Summary

Bum Rush the Pageis a groundbreaking collection, capturing the best new work from the poets who have brought fresh energy, life, and relevance to American poetry. "Here is a democratic orchestration of voices and visions, poets of all ages, ethnicities, and geographic locations coming together to create a dialogue and to jamnot slam. This is our mouth on paper, our hearts on our sleeves, our refusal to shut up and swallow our silence. These poems are tough, honest, astute, perceptive, lyrical, blunt, sad, funny, heartbreaking, and true. They shout, they curse, they whisper, and sing. But most of all, they tell it like it is." Tony Medina, from the Introduction

Author Biography

Tony Medina is a poet, professor, activist, and author of ten books, including DeShawn Days, Love to Langston, and Role Call: A Generational Anthology of Social and Political Black Literature & Art.

Louis Reyes Rivera is a professor of Pan African, Caribbean, Puerto Rican, and African American history and literature. A noted poet and essayist, he is the recipient of more than twenty citations, including a Special Congressional Recognition Award for his work as an activist poet. Def Poetry Jam is a multimedia poetry project featuring live showcases and jams across the country, a website, and other projects aimed at bringing poetry to new audiences.

Foreword	p. xv
Introduction	p. xix
Invocation
We Have Been Believers	p. xxv
A Poet Is Not a Juke Box	p. xxvi
Nommo	p. xxvii
No Jive	p. xxviii
failure of an invention	p. xxviii
Building	p. xxix
The Disdirected	p. xxxi
Blood I Say, Study Our Story, Sing This Song
The Way We Move	p. 1
... And the Saga Continues	p. 1
Bad Times	p. 3
How to Do	p. 4
Like a Dog	p. 6
Lonely Women	p. 7
On the Other Side	p. 9
N	p. 10
Her Scream Has Been Stolen	p. 11
Crater Face	p. 12
susu	p. 13
An Asian Am Anthem	p. 14
Scout	p. 16
This Old Man	p. 17
Afternoon Train	p. 19
Beginning at the End: Capital/Capitol Punishment	p. 20
Open Your Mouth--and Smile
A Chinese Man in Smyma	p. 22
450 Years of Selective Memory (Smile)	p. 23
the n-word	p. 24
an open letter to the entertainment industry	p. 25
Metropolitan Metaphysics	p. 28
America Eats Its Young	p. 29
laughin at cha	p. 31
Rosa's Beauty	p. 32
Overworked	p. 33
Nintendo	p. 34
Stealth-Pirates of Cyberia	p. 35
The Death of Poetry	p. 35
Last Visit to Chestnut Middle School	p. 37
Learning to Drive at 32	p. 38
Mr. BOOM BOOM Man	p. 39
Road to the Presidency	p. 40
For What It's Worth	p. 41
Every Word Must Conjure
It's Called Kings	p. 44
Billy	p. 45
To Become Unconscious	p. 46
Letter to an Unconceived Son	p. 46
The Usual Suspects	p. 48
Blooming Death ... Blossoms	p. 49
What the Oracle Said	p. 51
The U.S.A. Court of No Appeal	p. 52
on the state-sanctioned murder of shaka sankofa	p. 52
An Epistle to the Revolutionary Bible	p. 53
Warrior Womb	p. 55
Cowboynomics	p. 56
Demockery	p. 57
Executive Privilege	p. 58
Question	p. 61
georgia avenue, washington d.c.	p. 62
A Palace of Mourners	p. 64
Palestine	p. 65
The Road from Khartoum	p. 66
A Modern Love Poem	p. 68
In Praise of the Seattle Coalition	p. 69
Blood Is the Argument	p. 69
Drums Drown Out the Sorrow
Amadou Diallo from Guinea to the Bronx Dead on Arrival	p. 73
Another Scream	p. 74
A Well-Bred Woman	p. 76
Amadou	p. 78
BLS	p. 78
after diana died	p. 79
Dudley Randall (1914-2000)	p. 80
Hoodoo Whisper	p. 81
Sammy Davis, Jr.	p. 82
Glad All Over	p. 84
Dancing after Sanchez	p. 85
The 13th Letter	p. 86
In Black Churches	p. 86
For Gwendolyn Brooks	p. 87
tonal embryology	p. 88
Zizwe	p. 88
All, Bomaye	p. 89
Phyllis	p. 90
Timbalero	p. 91
Puente	p. 93
Somalia	p. 93
epitaph for Etheridge Knight	p. 94
Farewell Queen Mother Moore	p. 97
Palenque Queen by Habana's Shores	p. 98
When the Definition of Madness Is Love
January Hangover	p. 100
the hardest part about love	p. 100
