It wasn't until Carrie Allen McCray was seventy-three that she found her true calling as a poet. Now almost ninety, she has made up for lost time—she's written an award-winning collection of poems, a memoir, and a novel. In her prose and poetry she writes about her family's history: about her grandmother's forbidden relationship with a confederate general; the Harlem Renaissance writers who visited her home as a child; and a long poem about Ota Benga, an African pygmy tribesman who was brought by missionaries to the United States from the Belgian Congo and displayed in a cage at the Bronx Zoo. He later lived with McCray's family when she was growing up. McCray shows how poetry is an alternative medium for documenting the past, presenting us with experiences and events that are usually left out of the news or history books. Her poems are a living repository of American history, an alternative kind of telling, as she connects, with great clarity and directness, the personal particular experiences of her life to larger historical and social events.
October 1935
All I could see
was you in your
red felt hat
walking briskly
out the front door
on the way to
the “fight”
you, who integrated
the living in our
small town
being lowered now
into a segregated
corner of the
graveyard
To my mother, longtime fighter
for equality and justice
When I was a young child
in Lynchburg, Virginia
I could not ride the
trolley car sitting next
to our white neighbor
But could sit, nestled
close to her
under her grape arbor
swinging my feet
eating her scuppernongs
and drinking tall, cold
glasses of lemonade
she offered us on
hot, dry summer days
When I was a young child
moving to Montclair, New Jersey
I could now ride the
trolley car sitting next
to our white neighbor
but did not dare
cross the bitter line
that separated our house
from hers
and she never offered us
tall, cold glasses of lemonade
on hot, dry summer days
The high-pitched Soprano
over horn-rimmed glasses
looks at robust Contralto,
“Hmm, that the way you make
macaroni and cheese for Pastor?”
“Yeah,” Contralto deep-voices,
“That's the way I makes
macaroni and cheese for Pastor.”
“Well, Pastor loves mine,” Soprano
chirps, “cause it's so full
of cheese, cheese oozing all
over the top, runnin’ all
down the side,” her voice
seductive.
“Well, Pastor loves mine,”
Contralto's voice deepens,
“cause it's big and round
and full of all kinds of
good things.
“I boils that macaroni,
puts heavy cream, lots of
cheese, milk, eggs, butter,
and Pastor, he always say,
‘Um-um, Miz Lizzie, yo’
macaroni and cheese
the best I ever had.’”
Soprano turns up her nose
and in an accusatory tone
admonishes Contralto, “I don’ put heavy cream
in mine. You know Pastor
has a bad heart.
You could kill Pastor?
“I put a little cre-e-e-m cheese
in mine
And Pastor, he always say,
‘Um, um, Miz Sadie, yo’
macaroni and cheese
the best I ever had.’”
What is this guilt
You're trying to heap
upon me like bales of
cotton
No, life did not take
me into the fields
beside you
But I would gladly
carry your bales,
if you could bear
my griefs
For Molly Blackburn, lifelong fighter against apartheid
You could have spent
your time, as some,
among the wood anemone
or playing bridge on
afternoons with ladies fancy.
Instead you chose
the brambled path
where walked the
darker brother.