From Suite: Ida

Abstract

from Suite:Ida Angela Jackson (bio) Two Trains The countryside slides away, elides trees, sunlight rolls down like a savior. The train shudders and hisses to a stop. Which train? Who is in the wrong spot? A seat on a train is the site of a war. Ask Gandhi, East Indian in South Africa: Ask me, a colored schoolmarm, in skirts, hat, and gloves. We lost the battle, and won a war. Equally colored. There is something about insult that burns bodily as one is seized and dispatched like an angry letter full of inkblots of significance. Gandhi led his story. I wrote mine, in my way led my match-light. Hand Writing I do not have soft hands. My hands have been in too much hot water, water elbows deep, sleeves rolled up as if for a fight, washing, scrubbing, rinsing dirt loose from my siblings’ clothing. [End Page 1206] My hands have calluses from writing what hits the nervous system like nails on chalk board of a one room school house where I teach. The screech echoing the screams. My Business I have important business, too vital to be concerned with dross. I have to be my pen, dipped in blood and fire, illuminating the shadows, vanquishing the shadows. I have posted a “Do Not Disturb” sign over my heart. Only Ferdinand, my children, my people, Truth may enter in. Ida Rewrites “I, as usual, lost what favor I had by becoming furiously angry.” I agitate to a fault. If I were vulgar enough to sing the Blues I would be the Blues [End Page 1207] and shake hands with the Devil and bring him to his knees. I look Fear in the eye. I show no Fear. I look Hate eyeball to eyeball. I do not blink. I must, however, admit difficulty with rivals. Indeed so less than me can they be called rivals? Women! Fellow workers for the Good! History Tellers who omit me! Yet I cannot hold my peace when holding would benefit my cause and circumstance. Now I must rewrite. I must not admit my breach. Moving Day, 1925 A life is still a life. It is a process of elimination --- moving day. Giving away what will not fit in an apartment. Five rooms. Once filled a house. Fourteen. Fourteen into five. Division and cast asides. The boulevard is wide. Trees abound. Tall and generous. People picnic, sleep in the lush grass. A big front yard. Bodies stretch out like flags Of peace. I am a housewife. A life is still a life. [End Page 1208] Angela Jackson Angela Jackson is author of a number of volumes of poems, including Dark Legs and Silk Kisses: The Beatitudes of the Spinners (1994 winner of the Carl Sandburg Award and the Friends of Literature Book of the Year Award/Chicago Sun-Times), Solo in the Boxcar Third Floor E (winner of the 1985 American Book Award), and And All These Roads Be Luminous: Poems Selected and New, which was nominated for the National Book Award in 1998. In 2002, she was awarded the Shelley Memorial Award by the Poetry Society of America. This Chicago resident, who is also a published playwright and a fiction writer, was born in Greenville, Mississippi, and educated at Northwestern University and the University of Chicago. Copyright © 2008 Charles H. Rowell