WHILE I WAS WALKING
down the motel corridor
i nodded my head & spoke
to the black maid—
late-twenties, maybe mid-thirties—
who smiled and delivered
a deeply dimpled reply
in a low-pitched, whiskey-voiced
off-handed, matter-of-fact way
that led me
—and i suppose
would have tempted
most hetero-black males
of my generation—
to wonder how that voice
would have sounded
when pitched in the throes
of excruitiating love making
this was not the dog in me
barking for a boning
but rather the traditional
appreciator of african aesthetics
who finds great comfort
in both the pleasure and spirituality
of african feminity
and who acknowledges
with neither shame nor hesitancy
that i can be both physically
and spiritually moved
by the deepness
of a dark-hued woman’s
sweet voice
i suppose there are those
who will find this poem problematic
but that is their problem
as for me
i will never stop
greeting black women
& will continue to be
profoundly grateful to my sisters
and whatever gods there be
that despite the historic
and contemporary disasters
and miscues which taint
a multitude of exchanges
between females and we males
black women nevertheless
continue to respond
to our quieries of “good morning/
good evening, how you doing?”
with that most profound
of monosyllabic redundacies—
you know what i mean, how
when a sister that some hollywood
counch caster might consider a bit plump
weighing in on the upside
of a hundred pounds
but all attractively porportioned
in the classic negroidal 3-2-4
golden ratio of breasts, waist, butt
will innocently restate the obvious
as she looks up from whatever she is doing
looks up, stares you in the eye
and simply sounds an answer
to your rhetorical query
simply sounds
that amazingly accurate
one-word-tells-all
ebonic refrain:
“fine!”
and then i moved on
—kalamu ya salaam