Claudia Rankine

CLAUDIA RANKINE Michelle Smith she spoke carefully her tongue handling the words like glass setting them down softly as one puts a baby to bed I listened for the island in her inflection the stilted bounce ofa jerk patois but she didn't talk Jamaican she talked literature neat & distinct her breath reeking ofivy league but she did have dreadlocks a glittery mane ofrace-pride snakes beautiful & threatening & she wore funky got 'em in nyc shoes & she was a poet she was a professor and I wanted to be her she had the trick ofhow to be white enough & black enough down she wrote about raspberries Rodney King The crooked arc oftree branches And immigrant dreams & made me believe that they all mean something to her [Meridians:feminism, race, transnationalism 2002, vol. 3, no. 1, p. 133)©2002 by Wesleyan University Press. All rights reserved. 133 ...