dancing with anger

I wrote this in ’04 just before leaving for Africa. I was collecting books to donate to the university in Djibouti, and instead got a surprise from a jerk in my life. Went downstairs and told off the security guard earlier this evening…feel much better now:

“dancing with anger”

that fool sent me a book
on how to manage my anger
how to keep all my rage
from ruining his groove
he said, I was thinking about you
and saw this in a bookstore
all innocent and sweet
like I’m doing this for us

but there is no us
and never could be
because I am an angry black woman
aka
sapphire
pirate jenny
erzulie dantor

and this poem/rant was prompted
by a confluence of events but I could
write another on any given day
because I am an angry black woman
and that’s what we do

last week an elder bragged
about his olympian daughter
I asked what event
and he said she’s a sprinter
then quipped
you know black women
always running one or the other
their legs or their mouths

and I wondered why he thought
it was ok to say that to me
to us
two black women with phds
both over thirty whom he
nevertheless referred to as
girls

what makes that shit funny and
what makes me wrong for being pissed off

when a brother gets angry about being pulled
over for driving while black
no one tells him that he needs to
manage his anger
no one buys him a book
or holds it against him
for hating all cops
every brother has the right
to be angry at
the man
but my man thinks I’m
dysfunctional
because I’m angry about my own oppression
and I don’t hate brothers
(though sometimes they get on my nerves)
but I sure as hell don’t feel like smiling
when I’m hissed at in the street and men
I don’t know fondle every part of my being
with their liplicking cuntcursing tongues

and I don’t feel like giving a hug
to the brother on tv
arrested tonight for forcing two teenage girls
to whore for him out in queens
he beat and raped them himself in
between forcing the 13 year olds to
service fifteen men per night
(rev dr dyson says shame on ya heh heh)
I guess pimpin works better as a metaphor

and I don’t feel like laughing when I pick up usa
today and somewhere far from the front page
there’s a story about a brother who stabbed
his neurosurgeon wife “several dozen times”
before hurling himself out a ten-storey window
and hitting the pavement soaked in her blood

what I need is a book
that will show me how to
keep my girlfriend safe from the ex
who called her this weekend
and threatened to take her life
the cops say there’s nothing they can do
and she doesn’t even want to file a report
because that would just make him ANGRY

maybe HE needs a book
even more than I do
because I sure as hell didn’t set things up this way
and yes I am angry
but that rage keeps me from choking
on the tip of my own tongue
because my silence won’t protect me
and I don’t know who will

I’m a black woman in a world
that despises my femaleness
and patronizes my youth
and exoticizes my appearance
yet still expects me to SMILE
and be there for my man when he gets
passed over for promotion or
dropped from the team or
fired from a low-paying job
cause what do I know about oppression?

and seems everywhere I look
sisters are taking it lying down or
on the way back up a pole
even the ones who call themselves womanists
say you’ve got to let a man be a man
and the sisters who dared to speak the truth
are obsolete or
dead of cancer or
so far from the mic I can’t hear
what they’re whispering

and I’m tired of watching the same old scene
(a film classic, fully restored, now on dvd!)
nothing but a man my ass
that fool knocked abbey down and
she was carrying his child and
he never said sorry and
she never made him try and
in the end she took him back and
he decided to point his anger
where it actually belonged
(at the man)
and nobody blamed him
for hating crackers or
for plotting revolution or
for trying to make the world
a better place for his unborn child

but I have anger issues
father issues
low self-esteem
I’m a borderline manhating lesbian
out to castrate what balls men have left
my tongue clips like a razor
my legs open and close like shears
my arms slide around their necks like a noose
and I leave them swinging in the breeze
black woman/black widow
anansi ain’t got nothin on me

I am an angry black woman
a menace to straight brothers everywhere
but I am here to tell you that
I don’t need a good book
or a good fuck
or some armchair psychologizing
from a man who can’t hold that same mirror
up to himself

and yes I do eat sleep rant write live and
dance with anger
and if you don’t like it
shame on ya
my life
and the lives of the women I love
are worth more than your
manly pride

and I wonder what might happen
if the things that make me angry
made you angry too

– ZE
8/25/04
(published in The Ringing Ear: Black Poets Lean South, edited by Nikky Finney)