exchange clandestine feels / in dark hallways... /
young black bodies humped hard.” Ironically, she
is unable to participate in this important sexual
rite of passage because she unexpectedly begins
her own initiation into womanhood: “menstrual
red stains white pleated skirt / catching on to 2-
tone socks.” The consequence is, for the novice,
painful, as she remains “the only girl not asked to
dance.” Through her youthful speaker, who at the
end ponders “why boys don’t like me,” Coleman
explores the often paradoxical experiences of pu-
berty, a theme and treatment that move the poem
beyond the racial specificity Coleman cherishes.
In contrast, although it, too, is about rituals and
puberty—about “coming into manhood”—“Em-
mett Till” explores myopia by focusing on the blind
and senseless destruction caused by racism. The
poem accurately recalls the 1955 death of Emmett
Till, a 14-year-old Chicago youth who was lynched
and thrown into the Mississippi River while vis-
iting his grandparents, ostensibly for committing
oracular rape: “that hazel eye sees / the woman /
she fine mighty fine / she set the sun arising in his
thighs /... and he let go a whistle /... but she be
a white woman. but he be / a black boy.” Till pays a
horrific price for his crime, his lust-filled whistle:
“his face smashed in / lord! lord! / his body beaten
beyond recognition.”
Coleman is best known for the gutsy, raw,
unpretentious language of her poems about the
complexity of women and multifaceted character
of urban life—the life of the ghetto—with which
she strongly identifies. In these poems, she gives
voice to the often marginalized—for example the
lesbian, prostitute, the john or pimp—as she does
in “Sweet Mama Wanda Tells Fortune for a Price.”
Returning to walk the street after servicing a cus-
tomer, the prostitute speaker reflects, “outside i
count my cash / it’s been a good night / the street
is cold / i head east / i am hungry / i smile.” Clearly,
prostitution, for the speaker, is a respectable and
legitimate way of making a living, of putting food
on her table. She heads east, ready to meet head-
on and embrace without fear a new day. Ebullient
from the joy of her existential act and sense of
agency, she smiles.
In the end, Coleman’s work, poetry and fiction,
is dominated not only by her concern with wom-
en’s lives and issues but fundamentally by dynamic
love, which forms the central theme of her work.
Often, she uses this theme in conventional ways,
running the gamut from the purely physical and
erotic to the psychological, emotionally fulfilling,
and racial. For example, self-love and a celebra-
tion of blackness is the central theme in “Coffee,”
in which the speaker unabashedly and humorously
recalls with fond memory her love for the coffee her
Aunt Ora made, “in the / big tin percolator,” and
served to her and her playmates in “thick / white
fist-sized mugs.” The children love coffee “better
than chocolate,” despite a neighbor’s warning that
“young colored children” should not drink coffee
because “it made you get blacker / and blacker.”
With their act, the children confirm the popular
folk rhyme, “the blacker the berry the sweeter the
juice,” and affirm the mantra of the 1960s: “black is
beautiful.” As Lynda Koolish points out, Coleman
forces “readers to reexamine their own attitudes
about sexuality and race” (26).
In Coleman’s short story “Lonnie’s Cousin,” a
young mother and wife, trapped in an unfulfill-
ing interracial marriage, is seduced by her neigh-
bor’s cousin. Claiming, at first, that she has been
“hexed” by her pursuer, the wife confesses her
infidelity to her husband, who, upon hearing her
story for the first time, insists on hearing it over
and over again. Although she reveals her own
complicity in the process of retelling her story,
which she embellishes with each new narration,
the speaker succeeds in seducing her husband in
the end, infusing new life into their heretofore less
than exciting marriage.
Coleman’s work has been published in such
well-known magazines and journals as Antioch
Review, Crab Orchard Review, Obsidian, and
Zyzzyva. Her poems and short stories have been
included in Best American Poetry (1988); Trouble
the Water, edited by Jerry Ward; and Breaking Ice,
edited by TERRY MCMILLAN. The mother of a son,
Coleman has received fellowships from the Gug-
genheim Foundation and the National Endow-
ment for the Arts.Coleman, Wanda 111