On Sidewalks, On Streetcorners, As Girls

Just who was Miss Mary Mack,
all dressed in black, with her stalwart buttons
up and down her back, her patient request
for fifty cents to see some bedraggled circus elephant
jump a fence? As children, we never asked
who she was, content instead to clap out her story
in pairs, our hands meeting, then parting
in quick motions. When we sang
We're going to Kentucky, we're going to the Fair,
to see the señorita with flowers in her hair,
we'd shake our little girl hips in time
with the melody, but we never stopped to ask
what a lovely señorita was doing at a fair,
and we possessed no knowledge of where
Kentucky was, didn't even know
what one did at a fair--children who only
knew cinderblock and cement,
corner storefronts, brick high-rises.
We sang about Miss Lucy
and her prized steamboat,
the steamboat destined for heaven
and Miss Lucy for hell;
sang rumble to the bottom,
rumble to the top,
one girl in the midst of the circle
twirling and twirling until she stopped,
finger pointed at the next girl
who would shake her stuff in front
of us, our chants heard in every
schoolyard, every parking lot,
everywhere small dark girls
could gather to hear their voices swell
in nonsense rhyme, neighborhood chant.
Hands and feet would stomp out rhythms
inherited from older sisters--story-songs
about seeing London, seeing France,
sassy songs about someone's mama
doing wrong, acting crazy.
No one would dare take away
our homemade streetcorner music,
so we'd spend every afternoon after school
and every shred of summer daylight
riffing, scatting, improvising,
unafraid to tell each other
shake it to the east,
shake it to the west,
shake it to the one
you love the best.

Allison Joseph, who was born in London, is an assistant professor of creative writing and literature at Southern Illinois University (Carbondale). She is the author of several collections of poems: What Keeps Us Here, Soul Train, and In Every Seam.

...