Prose from Poetry Magazine
Originally Published: September 01, 2023From “lost in language & sound / a choreoessay”
(as lights come up…three actors are seated center stage writing in
journals…stage right, musicians are busy tuning up and making
notes…stage left, two dancers stretch and warm up )
VOICEOVER #1
O.K. Ms. Shange…yr level is set…are you ready?
ALL
yes
VOICEOVER #1
great…alright…standby .... in 5…4…3…2…1
VOICEOVER #2
good evening, listeners ..... thank you for tuning in to lend your
ears to WXLR .... we have a very special guest in the studio this
evening…poet, playwright, novelist, performance artiste & friend,
Ms. Ntozake Shange .... thank you, Ms. Shange, for stopping by to
share with us this evening…
ACTOR #3
thank you for having me…and please, stop with the Ms.Shange.
VOICEOVER #2
(laughs)
(laughs)
O.K.... Zake .... well that’s a great place to start…why don’t you share
your name.…Ntozake Shange…with our listeners. i understand that
was not yr birth name…how did you come to be Ntozake Shange?
ACTOR #2
unshackling myself from my slave name, i was blessed to be
renamed by two South African exiles in the early 70’s…
VOICEOVER #2
wow…O.K.... well, so much has been said in describing you…how
would Zake introduce Ntozake Shange?
(dancers begin to move, playing with a length of silk…winding
themselves/each other up in the cloth…cocooning themselves…
unraveling…interacting with actor #2 at intervals during
monologue…)
ACTOR #2
I cd say I am the ultimate conclusion of the allure of silk, the
shimmer and the breeze of silks. After all, my skin is silken, my
grandmother’s hands sheer as silk/ my mother’s cherry-blond hair
hard to picture without the capricious play of light changing her
thick mane of a coif moment to moment from golden to cerise, ash
blond to emboldened chestnut. These are but a few of the qualities of
silk that are my blood. my blood memory, my dreams./ Yet without
the extraordinary vision of Ferdinand and Isabela, ¹ Cristobal
Colon ² wd not have been charged with the mission to find an
alternate route to India, thence China, where silk was born. Colon,
Columbus, the adventure wd not have set foot on Santo Domingo
in search of the richesse of silks and gold, then synonymous in the
Old World, never suspecting sugar, tobacco, rice, and cotton wd
be as gold to silk; that Africans, wrapped in a tight ivory cocoon
of bondage we call slavery, wd inhabit these ‘Indies,”/ an indigo
damask demographic, fertile, furtive, hybrid, /glistening as silk/
does when the moon changes phase, as we do under a tropical sun./
Silken and foreign to these shores and to the thought, these are the
origins of my genealogical essence, my blood trail in the New World,
another Silk Road./ Though my earliest recollection of all that is
silk, all that swish soft fondling fabric conveys, are perfumed and
gliding over my eyebrows in the depths of my mother Ellie’s closet.
What shrouded my young head, braids and all, was the miracle of
the night, of conga drums, / claves and castanets, formal dinners,
chandeliers of translucent swirls of light dancing above the heads of
very important guests whose crepe, velvet, chiffon, and silk I’d bask
in under the dining table./ So like an ocean of unexpected sensation
were the skirt hems tickling my shoulders, sometimes I’d forget to
gaze at the ankles in silk stockings that lent ordinary brown and
bronze calves the magic of rose quartz, / moonstones, / tourmaline
sculpture, / a secret as as the next brush stroke of Sonia Delauney ³
or Raoul Dufy ⁴ turning silk painting to a landscape abstractly worn
by Parisian women adept at becoming art that cd walk./ While we
were in the New World far from St. Germain-de-Pres or Tours,
ignorant of the aroma and thick layers of medieval Venice, we drew
La Habana to us, as if the satin-bodiced and feathered brocatelle of
the mulatas at the Tropicana ⁵ were more than our senses cd bear,
enough to sate our sense of beauty and illicit treasures./ Were not
the seeds of white mulberry trees upon which the silkworm dined
contraband, smuggled, hidden dangerous cargo transported by the
foolish or foolhardy headstrong bent on wealth and stature? But
we needn’t concern ourselves with distant and ancient menace. The
flickering of home-style black-and-white movies after the flan, after
the cigars and cognac, bringing lampas-skinned brown beauties/
swinging from trees, swinging their hips was intimidating enough.
