how to get over

t’ai freedom ford, t'ai freedom ford

• Publisher: Red Hen Press
• Year: 2017
• eBook ISBN: 9781597095976
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: American Poetry
• Index: Literature

An astonishing debut, how to get over is part instruction manual, part prayer, part testimony. It attempts to solve the reader's problems (by telling them how to get over), while simultaneously creating them—troubling the waters with witness and blues. ford's poems witness via a series of "past life portraits" that navigate personal space as well as the imagined persona. These portraits conjure the blues via the imagined lives of the inanimate (a whip, a machete), the historic (a Negro burial ground, Harriet Tubman, The Red Summer), the iconic (Pecola Breedlove, Richard Pryor, Rodney King). At the same time, these portraits focus on the past lives of the author and grapple with themes including sexuality, sexual abuse, and substance abuse.

The collection's namesake poems speak to bullying and homophobia, blackness, whiteness and gentrification, and even directly address pop culture icons like Kanye West, Chaka Khan, and Nicky Minaj. Grounded in memory and re-memory, these poems pray in the voice of the ancestors and testify on their behalf. ford's poems not only remind how the history and legacy of slavery placed African-Americans at an unfair disadvantage, but attempt to illuminate the beautiful struggle of a people's endurance and resilience. The reader embarks upon a journey through these poems, circa 1787 to 2013, and emerges realizing that everything is connected—the ways we live, lie, love, and die—the ways we all get over.

live

black, brown, and beige (a movement in three parts)

after Duke Ellington

Movement One: Black

work song

there is a graveyard in the belly

a hunger jutting crooked

like a tombstone.

a plantation in them lungs

dirt floors and hot air

a suffocated field

holla a rebirth

a migration in the throat

a barefoot chant toward

some muscled music

fractured rock—

freedom roll

come Sunday

a river runs

through every holy town

its lulling rush like the breath

of Jesus. a salve for Monday

blues cause he the only white

who sees us. have mercy river—

forgiver of sins, we born

again slaves

until Spirit

frees us

light

there is a tunnel as black

as singed bone

a congregation there

a chorus of winged mouths

a tunnel. a kaleidoscope

of echoes. a backbone.

a graveyard of grannies

searching for shadows

follow follow

black winged moths

into the tunnel of night—

a chorus of light slanted

like your church hat

your roof

the soles of your

shoes.

Movement Two: Brown

(West Indian) Influence

all this: African

that soft-shoe

that boogaloo

that cha-cha

samba

mambo

rumba

hustle

shing-a-ling

swing

slide electric

poplock

Lindy Hop

krump

twerk

alla that: African

that two-step

drunk with swagger

that limp—pimp walk

Harlem Shake Hollywood

shuffle

nigger

negro

nigra

nigga.

i

ain’t

brown

i’m

Black.

Emancipation Celebration

how it feel?

weightless

a body burdened

colored—freed

what lightness this?

to walk as if winged

every step a sing-song

sway. a new breed

what Christmas this?

Juneteenth jubilee

a throat without chain

a book—no one to read

what reverie idles

this mind, these hands?

who will tend this land,

reap this cruel seed?

The Blues

what good free

hungry?

what good hands

empty?

what good mouth

quiet?

what good God

invisible?

what good skin

colored?

what good black

blue?

what good hands

hungry?

what good mouth

empty?

what good God

quiet?

what good skin

invisible?

what good black

free?

Movement Three: Beige

Sugar Hill Penthouse

this skin a journey

a testament—a lynching

a litmus test see

how faces turn red,

acidic this skin

an acrid memory

tanging the tongue

how mundane this

skin a shade

and a half past alright

a nighttime creeping

a bucket of fresh

cream—memory

curdling

this skin a telling

a pointed finger—

evidence, a finger

print a witness

come Sunday (resurrection remix)

this here a church

your touch—

a tambourine

a quivering finger

possessed

our hands

pressed together

a prayer

blessed reunion

this skin

a bible page

a holyghost

in them legs

calves praising God

that run

in your stockings

the Devil

but every step

faith

every breath

religion

your glorious mouth

scripture.

past life portrait

machete, circa 1791

my widest mouth hungriest in morning break

fast a staccato thwack clacking stalks of cane

sugar my smiling blade but teeth sharpening

themselves against the sweet dull thud of routine

rusty renegades of serrated jag thirst

yonder fields set ablaze in rebellion—smoke

blackening sky beckoning a thousand mouths

like me, but alas, i remain— in boredom

i scalp dandelions, split plantains in two

whack my way th...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Acknowledgments
• Contents
• how to get over Donyale Luna
• live
• lie
• love
• die
• Notes
• Biographical Note