Revolutionary Petunias

And Other Poems

Alice Walker

• Publisher: Open Road Media
• Year: 2011
• ISBN:
  9781453224021
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: American Poetry
• Index: Literature

National Book Award Finalist: The love poems of an author caught up in a hopeful and sometimes violent upheaval.
When Alice Walker published her second collection of poems in 1976, she had spent the previous decade deeply immersed in the civil rights movement. In these verses are her most visceral reactions to a moment in history that would shape the country, and that she herself influenced through words and advocacy. In hymns to ancestors, passionate polemics, and laments for lost possibilities, Walker addresses the problems of the past while keeping an eye on the possibilities of the future. Even in the midst of the call for change, these poems reveal a deep yearning for individual connection to others, as well as a deeply personal connection to nature.
This ebook features an illustrated biography of Alice Walker including rare photos from the author's personal collection.

In These Dissenting Times

To acknowledge our ancestors means we are aware that we did not make ourselves, that the line stretches all the way back, perhaps, to God; or to Gods. We remember them because it is an easy thing to forget: that we are not the first to suffer, rebel, fight, love and die. The grace with which we embrace life, in spite of the pain, the sorrows, is always a measure of what has gone before.

—Alice Walker, “Fundamental Difference”

IN THESE DISSENTING TIMES

I shall write of the old men I knew

And the young men

I loved

And of the gold toothed women

Mighty of arm

Who dragged us all

To church.

I

THE OLD MEN USED TO SING

The old men used to sing

And lifted a brother

Carefully

Out the door

I used to think they

Were born

Knowing how to

Gently swing

A casket

They shuffled softly

Eyes dry

More awkward

With the flowers

Than with the widow

After they’d put the

Body in

And stood around waiting

In their

Brown suits.

II

WINKING AT A FUNERAL

Those were the days

Of winking at a

Funeral

Romance blossomed

In the pews

Love signaled

Through the

Hymns

What did we know?

Who smelled the flowers

Slowly fading

Knew the arsonist

Of the church?

III

WOMEN

They were women then

My mama’s generation

Husky of voice—Stout of

Step

With fists as well as

Hands

How they battered down

Doors

And ironed

Starched white

Shirts

How they led

Armies

Headragged Generals

Across mined

Fields

Booby-trapped

Ditches

To discover books

Desks

A place for us

How they knew what we

Must know

Without knowing a page

Of it

Themselves.

IV

THREE DOLLARS CASH

Three dollars cash

For a pair of catalog shoes

Was what the midwife charged

My mama

For bringing me.

“We wasn’t so country then,” says Mom,

“You being the last one—

And we couldn’t, like

We done

When she brought your

Brother,

Send her out to the

Pen

And let her pick

Out

A pig.”

V

YOU HAD TO GO

TO FUNERALS

You had to go to funerals

Even if you didn’t know the

People

Your Mama always did

Usually your Pa.

In new patent leather shoes

It wasn’t so bad

And if it rained

The graves dropped open

And if the sun was shining

You could take some of the

Flowers home

In your pocket

book. At six and seven

The face in the gray box

Is always your daddy’s

Old schoolmate

Mowed down before his

Time.

You don’t even ask

After a while

What makes them lie so

Awfully straight

And still. If there’s a picture of

Jesus underneath

The coffin lid

You might, during a boring sermon,

Without shouting or anything,

Wonder who painted it;

And how he would like

All eternity to stare

It down.

VI

UNCLES

They had broken teeth

And billy club scars

But we didn’t notice

Or mind

They were uncles.

It was their job

To come home every summer

From the North

And tell my father

He wasn’t no man

And make my mother

Cry and long

For Denver, Jersey City,

Philadelphia.

They were uncles.

Who noticed how

Much

They drank

And acted womanish

With they do-rags

We were nieces.

And they were almost

Always good

For a nickel

Sometimes

a dime.

VII

THEY TAKE A LITTLE NIP

They take a little nip

Now and then

Do the old folks

Now they’ve moved to

Town

You’ll sometimes

See them sitting

Side by side

On the porch

Straightly

As in church

Or working diligently

Their small

City stand of

Greens

Serenely pulling

Stalks and branches

Up

Leaving all

The weeds.

VIII

SUNDAY SCHOOL, CIRCA 1950

“Who made you?” was always

The question

The answer was always

“God.”

Well, there we stood

Three feet high

Heads bowed

Leaning into

Bosoms.

Now

I no longer recall

The Catechism

Or brood on the Genesis

Of life

No.

I ponder the exchange

Itself

And salvage mostly

The leaning.

Burial

I

They have fenced in the dirt road

that once led to Wards Chapel

A.M.E. church,

and cows graze

among the stones that

mark my family’s graves.

The massive oak is gone

from out the church yard,

but the giant space is left

unfilled;

despite the two-lane blacktop

that slides across

the old, unalterable

roots.

II

Today I bring my own child here;

to this place where my father’s

grandmother rests undisturbed

beneath the Georgia sun,

above her the neatstepping hooves

of cattle.

Here the graves soon grow back into the land.

Have been known to sink. To drop open without

warning. To cover themselves with wild ivy,

blackberries. Bittersweet and sage.

No one knows why. No one asks.

When Burning Off Day comes, as it does

some years,

the graves are haphazardly cleared and snakes

hacked to death and burned sizzling

in the brush. … The odor of smoke, oak

leaves, honeysuckle.

Forgetful of geographic resolutions as birds,

the farflung young fly South to bury

the old dead.

III

The old women move quietly up

and touch Sis Rachel’s face.

“Tell Jesus I’m coming,” they say.

“Tell Him I ain’t goin’ to be

long.”

My grandfather turns his creaking head

away from the lavender box.

He does not cry. But loo...