Surely, there was no one more beautiful than a woman in silk
smiling down at me from a gargantuan Cuban cypress tree, / while I
hid at the foot of the stairs waiting for the exception./ A velvet cape
with the same pearled pattern was strewn over her left shoulder
as she mysteriously moved down the winding staircase. I was
speechless, not because I’d been found out, but because I was sure I
was not to see my mother in such a state of ethereal sensuality in my
lifetime. I almost believed the glow on her face was a reflection of
the moon/flirting unabashed in front of my father./ My father who
was as smooth as silk, though not named “Silk” like so many others
of us. His muscular frame interacted with the world as something
precious to behold, beyond the possibility of an ordinary anything./
This couple slipping into a black Missouri night to hear the raw
silk voice of Tina Turner, / the velvet intonations of Gloria Lynne or
the heightened boucle of Maria Callas were mine. I came from this
phenomenon, as Toomer said “rare as November cotton flower.” ⁶
ACTOR #1
although i rarely read reviews of my work/ two comments were
repeated to me by “friends” for some reason/ & now that i am
writing abt my own work/ I am finally finding some use for the
appraisals of strangers. One new york critic had accused me of being
too self-conscious of being a writer/ the other from the midwest
had asserted that I waz so involved with the deconstruction of the
english language/ that my writing approached verbal gymnastics
like unto a reverse minstrel show. in reality, there is an element of
truth in both ideas/ but the lady who thought i waz self-conscious
of being a writer/ apparently waz never a blk child who knew that
blk children didn’t wear tiger skins n chase lions around trees n
then eat pancakes/ she waznt a blk child who spoke an english that
had evolved naturally/ only to hear a white man’s version of blk
speech that waz entirely made up & based on no linguistic system
besides the language of racism. the man who thought i wrote with
intentions of outdoing the white man in the acrobatic distortions
of english was absolutely correct. i cant count the number of times
i have viscerally wanted to attack deform n maim the language that
I waz taught to hate myself in/ the language that perpetuates the
notions that cause pain to every black child as s/he learns to speak
of the world and the “self ”. yes/ being an African-american writer
is something to be self-conscious abt/ & yes/ in order to think n
communicate/ i haveta fix my tool to my needs/ i have to take it
apart to the bone/ so that the malignancies/ fall away/ leaving us
space to literally create our own image.
_____
ACTOR #1
you almost got it/ you really did
‘born of the blood of struggle’ we all here/ even if we don’t
know it/ what if poetry isn’t enuf?
watchu gonna do then?
Paint?
Dance?
Put your backfield in motion & wait for james brown to fall
on his knees
like it’s too much for him/ what?
Too much for james?
Yeah/ didn’t you ever see the sweat from his brow/ a libation
of passion
make a semi-circle fronta his body/ a half-moon of exertion
washin’away any hope he had of/ ‘standin’it/ can’t stand it
& he falls to his knees and three jamesian niggahs in a
stroll
so sharp it hurts/
ACTOR #2
to bring him a cape that shines like the
northern
star/ shinin’I say like you imagined the grease in the part of
yr hair
or yr legs/ or yr mother’s face after rehearsal/ after she had you/
james falls to his knees cuz he cain’t take it’/ he’s pleadin’
BAND
‘please/ please/ please/ don’t go’
ACTOR #3
we look to see who brought james brown to the floor/
so weak/ we think/ so overwrought/ with the power of love
that’s why poetry is enuf/ eisa/ it brings us to our knees
& when we look up from our puddles of sweat/
the world’s still right there & the children still have bruises
tiny white satin caskets & their mothers weep like mary
shda
there is nothing more sacred than a glimpse of the universe
it brought james brown to his knees lil anthony too/ even
jackie wilson
arrogant pretty muthafuckah he was/ dropped/ no knee
pads in the face
of the might we have to contend with/ & sometimes young
boys bleed
to death face down or asphalt cuz fallin’ to they knees was
not cool/
was not the way to go/ it ain’t/ fallin’ to our knees is a public
admission
a great big ol’ scarlet letter that we cain’t/don’t wanna escape any
feelin’/ any sensation of bein’ alive can came right down on
us/
ACTOR #1
& yes my tears & sweat
may decorate the ground like a veve in haiti or a sand
drawing in melbourne/ but in the
swooning/ in the delirium/ of a felt life
ACTOR #2
can ya stand up, chile?
