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VOICES RISING CELEBRATING 20 YEARS OF BLACK LESBIAN, GAY, BISEXUAL & TRANSGENDER WRITING

Edited by G.Winston James and Other Countries

WASHINGTON, DC www.redbonepress.com VR front matter layout 1/9/07 11:52 AM Page iv

Voices Rising: Celebrating 20 Years of Black Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Writing (Other Countries Volume III)

Published by: RedBone Press P.O. Box 15571 Washington, DC 20003

11 10 09 08 07 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

First edition

Permissions acknowledgments begin on page 576 Printed in the United States of America

ISBN-13: 978-0-9786251-3-9 ISBN-10: 0-9786251-3-7 ISSN: 0893-8296

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“Our history is each other. That is our only guide.” —James Baldwin, Just Above My Head VR front matter layout 1/9/07 11:52 AM Page vi VR front matter layout 1/9/07 11:52 AM Page vii

contents

xi Preface xvii Introduction by Dorothy Randall Gray

1 kumasi by Eva Yaa Asantewaa 4 hips ’n’ ass by Eva Yaa Asantewaa 6 Sojourner: an abandoned manifest by Colin Robinson 12 Learning to Speak Heterosexual by Robert E. Penn 30 My Boy by Laura A. Harris 40 A House in the World by Shawn Stewart Ruff 57 Sons (excerpt) by Alphonso Morgan 81 Ridge 479 by J.E. Robinson 89 Bees by Curú Necos-Bloice 119 nothin’ ugly fly by Marvin K. White 122 Dreams by Ayodele Christopher Dana Rose 125 first anniversary of my brother’s death by Letta Neely 126 Cycles by Barbara Stephen 132 west coast east by Carlton Elliott Smith 135 Nothing Looks the Same in the Light by Reginald Shepherd 136 All of This and Nothing by Reginald Shepherd 137 Unfinished Work by Colin Robinson 144 the dancer by Gina Rhodes 145 Fourteen by Mistinguette 146 No, I Haven’t Heard. by Antonia Randolph 148 Après Midi a Isabel’s: Deux by Alexis De Veaux 149 Going Down Bluff Road by John Frazier 150 Living to Live Again by Tony Ray Brown 163 Come Mourning by Christopher Adams 175 No Beauty Is Native to Us by John R. Keene 194 Flint: The Story of Sean and Floyd by Cary Alan Johnson 213 Curtis by Ernest Hardy 218 Infidelity by Bruce Morrow VR front matter layout 1/9/07 11:52 AM Page viii

235 PATH by G. Winston James 240 A View from Flatbush by G. Winston James 241 Miss Agnes’ Middle Son Was Mine by Duncan E. Teague 243 I’m Slipping by Warren Adams II 245 In the Silent Bathroom #2 by Warren Adams II 246 Native American Hustler on Greyhound by Jerry Thompson 247 Suicidal Ideation by Michelle Sewell 248 Dead Man Song by malik m.l. williams 250 Gravity by Duriel E. Harris 251 Blood, Prayer & Tears: 2002 A.D. by Ernest Hardy 254 It Begins by malik m.l. williams 256 flashes—cyan/magenta/yellow by francine j. harris 259 A Moontale Spun by Gale Jackson 272 Bearing Fruit by Letta Neely 273 untitled by Carlton Elliott Smith 274 haiku for the million (black) women march, philly october 1997 by Cheryl Clarke 275 On Being a Jazz Musician by Jcherry Muhanji 286 Fortune by R. Erica Doyle 294 from Phallos by Samuel R. Delany 320 He Remembers by malik m.l. williams 322 The Angelic by Peter Conti 326 i get it by L. Phillip Richardson 328 Notes Toward a Poem About Love by Reginald Harris 330 He remembers, I remember by Alan E. Miller 331 Yours Were the Last Lips I Kissed by Carl Cook 334 Blue by Forrest Hamer 335 Once by John Frazier 336 Evanescence by John Frazier 337 ReDefined by Geoffrey Freeman 338 Devious Mirrors by Reginald Harris 339 Evidence by D. Rubin Green 341 Lantern by Cheryl Boyce-Taylor 342 So, this is where we are by Samiya Bashir 344 Jesus Gon’ Hear My Song, Sho’ Nuff by Samiya Bashir 345 bloomfist by Karma Mayet Johnson VR front matter layout 1/9/07 11:52 AM Page ix

