Speeding Ticket Haiku

Cruising in the streets
I start to hear beep, beep, beep
damn it's the police.

I Sit and Sew

I Sit and Sew

I sit and sew-- a useless task it seems,
My hands grown tired, my head weighed down with dreams--
The panoply of war, the martial tread of men,
Grim-faced, stern-eyed, gazing beyond the ken
Of lesser souls, whose eyes have not seen Death
Nor learned to hold their lives but as a breath--
But-- I must sit and sew.
I sit and sew-- my heart aches with desire--
That pageant terrible, that fiercely pouring fire
On wasted fields, and writhing grotesque things
Once men. My soul in pity flings
Appealing cries, yearning only to go
There in that holocaust of hell, those fields of woe--
But-- I must sit and sew.
The little useless seam, the idle patch;
Why dream I here beneath my homely thatch,
When there they lie in sodden mud and rain,
Pitifully calling me, the quick ones and the slain?
You need me, Christ! It is no roseate dream
That beckons me-- this pretty futile seam,
It stifles me-- God, must I sit and sew?

By: Alice Dunbar-Nelson

Alice Moore Dunbar Nelson was born in New Orleans, Louisiana, on 19 July 1875, Alice Ruth Moore was the daughter of Patricia Wright, a seamstress, and Joseph Moore, a merchant marine, and, due to her middle-class social status and racially mixed appearance, she enjoyed the diverse culture of the city. She graduated Straight University (now Dillard University) in 1892 and began her career as a teacher in the public school system of New Orleans. In 1895, Dunbar-Nelson published her first collection of short stories and poems, Violets and Other Tales. Although many of the pieces were obviously marked by her inexperience, I Sit and Sew reveal her gift for capturing the language, setting, and pathos peculiar to New Orleans life at the turn of the century. I love Dunbar-Nelson poetry, because her message addresses the issues that confronted African-Americans and women of her time. In this poem, Dunbar-Nelson challenges the period's stereotypical leftist image of the proletarian as a burly, half-naked industrial worker. Her proletarian is a woman, an office worker whose daily confinement is painfully at odds with her yearning for "beautiful things"--the consolations of art and the sensual pleasures of a middle-class dream-life. Like her poetry, Dunbar-Nelson's political activism encompassed many forms

On Stripping Bark From Myself

On Stripping Bark From Myself
By: Alice Walker

Because women are expected to keep silent about
their close escapes I will not keep silent
and if I am destroyed (naked tree) someone will
please
mark the spot
where I fall and know I could not live
hearing their "how nice she is!"
whose adoration of the retouched image
I so despise.

No. I am finished with living
for what my mother believes
for what my brother and father defend
for what my lover elevates
for what my sister, blushing, denies or rushes
to embrace.

I find my own
small person
a standing self
against the world
an equality of wills
I have lived to understand.

Besides:

My struggle was always against
an inner darkness: I carry within myself
the only known keys
to my death - to unlock life, or close it shut
forever. A woman who loves wood grains, the colour
yellow
and the sun, I am happy to fight
all outside murderers
as I see I must.


Alice Walker was born on February 9, 1944, in Eatonton, Georgia, the eighth and last child of Willie Lee and Minnie Lou Grant Walker, who were sharecroppers. When Alice Walker was eight years old, she lost sight of one eye when one of her older brothers shot her with a BB gun by accident. In high school, Alice Walker was valedictorian of her class, and that achievement, coupled with a "rehabilitation scholarship" made it possible for her to go to Spelman, a college for black women in Atlanta, Georgia. After spending two years at Spelman, she transferred to Sarah Lawrence College in New York, and during her junior year traveled to Africa as an exchange student. She received her Bachelor of Arts degree from Sarah Lawrence College in 1965. Alice Walker was active in the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960's, and in the 1990's she is still an involved activist. Alice Walker is most known for her novel "The Color Purple," which she received a Pulitzer Prize in 1983.

This poem embrace the pain of being in relationships between women and men. This poem speaks to women who sacrifice themselves in order to maintain relationships with their men. I love this poem, because it allows women to define themselves for themselves despite their environments or situation.