ACTOR #1
the point is not to fall down & get up dustin’ our bottoms/
I always hated when folks said that to me/ the point
virginia—eisa/ is you fall on your knees & let the joy of
survivin’
bring you to yr feet/ yr bottom’s not dirty/ didn’t even graze
the earth/
no it’s the stuff of livin’fully that makes the spirit of the poem
let you show yr face again & again & again
ACTOR #3
I usedta hide myself in jewelry or huge dark glasses
big hats long billowin’ skirts/’anything to protect me/ from
the gazes
somebody see i’d lived a lil bit/ felt somethin’ too terrible
for casual conversation
& all this was obvious from lookin’ in my eyes/ that’s why I
usedta read poem after poem
with my eyes shut/ quite a treat/ cept the memories take
over & leave
my tequila bodyguard in a corner somewhere out the way of
the pain
in my eyes that simply came through my body/ they say
my hands sculpt the air with words/ my face becomes the
visage of a
character’s voice/ I don’t know
ACTOR #2
I left my craft to chance & fear someone wd see I care too much
take me for a chump
laugh & go home-style
this is not what happened
is poetry enuf to man a picket line/ to answer phones at the
rape crisis center/ to shield women entering abortion clinics
from demons with
crosses & illiterate signs defiling the horizon at dawn/ to
keep our children
from believing that they can buy hope with a pair of
sneakers or another nasty
filter for a cheap glass pipe/ no/ no/ a million times no
ACTOR #1
but
poetry can bring those bleeding women & children outta
time
up close enuf for us to see/ feel ourselves there/ then the separations
what makes me/ me & you/ drops away & the truth that we
constantly
avoid/ shut our eyes/ hold our breath hopin’ we won’t be
found out/
surfaces darlin’/ & we are all everyone of those dark &
hurtin’ places/
those dry bloodied memories are no less ours than
themselvesmourni’/ yes
the mournin’ we may be honorable enuf to endure with our
eyes open/
the coroner cannot simply bring her hand gently down our
eyelids/ leavin’
us to silence.
ACTOR #2
can ya stand up, chile’?
ACTOR #3
Hands stretched out touch again
not so you can get up & conquer the world/
you did that when you cdn’t raise your head & yr body
trembled so/
you sacred yr mama/ that was when the poem took over &
gave you back
what you discovered you didn’t have to give up/
all that fullness of breath/ houdini in an emotional maze/
free at last
but nobody can see how you did it/ how’d she get out/
nobody’ll know less you tell em/
ACTOR #2
do you really wanna write/
from twenty thousand leagues under a stranger’s wailin’?
Can you move gracefully randomly thru the landmines that
are yr own angola/ hey you bosnia/ falujah?
Are you ashamed sometimes there’s no feelin’ you
can recognize in yr left leg? Does the bleeding you’ll do
anyway
offend you or can you make a scared drawing like ana
medieta that will
heal us all? Do I believe in magic?
ALL
(in frenzied action .... Freeze…look up in thought)
ZAKE
I still/ sweat when I write
¹ Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand of Spain, on whose behalf Christopher Columbus traveled to the Americas.
² The Spanish name for Christopher Columbus.
³ Sonia Delaunay (1885–1979) was a Jewish Ukrainian and French visual artist, one of the founders of Orphic Cubism, an early twentieth-century art movement that focused on producing images with bright colors and lyrical geometric abstraction.
⁴ Raoul Dufy (1877–1953) was a French “Fauvist” painter who used layered rich color and bold lines.
⁵ The Tropicana is a famous nightclub in Havana that opened in 1939.
⁶ This is a quotation from Jean Toomer’s 1923 Cane, a modernist, hybrid-genre Harlem Renaissance masterpiece depicting his life in Georgia.
From the book Sing a Black Girl’s Song: The Unpublished Work of Ntozake Shange by Ntozake Shange. Copyright © 2023 by the Ntozake Shange Revocable Trust. Reprinted by permission of Legacy Lit, an imprint of Grand Central Publishing, a division of Hachette Book Group, Inc., New York, NY. All rights reserved.
This piece is part of the portfolio “My Name Back to Me: Ntozake Shange” in the September 2023 issue.
Ntozake Shange was born Paulette Williams into an upper middle-class African American family. Her father was an Air Force surgeon and her mother a psychiatric social worker. Cultural icons such as Dizzie Gillepsie, Miles Davis, and W.E.B. DuBois were regular guests in the Williams home. Shange attended Barnard College and the University of Southern California, earning both a BA and MA in American …