Need: A Chorale for Black Woman Voices

         For Patricia Cowan* and Bobbie Jean Graham† 
         and the hundreds of other mangled Black Women 
         whose nightmares inform these words.

         tattle tale tit.
         your tongue will be slit
         and every little boy in town
         shall have a little bit.
                      —Nursery rhyme

I

(Poet)
This woman is Black
so her blood is shed into silence
this woman is Black
so her blood falls to earth
like the droppings of birds
to be washed away with silence and rain.

(Pat)
For a long time after the baby came
I didn't go out at all
and it got to be pretty lonely.
Then Bubba started asking about his father
made me feel
like connecting to the blood again
maybe I'd meet someone
we could move on together
help make the dream real.
An ad in the paper said
     "Black actress needed
     to audition in a play by Black Playwright."
I was anxious to get back to work
and this was a good place to start
so Monday afternoon
on the way home from school with Bubba
I answered the ad.

In the middle of the second act
he put a hammer through my head.

(Bobbie)
If you're hit in the middle of Broadway
by a ten-ton truck
your caved-in chest bears the mark of a tire
and your liver pops like a rubber ball.
If you're knocked down by a boulder
from a poorly graded hill
your dying is stamped with the print of rock.

But when your boyfriend methodically
beats you to death
in the alley behind your apartment
while your neighbors pull down their window shades
because they don't want to get involved
the police call it a crime of "passion"
not a crime of hatred.

Yet I still died
of a lacerated liver
and a man's heelprint
upon my chest.

II

(Poet)
Dead Black women haunt the black maled streets
paying our cities' secret and familiar tithe of blood
burn blood     beat blood     cut blood
seven-year-old-child rape-victim     blood
of a sodomized grandmother     blood
on the hands of my brother
as women we were meant to bleed
but not this useless blood
each month a memorial
to my unspoken sisters     fallen
red drops upon asphalt.

(All)
We were not meant to bleed
a symbol for no one's redemption
Is it our blood
that keeps these cities fertile?

(Poet)
I do not even know all their names.
Black women's deaths are not noteworthy
not threatening or glamorous enough
to decorate the evening news
not important enough to be fossilized
between right-to-life pickets
and a march against gun-control
we are refuse in this city's war
with no medals     no exchange of prisoners
no packages from home     no time off
for good behavior
no victories. No victors.

(Bobbie)
How can I build a nation
afraid to walk out into moonlight
lest I lose my power
afraid to speak out
lest my tongue be slit
my ribs kicked in
by a brawny acquaintance
my liver bleeding life onto the stone.

(All)
How many other deaths
do we live through daily
pretending
we are alive?

III

(Pat)
What terror embroidered my face
onto your hatred
what unchallenged enemy
took on my sweet brown flesh
within your eyes
came armed against you
with only my laughter     my hopeful art
my hair catching the late sunlight
my small son eager to see his mama work?
On this front page
My blood stiffens in the cracks of your fingers
raised to wipe a half-smile from your lips.
Beside you a white policeman
bends over my bleeding son
decaying into my brother
who stalked me with a singing hammer.

I need you. For what?
Was there no better place
to dig for your manhood
except in my woman's bone?

(Bobbie)
And what do you need me for, brother,
to move for you     feel for you     die for you?
We have a grave need for each other
but your eyes are thirsty
for vengeance
dressed in the easiest blood
and I am closest.

(Pat)
When you opened my head with your hammer
did the boogie stop in your brain
the beat go on
did terror run out of you like curdled fury
a half-smile upon your lips?
And did your manhood lay in my skull
like a netted fish
or did it spill out like milk or blood
or impotent fury off the tips of your fingers
as your sledgehammer clove my bone
to let the light out
did you touch it as it flew away?

(Bobbie)
Borrowed hymns veil a misplaced hatred
saying you need me     you need me     you need me
a broken drum
calling me Black goddess     Black hope     Black
strength     Black mother
yet you touch me
and I die in the alleys of Boston
my stomach stomped through the small of my back
my hammered-in skull in Detroit
a ceremonial knife
through my grandmother's used vagina
the burned body hacked to convenience
in a vacant lot
I lie in midnight blood like a rebel city
bombed into submission
while our enemies still sit in power
and judgment
over us all.

(Bobbie & Pat)
Do you need me submitting to terror     at nightfall
to chop into bits and stuff warm into plastic bags
near the neck of the Harlem River
they found me     eight months swollen
with your need
do you need me to rape in my seventh year
bloody semen in the corners of my childish mouth
as you accuse me of being seductive.

(All)
Do you need me imprinting upon our children
the destruction our enemies print upon you
like a Mack truck or an avalanche
destroying us both
carrying their hatred back home
you relearn my value
in an enemy coin.

IV

(Poet)
I am wary of need that tastes like destruction.

(All)
I am wary of need
that tastes like destruction.

(Poet)
Who learns to love me
from the mouth of my enemies
walks the edge of my world
a phantom in a crimson cloak
and the dreambooks speak of money
but my eyes say death.

The simplest part of this poem
is the truth in each one of us
to which it is speaking.

How much of this truth can I bear
to see
and still live
unblinded?
How much of this pain can I use?

"We cannot live without our lives."

(All)
"We cannot live
without our lives."**

*Patricia Cowan, 21, bludgeoned to death in Detroit, 1978.
†Bobbie Jean Graham, 34, beaten to death in Boston, 1979. One of twelve Black women murdered within a three-month period in that city.

**From a poem by Barbara Deming.