Cerebration

ON THE OCCASION OF OBAMA’S BLACKNESS BEING QUESTIONED: MICHAEL VANDER DOES

Michael Vander Does is a jazz-poet and a video technology expert. He has been performing with The Jazz Poetry Ensemble for 25 years. The JPE was formed on the recommendation of Allen Ginsberg, who told Michael Vander Does to combine his poetry and trombone playing. Michael Vander Does is also the recipient of an Ohio Arts Council grant for individual artists and a Puffin Foundation grant. He has been published extensively. His poem “Thanamattapoeia” was nominated for a Pushcart Prize this year by Tryst. He was the founder of the Poetry in the Park program for the Columbus Department of Recreation and Parks. At 59, he is still an avid basketball player.

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Are you black enough

 

to have had to drink from the colored only fountain

eat at the colored lunch counter

pee in the colored toilet

 

for the slave hunter to have called you a runaway, stolen your papers, sold you

 

 

to end up in the river

    hanging from a tree

            a bridge

                    buried in a levee

 

 

to be kept off the stage

stifle your rage

have no coming of age?

 

Can we go to the bridge?

 

Are you black enough

 

 

to be told to sit in the back of the bus

to sit in the front

 

 

to play jazz with Benny

            or Miles

 

 

to play baseball with the Dodgers

tennis at Forest Hills

basketball on the first all-black team?

 

 

Are you black enough?

Are you white enough?

Is it all black and white enough?


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