…to write a poem. By Jessica. Because she is.

Spit on the mic
by t.tara turk

This is a poem about a poem
It is a poem about a poem that started off at the bottom of haggard but loved feet that traveled miles
That carried water
Brought meals to children
Ran from kidnappers
Tried to carry itself up through a drum and escape a red tragedy yet to come
And then waves rushed up and carried this poem through murky dark water
Sickness and coughing
Tried to interrupt lost languages clattering underneath leather boots and grimy fingers
It arrived on a shore of green and cold
Split its back by trying to revolt
Disguised itself as it slid through fields to big houses and back
Danced around pots of weeds made savory
Suckled from breasts to newborn mouthes
Ran
Died
Ran again
Died again
Made way to more cold, more green, further up
Mirrored out of necessity a culture it could not understand
So changed that culture and made soul
It sweated on dance floors, jitterbugs not crawling but jumping high to ceilings and landing back down
Trying to forget the fifteen cents that will make a difference
Not drinking pretty water
But water nonetheless
Gathering in salons and oratated outwards but also crawling along fruit carts with the same ease
Can cut and conk
But will eventually blow up in Alabama with four little girls
And then come pouring out of a John Coltrane horn
Sweating and jonesing with Miles, Bird, Coltrane, Lady Day….
And clinging to Mahalia
It wondered into the mind of Lorraine one day as she smoked a cigarette in Central Park, watching white kids play and staring at a plant
That would belong to Mama, whether she bought her house or not
Because everyone watches what happens to raisins in the sun
You can’t turn away
This poem was black enough for deadly hoses
But white enough to let Jimi feel himself outside of the boom chick boom
And see blackness even in the rock guitar on fire
It made James split
Elvis wish
Ntozake push out suicide as an option, along with purple feathers, fried fish and a creole dialogue
That made Africa, Latin-a and America come together on one tongue
Rolled in many hips
It curled itself around the turntable needed and scratched itself, squeezed itself into colored Levi’s
Rocked Lottos and nameplates
Curved around a foodstamp and carried it to the club in one syllable
It made poor know fur
It made ignorant find dictionaries to rhyme
It made ugly beautiful once it taught us how to draw a picture
With a word.
It is a poem that changes its name through centuries, is argued by elders who think they own it with youngsters who know they will change it
But youngsters will become elders
They just don’t know yet
But this poem knows. This poem knows that it will ride the wave of death and be present and millions of births of humans and things
It will be the only beat that could move a crowd
Or the one that will silence it
The only real evidence,
A spit on the mic
This poem is us.