Nikky Finney
Nació en 1957 en Carolina del Sur, EE.UU.
Nikky Finney, hija de activistas, en la Universidad de Talladega comenzó a entender al poderosa sinergia entre Arte e Historia. Ha publicado cuatro libros de poesía: Head Off & Split (2011) por el que recibió el National Book Award, The World Is Round (2003), Rice (1995) y On Wings Made of Gauze (1985). Es profesor de literatura en la Universidad de Carolina del Sur. Es fundadora de los Affrilachian Poets. Web: http://nikkyfinney.net/index.html
Terciopelo Rojo
(para Rosa Parks, 1913 – 2005)
La gente siempre dice que no cedí mi asiento porque estaba cansada, pero no es cierto. No estaba cansada físicamente, o no más cansada de lo que solía estar al final de una jornada laboral. No – lo único que estaba – era cansada de rendirme.
– Rosa Parks
I
Montgomery, Alabama, 1955
El marco: una caja rodante con ruedas.
Los actores: Mr. Joe Singleton, Rev. Scott,
Miss Louise Bennett, Mrs Rosa Parks,
Jaboc & Junie (gemelos fraternales, catorce años)
El juego: Paga tu Cabeza India al conductor,
luego bájate del autobús.
Luego, camina hasta la puerta al final del autobús.
(Luego, aprieta repetir durante cincuenta años)
A veces, el conductor se iba,
antes de que el cliente que había pagado
pudiese llegar a la única puerta abierta.
Harta de autobuses yéndose – sin ellos –
justo en el momento que alzaba su pie, rozando, el escalón metálico:
No era una niña. Estaba en los cuarenta.
Una costurera. Una mujer fiel a
las cosas hechas a mano.
Había crecido en un lugar:
donde sólo la gente blanca tenía poder,
donde sólo la gente blanca pasaba los buenos trabajos
a otra gente blanca,
donde sólo la gente blanca prestaba dinero
a otra gente blanca,
donde sólo la gente blanca era considerada humana
por otra gente blanca,
donde sólo los hijos de la gente blanca tenían libros
nuevos el primer día de colegio,
donde sólo la gente blanca podía conducir a la tienda
a medianoche a por leche
(sin tener que mirar por el retrovisor).
II
Una costurera trae tela e hilo, cuellos & dobladillos,
ojales, todo junto. Es alguien que sabe manejarse
con el terciopelo.
Arqueándose sobre un río de tela tantea su decisión,
pero no corta, no hasta que los alfileres estén en su sitio,
marcándolo todo; luego, todo confluirá.
Nueve meses después, 1 de diciembre, 1955, Claudette
Colvin, quince años, es arrestada por quedarse sentada; antes de eso,
Mary Louise Smith. El tiempo de actuar, sujetado por dos alfileres.
III
La costurera de Montgomery espera y espera al
autobús en la Avenida Cleveland. Se sube,
fila cinco. La fila cinco es la primera fila de la sección
de Color. El conductor, que intentó dejarla aquel día,
la había dejado doce años antes. Pero doce años
antes ella tenía sólo veintiocho años, todavía una cría para
el duro trabajo de la resistencia.
A los cuarenta y dos has ensamblado & cosido muchas cosas
en la Alabama segregada. Has oído
“chica negrata” más veces de las que puedes hilvanar
tus modales y calmarte. Has olido al miedo cortar a través
del aire como el hierro sulfúrico de las fábricas de papel. Los pantalones,
camisas y calcetines que has zurcido a la perfección, rutinariamente,
caminan perfectos, rutinariamente, a tu lado. (Buenas. Qué hay.)
Aquellos moviéndose por ahí tan cómodos en tu ropa bien hecha,
bien cosida, escupen rutinariamente, fallan por poco tu manga
perfectamente planchada.
A los cuarenta y dos, tus preferencias son claras, tus costuras están inter-
conectadas, tu paciencia con los imbéciles, tan fina como una navaja.
A los cuarenta y dos, tu corazón pesa de esclavitud, de linchamientos,
y de lecciones para ser “buena”. Has escuchado
7884 sermones de domingo sobre como Dios hizo a cada
mujer a su imagen. Puedes pensar mucho con
un dedal en tu pulgar. Has cogido los bajos de
8230 faldas para amables y bienintencionadas mujeres blancas
en Montgomery. Has soltado el dobladillo de
18809 pantalones para chicos blancos en la edad de crecer. Te has
pinchado el dedo 45203 veces. Has callado para siempre.