Lies We Tell Ourselves	p. 102
8 ways of looking at pussy	p. 103
Temporary Insanity	p. 105
alone in belize	p. 106
footprints	p. 107
Big World Look Out	p. 108
Bullet Hole Man: A Love Poem	p. 110
Dreadlocks	p. 111
Roots	p. 111
Six Minutes Writing	p. 112
Diner	p. 112
Fullness	p. 113
Wet Dream	p. 115
foursomes	p. 115
Wishing You	p. 116
Shunning an Imperative	p. 116
January 8, 1996	p. 118
A Poem for You	p. 119
Throbs for the Instructress	p. 120
At the Frenchman's	p. 121
Mata Hari Blues or Why I Will Never Be a Spy	p. 123
Yellah	p. 124
Extremes Ain't My Thing As Salaam Alaikum	p. 125
13	p. 126
rock candy	p. 127
Love Jam	p. 129
Cocaine Mad-Scream Article #33 LoveSong	p. 130
We Whose Fathers Are Hidden
The Elders Are Gods	p. 132
What the Dead Do	p. 133
creation is a cycle	p. 133
Birth	p. 134
Daughter-to-Father Talk	p. 136
Tattooing the Motherline	p. 137
Our Fathers	p. 138
Mama's Magic	p. 139
Father's Day	p. 140
Momma in Red	p. 140
Wildlife	p. 141
Chicago on the Day Brother Increases His Chances of Reaching Age 21	p. 142
Lest We Forget	p. 143
The African Burial Ground Called Tribeca	p. 143
fatherless townships	p. 144
Waiting for the Results of a Pregnancy Test	p. 146
Sitting in the Doctor's Office the Next Day	p. 148
Circa	p. 148
Seed of Resistance
Cooking	p. 151
Ben Hur	p. 151
in 5th grade	p. 152
Complected	p. 154
Broken Ends Broken Promises	p. 155
My Name's Not Rodriguez	p. 156
Water from the Well	p. 157
The Tragic Mulatto Is Neither	p. 158
Beauty Is Moving Us Forward
I'm Sayin Though	p. 160
beauty rituals 2000	p. 160
Medusa	p. 161
Stariette	p. 161
exceptions	p. 163
What the deal, son?	p. 166
Plain Ole Brother Blues	p. 168
Why I Be a Goddess	p. 169
I'm the Man	p. 170
Dare to Be Different	p. 171
Thoughts from a Bar Stool	p. 173
A Blue Black Pearl	p. 173
runnin	p. 175
conversations in the struggle	p. 176
Harvest: A Line Drawing	p. 177
joseph speaks to gericault in the studio	p. 178
Entrancielo	p. 181
New York Seizures	p. 182
Hey Yo / Yo Soy!	p. 185
Flying over America	p. 188
It Was the Music That Made Us
I'm a Hip Hop Cheerleader	p. 190
kill the dj	p. 192
Ms. Cousins' Rap	p. 193
all up in there	p. 194
Doin'	p. 195
The Trash Talker	p. 196
Owed to Eminem	p. 197
A Psychoalphadiscobetabioaquadoloop	p. 200
rapid transit	p. 201
hold it steady	p. 202
Conversation with Duke Ellington and Louis (Pops) Armstrong	p. 203
For Lady and Prez	p. 204
breath	p. 205
The Flow	p. 206
Bebop Trumpet	p. 208
conjugation of the verb: to blow	p. 208
The Creed of a Graffiti Writer	p. 210
Sonido Ink(quieto)	p. 214
because I am it's a race thing trip	p. 215
Grasshopper	p. 217
Grace	p. 219
The Low End	p. 219
rep/resent	p. 221
2G (Another Millennium Poem)	p. 223
enter(f*#@ckin)tained	p. 223
Children of the Word
Motherseed	p. 226
Wake Up, My Little Pretties	p. 227
nommo: how we come to speak	p. 227
spaNglisH	p. 229
New Boogaloo	p. 229
Mi Negrito	p. 232
News of the World	p. 233
Much of Your Poetry Is Beautiful	p. 234
Ginsberg	p. 234
In Bed with James Tate	p. 235
soulgroovin ditty #7	p. 236
Sundays	p. 237
To Aretha Franklin from Sparkle	p. 238
Lumumba Blues	p. 239
All the shoes are shined and the cotton is picked	p. 240
In this day age	p. 241
The Trouble I've Seen	p. 241
Having Lost My Son, I Confront the Wreckage	p. 242
Bensonhurst	p. 243
For Michael Griffith, Murdered Dec. 21, 1986, Howard Beach, NY	p. 244
Lift Every Fist and Swing	p. 245
TV Dinner	p. 245
Bluesman	p. 248
We're Not Well Here	p. 250
Nickel Wine and Deep Kisses	p. 251
The Coward	p. 253
Strip	p. 254
Sex	p. 255
enemies	p. 256
American Poetry	p. 257
So Many Books, So Little Time	p. 260
How to Be a Street Poet	p. 261
The Adventures of Grandmaster Flash	p. 263
X	p. 264
The Tradition	p. 265
There It Is	p. 267
Contributors	p. 270
Permissions	p. 281
Table of Contents provided by Syndetics. All Rights Reserved.