346 Why lisa don’t mind washing the floor by Letta Neely 348 Drive by Duriel E. Harris 350 But There Are Miles by Duriel E. Harris 352 That August You Knew My Mother by Cheryl Boyce-Taylor 353 Psychic Imprints by B.Michael Hunter 356 raindrop by Renita Martin 357 Starvation Diet by Mistinguette 359 The summer I did not go crazy by Mistinguette 360 working my way back by Cheryl Clarke 361 Rites by Karma Mayet Johnson 362 pieces of the dream by Gina Rhodes 363 back roads by Gina Rhodes 366 In the Winston Lips of September, How We Met by Karma Mayet Johnson 367 pearls by francine j. harris 372 where the boys are by Marvin K. White 373 How Can You Live Without Hugs? by Duncan E. Teague 375 Shopping List by Ernest Hardy 376 demon eyes by Tim’m T. West 378 Marguerite and Camay by Bil Wright 380 A Name I Call Myself: A Conversation by D. Rubin Green 390 The Color of Free: Jamaica 1996 by Staceyann Chin 396 What We Inherit by Robert Vazquez-Pacheco 402 (Re-) Recalling Essex Hemphill: Words to Our Now by Thomas Glave 413 sassy b. gonn, or Searching for Black Lesbian Elders by Lisa C. Moore 432 Parking Lot Attendant/North Beach by Jerry Thompson 433 Gift by Forrest Hamer 434 Bel Canto (excerpt) by Daniel Alexander Jones 482 Waiting for Giovanni (excerpt) by Jewelle Gomez 490 Mighty Real: A Tribute to Sylvester (excerpt) by Djola Branner 511 Guess Who Came to Dinner (a monologue) by Craig Hickman 522 The Phone Rings by Samiya Bashir VR front matter layout 1/9/07 11:52 AM Page x

525 Question and Answer by Alan E. Miller 526 dyke/warrior-prayers (an excerpt) by sharon bridgforth 537 The D-train by Pamela Sneed 544 homocomin’ by Tim’m T. West 547 Cornbread Girl by Imani Henry 551 Peculiar Wars by Renita Martin 553 Osiris by Reginald Harris

555 Contributors’ Notes

576 Permissions

583 About the Editors VR front matter layout 1/9/07 11:52 AM Page xi

VOICES RISING xi preface

Voices Rising marks the twentieth anniversary of Other Countries, a powerful, far-reaching and deliberate legacy of community expression that began when Daniel Garrett invoked James Baldwin’s line “Our history is each other” to convene black gay men to a writing workshop on June 14, 1986—the same New York City summer that gave birth to Gay Men of African Descent and Adodi. One of Other Countries’ early commitments was to publishing, producing our first volume Other Countries: Black Gay Voices in 1988, which won a Coordinating Council on Literary Magazines award, and five years later Sojourner: Black Gay Voices in the Age of AIDS, which won the Lambda Literary Award for small presses. A collection of sixty-five black gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender voices, Voices Rising breaks brand new ground for Other Countries in two exciting ways. This unique anthology is the first co-gender project undertaken by the group, which began as and remains an organization of black gay men. Despite repeated discussion of the idea, and one effort at doing so, black women were never truly included in the Other Countries writing workshop, which over fifteen years functioned as an important “safe space” where black gay and gender-nonconforming men gathered for conversation and kinship, and many learned to write. Voices Rising took shape on the borders of that weekly workshop, from a vision that the anthology would include and serve as a bridge among members of the black gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender communities. The wealth of talent collected here, and the creation and sharing of art itself, are remarkable foundations upon which to build and strengthen community. In a departure from Other Countries’ two previous publications, which included visual art, the pages of Voices Rising exclusively celebrate the written word and the personal, political and cultural complexity that writing so well represents. We hope that individuals from all corners of our black GLBT community, and VR front matter layout 1/9/07 11:52 AM Page xii