IV
1 de diciembre, 1955: no te habías dado cuenta de quién
conducía el autobús. No hasta que te subiste. Luego
te acordarías, “lo único que quería era llegar a casa.”
El conductor, que te dejó tirada cuando tenías
veintiocho, no volverá a tener el placer
de dejarte tirada otra vez. Cuando
te pide que te muevas cruzas tus pies a la altura del tobillo.
Bueno – tendré que pedir que te arresten.
Y tú, tú con tus cuarenta y dos años, con tus
21199 cremalleras perfectas, tú con tu preciosa
nación de costuras perfectas desfilando todas en su sitio, por
todo Montgomery, Alabama, en las espaldas &
cinturas de negros & blancos por igual, le respondes,
Bueno – adelante puedes hacerlo.
Te arrestan un jueves. Esa noche en
Montgomery, Dr King lidera un canto, “Llega
un momento en que la gente simplemente se cansa.” (No
estaba totalmente en lo cierto, pero era un King.) Te pidió
que te levantases para que tu gente pudiese verte. Te
levantaste. ¡Veritas! No hablas. La indeleble
tinta azul todavía en tu pulgar diciendo, ¡Basta!
Piensas en las cualidades del terciopelo: fuerza
& flexibilidad. Con qué poder sujeta el hilo y
no lo deja escapar. Te abrazas a tu bolso,
las luces azules trazan tu pulgar, resplandeciendo
en el auditorio oscuro.
El lunes en los juzgados, el rocío
sudando en la hierba, caminas por la acera
en un vestido negro con mangas largas, tu cuello blanco
y puños perfectos alzándote,
almidonados en el aire de Alabama. Un esbelto sombrero
de terciopelo negro, un abrigo gris, guantes blancos. Sujetas tu
bolso cerca: todo lo valioso se guarda cerca
de la barriga, igual que habías visto hacer a tu propia madre.
Estás prístina. Puntillosa. Excepcional.
Una costurera. Toda tú recogida y
en tu sitio. Una chica en la multitud, enseñada
a no gritar, gritos, “¡Oh! ¡Se ve tan dulce! ¡Oh!
Esta vez se han metido con la persona equivocada.”
No puedes seguir metiéndote con una preciosa
mujer negra que sabe manejarse con el terciopelo.
Una mujer que puede coger el algodón y la gabardina,
la sirsaca y la seda, tapices circulares y lana
cocida colgando para las cortinas de la casa,
milimétricamente. A una mujer hecha de todo esto no se
la debe subestimar nunca, nunca se le debe pedir que se mueva
a la parte de atrás de nada, jamás se la debe arrestar.
Una mujer que cree que es digna de todas
las cosas posibles. Piadad. Gracia. Bondad. Tanto si
lo crees o no, no ha venido a la Tierra para tocar
Ring Around Your Rosie en tu circo
ambulante de transporte público.
Una mujer que entiende la forma de la simplicidad,
que viste un brazalete circular de alfileres ahí,
en la pequeña curva de su muñeca, una mujer
sagaz y en su sitio que tiene la ayuda de todas las cosas, afilada cual aguja,
plateada, dedicada, eléctrica, puede atraer las telas y a otros
hacia ella, por las pequeñas aberturas que ella y otros
antes han hecho.
Pueden meterse
con una mujer atada, demasiadas veces ya.
Con alfileres balanceándose en las esquinas
de su labios levemente abiertos, esperando a marcar
la puntada, sus dedos hilvanando,
girando en la riostra rojo sangre,
a través de sus dientes apretados levemente
te dirá, sin mirar nunca
hacia ti,
Usted haga lo que tenga que hacer &
Yo haré lo mismo.
De Head Off & Split, 2011
___________________________________________________
Traducción de: Ángel Talián nació en Madrid. Es Licenciado en Filología Hispánica por la Universidad de Granada. Ha publicado la plaquette El último verano (Vitolas del Anaïs, 2008). Obtuvo la mención especial de los premios Federico García Lorca 2009 con el libro de cuentos With or wihout you (Point de Lunettes, 2010). Fue ganador de ‘La voz + joven’ de la Obra Social Caja Madrid 2011. Su último libro, La vida, panorámica (Rialp, 2013) obtuvo un accésit del Premio Adonáis 2012.
Dancing with Strom
I want to tell you, ladies and gentlemen, there’s not enough
troops in the army to force the southern people to break
down segregation and accept the Negro [pronounced Nigra]
into our theatres, into our swimming pools, into our homes,
and into our churches.
—Strom Thurmond, South Carolina
Senator and Presidential Candidate
for the States’ Rights Party, 1948
I said, “I’m gonna fight Thurmond from the mountain to
the sea.”
