3 minute read
FEAT. POET | KEVIN POWELL
Featured PoetrySubmission
Kevin Powell is a poet, journalist, civil and human rights activist, filmmaker, and author of 14 books. His 15th book, from which this poem, "i am magic" is taken, will be published this Fall. His 16th book, a biography of Tupac Shakur, is coming in 2023. Kevin is a longtime resident of Brooklyn, BIO [New York.
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Kevin Powell
In honor of Women's History Month
i am magic (for Bridget L. Moore)
~By Kevin Powell
i am magic i can do anything i can moon-walk
my bare feet on fire and taste sunrise when others cannot taste at all i was born the year diane mcintyre un-buried freedom from below an ohio underground railroad and made new york her power-to-the-people dance partner i was given breath amidst super fly afros tent-wide bell bottoms and soul-trained symphonies with tightened fists jabbing and counterpunching red-white-blues-song tomorrows i was cornrolled where cowboys are dusty-eyed gladiators slow smoking the ghosts of devil he-men who took jfk away don’t matter my momma had me at 18 don’t matter my momma and me had to rock and climb our ancestors’ bloodied backs
to find ourselves what matters is that black girls chocolate-brown and true like me make music with our
movements before we even kiss the universe hello because for months of sundays i am my momma’s only child i sit in a chair
next to my imagination and i ego trip and draw for-coloreds-lonely poetry like nikki giovanni for months of sundays i am my momma’s only child i sit in a chair
next to my imagination and i protest and wait to exhale slavery and four women like nina simone for months of sundays i am my momma’s only child i sit in a chair
next to my imagination and cause blind rebels to explode inside their heads like eartha kitt
i am magic i can do anything i can moon-walk
my bare feet on fire and taste sunrise when others cannot taste at all i have no name like woman or girl dancer-warrior stolen from herself through african doors of no return i choreograph art at the bottom of them boats i braid escape routes in my hair while swallowing a trumpet full of cotton in them fields i can sing and i can dance lawd knows i can sing and i can dance like big momma like marilyn cox like “tootha” like wilma dews like linda hines like the way pearl primus and katherine dunham sang with their bodies reversing slave ships with their fingers burning plantations with their elbows un-knotting nooses with their necks lifting traumatized eyes with their legs and reviving sandra bland and breonna taylor with their hips because black women black girls so dope we can sing and dance and sew and paint and act and mime and cook and write rhythms for a nation of billions like janet jackson or the lady school janitor who taught me to dance
at age six because momma ain’t had no money for me to take dance classes i understood right then and there that
art dance learning black girl magic be like cicely tyson sarah vaughan ella fitzgerald
lorraine hansberry angela davis be making a way out of no way be black women and black girls strutting through the sky even when our wings are barely taped together because ain’t no love no families
no communities no possibilities no church no holy ghost no get-out-the votes if we ain’t here because
we are magic we can do anything we can moon-walk
our bare feet on fire and taste sunrise when others cannot taste at all
Thursday, May 13, 2021 7:11am
©2021 Kevin Powell
