I don’t wanna write
In English or Spanish
I wanna sing/make you dance
(I enter doing my whirling dervish turn, torso leaning and focused upward,
with hands reaching skyward as if to some unreachable star)
like the bata/dance scream
(I utter a loud wail and I perform Oshun’s movements,
shoulders undulating and my hips swaying)
Twitch hips with me cuz
Done forgot all abt words
Ain’t got no definitions
I wanna whirl with you
(I shift into second gear, turning voraciously directly in front of her stool,
bringing the dancer and poet in visual proximity)
our whole body
wrapped like a ripe mango ramblin’ whippin’ thru space
(I execute a grand jeté, even in the narrow space cleared for my dance,
recovering into a low crouching yanvalu body roll
that draws heaven and earth in closer proximity)
On the corner in the park
Where the rug useta be
Let willie colon take you out swing your head
push your leg to the moon with me . . .
( I reach for the sky with a strong high battement kick, head roll out of it as I arch my chest
open to receive all of the moon’s energy, segueing into a step-two-three mambo)
This was the way we worked: spontaneous, inspired, groping, searching for the goddess-like moment when
word and movement merged into communication that could not be denied. This was long before Ntozake
Shange of New York fame, or before her novels Betsy Brown and Sassafrass Cypress & Indigo, or her
St. Martin Press poetry publications like Nappy Edges or A Love Space Demands, or any of the major works
for which she established herself as a 20th century writer with whom to be reckoned. This is why she had to be
the “Lady in Orange” herself, in the beginning Broadway run of for colored girls.
These are the forgotten years when we were young and testy enough to try anything in the SF Bay Area
environment of the early 70s that said, “Fuck it! Just Do It.” We gave Zake permission to be as open and
vulnerable and as tough and confrontational as she wanted to be. Anything that we tried, albeit rough and
unsophisticated, set the standard for so many of today’s young experimental artists. The early 70s in the Bay
Area witnessed young, quintessential, and unfettered Ntozake Shange, the One Who Walks Among Lions
With Her Own Things.
african Voices
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