Poetry Month ‘22: Poem and Intentions

Happy Poetry Month, loves. Spring is coming.

This is the first year I’ve moved into National Poetry Month with awareness and intention. It’s been a beautiful sunny Friday. After a rare day in the office, I came home and put on a little fashion show of some surprise bonus items that came with a recent purchase, dancing around my room like a Big Grrrl* (low stamina; not ready for tour, alas)! Beyonce’s ‘Get Me Bodied’ is always a cardio moment, as I inevitably get carried ALL the way away. Feeling hope for spring, and took Sissy dog for a longer walk than usual to run an errand and catch up on GirlTrek. Joy and peace in movement.

I plan to write at least a poem each day. If not write, revise.

To everyone in the In Surreal Life April cohort (I see you, bestie! :D) - HAVE A FANTASTIC TIME!

The poem below was written sometime in the last year, maybe in the fall… I was inspired, actually, by an episode of GirlTrek’s Black History Bootcamp (which also begins today, which I am SO excited about!!! What a good day of beginnings!). I hope it resonates.

Love,

A

What They Didn’t Tell Us Young Folks About Anita Hill

by Atena O. Danner

Facing

Such betrayal

From the people she served

Truth didn’t flinch as she told it:

Courage

Hand raised

Surrounded by

Rows of men like shark teeth

Closing, consuming, all in a

Day’s work

It’s work

Angling to break

A Black woman- just work

Like their father’s, and their father’s

Fathers’

Angry

At the way that

She couldn’t be made to

Cry out. Who and where she came from

Scared them

Power

She held in hand

Protection she’d carried

All the way from Oklahoma

To wield

(Confirmed:

Our ancestors’

cruelest nightmare, hiding

from the weeping Freedmen that haunt

his blood)

She knew

What moving cost:

Better than being moved.

Chose to spend her inheritance

On truth.