Tara Stringfellow

my ex-husband  

loved me but in white  
i spoke only negro 
meaning i did not know fairy tale 
saw it in movies, yes, but saw my daddy  
spit on in a park in chicago 
grimms negated 
 
i can't speak white  
though i tried lord knows  
pressed brown hands to pale fingers 
in some sign language morse code 
palms screaming 
dontchu remember africa?  
why you treat your sistah? 
 
forgive me 
my granddaddy was strung up  
on a poplar on poplar avenue in memphis 
hanging there for weeks  
all cause he applied for the police academy... 
 
my love, i should've warned: 
a black woman is no picnic

---

hot combs catfish crumbs and bad men 

lent she'd send us out  
come back with a basketful she'd call 
my sister and i caught black tadpoles 
with dark hands thrust into warm bogs  
seeking, unafraid 
 
my mother bent over cast iron skillet 
read entrails in the hot oil 
men will fail you more than the Lord 
she swung a rosary over the stove 
in a pendulum swinging north 
 
my sister collected hair thick as a nest 
from all the old combs in the house  
buried it deep in red clay  
daddy will come back she chanted 
 
God can stay asleep 
these women in my life are magic enuff

---

in your life

i was eight when my mother filled with rage and jameson
crunched a love letter she found from my father's secretary in his suit pocket
and came at me screaming, lustful even in her delirium,
holding the pulp of paper like a warm heart in her hand
and through tears screamed dontchueva—held up the pulsing letter--
dothis toanuthawoman eva inyolife
 
she stumbled away defeated as job lost as joseph and left me for more liquor
 
i was thirty when i left my husband to be with no one in particular
which is much worse my mother screamed for the life of her
she could not understand why God bid her raise a selfish child
 
don’t pay mom no mind my sister says
sometimes you need a sister like a sailor needs a compass
 
mom prolly still achin over daddy
aren’t we all i ask

---

only read from exodus 

we've cradled enuff bodies of men we love
bleeding out onto uncaring streets
learned to roll my hair with funeral programs
climbed into sheets that may shroud my children 
black rituals. emmit till was my peter rabbit.
my mama only read from exodus
I am the Lord thy God, which have brought thee
out of the land of Egypt, out of slavery 

i wonder what most egyptians thought
when the jews cried with locusts and plagues
and blood that their lives mattered 
my father pulls from a Kool not a damn thing he exhales  

backing out the drive my mama comes running gasping
you'll need this she says unfolds one long pearl rosary 




--
Tara Stringfellow is a poet and an attorney living in Chicago, originally from Memphis, Tennessee and Okinawa, Japan. Third World Press published her first collection of poetry entitled More than Dancing in 2008. Her poems have appeared, or are forthcoming, in Transitions Magazine, Apogee Journal, decomp: a literary magazine, Voice and Vision: An African American Literary Magazine, and North by Northwestern. Currently, the author is an MFA Candidate for both poetry and prose at Northwestern University.