Voice of America.

Voice of America

Peckerwood Creek, Alabama (no blacks no jews no gays):
Billy Jack Gater is dead forever sissy
("Blinded by Hatred" 20/20) The way he sees it, killer owns
  the story
'cause he ain't dead
Nina's singin in me and ain't no sugar ain't gonna be no
  sugar

Mississippi Mississippi Mississippi
Mississippi Got Damn Mississippi
Nina's singin in me and ain't no sugar ain't gonna be none

Remember that
fictive shadow: gritty muddy blue lit: forest hutting
make it dark-dark darker than that and barbed
call that story song, hear that ravenous absence
no secret hunger built to last
Nina's singin and ain't no sugar

Black Gator felled by jungle fever
was no martyr was a misstep
in da dance da dee da daaa
doin, it to death
pi_e in the pocket, in the pocket
blood in the pocket book play(s) dozens
cha ching!: dollar signs and since
Nina's singin in me ain't no sugar ain't gonna be no sugar

Ask Mississippi
this set's in the street milk crate in the road
sampled discord dat swingin' pulp
obscenity in your living room in the measure
rest to mark beat time is an accessory
we cannot afford

Persistent ideology makes itself
known we are American and valued
and the church said ; universal truths rest
in the value use and leisure placed
on certain inalienable bodies:
Better to reign in Hell, that story

Whatcha want whatcha want two dimes and a nickel
Whatcha want want you, Walk on
Whatcha want whatcha want half a mind to get it
Whatcha want want you, Walk on

If there is one true word uttered here:
nigger--its monstruous possibilities--variations
and axioms: axes: n I g (g) (a) (h) (z)
no sugar

    [5 year old South Africa wards 3 oceans, trades 6 billion
        bones for submarines.
    Her men are taking their women by force. theirs [italics]
    And who would have thought 3 letters could keep
    still as sleep (each little death) so much blood in them.
    3 letters praxis : a free state's pass to pandemic affection.
    The orphan sea will avenge its mother's body.

    Where is Nelson Mandela
    Tear down the shantytown: he's home
    Bring back Nelson Mandela
    Tear down the shantytown: he's home] no sugar

no fallen back into old music, everything a woman
scorned, loose, chaste, plain, shapely
a looker, with a car, a hooker, a nun
tight-tight, ready to pop, born to be_____ed
sanctified, mammy, sapphire, hot
bitchy, tired, tested, tried, true
a digger, a dame, a queen, a skeeze
luck, a chicken, cold, a tease
muse hoochie, muse goddess, moody muse
mule
let go ya oughta let it go
woman singin' ain't no sugar

Ask somebody
who owns it ain't dead
foot on the neck, that story
Sugar Ditch, Mississippi
rumored kin
Westside Hypewalk #___
Chicago, Illinois Mississippi

25 below too cold to ho
25 below too cold to ho
Never too cold to pimp

Money won't change you
In time, Sugar In time

Duriel E. Harris, a graduate of Yale and NYU, holds her doctorate from the University of Illinois. Her manuscript DRAG has been a finalist for several first-book prizes, and her writing has most recently appeared in Step Into a World, Works & Days, nocturnes, and Fence. Currently at work on Sorna, a sound recording, she has received grants from the Cave Canem Foundation and the Chicago Bar Association. Harris is the Poetry Editor for Obsidian III, a co-founder of Black Tool Collective, and the recipient of a 2002-2003 Illinois Arts Council Artist Fellowship.