Breaking Down

ChickenBones: A Journal

for Literary & Artistic African-American Themes

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in the kitchen / making lunch / for the freakin UN-brady bunch

and aint no maid like alice here to help a sista out / aint got time for chit chat and shit like that

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Baring My Soul

By Stacey Tolbert

* * * * *

N’

down

By Stacey Tolbert

4:30 AM

the roosters aint even up

got sense

to sleep

at least till 5

but not

in the kitchen

making lunch

for the freakin UN-brady bunch

and aint no maid like alice here to help a sista out

aint got time for chit chat and shit like that

conversations only stop the preparation of

“my favorite is bologna and cheese with mayonnaise

no mustard mommy. Aaaaaaand i want

chips aaaaaaaaand a drink aaaaaaaaand a cookie

and are u gonna put me a little note sayin i love

u in there like last time . . . i love u dont forget the chips . . .”

on my lips be words like

“I love u too and yes I have the chips”

and them chips

they be down

but I

I be up

up since 5

up smiling

and my little joys

my boys

don’t know

I’m breakin down

down like mississippi flood waters

crashin like

atlantic ocean

titantic type ship

bail out or be killed

or bail out and be fulfilled

bill collectors call

and I’m like

“excuse me, don’t u see I’m breakin down here”

set my ass up on a payment paln and don’t call me ni more today”

and ima play like all is cool

and right

and sound

in the mind

aint

my time to break down

and I once heard (from someone who is famous but

dead now) that breakin down is really

breakin through . . .

traffic

bustin loose like get out of my way

gotta go

pick up kid #1, kid #2, kid #3, husband, bank, store, gas station . . .

all today

in about an hour or so

“GET OUT OF MY WAYYYY”

I aint playin

road rage aint nothin unless its a bad MOMA

jama like myself trying get kid #1 out of school

so they wont put him on the bus . . .

STOP

want some time to get off this roller coaster

can’t ride while I’m drivin

while im breakin down or through or whatever

my ass is brakin

like hurtin from sit ups I was attemptin

right after dinner, baths and bed time stories

small and precious glories

when they say “u da best mama in the whole world”

and he say “honey u are beautiful abd fabulous, what’s for dinner”

thinner

I don’t need to be

but the patience

its making me lose weight

runnin thin like

sliced tomatoes

done by a professional

sandwich maker

breakin down

through

whatever’s clever

im breakin

walls down tryna spend some time with myself

on the shelf

till everyone else has a piece

of womb pie

LIE

awake at night and count sheep

sacrificed for the shearer

and i’m cold

all the time . . .

gotta go

I’m breakin down

or through

or whatever

Anastacia Tolbert Table

* * * * *

AALBC.com’s 25 Best Selling Books

Fiction

#1 – Justify My Thug by Wahida Clark #2 – Flyy Girl by Omar Tyree #3 – Head Bangers: An APF Sexcapade by Zane #4 – Life Is Short But Wide by J. California Cooper #5 – Stackin’ Paper 2 Genesis’ Payback by Joy King #6 – Thug Lovin’ (Thug 4) by Wahida Clark #7 – When I Get Where I’m Going by Cheryl Robinson #8 – Casting the First Stone by Kimberla Lawson Roby #9 – The Sex Chronicles: Shattering the Myth by Zane

#10 – Covenant: A Thriller by Brandon Massey

#11 – Diary Of A Street Diva by Ashley and JaQuavis

#12 – Don’t Ever Tell by Brandon Massey

#13 – For colored girls who have considered suicide by Ntozake Shange

#14 – For the Love of Money : A Novel by Omar Tyree

#15 – Homemade Loves by J. California Cooper

#16 – The Future Has a Past: Stories by J. California Cooper

#17 – Player Haters by Carl Weber

#18 – Purple Panties: An Eroticanoir.com Anthology by Sidney Molare

#19 – Stackin’ Paper by Joy King

#20 – Children of the Street: An Inspector Darko Dawson Mystery by Kwei Quartey

#21 – The Upper Room by Mary Monroe

#22 Thug Matrimony by Wahida Clark

#23 – Thugs And The Women Who Love Them by Wahida Clark

#24 – Married Men by Carl Weber

#25 – I Dreamt I Was in Heaven – The Rampage of the Rufus Buck Gang by Leonce Gaiter

