STACY​ DYSON

People need to understand...poetry is a fire element​

I am trying to teach Hanah the history of music in this country

which means we have to start with slavery

with cries to God for mercy and a better place

with signal songs and the Underground Railroad

Hanah wanted to know if slaves ran away because they did something wrong

“Were they bad people? Then why were they running?”

Hanah is in the 4th grade

her school ignores Black History month,

apparently they do not find it relevant to a Christian education...

                                                                                                from LESSONS IN LYRICS AND LIES

there is nothing more volatile/than a Black woman who has made friends/with both her beauty and her pain/and we are lovely and suffering right now/we are lovely and suffering right now

we are lovely and suffering/RIGHT now..

                                                                                                .from LOVELY AND SUFFERING

I will get in trouble for this poem...

but sometimes I have to breathe just for me

sing just for me

and ignore the fire- news from all my sister-girls' battlefields

be beautiful, be intelligent just for me..

Lord, I know there is a debt to be honored

I know

but today a butterfly trembled along the

edge of my finger

and I took a breath...

and the world did not fall down...

                                                     from "And the World Did Not Fall Down (for Kimba Rael)