to claudia
This article originally appeared in Southern Exposure Vol. 5 No. 1 "Good Times and Growing Pains." Find more from that issue here.
my skin
bites me hard
the heat of this day
and these chains
bleed me
and still I hear your pounding heart
summer nights in alabama
are not meant for lovers
the evenings were cooler
in africa
in the infancy of our love
negroes
below us boast of revolution
in these barren cotton fields
the heat laughs at us
the heat dares us to die
but i say
the struggle must wait
at least until tomorrow morning
for i have found
sweet blackness
in your arms this night
and i love you too much to die
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Manning Marable
Manning Marable is professor of political sociology and director of the Africana and Hispanic Studies program at Colgate University. During the 1982-83 academic year he directed the Race Relations Institute at Fisk University. He is national vice-chair of the Democratic Socialists of America. (1984)