Cave Canem Called

Hard work has paid off. I was selected to participate in the Cave Canem Spring 2006 Workshop at Poets House. It is the first congratulations letter I've received in a long time. I've been sending out submissions of all kinds. Articles, poems, proposals of what I thought were great ideas. I get many rejections or no response at all.

So getting that email was sweet.

I thank all the poets and writers who have heard me. Here are a few.

Thank you Audre Lorde. The only reason I went to Hunter College is because you were on staff. I wrote a note to you and slipped it under your office door. It was a pitiful note begging to get into one of your classes. I went by the office for a week looking for you. You were on sabbatical. You were also beginning your battle with cancer. When you came to Hunter to be honored by the Poder Collective, I missed the event. I was always one step away. The closest I ever got was when I met your daughter who blessed me with kind words after a reading. I was always one step away. Thank you for leaving your words and instructions. Your words have made a path for me.

Thank you Zora Neale Hurston. You made me believe I was not crazy for wanting to remember my Geechie folk, their language and their stories. Your picture is on the altar beside a great company of writers. Your picture is beside my great-grandfather's cigarette case and my great-grandmother's Conch Shells. Because of you I've learned to love myself best, when I'm laughing.

Thank you Ann Petry. Your novel, The Street spoke to me through the wind on 116th street as I tried to make sense of a difficult time. Your words jumped right off of the page and surrounded me like a quilt. I struggled between Lenox and Adam Clayton Powell Blvd because your words gave me the courage to do it.

Thank you James Baldwin. Your work is a reminder that there is no limit of what I can do with words. You remind me to look at the world and tell it what I really think about it.