36. [submitted]
Napoléon writing
Je suis pour les blancs, parce que je suis blanc,
I'm for the whites, because I'm white and
Liberté des noirs signifie l'esclavage des blancs,
Freeing blacks means slavery for whites is as blind
to L'Ouverture's ideals as Toussaint was to Bonaparte's misanthropy.
Before the French attacked Crête-à-Pierrot, Dessalines opened the gates
for those who don't feel brave enough to die. One who stayed—
white as a white
but with black blood in his veins, Toussaint said—was your ancestral namesake
Lamartinière. My skin's the same hue as his but you lump me with
Bonaparte, blind to ebony traitors and faithful whites equally.
Tom! You want me to be what I do not want to be. You want me to
join the papiyon
in flight and spit on God's cheeks for what He has done.
You want me to be part of your so-called liberation when you are
already more free than I am. What I am looking for is simply
contentment. No more?
Non, pa pli! I have no hunger for ecstasy—
which incidentally is what you find so agreeable about me!
It's not the blood that is or isn't in your veins, but that you want more
of it to be evident and I want less. This is your greediness.Don't play the country girl! Who do you think you're fooling?
Oh, I'm Haitian!
All that bloodshed in my heritage has left me traumatized! Bullshit!
Do you think my people fled Shangri-La because it was too quiet?
You and I are the same except that you're fleeing from difficulties
you anticipate and I from trouble I've ignored too long. Don't I want to be
content too? Doesn't your lip curl in an unforgettable way when
your pleasures edge you towards orgasm? What's scaring you is not excitement
but living outside of convention.
Oh, he's a married man! He's white.But you're already outside the hut, Martine, why go crawling back in?
Tradition's a thing to master, I don't find it suffocating me
like you do! What fills the world with blood? Neglijans nan bon konpòtman.
Martine, get a grip!
Fills the world with blood? We're eating Sabrett's hotdogs!
37. [revision in Workshop]
“Don't degrade your mind,” my tiny literature professor began—
“a free, independent entity desperately fighting enslavement
by agendas not its own. Don't require it to slog through boring tasks,
including the books I assign. All art is the pursuit of liberty.”
In 4th grade Miss Linder asked me to memorize and then to recite
“Johnny Fife and Johnny's Wife,” and I did, and swore a pact with my mind:
it promised to remember everything of interest, and I promised
never to memorize anything artificially again. High school
went well, except for grades. Then one day in 4th year a great teacher
asked us to memorize ten lines of some long poem, I forget which one.
I didn't want to just say no, and I looked at the lines and wondered
if they weren't interesting enough to just stick on their own merits.
Needless to say, they weren't. I don't have that kind of memory.
But I fixed them anyway. It was no big deal. What was a big deal
was that I could no longer remember every fascinating thing.
The tiny lit professor sort of clued me in to what had happened.
38. [in Workshop]
Leaf and limb lopped off
again,
again,
you send up every little shoot
you can
in a raw test of wills
you'll win.
How many reaching-outs do
I have left?
Cut me, I quit.
I won’t keep getting up
and getting hit.
But you're as tough
as tungsten iron,
inch-thick trunk
bunkers underground
far more concerned
with self-perpetuation
and preponderance
than
pleasure or honor.
To your minute
lime green ears—
peppering a grass
thin and sick as
syphilitic hair—
too artless
to eavesdrop any
secrets beyond
the ticking of pavement ants,
let me confide
something
before I
snip you off and leave you
strangling in air:
the reason
I'm out here
with these blades
has more to do
with estrangement than landscape.
Fingers bitter with your injuries,
when I
go in for lunch
and wave
my pruners Hi,
my wife stops a knife
mid-air
and cocks an eye at me
as if to say
So much
for half an hour’s peace.
I don’t know how we know,
but we do.
This sunny late April noon
is our last chance.
She places
her knife down
on the board.
I don’t hurry to the sink
to wash my hands.
Quitting
is as seductive as anything
I know.
She just won't, though.
39. [revision in Workshop]
What happens to the fearless children—all hit by trucks, as my father
used to say? Forced underground, as another conventional wisdom
has it—brooding and strengthening themselves like cicadas on the sap
of tiny root tips while awaiting a
Go to overrun the Earth?
Or do they leave—after having a look around, trading their human
forms instant by instant for some next steppingstone on their gad to God
knows where? If so, then who are they that assume their shapes in increments
and will eventually adopt the mantles of adults? Is the child's
infinitesimally gradual transmigration osmotic—one
breath of courage floats free, merely exchanged for inert ambient air?
Or is there another kind of child who waits there timidly to take
the brash one's place and tries their hand at bronc-riding an unhappy husk?
Whichever, wherever, whoever, however you are—and I am—
I want you to know you are welcome here with me for the duration.
