Veterans of the Civil Rights Movement

Poems by Angela Jackson

MIZ ROSA RIDES THE BUS

That day in December I sat down
by Miss Muffet of Montgomery.
I was myriad-weary. Feets swole
from sewing seams on a filthy fabric;
tired-sore a pedalin' the rusty Singer;
dingy cotton thread jammed in the eye.
All lifelong I'd slide through century-reams
loathsome with tears. Dreaming my own
silk-self.
It was not like they all say. Miss Liberty Muffet
she didn't
jump at the sight of me.
Not exactly.
They hauled me
away — a thousand kicking legs pinned down.
The rest of me I tell you — a cloud.
Beautiful trouble on the dead December
horizon. Come to sit in judgment.
How many miles as the Jim Crow flies?
Over oceans and some. I rumbled.
They couldn't hold me down. Long.
No.
My feets were tired. My eyes were
sore. My heart was raw from hemming
dirty edges of Miss L. Muffet's garment.
I rode again.
A thousand bloody miles after the Crow flies
that day in December long remembered when I sat down
beside Miss Muffet of Montgomery.
I said — like the joke say — What's in the bowl, Thief?
I said — That's your curse.
I said — This my way.
She slipped her frock, disembarked,
settled in the suburbs, deaf, mute, lewd, and blind.
The bowl she left behind. The empty bowl mine.
The spoiled dress.
Jim Crow dies and ravens come with crumbs.
They say — Eat and be satisfied.
I fast and pray and ride.
[For background see Montgomery Bus Boycott. "Miz Rosa Rides the Bus" from And All These Roads Be Luminous. Copyright © 1998 by Angela Jackson.]