I Spend the Day with Gwendolyn Brooks
by Wilda Morris

Gwendolyn gives me a tour of the South Side,
shows me a little boy, mouth stuffed with licorice,
without a nickel for Sunday School, an old couple
in a backroom flat eating beans from chipped bowls,
and those seven teens playing pool at the Golden Shovel,
still thinking themselves real cool.

We watch Mary Ann make love
to a Gangster Disciple, flash the big diamond ring
he got her (we know not to ask how or where).
When a hearse drives by, Gwendolyn bows
in tribute to DeWitt Williams, Alabama-born,
plain black boy, on his way to Lincoln Cemetery.
She hopes the hearse will drive past the Savoy
where, with women and wine, DeWitt found some joy.

Gwendolyn takes me to the projects where gray rats
skitter into shadows. Chitterlings and cabbage
cook on old stoves, their scents mingling in the halls
with the stench of urine and yesterday’s garbage.
The Ladies of the Betterment League come–
with their rose-tipped fingernails and high-heeled shoes–
reaching out to help those they deem the worthy poor,
the very worthy poor–not too dark, not too dirty
or too dim, never touching anyone, trying not
to inhale the putrid air. We watch their frightened eyes
as they flee back toward Glencoe and Lake Forest.

Gwendolyn shows me the nice neighborhood
where Rudolph Reed bought his dream home, moved
with his unwelcome family. We hear rocks shatter windows,
see his wife change the bandage on little Mabel’s head.
Her whimpers, the crimson gauze, her father’s murderous rage,
his blood-covered body, will haunt my nights with dread.

One can’t be sure one has a home in this fractured world,
Gwendolyn says, One wants a teller in a time like this.
And I say, Ah, yes.



 

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