—Modjeska Monteith Simkins, Civil
Rights Matriarch, South Carolina, 1948
The youngest has been married off.
He is as tall as Abraham Lincoln. Here, on his
wedding day, he flaunts the high spinning laugh
of a newly freed slave. I stand above him, just
off the second-floor landing, watching
the celebration unfold.
Uncle-cousins, bosom buddies, convertible cars
of nosy paramours, strolling churlish penny-
pinchers pour onto the mansion estate. Below,
Strom Thurmond is dancing with my mother.
The favorite son of South Carolina has already
danced with the giddy bride and the giddy bride’s
mother. More women await: Easter dressy,
drenched in caramel, double exposed, triple cinched,
lined up, leggy, ready.
I refuse to leave the porch.
If I walk down I imagine he will extend his
hand, assume I am next in his happy darky line,
#427 on his dance card. His history
and mine, burnt cork and blackboard chalk,
concentric, pancaked, one face, two histories,
slow dragging, doing the nasty.
My father knows all this.
Daddy’s Black Chief Justice legs straddle the boilerplate
carapace of the CSS H. L. Hunley, lost Confederate
submarine, soon to be found just off the coast of
Charleston. He keeps it fully submerged by
applying the weight of every treatise he has
ever written against the death penalty of
South Carolina. Chanting “Briggs v. Elliott,”
he keeps the ironside door of the submarine shut.
No hands.
His eyes are a Black father’s beacon, search-
lights blazing for the married-off sons, and
on the unmarried, whale-eyed nose-in-book
daughter, born unmoored, quiet, yellow,
strategically placed under hospital lights to
fully bake. The one with the most to lose.
There will be no trouble. Still, he chain-
smokes. A burning stick of mint & Indian
leaf seesaws between his lips. He wants
me to remember that trouble is a fire that
runs like a staircase up then down. Even
on a beautiful day in June.
I remember the new research just out:
What the Negro gave America
Chapter 9,206:
Enslaved Africans gifted porches to North
America. Once off the boats they were told,
then made, to build themselves a place—to live.
They build the house that will keep them alive.
Rather than be the bloody human floret on
yet another southern tree, they imagine higher
ground. They build landings with floor enough
to see the trouble coming. Their arced imaginations
nail the necessary out into the floral air. On the
backs and fronts of twentypenny houses,
a watching place is made for the ones who will
come tipping with torch & hog tie through the
quiet woods, hoping to hang them as decoration
in the porcupine hair of longleaf.
The architecture of Black people is sui generis.
This is architecture dreamed by the enslaved:
Their design will be stolen.
Their wits will outlast gold.
My eyes seek historical rest from the kiss-
kiss theater below; Strom Thurmond’s
it’s-never-too-late-to-forgive-me chivaree.
I search the tops of yellow pine while my
fingers reach, catch, pinch my father’s
determined-to-rise smoke.
Long before AC African people did the
math: how to cool down the hot air of
South Carolina?
If I could descend, without being trotted
out by some roughrider driven by his
submarine dreams, this is what I’d take
my time and scribble into the three-tiered,
white créme wedding cake:
Filibuster. States’ Rights. The Grand Inquisition
of the great Thurgood Marshall. This wedding
reception would not have been possible without
the Civil Rights Act of 1957 (opposed by
you-know-who).
The Dixiecrat senator has not worn his
sandy seersucker fedora to the vows.
The top of Strom Thurmond’s bald head
reveals a birthmark tattooed in contrapposto
pose: Segregation Forever.
All my life he has been the face of hatred;
the blue eyes of the Confederate flag,
the pasty bald of white men pulling wooly
heads up into the dark skirts of trees,
the sharp, slobbering, amber teeth of
German shepherds, still clenched inside
the tissue-thin, (still marching), band-leader
legs of Black schoolteachers, the single-
minded pupae growing between the legs of
white boys crossing the tracks, ready to
force Black girls into fifth-grade positions,
Palmetto state-sanctioned sex 101.
I didn’t want to dance with him.
My young cousin arrives at my elbow.
Her beautiful lips the color of soft-skin
mangoes. She pulls, teasing the stitches
of my satin bridesmaid gown, “You better
go on down there and dance with Strom—
while he still has something left.”
I don’t tell her it is unsouthern for her
to call him by his first name, as if they
are familiar. I don’t tell her: To bear
witness to marriage is to believe that
everything moving through the sweet
wedding air can be confidently, left—
to Love.