Non-fiction

#1 – Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention by Manning Marable #2 – Confessions of a Video Vixen by Karrine Steffans #3 – Dear G-Spot: Straight Talk About Sex and Love by Zane #4 – Letters to a Young Brother: MANifest Your Destiny by Hill Harper #5 – Peace from Broken Pieces: How to Get Through What You’re Going Through by Iyanla Vanzant #6 – Selected Writings and Speeches of Marcus Garvey by Marcus Garvey #7 – The Ebony Cookbook: A Date with a Dish by Freda DeKnight #8 – The Isis Papers: The Keys to the Colors by Frances Cress Welsing #9 – The Mis-Education of the Negro by Carter Godwin Woodson

#10 – John Henrik Clarke and the Power of Africana History by Ahati N. N. Toure

#11 – Fail Up: 20 Lessons on Building Success from Failure by Tavis Smiley

#12 –The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander

#13 – The Black Male Handbook: A Blueprint for Life by Kevin Powell

#14 – The Other Wes Moore: One Name, Two Fates by Wes Moore

#15 – Why Men Fear Marriage: The Surprising Truth Behind Why So Many Men Can’t Commit by RM Johnson

#16 – Black Titan: A.G. Gaston and the Making of a Black American Millionaire by Carol Jenkins

#17 – Brainwashed: Challenging the Myth of Black Inferiority by Tom Burrell

#18 – A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose by Eckhart Tolle

#19 – John Oliver Killens: A Life of Black Literary Activism by Keith Gilyard

#20 – Alain L. Locke: The Biography of a Philosopher by Leonard Harris

#21 – Age Ain’t Nothing but a Number: Black Women Explore Midlife by Carleen Brice

#22 – 2012 Guide to Literary Agents by Chuck Sambuchino #23 – Chicken Soup for the Prisoner’s Soul by Tom Lagana #24 – 101 Things Every Boy/Young Man of Color Should Know by LaMarr Darnell Shields

#25 – Beyond the Black Lady: Sexuality and the New African American Middle Class by Lisa B. Thompson

* * * * *

Salvage the Bones

A Novel by Jesmyn Ward

On one level, Salvage the Bones is a simple story about a poor black family thats about to be trashed by one of the most deadly hurricanes in U.S. history. What makes the novel so powerful, though, is the way Ward winds private passions with that menace gathering force out in the Gulf of Mexico. Without a hint of pretension, in the simple lives of these poor people living among chickens and abandoned cars, she evokes the tenacious love and desperation of classical tragedy. The force that pushes back against Katrinas inexorable winds is the voice of Wards narrator, a 14-year-old girl named Esch, the only daughter among four siblings. Precocious, passionate and sensitive, she speaks almost entirely in phrases soaked in her familys raw land. Everything here is gritty, loamy and alive, as though the very soil were animated. Her brothers blood smells like wet hot earth after summer rain. . . . His scalp looks like fresh turned dirt. Her fathers hands are like gravel, while her own hand slides through his grip like a wet fish, and a handsome boys muscles jabbered like chickens. Admittedly, Ward can push so hard on this simile-obsessed style that her paragraphs risk sounding like a compost heap, but this isnt usually just metaphor for metaphors sake. She conveys something fundamental about Eschs fluid state of mind: her figurative sense of the world in which all things correspond and connect. She and her brothers live in a ramshackle house steeped in grief since their mother died giving birth to her last child. . . . What remains, whats salvaged, is something indomitable in these tough siblings, the strength of their love, the permanence of their devotion.

WashingtonPost

* * * * *

Sister Citizen: Shame, Stereotypes, and Black Women in America

By Melissa V. Harris-Perry

According to the author, this society has historically exerted considerable pressure on black females to fit into one of a handful of stereotypes, primarily, the Mammy, the Matriarch or the Jezebel. The selfless Mammys behavior is marked by a slavish devotion to white folks domestic concerns, often at the expense of those of her own familys needs. By contrast, the relatively-hedonistic Jezebel is a sexually-insatiable temptress. And the Matriarch is generally thought of as an emasculating figure who denigrates black men, ala the characters Sapphire and Aunt Esther on the television shows Amos and Andy and Sanford and Son, respectively.

Professor Perry points out how the propagation of these harmful myths have served the mainstream culture well. For instance, the Mammy suggests that it is almost second nature for black females to feel a maternal instinct towards Caucasian babies.

As for the source of the Jezebel, black women had no control over their own bodies during slavery given that they were being auctioned off and bred to maximize profits. Nonetheless, it was in the interest of plantation owners to propagate the lie that sisters were sluts inclined to mate indiscriminately.