The Supremes
Mary was mysterious,
but the best dancer
Diana, the magnetic,
cooing romancer—
But, here’s a secret I know:
cats like me dug Miss Flo—
And the 4th Supreme’s ‘fro!
The 4th Supreme came
Singing tones ‘tween
Douglass and Carmen McRae—
Malcolm X and Lady Day
The 4th Supreme came
Singing “Stop In The Name Of Love!”
by way of Brandeis/Bombing-ham—
hitting Dynamite Hill high notes
The 4th Supreme came
Singing “Reflections”
in silver bracelets, on a
Newsweek cover captioned:
“Red, Black and Wanted!”
Hoover hated her harmonies with millions…
But I heard, “Set me free, why don’t you, babe?”
Rocking me to “ …Try Something New:”
Dialectics…
The 4th Supreme came
Singing, “I Hear A Symphony—”
“No Matter What Sign You Are,”
in ’08—but I
forgive her and comrades
and friends for singing flat
Madison Avenue smash hits: “Yes,
we can and bottle Jim Jones Juice;”
“regime Change you can believe in—”
delivering “Nothing But Heartaches” to
Honduras, Libya, Syria, Mother Africa…
© 2018. Raymond Nat Turner, The Town Crier. All Rights Reserved.
Raymond Nat Turner, our poet in residence, is an accomplished performing artist. You can find much more of his work at http://upsurgejazz.com.
The Fourth Pan-African Congress in New York in 1927 was the first held in the Americas, and the first organized by women.
Ann Garrison ends her reporting from the Horn of Africa with updates on the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam and the conflict between Ethiopia and the TPLF.
Reading, writing, ‘rithmetic of rifles (for Uvalde and other schools…)
BAR Book Forum editor Roberto Sirvent and Julian Akil Rose discuss community organizing, Black Queer Feminism, the struggle for police and prison abolition, and an end to militarism.
"From May 26 to May 31, I was in Cali, Colombia serving as an election observer with an international delegation of mostly Black women. This is a preliminary report."
