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Mary
Weems
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 Mary E. Weems, Ph.D. is a poet, playwright, performer, and
scholar of Urban Education from Cleveland, Ohio. She has had
four chapbooks published: Blackeyed, (Burning Press, 1994),
Fembles (Bowling Green, 1996) white (Wick Chapbook, 1997) and
Tampon Class (Pavement Saw Press, 2005). Her work has also
been widely anthologized most recently in Boomer Girls
(Iowa University Press), and Spirit and Flame: An Anthology of
African American Poetry (SUNY); and published in journals
like Obsidian III: African American Literature in Review, xcp:
Cultural Poetics, and the African American Review. She also
teaches in the English and Education departments at John
Carroll University. Dr.
Weems designs and implements literacy, cultural, and
self-esteem based programming in public, private, urban and
suburban k-12 schools through her consulting business
Bringing Words to Life established in 1996.
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“Self-Portrait”
Jean Michel-Basquiat, 1980
Painted himself
inside out
Black as the middle
of the night.
Deformed hip, too big
foot, impotent as
George Washington Carver.
Shot horses
a black-on-being-black
pain killer. Canvassed
the world in living
color.
His work just-us
on brick walls, wood,
napkins,
toilet paper. Used
useful in white
folks’ basements
work, work, work, jerk
work, work, work,
jerk—the sound
of snatched wet paintings
living
on rich walls next to
Warhol
now that he’s dead.
Jemison’s Face
Photographer: Andrew
Eccles
A black and white
photograph.
Her dancer’s hands curved
around midnight cheeks
smooth
as new obsidian, her eyes
a prayer.
Her opening answers the
mystery
where do we go from here?
I bought a huge book on
dance
because she was in it,
because she’s
a poem in progress,
because she made
me want to move graceful
as stars,
Bill Robinson, Ginger
wearing one red shoe,
Savion—who Gregory Hines
called a genius.
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