Mr. Africa Poetry Lounge!
Seventh Street
Money burns the pocket, pocket hurts,
Bootleggers in silken shirts,
Ballooned, zooming Cadillacs,
Whizzing, whizzing down the street-car tracks.
Seventh Street is a bastard of Prohibition and the War. A crude-boned, soft-skinned wedge of
nigger life breathing its loafer air, jazz songs and love, thrusting unconscious rhythms, black
reddish blood into the white and whitewashed wood of Washington. Stale soggy wood of
Washington. Wedges rust in soggy wood. . . Split it! In two! Again! Shred it! . . the sun. Wedges
are brilliant in the sun; ribbons of wet wood dry and blow away. Black reddish blood. Pouring
for crude-boned soft-skinned life, who set you flowing? Blood suckers of the War would spin in a
frenzy of dizziness if they drank your blood. Prohibition would put a stop to it. Who set you
flowing? White and whitewash disappear in blood. Who set you flowing? Flowing down the
smooth asphalt of Seventh Street, in shanties, brick office buildings, theaters, drug stores,
restaurants, and cabarets? Eddying on the corners? Swirling like a blood-red smoke up where the
buzzards fly in heaven? God would not dare to suck black red blood. A Nigger God! He would
duck his head in shame and call for the Judgement Day. Who set you flowing?
Money burns the pocket, pocket hurts,
Bootleggers in silken shirts,
Ballooned, zooming Cadillacs,
Whizzing, whizzing down the street-car tracks.
Written by Jean Toomer (1894-1967)
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