Some changes

by June Jordan

Book by Jordan, June

Genres: Poetry

86 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1971

About the author

June Millicent Jordan (July 9, 1936 – June 14, 2002) was a Caribbean-American poet and activist.

Jordan received numerous honors and awards, including a 1969-70 Rockefeller grant for creative writing, a Yaddo Fellowship in 1979, a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship in 1982, and the Achievement Award for International Reporting from the National Association of Black Journalists in 1984. Jordan also won the Lila Wallace Reader's Digest Writers Award from 1995 to 1998 as well as the Ground Breakers-Dream Makers Award from The Woman's Foundation in 1994.

She was included in Who's Who in America from 1984 until her death. She received the Chancellor's Distinguished Lectureship from UC Berkeley and the PEN Center USA West Freedom to Write Award (1991).

(from Wikipedia)

Reviews

[Sam · Rating 4 out of 5]

favorite poems were “What Would I Do White?” and “Solidarity, 1968”

[M.W.P.M. · Rating 4 out of 5]

In the Time of My Heart

In the time of my heart
the children tell the clock
a hallelujah

listen people
listen

* * *

This Man


This old whistle
could not blow
except
to whiskey wheeze
with bandage on his head
temple to temple
black
and dry hands
in his pockets keeping
warm
two trembling fists
clammed
against a stranger
('s) blueandwhite sedan
he
would never drive
could not repair
bu damaged
just by standing there.

* * *

Fibrous Ruin


Fibrous ruin of the skin not near
not anywhere not torn nor stained
now disappears like leaf and flood
A loose appealing
to the vanishing of many scars lost
by long healing of long loss slipped
quietly across a bruise new broken
from new pain inside
the feeling of let go

* * *

Maybe the Birds


Maybe the birds are worried
by the wind

they scream like people
in the hallway

wandering among the walls

* * *

In Memoriam: Martin Luther King, Jr.


1

honey people murder mercy U.S.A.
the milkland turn to monsters teach
to kill to violate pull down destroy
the weakly freedom growing fruit
from being born

America

tomorrow yesterday rip rape
exacerbate despoil disfigure
crazy running threat the
deadly thrall
appall belief dispel
the wildlife burn the breast
the onward tongue
the outward hand
deform the normal rainy
riot sunshine shelter wreck
of darkness derogate
delimit blank
explode deprive
assassinate and batten up
like bullets fatten up
the raving greed
reactive a springtime
terrorizing

by death by men by more
than you or I can

STOP


2

They sleep who know a regulated place
or pulse or tide or changing sky
according to some universal
stage direction obvious
like shorewashed shells

we share an afternoon of mourning
in between no next predictable
except for wild reversal hearse rehearsal
bleach the blacklong lunging
ritual of fright insanity and more
deplorable abortion
more and
more

* * *

What Declaration


What declaration can I make to clear
this room of strangers leaving
quickly as an enemy might come?
You look at me not knowing
I must guess what question I can ask
to open every mouth (and mine)
to free the throat (and yours) from fear.
We keep unknown to us
and I apart from me will search
my own deliberation my own you
and you and you, my own.

* * *

Not Looking


Not looking now and then I find you here
not knowing where you are.
Talk to me. Tell me the things I see
fill the table between us or surround
the precipice nobody dares to forget.
Talking takes time takes everything
sooner than I can forget the precipice
and spear to your being there
where I hear you move no nearer
than you were standing on my hands
covered my eyes dreaming about music.

* * *

When I or Else


when I or else when you
and I or we
deliberate I lose I
cannot choose if you I
we then near or where
unless I stand as loser
of that losing possibility
that something that I have
or always want more than much
more at
least to have as less and
yes directed by desire

* * *

Or


OR
like Atlanta parking lots insatiable
and still
collected kindly by the night

love lies

wrong riding hard
in crazy gear
the hills fly by corruptible
and polar up

and up
the bottom traveling
too proud

* * *

Then It Was


Then it was
our eyes locked slowly
on the pebble wash
of humus leaves and
peeled the plummet belly
of a thundercloud

You bent your neck
beneath a branch my
arms enclosed
and slipped your shadow
over me

Soon we had bathed
the sun fell at our feet
and broke into the sliding
ferment of our warmth

we were an early evening

* * *

Leaves Blow Backward


leaves blow backward with the wind
behind them beautiful
and almost run through atmosphere
of flying birds
or butterflies turn light
more freely than my mouth
learns to kiss by speaking
among aliens

* * *

LBJ: Rejoinder


The President talks about peril
to Negroes talking about power
and all I want to say
to him The President
(no less)
until we sway as many
people as he can scare
until we tell
and compel as loud and
as much as The Lonestar
State is large:
"Don't warn me Big
Buddy you have kept me
in my peril long enough you
been pushing Hush My Mouth on me
my lips been black and very blue
but nothing
else than now but power now
and nothing else
will warn
or worry you."

He lost the peace so
he can keep the peril he
knows war is nothing like please.

* * *

Uhuru in the O.R.


