Funeral Diva by Pamela Sneed

Author:Pamela Sneed [Sneed, Pamela]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: City Lights Publishers
Published: 2020-06-15T00:00:00+00:00

EPILOGUE:

Twenty years later I received a call from Gregg Bordowitz who asked

me to read poetry at a tribute to Other Countries at the Whitney Museum.

Without knowing our relationship, he asked me to speak about Donald Woods.

“He was one of my best friends,” I said.

At the tribute, I read David Frechette’s poem, “Je Ne Regrette Rien”

as well as Essex Hemphill’s, “When My Brother Fell.”

I also read Donald Woods’s poem, “Prescription.”

I read an inscription Donald had written to me

on the inside cover of Brother to Brother, a Black gay male anthology:

Dear Pamela,

Thank you for appreciating the love of brothers for brothers.

Love is the light of the world.

When I finished there wasn’t a dry eye.

Later in an unfinished poem I would describe that moment

As I imagined a soldier would,

“I had to go back to the warfront, to reconstruct his body parts,

and bring him home.”

And I felt like Alex Haley finally closing a chasm,

a great divide in his soul

having put my brother to proper rest.

There are many things to update, since Rodney King,

at this time the number of police killings has increased against Black men

and reached crisis proportions.

I do not believe as some writers do that this violence is new, only

the cameras are. America is imploding

from crimes of the past.

Those of us who are left from that Black lesbian and gay literary

scene still write.

After a period of silence

we are finally able to process

and writing about that time has begun to flourish.

Documenting the lives of Black lesbians and gays who died

of AIDS and cancer is part of my life’s work.

I am a professor.

I feel often like the daughter of Kizzy in Roots who returns

to the grave of her father the famous runaway

Kunta Kinte.

In defiance, she scratches off his slave name Toby on a wooden marker

and writes his preferred and biological name Kunta Kinte

as if to say as I am saying now, we are still here.

Don’s son Baby Max is a young man like his father

He has become a visual artist.

He still struggles with the loss of his fathers to AIDS.

There is a picture of Donald and me at a gay pride event in March 1991.

He is holding my waist and we are looking out and smiling.

At present, I am in love. One day at a time.

Some days I look at her and wish like Alex Haley after a lifelong

search,

I could shout “I found you. Finally, I found you.”

This piece took fifteen years to write.

I am tired.

I can feel the hands of Donald, Don Reid, David Frechette,

Rory Buchanan, Bert Hunter, Alan Williams, Audre Lorde,

Pat Parker, Marlon Riggs, Essex Hemphill, and Assotto Saint pushing me

across the finish line.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.