Tell me to fuck myself, to stick my nagging right back up my ass—or
curry smiles and look to me for everything the whole eight seconds.
Son.40. [submitted]
"While I was a slave, if one minute's freedom had been offered to me,
and I had been told I must die at the end of that minute, I would
have taken it," Mum Bett declared. "I heard that paper read yesterday —
it says all men are born equal and have a right to freedom. I'm not
a dumb critter. You call me wench and nigger — yet you and your fellows
are no better than I thought you.
It was in May — just about at the time
of the apple blossoms. I was wetting the linen that was bleaching —
when a smallish girl came into the gate and up the lane and straight to me
and asked me without raising her eyes 'Where is the Judge your master?
I must speak with him.' I told her my master was absent and would not
come home before night. 'Then I must stay,' she said, 'for I must speak with him.'
I set down my watering-pot and told her to come into the house.
I saw it was no common case – girls in trouble were often coming
to Master but I never saw one look like this. The blood in her veins
seemed to have stopped — her face and neck were all in blotches of red and white —
her lip was bitten through — her voice was hoarse and husky — and her eye lids
seemed to settle down as if she could never raise them again.
I showed
her into a bedroom next the kitchen and shut the door, hoping
Madam would not mistrust it — for she never overlooked anyone's
wrong-doing but her own, and she had a partic'lar hatred of girls
that had met with a misfortune – she could not abide them. But she saw
me bring the girl in — it was just her luck — she always saw every thing —
I heard Madam coming and I threw open the bedroom door. Being
that I could not no way hide the poor child — she was not over fifteen —
I determined to stand by her.
As soon as Madam had got in full sight
of the child, her eyes flashed like a cat's in the dark, and she asked me what
that baggage wanted. 'To speak to Master.' 'What does she want to say to
your Master?' 'I don't know Ma'am.' 'I know,' she said — and there was no foul thing
she did not call the child. When she had got to the end of her bad words
she ordered the girl to leave, who then raised up her eyes for the first time —
she had not seemed to hear a word before — she did not speak — did not sigh,
nor sob, nor groan — but a sharp sound seemed to come right out of her young heart –
it was heart-breaking to hear it! 'Set still, child,' I said.
At that, Madam's
temper rose like a thunder storm — she said the house was hers and again
ordered the girl out of it. 'Set still, child,' says I again. 'She shall go,'
says Madam. 'No, Ma'am, she shan't,' says I — "if she has a complaint to make,
she has a right to see Master, who is the Judge — that's lawful and stands
to reason besides.' When dinner-time came, I offered the child a part
of mine but she said I had no right to take Madam's food and give it
to her, and I did not — but — poor little creature — she could not no more
eat than if she were a corpse. She tried when I begged her, but she could not.
Master came home at Evening. I got speech of him as he was getting
off his horse and told him a poor afflicted gal had been long waiting
to speak to him. He bid me bring her in to him after his supper.
I knew Madam would berate her to him — but that did not signify
to Master – he always went straight forward to do the right. When he sent
word he was ready, I took a lighted candle in each hand and told
the child to follow me. She did not seem frightened — she was just as she
was in the Morning — except that the red blotches had gone and she was
all one dreadful paleness, waxy white.
We went to the study. Master
was sitting in his high-backed chair before his desk. Master could not scare
anybody — he looked like an angel that pities – not like a judge
that condemns. I set down the candles, walked back to the wall and stood there —
I knew Master had no objections — Master and I understood one
another. 'Come hither,' says he. The girl walked up to the desk. 'What is
your name?' 'Tamor Graham.' 'Take off your bonnet, Tamor.'
She did take it off.
Her hair was brown — a pretty brown and curly, but all in a tangle.
Master looked at her — the tears started from her eyes, and she quietly
wiped them away with the back of her hand. She was not given to tears.
They were not her demonstration. If ever was a pitiful look,
it was the look then on Master's face. 'Hold up your hand Tamor,' he said,
"and swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help
you God!' She did. 'Sit down now, child,' he said and drew a chair up himself.
She fell into the chair and clasped her hands tight together – then burst out
like a little child and cried and cried and wrung her hands.
'Why did you not
complain before?' Master asked. 'Did you realize, child, that if your father
is taken up and convicted on your oath, he must die for the crime?'
'Yes sir, I know it.'
He was an awful looking man. He had close cropped
grey hair, and when I led Tamor in, it rose and every hair stood stiff
on his head. I've seen awful sights in my day, but nothing near to that."
[drawn from the "Mumbett" manuscript draft by Catharine Maria Sedgwick, 1853
http://www.masshist.org/database/img-viewer.php?item_id=547&mode=transcript&img_step=19&tpc=&pid=#page19]
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