Essex Hemphill (Video)
- - [Michelle] This is Essex Hemphill.
- He is an activist, or he was an activist, and poet.
- He was born in 1957 in Chicago.
- And he passed in 1995, which was also the year
- that we lost Eazy-E, both of them to the AIDS epidemic.
- I'd like to read Essex Hemphill's poem, The Tomb of Sorrow.
- "When I die, honey chil', my angels will be tall, Black Drag Queens.
- "I will eat their stockings as they fling them into the blue shadows of dawn.
- "I will suck their purple lips
- "to anoint my mouth for the utterance of prayer.
- "My witnesses will have to answer to Go-Go music.
- "Dancing and sweat will be required at my funeral.
- "Someone will have to answer the mail I leave, the messages on my phone service;
- "someone else will have to tend to the aching that drove me to seek soul.
- "Everything different tests my faith.
- "I have stood in places where the absence of light allowed me
- "to live longer while at the same time it rendered me blind.
- "I struggle against plagues, plots, pressure, paranoia.
- "Everyone wants a price for my living.
- "When I die, my angels, immaculate Black diva drag queens,
- "all of them sequined and seductive, some of them will come back to haunt you,
- I promise, honey chil'."