I stand on the landing high above the
beginnings of Love, holding a plastic
champagne flute, drinking in the warm
June air of South Carolina. I hear my
youngest brother’s top hat joy. Looking
down I find him, deep in the giddy crowd,
modern, integrated, interpretive.
For ten seconds I consider dancing with
Strom. His Confederate hands touch
every shoulder, finger, back that I love.
I listen to the sound of Black laughter
shimmying. All worry floats beyond
the gurgling submarine bubbles,
the white railing, every drop of
champagne air.
I close my eyes and Uncle Freddie
appears out of a baby’s breath of fog.
(The dead are never porch bound.)
He moves with ease where I cannot.
He walks out on the rice-thrown air,
heaving a lightning bolt instead of
a wave. Suddenly, there is a table set,
complete with 1963 dining room stars,
they twinkle twinkle up & behind him.
Thelonious, Martin, Malcolm, Nina,
Dakota, all mouths Negro wide &
open have come to sing me down.
His tattered almanac sleeps curled like
a wintering slug in his back pocket.
His dark Dogon eyes jet to the scene
below, then zoom past me until they are
lost in the waning sugilite sky. Turning
in the shadows of the wheat fields,
he whispers a truth plucked from
the foreword tucked in his back pocket:
Veritas: Black people will forgive you
quicker than you can say Orangeburg
Massacre.
History does not keep books on the
handiwork of slaves. But the enslaved
who built this Big House, long before
I arrived for this big wedding, knew
the power of a porch.
This native necessity of nailing down
a place, for the cooling off of air,
in order to lift the friendly, the kindly,
the so politely, the in-love-ly, jubilant,
into the arms of the grand peculiar,
for the greater good of
the public spectacular:
us
giving us
away.
Nikky Finney, “Dancing with Strom” from Head Off & Split.
The Afterbirth, 1931
We were a Colored Clan of Kinfolk
Who threw soil not salt
Over our shoulders
Who tendered close the bible
Who grew and passed around the almanac at night
So we would know
What to plant at first light
Black soil and sweet brown sorghum
From the every morning biscuits
Mama Susan fixed
Dripping and mixing
Up under our fingernails
A secret salve
Just like any other
Living simple
And keeping to our proud selves
Quite aware of night riders
Quite aware of men with
Politicious smiles
Cologned with kerosene and match
Aware of just whose feet
Walked across our tin roofs at night
We were such light sleepers
Such long distance believers
We were a family pregnant
Whose water had broke
And for once there was ham money
’Bacca money
So we thought to do better by ourselves
To begin our next row
We would go and get him
Because he was medically degreed in baby bringing
Because he was young and white and handsome
And because of that
Had been neighbor to more knowledge
Than us way back behind
The country’s proud but inferior lines
And because he came with his papers in his pocket
So convincing so soon
After his ivy graduation
Asking us hadn’t we heard
Telling us times had changed
And the midwife wasn’t safe anymore
Even though we had all been caught
By tried and true Black Grannies
Who lay ax blade sharp side up
And water pan underneath the bed
To cut the pain
To cool the fever
We were a Pregnant Clan of Kinfolk
Caught with water running down our legs
Old family say they remember
Going to fetch him
Telling him that it was time
That he should come now
But he didn’t show right away
Not right away
But came when he wanted
The next day
After his breakfast
But what more
Could we colored country folk ever want
Even if we had to watch the road all night for him
Even if we had to not let her push too hard
When he finally came
He had his papers on him
Something with one of those pretty shiny seals
Old family say they can remember
Somethin’ just wasn’t right
But we opened the screen for him anyway
Trusting
And tendering close what the Good Book
Had told us all our lives to do
Then we made him a path
Where he put his hand up then inside
My grandmother’s womb
Her precious private pleasing place
Somewhere he probably didn’t want to touch
Then he pulled my daddy through
Somebody he probably didn’t care to reach for
And from the first he pulled him wrong
And wrong
Shattered his collarbone
And snapped his soft baby foot in half
And smashed the cartilage in his infant hand
Wringing
Their own sun baked arms
Old timey family
Remember him well
Say they knew somethin’ wasn’t right
As he came through the door
A day later
His breakfast digested now
Somethin’ just wasn’t right
How he had two waters on him
One sweet one sour-mash
One trying to throw snow quilt over the other
As he un-carefully
As drunkenly
He with his papers on him still
Stood there turning a brown baby into blue
Un-magically
And right before our eyes
Hope and Pray
Hope and Pray
Then he packed his bag and left
With all of his official training
And gathered up gold stars left
The Virginia land of Cumberland County
He left and forgot
He left and didn’t remember
