Greenwood Ghosts Dress Their Sunday Best

POETRY [Greenwood Ghosts Dress Their Sunday Best] by Jasmine Elizabeth Smith after Gwendolyn Brooks’s “We Real Cool” this no parade for your pleasure no one winds up brass band stand celebration this no market we knife melons sample haggle down our price aspirin, or the lady-hand leather of Louise half heels, some our bit-o-honey, salted seed from Ferguson Drug Store & Grier Shoemaker no one here hunch their back, low eyes, pantomime themselves minstrel or maid we don’t give— we grand stand our own streets headlining Tulsa Star newspaper, Attorneys Spears, Saddler, & Chappelle. we call Lazarus up from the dead, his bluebonnet gurney in Frissell Hospital’s basement just seen to be seen we filled out, we bright enough, we goldend weed, we oil reserve, we keep no time, we Bunn’s Shoeshine gospel. we holy spirits broken from the mouth & matchsticks of Bethel Adventist Church pews past Abner & Hunter Barbershop, Carter Billiards, Hardy Furnished Rooms Dixie Theater— you mistake our procession for ghosts envious, the figurative you claim we isn’t so why you stop and stare is our beauty so vain it a form of resistance? Jasmine Elizabeth Smith (she/her) is a Black poet from Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, and Cave Canem Fellow. She received an MFA in poetry from the University of California, Riverside. Her poetic work, invested in the diaspora of Black Americans in various historical contexts, has been featured in Black Renaissance Noir and Poetry, among others. She is the winner of the Georgia Poetry Prize, and her collection South Flight is forthcoming with the University of Georgia Press. WORLDLIT.ORG 67 YIELBONZIE JOHNSON, PASSAGES (2020), 16 X 20 IN., WATERCOLOR/ACRYLIC MIX ON PAPER / COURTESY OF THE ARTIST

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