Shake Loose My Skin : New and Selected Poems

by Sanchez, Sonia

• ISBN13: 9780807068502
• ISBN10: 0807068500
• eBook ISBN(s): 9780807068892
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1999-01-01
• Publisher: Random House Inc
• More Book Details
• Purchase Benefits

Summary

Covering over thirty years of work, Shake Loose My Skin is a stunning testament to the literary, sensual, and political powers of the award-winning Sonia Sanchez. "This world is a better place because of Sonia Sanchez: more livable, more laughable, more manageable. I wish millions of people knew that some of the joy in their lives comes from the fact that Sonia Sanchez is writing poetry." -Maya Angelou

Table of Contents

I. from I've Been a Woman 1978
Homecoming	3	(1)
Poem at Thirty	4	(2)
Malcolm	6	(2)
Personal Letter No. 2	8	(1)
A Poem for My Father	9	(1)
Peom No. 3	10	(1)
Blues	11	(1)
Haiku	12	(1)
Sequences	13	(3)
Haiku	16	(1)
Poem No. 8	17	(1)
Present	18	(2)
Tanka	20	(1)
Tanka	21	(1)
A Love Poem Written for Sterling Brown	22	(1)
Kwa mama zetu waliotuzaa	23	(6)
II. from Homegirls and Handgrenades 1984
``Just Don't Never Give Up on Love''	29	(6)
Ballad	35	(1)
After Saturday Night Comes Sunday	36	(11)
I Have Walked a Long Time	47	(2)
On Passing thru Morgantown, Pa.	49	(1)
On Seeing a Pacifist Burn	50	(1)
Letter to Ezekiel Mphahlele	51	(6)
III. from Under a Soprano Sky 1987
Under a Soprano Sky	57	(2)
Philadelphia: Spring, 1985	59	(3)
Haiku	62	(3)
Dear Mama	63	(2)
Fall	67	(1)
Fragment 1	68	(1)
Fragment 2	69	(1)
Haiku	70	(1)
Towhomitmayconcern	71	(1)
Blues	72	(1)
Song No. 2	73	(2)
An Anthem	75	(2)
Graduation Notes	77	(4)
IV. from Wounded in the House of a Friend 1995
Wounded in the House of a Friend	81	(12)
Catch the Fire	93	(3)
A Remembrance	96	(5)
Poem for July 4, 1994	101	(5)
This Is Not a Small Voice	106	(1)
Like	107	(2)
Haiku 1	109	(1)
Haiku 9	110	(3)
V. from Does Your House Have Lions? 1997
Father's Voice	113	(14)
VI. from Like the Singing Coming off the Drums 1998
Dancing	127	(1)
Haiku	128	(1)
Tanka	129	(1)
Blues Haiku	130	(1)
Blues Haiku	131	(1)
Haiku	132	(1)
Love Poem	133	(6)
VII. NEW WORKS
Mrs. Benita Jones Speaks	139	(4)
Morning Song and Evening Walk	143	(5)
For Sweet Honey in the Rock	148	(3)
Aaaayeee Babo (Praise God)	151

Excerpts

Excerpt

Homecoming

i have been a

way so long

once after college

i returned tourist

style to watch all

the niggers killing

themselves with

three-for-oners

with

needles

that cd

not support

their stutters.

          now woman

i have returned

leaving behind me

all those hide and

seek faces peeling

with freudian dreams.

this is for real.

             black

          niggers

             my beauty.

baby.

i have learned it

ain't like they say

in the newspapers.

Poem at Thirty

it is midnight

no magical bewitching

hour for me

i know only that

i am here waiting

remembering that

once as a child

i walked two

miles in my sleep.

did i know

then where i

was going?

traveling, i'm

always traveling.

i want to tell

you about me

about nights on a

brown couch when

i wrapped my

bones in lint and

refused to move.

no one touches

me anymore.

father do not

send me out

among strangers.

you you black man

stretching scraping

the mold from your body.

here is my hand.

i am not afraid

of the night.

Malcolm

do not speak to me of martydom

of men who die to be remembered

on some parish day.

i don't believe in dying

though i too shall die

and violets like castanets

will echo me.

yet this man

this dreamer,

thick-lipped with words

will never speak again

and in each winter

when the cold air cracks

with frost, i'll breathe

his breath and mourn

my gun-filled nights.

he was the sun that tagged

the western sky and

melted tiger-scholars

while they searched for stripes.

he said, "fuck you white

man. we have been

curled too long. nothing

is sacred now. not your

white face nor any

land that separates

until some voices

squat with spasms."

do not speak to me of living.

life is obscene with crowds

of white on black.

death is my pulse.

what might have been

is not for him/or me

but what could have been

floods the womb until i drown.

Personal Letter No. 2

i speak skimpily to

you about apartments i

no longer dwell in

and children who

chant their dis

obedience in choruses.

if i were young

i wd stretch you

with my wild words

while our nights

run soft with hands.

but i am what i

am. woman. alone

amid all this noise.

A Poem far My Father

how sad it must be

to love so many women

to need so many black

perfumed bodies weeping

underneath you.

          when i remember all those nights

i filled my mind with

long wars between short

sighted trojans & greeks

while you slapped some

wide hips about in

your pvt dungeon,

when i remember your

deformity i want to

do something about your

makeshift manhood.

i guess

          that is why

on meeting your sixth

wife, i cross myself

with her confessionals.

Poem No. 3

i gather up

each sound

you left behind

and stretch them

on our bed.

             each nite

i breathe you

and become high.

Blues

in the night

in my half hour

negro dreams

i hear voices knocking at the door

i see walls dripping screams up

and down the halls

                   won't someone open

the door for me? won't some

one schedule my sleep

and don't ask no questions?

noise.

       like when he took me to his

home away from home place

and i died the long sought after

death he'd planned for me.

Yeah, bessie he put in the bacon

and it overflowed the pot.

and two days later

when i was talking

i started to grin.

as everyone knows

i am still grinning.

Haiku

did ya ever cry

Black man, did ya ever cry

til you knocked all over?

Sequences

1.

today I am

tired of sabbaths.

I seek a river of sticks

scratching the spine.

O I have laughed the clown's air

now my breath dries in paint.

2.

what is this profusion?

the sun does not burn

a cure, but hoards

while I stretch upward.

I hear, turning

in my shrug

a blaze of horns.

O I had forgotten parades

belabored with dreams.

3.

in my father's time

I fished in ponds

without fishes.

arching my throat,

I gargled amid nerves

and sang of redeemers.

             (o where have you been sweet

                redeemer, sharp redeemer,

             o where have you been baroque

                shimmer?

             i have been in coventry

             where ghosts danced in my veins

             i have heard you in all refrains.)

4.

ah the lull of

a yellow voice

that does not whine

with roots.

I have touched breasts

and buildings answered.

I have breathed

moth-shaped men

without seeds.

(O indiscriminate sleeves)

             (once upon an afternoon

       i became still-life

       i carried a balloon

             and a long black knife.)

5.

love comes with pink eyes

with movements that run

green then blue again.

my thighs burn in crystal.

Haiku

if i had known, if

i had known you, i would have

left my love at home.

Poem No. 8

i've been a woman

    with my legs stretched by the wind

       rushing the day

          thinking i heard your voice

             while it was only the nite

                moving over

                   making room for the dawn.

Copyright © 1999 Sonia Sanchez. All rights reserved.