Toi Derricotte

St. Peter Claver

by Toi Derricotte

Every town with black Catholics has a St. Peter Claver’s.   

My first was nursery school.

Miss Maturin made us fold our towels in a regulation square and nap on army cots.

No mother questioned; no child sassed.

In blue pleated skirts, pants, and white shirts,

we stood in line to use the open toilets

and conserved light by walking in darkness.

Unsmiling, mostly light-skinned, we were the children of the middle class, preparing to take

       our  parents’ places in a world that would demand we fold our hands and wait.

They said it was good for us, the bowl of soup, its pasty whiteness;

I learned to swallow and distrust my senses.

On holy cards St. Peter’s face is olive-toned, his hair near kinky;

I thought he was one of us who pass between the rich and poor, the light and dark.

Now I read he was “a Spanish Jesuit priest who labored for the salvation of the African

        Negroes and the abolition of the slave trade.”

I was tricked again, robbed of my patron,

and left with a debt to another white man.

I have heard the argument that it should not matter that we were raised to think of God as male and of Jesus as Caucasian. I have long struggled with the Holy Father, the patriarchy of Christianity, women’s second class status throughout. However, because of this perception as a female, I am able to identify with the message in St. Peter Claver. This poem helps me understand how much harder it would be to swallow Christianity as a black female.

This week I chose to feature the black poet,Toi Derricotte, because she is going to be reading her poetry Hart Chapel at CUP at 7:30 on Tuesday evening, March 22. I will be going, call or email me if you care to join me. I know several of you have heard her in the past and were very impressed, so i am looking forward to seeing her.

Derricotte is nationally recognized and has written several books of poetry and prose.  http://www.toiderricotte.com/    As you will see on her website, she does not “look black.”  This is perhaps part of the reason she wrote the poem below, A Note on My Son’s Face.  I find this poem to be brutally honest. I think it would be extremely difficult to share these feelings even with the closest friend, yet she is willing reveal herself to us.  Her candor serves its purpose, here too I am given some level of understanding as to the vicious toll prejudice takes on its victims. Very powerful poems.

Derricotte appeared on PBS and you can hear her reading a poem at this link. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/poetryeverywhere/derricotte.html

A Note on My Son’s Face

by Toi Derricotte

I.

Tonight, I look, thunderstruck

at the gold head of my grandchild.   

Almost asleep, he buries his feet   

between my thighs;

his little straw eyes

close in the near dark.

I smell the warmth of his raw   

slightly foul breath, the new death   

waiting to rot inside him.

Our breaths equalize our heartbeats;   

every muscle of the chest uncoils,   

the arm bones loosen in the nest   

of nerves. I think of the peace   

of walking through the house,

pointing to the name of this, the name of that,

an educator of a new man.

Mother. Grandmother. Wise

Snake-woman who will show the way;   

Spider-woman whose black tentacles

hold him precious. Or will tear off his head,   

her teeth over the little husband,

the small fist clotted in trust at her breast.

This morning, looking at the face of his father,

I remembered how, an infant, his face was too dark,   

nose too broad, mouth too wide.

I did not look in that mirror

and see the face that could save me

from my own darkness.

Did he, looking in my eye, see

what I turned from:

my own dark grandmother

bending over gladioli in the field,

her shaking black hand defenseless   

at the shining cock of flower?

I wanted that face to die,

to be reborn in the face of a white child.

I wanted the soul to stay the same,   

for I loved to death,

to damnation and God-death,   

the soul that broke out of me.

I crowed: My Son! My Beautiful!   

But when I peeked in the basket,   

I saw the face of a black man.

Did I bend over his nose

and straighten it with my fingers   

like a vine growing the wrong way?   

Did he feel my hand in malice?

Generations we prayed and fucked   

for this light child,

the shining god of the second coming;   

we bow down in shame

and carry the children of the past   

in our wallets, begging forgiveness.

II.

A picture in a book,

a lynching.

The bland faces of men who watch   

a Christ go up in flames, smiling,   

as if he were a hooked

fish, a felled antelope, some

wild thing tied to boards and burned.   

His charring body

gives off light—a halo

burns out of him.

His face scorched featureless;

the hair matted to the scalp

like feathers.

One man stands with his hand on his hip,   

another with his arm

slung over the shoulder of a friend,   

as if this moment were large enough   

to hold affection.

III.

How can we wake

from a dream

we are born into,

that shines around us,   

the terrible bright air?

Having awakened,

having seen our own bloody hands,   

how can we ask forgiveness,

bring before our children the real   

monster of their nightmares?

The worst is true.

Everything you did not want to know.