Summer of 64', Forty Years After

I wrote this poem on yesterday as I watched the vote of black people in Ohio and Florida being challenged. It brought back memories of forty years ago, when I was a little girl, and the political climate at that time. It is very discouraging when voting returns to issues of race and voter eligibility based on race. The sacrifices that black people made during the 1960s ushered in an era that would see women making strides for equality, especially in the workplace; handicapped persons being accomodated and given opportunities; abortion rights and many other civil liberties that we enjoy as a free people. For black people to be challenged at the polls forty years later is extremely sad.

The president ran on a platform that targeted different groups of people, painting them as social deviants. He appealed to homophobia and fear, cloaking the issues in morality and honor. There is no honor in cheap tricks. I find nothing moral about a person who would take a nation to war by lying and inventing enemies. Over 100,000 Iraqis have been killed, and over 1000 American troops. More deaths will follow. I wish that I could be optimistic about the future, but I can't.
My memory will not allow me.

The Summer of '64, Forty Years After--Nov. 2, 2004

My mother stands on the screened porch in her bra and grasps a Coca Cola spray bottle.
The bottle makes an excellent water toy, especially when she is not looking.
I like the metal corked tip,
the way if fits snugly into the bottle's opening.

I sit on my little stool watching as the black & white TV Dogs
nip at the legs of people who look just like me.
My plastic baby bottle filled with water is wedged in the mouth of
my baby doll.

She drools and I wipe the water from her mouth. Sometimes, she is an excellent
source for my torturous games, today she is loved. I've cut all her hair
so that nothing is left but stubble.
She is a pitiful doll, but she is mine.

White people make faces in the camera and shout "niggers", and
"the niggers ain't", "git no vote", "niggers ain't",
"gone go to school with my children", I hear and
"the niggers ain't human." Do they mean me?

I watch my mother as she shakes her head and rhythmically shakes the Coca Cola bottle.
Tears fill her eyes and spill down her brown cheeks gathering
just below her chin. They fall and mix with the water from the cola bottle,
and hit the white cotton shirt that she is ironing. She irons Hard and Fast.

She says: "I'm gone deliver these shirts to Ms. Walper and then I'm gone go over town
and make sho' I can vote. These crackers ain't gone scare me outta voting. You hear me."
She speaks to the steam of the iron, to the clouds, to the red bird that, has just flown by,
To Me.

She sweats from the heat. Moisture settles between her breasts. I sit on my stool,
white doll in hand, and watch the TV dogs and the white men,with guns and angry words,
the white girls, their angry faces.
My mother determined.

There is too much anger here. The baby bottle is empty.
The doll pisses me off. Her blue eyes do not close.
I fold her legs into the sitting position and place her on the pedestal that holds
my mother's rings. She will be safe here. It's time for a new game.

Running down the hallway, I enter my bedroom. Emptying out the toy box,
I find my gun, examine it "bang, bang" and then throw it down. I pick up a book instead.
My mother says that the pen is mightier than the sword and that knowledge
is the armor that will take me to freedom. Like my mother, I am very determined.

Copyright 2004 lynnlinn