“Envoi” of William H. Johnson’s “Nude”
When Precious Jackson, a middle-aged Black woman
Whose personalized license plate simply read QUEEN,
Discovered William H. Johnson’s Nude, 1939, oil
On burlap, hanging in a museum recently, she underwent
What my mother described as an Octavia Butlering,
A temporal transfixion so mean she excused herself
From her small tribe of Baptists up from South Carolina,
Following a nervous tour guide around a museum in DC.
Just before, Aaron Douglas’s The Negro in an African
Setting made my mother hallucinate something
She still refuses to share with me, recalling Precious’s
Melodramatic skedaddle. Jackson was found
Hyperventilating in a bathroom stall by my mother
Who also happened to be her roommate on the road
& who knew Jackson suffered bouts of insomnia,
Half sleepwalking the halls of hotels nosing
The ice machines &/or eavesdropping on the room
Of Pastor Evans. When Precious gazed upon the nude
Black woman in William H. Johnson’s 1939 painting
She swore she recalled the scene, him watching her watch
Him watch her looking at him fuss & mutter over the painting.
She started rocking & sweating, my mother said,
As if she was filled with the Holy Spirit, then
Precious said the light falling on her nipples that day
Was like the feel of Johnson’s brush. His touch
Could turn burlap to silk. There was a tiny bit of wine
In a glass beside an emptied bottle just as in the painting,
But there was also a tiny bit of the nectar in the air
& on her lips. My mother told her
To wash her face & bring her tail on. The rest
Of the church members knew how to look
Without suffering a public vision.
The Negro in an African Setting is not quite like the Negro
Of Loïs Mailou Jones’s Africa nor the Negro in Winold
Reiss’s African Phantasy is all my mother will tell me
Of her own vision. My mother added,
Don’t you know when that girl came to Elizabeth Catlett’s
Wood sculpture of a Black woman made of mahogany,
She claimed again she was there when Catlett carved it,
Except this time she said she was not the model,
She was the tree. She said she recalled living as the tree
Catlett was carving to reveal the precious body
Beneath the bark. When I asked, “Like Michelangelo?”
My mother said, “No, like Pinocchio.” Precious
Hyperventilated constantly. The word mahogany
Comes to us from the West Indies by way of the enslaved
West Africans who hid its bark in their mouths
When they were seized. The wood is used in boats
Because of its resistance to rot, but it is also found
In the necks & bodies of guitars. One can see
How a Black woman might see some of herself in the tree.
Notes:
“Not Too Hard to Master” is a new series of poets writing on form and sharing a prompt. This is the second essay in the series. Read Terrance Hayes’s “Your Do-It-Yourself Sestina,” “Illustrated Octavia Butler Do-It-Yourself Sestina,” and “Two Do-It-Yourself Sestina Starters.”
Source:
Poetry
(March 2023)