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Excerpts

The Way We Move
the way we move, funk groove
beat the rhythm out some pavement,
our elegant violent attitude, quick
slow motion movement in quicksand
in somebody else's shit house shanty town
shingly jingly chains clamped on our neck,
hang to the floor scrape spark and clink
and we make music out of this cool behind dark
shades, taught to fear the sun, hiding in
beauty parlors and bars draggy face with
hatred and ugliness,
and it only comes when you don't
accept the natural gifts, the fingerprints of a
higher order of peace and simple logic, what makes us
phenomenal is that we can sleep walk in
harmony, never breaking a sweat 'cept in factories
or bars, prisons we even build systems for, our
own street logic and survival, but this is not where
we're meant to be, not on the operating table of
extinction or at the broken doorstep of finality
stumbling drunk confused scagged out on whiteness
and greed and stupidity into the bleeding face of our
dead father, and we are not supposed to move
this way, slow mumbling suicide in quicksand and defeat
we must refocus, we must see again

Tony Medina (New York)

. . . And the Saga Continues
for Gary Graham

From Guinea to Haiti to Brooklyn
And back
From Guinea to Haiti to the Bronx
And back
From Brooklyn to the Bronx to LA
And back
From Philly to Haiti to the New Jersey Turnpike
And back
From village to hamlet to Borough
And back
From LA to Orange to Newark to Guinea
And back
From PR to the Bronx Brooklyn Queens Guinea
And back
From Soundview to no view of the anguish of . . .
Mother Mother why have you forsaken me

Bless me father for they are winning
And my mutter is crying
Bless me father for my mutter is crying
At the sight of my dying
Save me Lord from being vanquished
Save my mutter from this anguish

From Harlem to the Bronx to Brooklyn Queens Newark San Juan
and the nation's highways I languish
In my blood and tears of my mother's anguish
And back

Call the name . . . Call the names I say
you know them better than I

Shaka Sankofa Malcolm Ferguson Patrick Doresmond
Abner Louima Amadou Diallo Kevin Cedeno James Byrd
Matthew Sheppard Anthony Baez Michael Stewart
Earl Faison . . . etc. etc. etc.

And the list gets longer week by week
An African got lynched today
Juneteenth 2000

From Texas to Chicago to Watts to Newark
And back
From PR to Cuba to the Dominican Republic
And back

Africa calls from the bottom of the Atlantic
And back
From Ghanaian fields smooth black skin
Turns purplish under lash under water
And back

Can you hear them gurgle . . . Abnerrrrr
Can you hear them scream . . . Amadouuuuuuuu
Can you hear the windpipe snap . . . Antonyyyyyyyyap

Blessed be Blessed be Blessed be
Dear Lord have mercy Lord have mercy
Have mercy on me
bless me father for I
have sinned . . .
with my mind I daily will demise
of the western ways and all of its compatriots

Bless me father with a bottle of scupernog or
Wild Irish Rose to soften the blow
of this monster's breath upon my neck
And back

in harlem in havana in charleston in Porto Prince
the saga continues . . .
blood blood I say
blood in the rectum bullets in the gut
in the head the chest neck
And back

A rope a nightstick pepper spray
Or a lethal illegal injection
from the State
the state of tex ass where seldom is heard
an encouraging word and the sky is cloudy
all year
how 'bout florida or new jersey or new york
the city so nice they kill you twice

Next stop Ghana to the Congo to Zimbabwe
And back

Ted Wilson (Orange, NJ)