“Hip-Hop Ghazal
BY PATRICIA SMITH
Gotta love us brown girls, munching on fat, swinging blue hips,
decked out in shells and splashes, Lawdie, bringing them woo hips.
As the jukebox teases, watch my sistas throat the heartbreak,
inhaling bassline, cracking backbone and singing thru hips.
Like something boneless, we glide silent, seeping ‘tween floorboards,
wrapping around the hims, and ooh wee, clinging like glue hips.
Engines grinding, rotating, smokin’, gotta pull back some.
Natural minds are lost at the mere sight of ringing true hips.
Gotta love us girls, just struttin’ down Manhattan streets
killing the menfolk with a dose of that stinging view. Hips.
Crying ’bout getting old—Patricia, you need to get up off
what God gave you. Say a prayer and start slinging. Cue hips.”
This poem by Patricia Smith, is such a joy to read as a black woman, knowing some of the African delect used in this, I could hear my grandmother say this poem in a normal day to day conversation with me. The way she talks about “us brown girls” inspired me to write a poem about “them brown boys” or “my brown boy.” How she used the word hips so many different times but meant the same thing. She is very descriptive in this poem in a way that almost every woman could relate to not only the brown girls. She talks about the curves of a women using a rhyme scheme throughout just like a ghazal is supposed to be.
I enjoyed how the author put “Hips” at the end of each couplet but not always included it in her sentence, feeling that created a more lyrical feel to the Hip Hop Ghazel. The word “Hips” is a strong word to use. It was very musical as if Lauren Hill would have put this exact poem in one of her songs, because of how soulful and rhythmic it is. It makes you want to read and reread because of how it makes your mouth move, the flick of the tongue for example
“Gotta love us brown girls, munching on fat, swinging blue hips,
decked out in shells and splashes, Lawdie, bringing them woo hips.”
This is one of my favorite poems that we have read is far. She includes slant rhymes and hidden ways to make the reader laugh and have a deeper understanding of the brown woman’s curves and how others view them. That she is proud and unashamed to show them and flaunt them to the world.
This poem makes me feel powerful.