Bronzeville Poet
For Gwendolyn Brooks
The streets of Bronzeville
seem more beautiful
because you gave them honesty.
Made Philistine experiences
more than monotonous copy
for obituary columns.
Helped Black children
realize that filth and dilapidated houses aren’t
the only world they have.
That Blackness is more than
being able to recite Black poetry
or wearing a voluminous natural.
You gave them fertile
soil from Africa to
scrub their faces.
Lifted their pregnable hearts
When racist institutions
branded their minds
with inferior images.
And the clumsy tongues of
button-down collar bureaucrats
told them that America
was the Black man’s salvation.
The streets of Bronzeville
seem more beautiful.
The blues at Pepper’s Lounge
begin to take on
greater significance.
Muddy Waters becomes
a living legend and even
first graders admire Otis Redding.
And the new Black poets
begin to talk about
creating something
revolutionary…
Black lifestyles/
and relevant dialogue/
They take a walk
through your Bronzeville
and begin to discover themselves.
See true images/the gut of life
silhouetted against the transparent
fabric of the Black experience.
A blues Singer greets them
And fiddles on his twelve-string guitar,
while little Bronzeville children listen
And dance to your poetry.
–by Useni Eugene Perkins
Excerpted from the poem “Bronzeville Poet” by Useni Eugene Perkins. Copyright ©2022 from the book Wherever I’m At – An Anthology of Chicago Poetry, edited by Donald G. Evans and Robin Metz. Published by Third World Press.
Useni Eugene Perkins is a human service practitioner and director of Chicago State University’s Family Life Center. As a poet, playwright, and author, he served as president of Chicago’s DuSable Museum of African American History, and president of the African American Arts Alliance of Chicago. He was inducted into the Gwendolyn Brooks National Literary Hall of Fame for writers of African descent in 1999. Perkins’ illustrated poem for children entitled “Kwame Nkrumah’s Midnight Speech for Independence” won the Children’s Africana Book Award for 2022.