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the world, will be enriched, challenged and expanded by the breadth and intelligence of the work they find here. Additionally, our partnership with RedBone Press in publishing this volume represents an important political and practical gesture we wish to underscore. Other Countries chose this strategy over selling the manuscript to a corporate press or continuing our past practice of independently publishing. Our relationship with RedBone Press reflects our recognition of Lisa C. Moore’s success in building a production and distribution infrastructure for work like ours, the importance of supporting and strengthening entities that not only produce such work but have the capacity and commitment to keep that work in print and in wide distribution, and the flexibility RedBone Press promised in honoring Other Countries’ history and autonomy. Collaborative cultural products do not arrive in the world bloodlessly, however. We want this preface to reveal some of the complexity of the fifteen-year gestation of this book and, with the genuine grace one employs at a birth, to acknowledge the range of actors and to celebrate the distinct value choices that were part of that messy process. G(lenroy) Winston James jealously parented the book over ten years of both progress and stagnation, and his editorial craft more than anyone else’s is reflected here. We are eager to recognize, without shade or disrespect, both the yearlong co- editorial collaboration of Reginald T. Jackson and a sad and lengthy dispute that left the project’s editorial future again in Glenroy’s hands alone. We also acknowledge earlier co-editorial players Christopher Adams, Anthony Brown, Geoffrey Freeman and the late Nene Ofuatey-Kodjoe and Adrian Reynolds who, for various reasons and at various points, entered, exited and re- engaged with the project. We salute the book’s “midhusbands,” a small group of Other Countries “godmothers” who, along with Glenroy, shepherded its final delivery into the world (a fundamentally practical exercise that proved elusive for far too long), and who took responsibility for the business judgment to depart from Other Countries’ tradition to date of self-publishing. Mirroring the administrative roles they played in Other Countries’ VR front matter layout 1/9/07 11:52 AM Page xiii

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first effort at publishing, Terence Taylor and Cary Alan Johnson took special leadership in the publication process; Colin Robinson, with the help of his organization the New York State Black Gay Network, provided the sometimes questionable 2004- 5 planning framework from which the group’s leadership emerged; Kevin McGruder’s steadfastness and Doug Jones’ insights completed this group, along with Len Richardson’s early involvement. The book also embodies some humbling aspects of community economics and organization. Two black gay writers used their personal philanthropy to sustain the work and organization they helped parent, even beyond their deaths. Assotto Saint, a publisher himself (Galiens Press), and Bert Michael Hunter, who edited Sojourner, both bequeathed funds to Other Countries that enabled this project. (Special thanks go to Bert’s executor John Manzon-Santos who took additional interest in the success of the project.) Voices Rising’s publication also finalizes a process through which Other Countries has reclaimed our identity and functioning, reversing a 1999 decision to cease administrative autonomy and fold our program activities under the umbrella of Gay Men of African Descent. We acknowledge Tokes Osubu’s respect for that choice and—what was not an easy decision for a small nonprofit—his agreement to return Other Countries funds to our control. Though the process was, by its nature, not perfect, Tokes and Susan Li honored their promises to us. Through other fiscal sponsors—including the New York Foundation for the Arts—the Jerome and Stonewall Foundations and NYFA itself made past awards to Other Countries for general support and this publishing project. Those of us involved with Voices Rising have done our best to responsibly steward such funds by applying them to this publication. The Publishing Triangle also contributed knowledge and technical support to Other Countries and this project as it developed. And Rien Murray lovingly directed the Black Gay Network planning work. In these pages are the collected works of literary artists, both known and until now unknown, living and deceased, who VR front matter layout 1/9/07 11:52 AM Page xiv

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recognized the importance of their stories, and the beauty and effectiveness of the written word. Talent, craft and poignancy were the main criteria for inclusion in Voices Rising. So it is with a sense of both regret and joy that we admit that there are many other writers and works that could have been included in this volume, and that we have merely sampled from the ever- increasing pool of talented U.S.-based writers. We thank all those who trusted us with their work, continued to do so over the years that the manuscript remained unpublished, and cooperated with us in the final permissions process. We especially acknowledge the heirs and executors of contributors who died while the publication was in process. Other Countries is a legacy to which many can now lay various and particular claims, as creators, kin, students, witnesses, supporters or heirs, and in which we invite you to seize your own ownership. Created at a powerful historical moment at which feminism, GLBT people of color organizing and HIV intertwined to unhinge closets and untie tongues, and rooted in a re-excavation of the Harlem Renaissance’s queerness and the lessons of black feminist expression, Other Countries was catalyzed from the immediate lineage of the Blackheart Collective and Joseph Beam’s anthology In the Life. For twenty years we have made lasting contributions to public consciousness about desire, community and identity. We have nurtured committed writers and created talented writers out of many who came mainly for connection. We have preserved their work in print; and have taken these words, through both publication and performance, into diverse community and artistic spaces, including gay bars, community centers, elite museums and universities, and public schools. And we have engaged in the often historically unrecognized struggles with organizational infrastructure, process and personality that community artistic processes undergo. Other Countries’ mission to nurture, disseminate and preserve black gay expression is nourished by the soil tilled by such writers as James Baldwin, Joseph Beam, Steven Corbin, Melvin Dixon, Angelina Weld Grimké, Lorraine Hansberry, Craig VR front matter layout 1/9/07 11:52 AM Page xv

