STATE LINES
One of the major American poets of the late 20th century, June Jordan mastered a variety of poetic styles. This fall, Alice James Books published an essential compendium of her work, titled “We’re On.” The book fully displays Jordan’s aesthetic range. She is best known for writing poems that bend toward political protest and resistance. But her quieter modes are often overlooked, such as this forlorn message to Haruko, a lover who appeared late in Jordan’s life. It’s important to note that Jordan believed her love poems were also deeply political. She once wrote, “I feel very strongly that love poems constitute a political body of writing; to write them is a political act.”
Poem for Haruko
I never thought I’d keep a record of my pain or happiness like candles lighting the entire soft lace of the air around the full length of your hair/a shower organized by God in brown and auburn undulations luminous like particles of flame But now I do retrieve an afternoon of apricots and water interspersed with cigarettes and sand and rocks we walked across:
How easily you held my hand beside the low tide of the world Now I do relive an evening of retreat a bridge I left behind where all the solid heat of lust and tender trembling lay as cruel and as kind as passion spins its infinite tergiversations in between the bitter and the sweet Alone and longing for you now I do “Poem for Haruko” is from “We’re On: A June Jordan Reader,” from Alice James Press. © 2017 June M. Jordan Literary Estate. Reprinted by permission. June Jordan (1936-2002) was a poet, activist, journalist, essayist and teacher. She wrote more than 25 books of poetry. In 1988, she was appointed professor of African American Studies at UC Berkeley, where she founded Poetry for the People, a program designed to empower students to use poetry as a means of artistic expression.
David Roderick is the co-founder of Left Margin LIT: A Home for the Literary Arts, in Berkeley. He is author of “Blue Colonial” and “The Americans.”