Here at Black Lawrence Press we are celebrating National Poetry Month with a poem a day, featuring a total of 30 authors from our list. Today’s featured poet is Bettina Judd, winner of the 2013 Hudon Prize. Her collection Patient. will be published this fall.
AFTER MEMORY
i keep on remembering mine.
—Lucille Clifton
It’s like when a black person says: “that’s racist!” to a white person and
they refuse to believe. Maybe it is better to say, “This moment is steeped
in a racist history. This racist history is indelibly printed on my memory.
You do not want to remember, so you wish to erase mine.” But it is not
heard. One only hears what one hopes not to be, and that’s racist.
After memory, I am absent. No table. No one on all fours. No children
living or otherwise. No hymns. No nursemaids. No sideshow freaks. No
experiments. No spoon. No bent handle, no wincing. Just whiskey, opium
and: Now wasn’t there some good?
Bettina Judd is an artist, writer and teacher. She is currently Visiting Assistant Professor in Gender Studies and Africana Studies at Mount Holyoke College. Her current research explores feelin and feminist politics in Black women’s music, visual art, and literature. Her current poetry and visual art project is a series of poems and images titled Patient. This project explores the history of gynecological experimentation on Black women in the U.S. and the generational traumas that such practices have caused. This book won the Hudson Book Prize from Black Lawrence Press and will be published in the fall of 2014.