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Harris, Essex Hemphill, Terri Jewell, June Jordan, Audre Lorde, Alice Dunbar Nelson, Richard Bruce Nugent, Pat Parker, Marlon Riggs, Assotto Saint, Adrian Stanford and Donald Woods, and it is their seeds of creativity and courage that have enabled the voices of today’s crop of writers to rise. A milestone marking our two decades of building on that heritage, Voices Rising: Celebrating 20 Years of Black Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Writing continues Other Countries’ service to black gay writers and the communities to which we belong and in which we work. It celebrates how deeper, fuller, and continually more complex our community’s voices grow as they continue, relentlessly, to rise.

—Other Countries, December 2006 VR front matter layout 1/9/07 11:52 AM Page xvi VR front matter layout 1/9/07 11:52 AM Page xvii

VOICES RISING xvii introduction

by Dorothy Randall Gray

This is a visitation. A gathering of spirits ancient and new. An earthquake of excellence unparalleled in the history of publication. It is an answer to a call heard amidst the whispered prayers and loud silences, the righteous clamor of protest and passion, joy, and sorrow and sweet dreams. It is a resounding reply to Lucy, unearthed from the bowels of Africa and named first woman. Lucy, calling for her sons and daughters to come home, not as separate but equal vessels sailing the middle passage of a literary aesthetic, but as family, brothers and sisters, survivors of the fittest. This is Voices Rising, a homecoming named first reminder of the kindred spirit we share as black lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered children of Lucy. Voices Rising, a dazzling compilation of the bones beneath the blood, the sinew and fiber of our existence in all of its painful brilliance. This book comes home celebrating ancestral landscapes of the past, the power of the present, and the poignant promise of the future. It comes adorned with the armor of our love, filling its pages with silk and studs and leather and lace, boot and Birkenstock realities. The arcane archeology of our lives wrapped in poetry and prose. Voices Rising comes with spirits dancing between its sheets, sitting on shoulders, daring us to carry on, to remember, to write as if we could not breathe without our words. These visceral voices from bygone days lie in wait behind each page. I heard them sing to me of how our lives had crossed, and how they had lived their days. Essex Hemphill daring to be black and gay and fiercely eloquent in a deep south reading with Sonia Sanchez, Sapphire, and Imamu Baraka. Terri Jewell, weighing her last thoughts before taking her last breath, a colored girl who did more than VR front matter layout 1/9/07 11:52 AM Page xviii

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consider suicide. Assotto Saint in his Haitian divaness, arranging his own funeral, dictating whom he did and did not want to have reading poetry at his service. Danitra Vance, a neighborhood girl living on Sterling Place while making a living on Saturday Night Live. Dellon Wilson, elegant with pride, receiving transfusions of blood and music while serving poetry and dance, culture and commitment. I also heard the pioneering activism of Ruth Waters, the ferocious colors of Michael Kendall, and the fighting spirit of Maua Yvonne Flowers losing her fingers before losing her life. I heard the power of Donald Woods, the effervescence of Roy Gonsalves, and the southerness of Trey Johnson. I heard names I don’t hear often enough. I stood witness to their passing, to their memorials in Brooklyn and Boston, in the Village and in the vestal regions of the cities that fed them. And it is all in this book, between these stirring lines and in the splendid souls who had the courage to create them. A fulfillment of our diasporic destiny. A legacy carried forth from our foremothers and forefathers, from the voices of all who could not finish their song. This is Voices Rising, monumental and magnificent. A home for your spirit to dwell in. Hold this history in your hands, listen to its incantations, and let them live inside your heart. Lucy is well pleased.