I like love anonymous
more than murder incorporated or
shall we say South Africa
I like the Valentine the heart the power
incorruptible but failing body
flowers of the world

From my death the white man
takes new breath he stands as
formerly he stood and he commands me
for his good he overlooks
my land my people
in transition transplantations
hearts and power
beating beating beating beating
hearts in transplantations
power in transition

* * *

Bus Window


bus window
show himself a
wholesale florist rose somebody
help the wholesale
dollar blossom spill to spoil
low pile
on wanton windowsills
whole
saleflorists seedy
decorations startle small

* * *

What Happens


What happens when a dog sits on a tiger
when the fat man sells a picture of himself
when a lady shoves a sword inside her
when an elephant takes tea cups from the shelf

or the giant starts to cry
and the grizzly loses his grip
or the acrobat begins to fly
and gorillas run away with the whip

What happens when a boy sits on a chair
and watches all the action on the ground and in the air
or when the children leave the greatest show on earth
and see the circus?

* * *

In My Own Quietly Explosive Here


In my own quietly explosive here
all silence isolates
to kill the artificial suffocates
a hunger

Likely dying underground
in circles hold together
wings
develop still regardless

* * *

Last Poem for a Little While


1

Thanksgiving 1969
Dear God I thank you for the problems that are mine
and evidently mine alone

By mine I mean just ours
crooked perishable blue like blood
problems yielding to no powers
we can muster we can only starve or stud
the sky the soil the stomach of the human hewn


2

(I am in this crazy room
where people all over the place
look at people all over the place.
For instance Emperors in Bronze Black Face
Or Buddha Bodhisattva sandstone trickled old and dirty
in inexpensive, public space.)

Insanity goes back a long time I suppose.
An alien religion strikes me lightly
And I wonder if it shows
then how?


3

Immediately prior to the messed-up statues that inspire
monographs and fake mistakes
the Greco-Roman paraplegic tricks
the permanently unbent knee
that indoor amphitheatre that celebrates the amputee -

Immediately prior to the messed-up statues
just before the lucrative mutilation choir
of worthless lying recollection

There the aged sit and sleep;
for them museum histories spread too far too deep
for actual exploration

(aged men and women) sit and sleep
before the costly exhibition can begin

to tired what remains of life.


4

If love and sex were easier
we would choose something else
to suffer.


5

Holidays do loosen up the holocaust
the memories (sting tides) of rain and refuge
patterns hurt across the stranger city
holidays do loosen up the holocaust
They liberate the stolen totem tongue

The cripples fill the temple
palace entertainment under glass
the cripples crutching near the columns swayed
by plastic wrap

disfiguring haven halls or veils the void
impromptu void
where formerly
Egyptian sarcasucker or more recently
where European painting
turns out nothing
no one
I have ever known.

These environments these
artifacts facsimiles these
metaphors these
earrings vase that sword
none of it
none of it
is somehow what I own.


6

Symbol like the bridge.
Like bridges generally.
Today a flag a red and white and blue new flag
confused the symbols in confusion
bridge over the river
flag over the bridge
The flag hung like a loincloth flicked in drag.


7

Can't cross that bridge. You listen
things is pretty bad
you want to reach New Jersey
got to underslide the lying spangled banner.
Bad enough New Jersey.
Now Songmy.
Songmy. A sorry song. Songmy.
The masacre of sorrow songs.
Songmy. Songmy. Vietname.
Goddamn. Vietnam.

I would go pray about the bridge.
I would go pray a sorrow Songmy song.
But last time I looked the American flag was flying
from the centre of the crucifix.


8

"Well, where you want to go?"
he asks. "I don't know. It's a long
walk to the subway."
"Well," he says, "there's nothing at home."
"That's a sure thing," she answers.
"That's a sure thing: Nothing's at home."


9

Please pass the dark meat.
Turkey's one thing I can eat
and eat.
eeney eeney meeney mo
It's hard to know
where I should head into
a movie
or take the highway to the airport.
Pass the salt.
Pass the white meat.
Pass the massacre.
o eeney eeney myney mo.
How bad was it, exactly?
What's yoru evidence?
Songmy o my sorrow
eeney meeney myney mo
Please pass the ham.
I want to show
Vietnam how we give thanks
around here.
Pass the ham.
And wipe your fingers on the flag.


10

Hang my haven
Jesus Christ
is temporarily off
the wall.


11

American existence twists
you finally
into a separatist.


12

I am spiders
on the ceiling of a shadow.


13

Daumier was not mistaken.
Old people sleep with their mouths open
and their hands closed flat
like an empty wallet.

So do I.

[Patricia N. McLaughlin · Rating 4 out of 5]

“June Jordan is a black woman poet. Think about that. A black woman poet. That’s triple vision.” —Julius Lester

Favorite poems:
“If You Saw a Negro Lady”
“What Would I Do White?”
“47,000 Windows”
“Exercise in Quilts”
“In My Own Quietly Explosive Here”
“Last Poem for a Little While”

[Knar]

"Pass the salt.
Pass the white meat.
Pass the massacre ...

Pass the ham.
And wipe your fingers on the flag."

(From "Last Poem for a Little While")