Dear Jimmy,
“The place in which I’ll fit will not exist until I make it.”
Dear Jimmy,
Who else would I turn to in these times besides you? There is a war raging. Children who once played with plastic ivy green soldier figurines wound up in boardrooms where childhood dreams of domination run wild. The other day, I remembered the quote of yours I placed on my graduation cap. I peeled & stuck felt letters like kiwi rinds onto my purple cap. The words were placed against the image of you that adorns my copy of Notes of A Native Sun. The rind letters spelled your words “the place in which I’ll fit will not exist until I make it.”
In the background of the picture your head is tilted slightly to your left while your eyes jut straight forward towards the lens. Each panel of divided fabric is planked by the balance of your white collar—offering a satisfying composition to the image. Similarly, continuing to create a balanced square composition, your arms are crossed at your waist. Your left hand is tucked behind your right arm & your left hand gently presses into your left arm. The left hand’s middle & index finger keep each other company. The fingertips of your slightly bent pink & index finger gently press your arm for support. It is as if your left arm is a bow & your right hand naturally finds the perfect posture to skillfully play new songs. Behind you, on the left, is a flat citrine fabric. Behind you on your right, in a stark juxtaposition, is rumpled kiwi fabric.
When I place your words on my cap preparing to go into the future I never imagined a world such as this one. Your words felt very affirming to me at the time. The endless opportunities I was sure I could make change in were made of marble pillars of safety & security. Now, they all appear to be made of pillars of sand with no core of integrity. At such a young age your words were greatly affirming to someone like myself who has always, as you told Studs Terkel at 5:20, been “whistling in the dark.” Reading your words enveloped me in the darkness of myself & showed me there are others facing cave moments—moments that make one eager to hide/seclude/or isolate—due to circumstances such as race, harm, gender, & all the ways this world shames us for daring to exist with dimpled scars from the violence enacted upon us.
Yet, at that young age, I was not aware that finding a place in which I’ll fit—doing the work of being a Poet with a backbone who knows the people—would require immense sacrifice. It meant learning the difference between manually applied artificial shine & natural luster that exists abundantly around us. I didn’t anticipate the dissent into being a Poet feeling so steep. I love conducting the work of being a Poet. You know that quote your friend Toni Morison wrote? Where she writes in her novel Jazz, “I didn’t fall in love, I rose in it.” Have you read that book? Well, anyway, I do deeply love the work of being a Poet. However, coming to choose it felt like an exhaustive surrender or freefall.
I simply had no other way of being but myself after years of denying myself the origin of my witness filled writing practice. Writing, honoring who I am, is one of the many acts of survival for me. If I stray from the page for too long nothing makes much sense. Without writing, there is no recourse, public counter-narrative, or way to affirm the ways my body fully responds to this world. To find the space in which you fit is to be under the constant glamor of another way of being—a third way,beyond societal binaries, to exist exactly as who you are. Where in the world after succumbing to the glamour of finding your way did you feel the most free to do your poetic work? Was it in Istanbul or France? Was it in the faces of those who truly saw you beyond the blistering tropical background of your guarded direct stance?
There’s a certain grief to realizing the way in which the world operates does not feel conducive to the support you need in order to live. Though you may try—to shame or force yourself to contour your body into pre-made molds—you are not even capable of being molded by forceful violence. To be capable of such a process ensures that we enact harm on others due to the violence unjustly enacted upon ourselves. What of those who, as Lucille Clifton writes, had no other recourse but to make it up “between starshine and clay?” How can someone made of starshine ever be contained? I tend to think about you a lot in this way Jimmy. I tend to your memory as being made of starshine with others trying to mold you as if you were solely clay. What does it mean to let sunshine, space, & water create the space your life force will flow through?
I wonder how your relationship with sweet Harlem & The United States changed throughout your life. If finding the place in which you fit was in part because of the kin who, when you looked at their faces, found yourself also looking back straight into you. Of course I’m thinking about your friends who felt like kin. At this moment, I’m thinking of what it means to walk & dream alongside fellow comrades of freedom. I’m thinking of how your poetic work changes as a result of losing Medgar Evers, Malcolm X, & Martin Luther King Jr. in such a short span of time. Birmingham Alabama was called Bombingham during the Civil Rights Movement because of the consistent bombings.
As war rages on in the world today I know the Civil War was not the last war fought on United States soil. Lychings were never called war, nor were the bombings in Black communities, the complete destruction of Tulsa in 1921, or the eerie way people kept disappeared. Nor is the eerie way people keep disappearing today. I know hearing news of the four little girls murdered in the 16th street church bombing in 1963 deeply saddened you. Recently, at least 100 (probably more) girls were murdered by the bombing of a girls school in Iran. You always reminded us that “the children are always ours, every single one of them, all over the globe; and I am beginning to suspect that whoever is incapable of recognizing this may be incapable of morality.” Despite the time extensive amount of time between these atrocious acts the shared root of the incidents remain the same.
John Coltrane wrote & recorded this piece entitled “Alabama” after the 1963 bombing of the 16th street church. This is but one example of what Nina Simone was discussing when she said “an artist’s duty, as far as I’m concerned, is to reflect the times.” I’m always looking for other examples so feel free to leave some in the comments!
Of course I’m talking about your friends but I’m also speaking of strangers who we also value. We value strangers simply by virtue of the fact that we are all here on this planet at the same time. In that respect, we do owe something to each other to ensure the sustainability of cultures, humanity, & the living breathing world. This interrogation of curious wonderment is a constant for the Poets of the world. It’s a cycle of using agency & discernment to ensure every choice is aligned with the kind of world we want to co-steward together.
“Everyone you’re looking at is also you. You could be that monster, you could be that cop. And you have to decide, in yourself, not to be.” — James Baldwin (056-1:115)
To be under a glamour is to be under a spell—that with proper interrogation can be in service of a liberatory world. While chasing glamour is an illusory attraction to a personal hero’s journey quest. The idea that you can indeed one day be molded into a version of yourself that finally grants rewards. You told Terkel 5 minutes & 29 seconds into your conversation, that “it is true that the nature of society is to create, among its citizens, an illusion of safety; but it is also absolutely true that the safety is always necessarily an illusion. Artists are here to disturb the peace.” So while I still feel like I freefalled into my poetic work, & discovering pillars of sand instead of marble riddled me with grief, what else besides this work is important? Why would I ever trade being shaped by starshine for human hands or molds?
From the night following the morning they came for you,
Kay Brown
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