The Glory Gets. Honorée Fanonne Jeffers

      

       the glory gets

      WESLEYAN POETRY

       the glory gets

      HONORÉE FANONNE JEFFERS

      Wesleyan University Press | Middletown, Connecticut

      Wesleyan University Press

      Middletown CT 06459

       www.wesleyan.edu/wespress

      © 2015 Honorée Fanonne Jeffers

      All rights reserved

      Manufactured in the United States of America

      Designed by Mindy Basinger Hill

      Typeset in Calluna

      Wesleyan University Press is a member of the Green Press Initiative. The paper used in this book meets their minimum requirement for recycled paper.

      Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

      [Poetry. Selections]

      The glory gets / Honorée Fanonne Jeffers.

      pages cm. — (Wesleyan Poetry series)

      Includes bibliographical references.

      ISBN 978-0-8195-7542-5 (cloth: alk. paper) —

      ISBN 978-0-8195-7543-2 (ebook)

      I. Title.

      PS3560.E365A6 2015

      811'54—dc23 2014043920

      This project is supported in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts.

      5 4 3 2 1

      Cover illustrations: Woman: If I stand in my window, by upfromsumdirt. Swirled fabric pattern © Ka2shka | Dreamstime.com.

      FOR MISS LUCILLE

       Out in the open wisdom calls aloud,

       she raises her voice in the public square …

      PROVERBS 1:20

      CONTENTS

       fear

       Singing Counter 3

       Draft of an Ex-Colored Letter Sent Home from the Post-Race War Front 6

       I End the Winter 7

       Apologia for Something 8

       My Father as Walter Lee Younger 9

       Try to Hide 11

       beauty

       Mammy Know 15

       Portrait D’une Négresse 17

       Light 19

       blues

       Magdalene Brings 27

       Magdalene Begins to See Jesus 28

       What Jesus Said to Magdalene at Their Last Meal 29

       Magdalene’s Wait 31

       Magdalene on the Third Day 32

       hoodoo

       Memory of a Vision of Marie Laveau, the Voodoo Queen of New Orleans (1996) 35

       Memory of an Ancestral Vision (2006) 36

       Angry Black Woman in Root Worker Drag 37

       After, We’ll Read the Bible 39

       Job to His Daughter Jemima 40

       [Faith is a virgin wrist] 41

       [Today You spoke to me] 42

       [Before I came to You] 43

       [And how does God come] 44

       [There is only] 45

       [I recall four words] 46

       [There is some blessedness] 47

       wit

       The Glory Gets 51

       Female Surgery 52

       My 4:15pm Shrink’s Appointment on Thursday 54

       Memory of One Day in a Kitchen 56

       Birthright 58

       Patience 59

       If Free, Then 61

       Notes 65

       Gratitude 67

       Publication Acknowledgments and Credits 69

       fear

SINGING COUNTER

       after Hayes and Mary Turner, Valdosta, Georgia, May 1918

      The rope, the tree,

      the tired comparison to Jesus on the Cross. Avoid the tropes.

      The metaphors.

      This stands for that, but if no one black ever says that, how would

      someone white learn

      this? How would any of us? I desire the surprise of intellectual,

      fractured lyrics.

      Yet here I am, refusing refusal. Calling the mob out by name.

      Not even safely—

      as with an anonymous South—but uncomfortably. As with white

      man by white man.

      (I’m scared just saying it.) And locating each in case

      you have trouble.

      (My People are exceedingly patient.) There: the expected

      poor, drunk one,

      neck darkened in the field. He’s a nice cliché. But not the next:

      a churchgoer

      and father. A man who believes in Christ and the love of a virtuous

      woman who fries

      chicken for picnics and stirs up lemon cakes. After the lynching

      he will