleys, desert, sea. See / how it swells & how it booms to bring forth "sun's children" in Iraq. From Africa, to Central America,, to North America to Iraq, the sojourner/poet narrator's identification and commitment to the oppressed will not allow her to consider the Iraqi people "the enemy." The first poem, "Arroz Poetica," speaks of the suffering, the dying, and the death of the familiar. Her "enemies" are not those "hungry" or "standing in lines / for food, or stretching rations / or waiting at the airports to claim the pieces / of the bodies of their dead." They are not tied up in pens in Guantanamo Bay. They are not young children throwing rocks. My "enemies eat meats & vegetables at tables/ in white houses where candles blaze, cast shadows of crosses, & flowers./ They are not enemies. They are "Hassna Ali Sabah," "Ibrahim Al-Yussuf," and the "sons of Sa'id Shahish," names she will not forget, for she will not forget to try to open everyone of her "windows," always calling their names. ... it is your name I am calling /your thousand, thousand names your million names. * Every time I breathe, I am going somewhere. Through the window. Out the door. I am going somewhere seemingly far -- yet somewhere at once different but familiar. There's a multitude of others, close by my window, where I stand. I am reminded, too, of ancestors and of the personal and collective heritage, the secret of our survival. Our ancestors, Toni Morrison reminds us, hold the secret and, when we recall them, they "provide a certain kind of wisdom." The process of recollection is essential for the poet/writer who recognizes in the "timeless people" a "benevolent, instructive, and protective" relationship with her characters. And Girmay: "I pray for this to be my way: sweet / work alluded to in the body's position to its paper." In Teeth, Girmay conjures as a right, as a political necessity -- to remember: " ... have you heard the story of the cane field woman / cutting cane? how her hands burst into two red birds?" Or here, in "What Brang Me Here": ...Fine Beth in the kitchen at home. She don't know I'm hanging here Like fruit from a tree ... God said, 'Drink the water.' & I just drink the water. As a profound performance of conjuring and as a defiant reclamation of historical and cultural ancestry, Girmay (who has Eritrean, Puerto Rican, and African American heritage) called upon the spirit of Gwendolyn Brooks, on August 7, 2007, at Rainbow Books. Collectively, ancestor and poet spoke in one voice about the forgotten Black children among us who, before they die without ever learning the secret, cry out not only to "Father" but to "Mother" to "Sister" and to "Brother,"too. When Girmay spoke to me by phone, she said "it is interesting to be a Black person!" Yeah! Martin Espada wrote in the Introduction of Teeth that Blacks were among "the most humiliated and violated people on earth." "I want to get those words off of us," Girmay said. She is "attuned to the nuances" of Black people and others who are oppressed, for there is joy in their willingness to resistance in every day life. "Teeth" is the work to rediscover connections of resistance despite the odds. We garner from our ancestors the wisdom, the knowledge of our specialness. We fall but we rise still in the memory of the "horn of Miles or the soul of Aretha," the "poetry of Langston", the "rap of Tupac," and the "caged roar of Huey," writes Larry Pinkney. I would add to this list the poetry of "Teeth," a window close by, speaking through the "humiliated" and "violated" with joy! |
| Voices/Dr. Jean Daniels Aracelis Girmay's Poetry: Rediscovering the past |
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