Untitled 3 6.34” x 6.34” mixed media on found wood
Makes You Happy
When I was coming up my mama and daddy
got their groove every Saturday night listening to some Earth Wind and Fire and Al Green.
Have you ever seen old people listen to Al Green?
It’s a beautiful thing.
And me? Well, I loved me some Jackson Five.
I had a crush on Jackie. He was my husband.
And I loved me some Janet.
How lucky she was to have all of them fine brothers protecting her.
And she was light-skinned with good hair.
Too bad she always had it up in a bun.
You’d think Willona woulda known what else to do with that head.
But Janet was still my girl. She had some kind of power.
Now I’ll tell you who’s really in touch with their power:
Those black girls who get their hair and nails done like nobody’s business.
You can laugh at ‘em and wonder how they keep their babies lookin’ good in Nike and DKNY.
They make it because they are in touch with their past lives like a mutha.
In touch with what they were not too long ago: Royalty.
Asian royalty.
Those long exotic nails and hair in all kinds of colors piled high atop their heads look like Kabuki.
And today we want to turn it around and say low class.
Get real.
Take away the welfare.
They’re still going to make it.
And if they don’t, they going to come marching toward where you live with those long fingernails.
My most powerful self appears when I’m not numb.
Being numb makes you happy because you don’t know your rights.
Being numb makes you marry people you don’t know or people you don’t even like.
Being numb makes you pledge sororities whose histories you can’t repeat 10 years later.
Being numb makes you sleep with bad boys because they are everything your daddy is not.
Untitled 1 4.25” x 7.25” x .75” mixed media on found wood
Untitled 2 4” x 6” mixed media on found wood
Untitled 3 6.34” x 6.34” mixed media on found wood
Untitled 4 7.25” x 9” x .34” mixed media on found wood
Untitled 5 4.75” x 6.75” mixed media on found wood
About the author/artist:
Sharony Green is an Associate Professor of History at the University of Alabama. This piece is part-memoir. This choreopoem receives inspiration from her first book Cuttin the Rug Under the Moonlit Sky: Stories and Drawings About a Bunch of Women Named Mae (Anchor, 1997).