Malcolm by Sonia Sanchez
Poetry today. You can hear Sanchez recite it here. It’s the “life is obscene with crowds/of white on black/death is my pulse.” Just gorgeous.
Malcolm
by Sonia Sanchezdo not speak to me of martyrdom,
of men who die to be remembered
on some parish day.
i don’t believe in dying
though, I too shall die.
and violets like castanets
will echo me.yet this man,
this dreamer,
thick lipped with words
will never speak again
and in each winter
when the cold air cracks
with frost I’ll breathe
his breath and mourn
my gunfilled nights.
he was the sun that tagged
the western sky and
melted tiger-scholars
while they searched for stripes.
he said, “fuck you, white
man. we have been
curled too long. nothing
is sacred, not your
white face nor any
land that separates
until some voices
squat with spasms.”do not speak to me of living.
life is obscene with crowds
of white on black.
death is my pulse.
what might have been
is not for him/or me
but what could have been
floods the womb until I drown.
Cellar Door 
What does she mean in her use of the word “parish?”
probably he died
lmfao
“do not speak to me of martyrdom,
of men who die to be remembered
on some parish day.”
I think it means that the narrator is frustrated with how martyrs are only celebrated on holy days. Parish implies that something is christian and separated from the larger christian body, for example, “A parish church”