Patricia Spears Jones: Pick of the Week [ed. Terence Winch]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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If I Were Rita Hayworth

 

I would hear Spanish first.

My father would teach me how to shimmer.

My mother would keep her mouth shut.

 

I would wear red dresses at age 12

and dance like a woman many years older.

I would dance in my father's arms.

 

Later I would dye my hair red

and pluck the last Spanish words from my mouth.

 

I would masquerade as an American­

that healthy girl next door who knows

how to crack a whip.

 

I would dream only in black and white

(after Technicolor, some peace is needed).

 

As the Studio built a whole world for me

full of fresh cream and gingerbread, I would seek

out the darkest men, nigger dark, then fuck them

into marriage. I would wed a Prince of Darkness

and bear daughters named for the perfumes of Arabia.

 

If l were Rita Hayworth, strung between living a lie

and bearing a sickness so furious it ages me to dream of it,

I would rage in my illness, make a black hole

wide enough to swallow the damnation of my beauty.

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Patricia Spears Jones grew up in Arkansas and has lived and worked in New York City since the mid 1970s.  She is a poet, playwright, educator, cultural activist, and anthologist. The recipient of the Jackson Poetry Prize from Poets & Writers in 2017, Spears Jones is the author of A Lucent Fire New and Selected Poems and other books. Her poems are widely anthologized, including in the forthcoming in 250 Years of African American Poetry: Why African American Poetry Matters Today.  Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, The Brooklyn Rail, msmagazine.com, and numerous other print and online journals.  She co-edited ORDINARY WOMEN: An Anthology of New York City Women Poets (1978) and edited THINK: Poems for Aretha Franklin’s Inauguration Day Hat (2009). She curated programs as Program Coordinator for The Poetry Project at St. Marks Church and created WORDS Sunday series in Brooklyn.  She has taught Creative Writing at Hunter College, Barnard College, Adelphi University, and Hollins University as the 2020 Louis D. Rubin Writer in Residence.  She has taught summer poetry workshops at Community of Writers, Fine Arts Work Center, Naropa, Rutgers University, Truro Center for the Arts at Castle Hill and Wild Seeds Workshop for Medgar Evers College and at The Poetry Project, Poets House, Brooklyn Poets, for Cave Canem New York classes and at branches of the NYPL and the BPL. She is Emeritus Fellow for Black Earth Institute and organizer of the American Poets Congress. 

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Comments

[J Baumgartner]

Such a vivid, evocative, gorgeous poem. Thank you for posting it!

[Terence Winch]

I agree, and thank you.

[lally]

great pick Terence, this poem highlights all that I love about Patricia's poetry, and all everybody should...

[Terence Winch]

Thank you for suggesting her work to me.

[Diane Ward]

"If I Were Rita Hayworth" is a remarkable collapsing of object and gaze, an intersectional rage against fatalistic and constricting notions of beauty. Thank you for writing it, Patricia, thank you for posting, Terence.

[Terence Winch]

Thanks, Diane, for this insightful comment.