#030 Jessica Care Moore, 1997

Detroit native Jessica Care Moore is a renowned poet, author, playwright, performance artist/producer, and community activist. She is the CEO of Moore Black Press, executive producer of Black Women ROCK!, and founder of the literacy-driven Jess Care Moore Foundation. Her poetry has echoed throughout Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, and the London Institute of Contemporary Arts. 

Thank you Jessica, for sharing your work with the world...

I Bet You Want Me To Write About Fiction

I could paint my front porch green

Smile through my teeth so I didn't seem so mean

Give you a glass of water so you could swallow my reality

Without Guilt

Warm your heart

Spend time showing you how to sew up the holes of my

African Quilt

Guess I could write a thesis on why I write

With Black dialect or diction

I bet you want me to write fiction

Cause you can't handle my truth!

You want novellas that tella pretend made up existence

With fairies

When I fly without wings on the weekend

And you want me to wear a costume on stage

Depict a fictionary tale that deals with Black rage

On an island far far away

On a planet that no one's every heard of

Want me to chop off my female into

Carefully constructed chapters

With titles like Snow Black and my seven boys

Or Mary had just a little ham

But I don't own shiny red shoes and 

the green witch melted

So when you read my work you felt it

Now you want me to write fiction

With happy endings

Typical beginnings

Want to imagine my existence

Is a figment of your twisted imagination

With lots of exhaling and no breathing

You want a black women's story bout how she's so alone

But I got a good man at home

Think I can't compete with those who test my black power temperature

With panting wet dog tongues

You think I'm too young to have a relevant truth

You want to paint my experience in bright pastels

As if my brown is lacking color

And you want me to speak to my audience

Lying on my back

On top of a long Black couch

As publishers posing as psychologists

Analyze my analogies and antonyms

Trying to figure out where the hell I've been

But Black women don't have time for therapy!

 

You want to marry ketchup with my blood

Too thick

Pouring so slow drops of my watered-down life

So you can enjoy a glass of black girl juice

With your morning paper without choking

You want me to write fiction

So there's no way of connecting my words to

something tangible

Down the road you can write me off

Calling my characters fictional

Their lives false

My afro grows too thick to please the animated cartoon

You've outlines in one-dimensional crayons

Representing a generation without a last name

Building wooden tables of continents

Take a valium

This is only my first

And there are others like me

I have their phone numbers and bra sizes

And the fact is your fiction can't be created without my blue print

Dipped in fresh Black ink

Cause this poem is real

And if you're really afraid

Why are you here?

At the end of my poems life

And she doesn't commit suicide

She survives

With a wicked smile

And the story never ends cause my girl

T.Tara Turk said

In real life nothing ever does

And I believe her

Writing her way out of fiction

Sitting on a green porch in Harlem

recreating the spirit of a woman named Sugar

Ain't our reality a sweet thing

A taste you can't seem to place

Can't pretend not to know

But we exist

Yes we do

It's a fact. 

written by Jessica Care Moore, The Words Don't Fit in my Mouth, 1997.