SERPENTWITHFEET
I originally started writing this song thinking about how much Toni Morrison’s novels have guided me through my adult life. Then I began thinking of all the self-possessed Black men I met in NYC.
I wanted the song to feel patriotic and anemic. I’m a product of all the loving, abundant Black men I’ve encountered; because of them I gave myself space to be abundant, too.
In the second verse, I’m thinking of how the boundless Black men in my life have shown me how to reject the inadequate emotional tools given to me by my father. Thinking of Milkman’s coming of age in Song of Solomon.
This song is about redesigning myself.
Shani Jamila
Morrison (Well Read Black Girl Memorial), 2019
Chromogenic print, 20" x 30" (50.8 x 76.2cm)
Image courtesy of the artist
Invoice
I’d be a stencil of a man
I’d taste the sting of violent hands
If it weren’t for you, if it weren’t for you
I’m sorry for calling your love “sickness”
I needed your strength but mocked your thickness
But I owe so much to you, owe so much to you
Whatever makes you cold freezes me
Even when we grow old you’ll speak to me
Whatever makes you cold freezes me, freezes me, freezes me
He straddles the equator, not the fence
Taught us to break our wrists, not our promises
Not our promises, he always keeps his promises
Because of him lesser men have set their father’s homes ablaze
And as the smoke billowed all those men became
The boys they never got to be, never got to be
Whatever makes you cold freezes me
Even when we grow old you’ll speak to me
Whatever makes you cold freezes me, freezes me, freezes me
SERPENTWITHFEET