The afterbirth inside
Carlene Godwin Finney
To clabber
Gangrene
Close down
Her place
Her precious private pleasing place
To fill the house to the rafters
Up past the dimpled tin roof
With a rotting smell
That stayed for nine days
That mortgaged a room
In our memories
And did not die with her
We were a Brown and Pregnant Family
And he would’ve remembered his schoolin’
And left his bottle
Recollected his manners
And brought his right mind
Had another klan called him to their bedside
He would’ve come right away
He would’ve never had liquor on his breath
If the color of my daddy’s broken limbs
Had matched the color of his own but
We were a Colored Clan of Kinfolk
We should’ve met him at the door
Should’ve told him lean first into the rusty screen
Made him open up his mouth and blow
Breathe out right there
Into all of our brown and lined up faces
In wait of his worthiness
Then just for good measure
Should’ve made him blow once again
Into Papa Josh’s truth telling jar
Just to be sure
Should’ve let Mama Sally
Then Aunt Nanny
Then lastly Aunt Mary
Give him the final once over
And hold his sterile hands
Down to the firelight to check
Just like she checked our own every night
Before supper
Before we were allowed to sit
At her very particular table
We could’ve let Aunt Ira clutch him by his chin
Enter and leave through her eyes
Just like how she came and went through us
Everyday at her leisure
She would’ve took care to notice
As she traveled all up and through him
Any shaking any sweating
And caught his incapable belligerent incompetence
In time
Oh Jesus
We should’ve let Grandpop Robert
Have him from the first
Should’ve let him pick him up
By the back of his pants
And swirl him around
Just like he picked us up
And swirled us around
Anytime he caught us lying or lazy
Or being less than what we were
We should’ve let Grandpop
Loose on him from the start
And he would’ve held him up
High eye to the sun
And looked straight through him
Just like he held us up
And then we would have known first
Like he always knew first
And brought to us
The very map of his heart
Then we would have known
Just what his intentions were
With our Carlene
Before we knew his name
Or cared about his many degrees
Before he dared reach up then inside
Our family’s brown globe
While we stood there
Some of us throwing good black soil
With one hand
Some of us tending close
The Good Book with the other
Believing and trusting
We were doing better
By this one
Standing there
Waterfalls running
Screaming whitewater rapids
Down our pants legs
Down our pantaloons
To our many selves
All the while
Praying hard
That maybe we were wrong
(please make us wrong)
One hundred proof
Smelled the same as
Isopropyl
Nikky Finney, "The Afterbirth, 1931" from Rice.
The Aureole
(for E)
I stop my hand midair.
If I touch her there everything about me will be true.
The New World discovered without pick or ax.
I will be what Brenda Jones was stoned for in 1969.
I saw it as a girl but didn’t know I was taking in myself.
My hand remembers, treading the watery room,
just behind the rose-veiled eyes of memory.
Alone in the yard tucked beneath the hood of her car,
lucky clover all about her feet, green tea-sweet necklace
for her mud-pie crusty work boots.
She fends off their spit & words with silent two-handed
twists & turns of her socket wrench. A hurl of sticks &
stones and only me to whisper for her, from sidewalk far,
break my bones. A grown woman in grease-pocket overalls
inside her own sexy transmission despite the crowding of
hurled red hots. Beneath the hood of her candy-apple Camaro:
souped, shiny, low to the ground.
The stars over the Atlantic are dangling
salt crystals. The room at the Seashell Inn is
$20 a night; special winter off-season rate.
No one else here but us and the night clerk,
five floors below, alone with his cherished
stack of Spiderman. My lips are red snails
in a primal search for every constellation
hiding in the sky of your body. My hand
waits for permission, for my life to agree
to be changed, forever. Can Captain Night
Clerk hear my fingers tambourining you
there on the moon? Won’t he soon climb
the stairs and bam! on the hood of this car?
You are a woman with film reels for eyes.
Years of long talking have brought us to the
land of the body. Our skin is one endless
prayer bead of brown. If my hand ever lands,
I will fly past dreaming Australian Aborigines.
The old claw hammer and monkey wrench
that flew at Brenda Jones will fly across the
yard of ocean at me. A grease rag will be
thrust into my painter’s pants against my
will. I will never be able to wash or peel
any of this away. Before the night is over
someone I do not know will want the keys
to my ’55 silver Thunderbird. He will chase
me down the street. A gaggle of spooked
hens will fly up in my grandmother’s yard,
never to lay another egg, just as I am jump-
ed, kneed, pulled finally to the high ground
of sweet clover.
Nikky Finney, “The Aureole” from Head Off & Split.
.
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