From Black in the Middle: An Anthology of the Black Midwest, edited by Terrion L. Williamson
I am trying to say
his neighborhood
is as tattered and feathered
as anything else,
as shadow pierced by sun
and light parted
by shadow-dance as anything else,
but they won’t stop saying
how lovely the ruins,
how ruined the lovely
children must be in that birdless city.
This excerpt from Jamaal May’s “There Are Birds Here” strikes up an implicit conversation with Nikki Giovanni’s poem “Nikki-Rosa”: “childhood remembrances are always a drag / if you’re Black,” and as Giovanni’s poem goes on to say,
and I really hope no white person ever has cause
to write about me
because they never understand
Black love is Black wealth.
May’s poem argues against those who continually say “how lovely the ruins / how ruined the lovely / children must be in that birdless city.” There are birds in the troubled neighborhoods and the vast urban spaces where children live. The poem suggests that nature, beauty, avatars of freedom, or just plain ol’ crows, wrens, and sparrows live in places too easily and too often dismissed as mere slums or war zones.
I am trying to say
his neighborhood
is as tattered and feathered
as anything else.
May sees the dangers (war, difficult history, violence) but wants readers to see the lived experience (a child feeding birds) and the possibilities within the spaces that others discount as “ruined.” But the poem also points to the similarities between the supposedly ruined neighborhoods and those unseen, and presumed better, neighborhoods. There are birds in the neighborhood of May’s poem. There are children and families. An eye blind to the neighborhood’s birds is an eye blind to the neighborhood’s children, and that kind of blindness is a form of violence. May struggles: “I am trying to say,” as if the poet is chronically misunderstood or continually forced to speak through the wrack of distorted perceptions, as if poetry grows more difficult when speaking to blindness.
Black in the Middle: An Anthology of the Black Midwest, Belt Publishing, edited by Terrion L. Williamson, 2020. Reprinted from Jamaal May, The Big Book of Exit Strategies, Alice James Books, 2016.