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Tuesday, November 27, 2012

Poem-A-Day: The Ballad of Cathay Williams William Cathay by Shane McCrae

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The Ballad of Cathay Williams William Cathay
by Shane McCrae


A white man wouldn't less

He stripped me naked was

Whipping me know

I was a woman     got

A name just turn

It inside out

And I'm a man

How else I'm gonna know myself

When I am called




A white man wouldn't twice I had

Smallpox twice after     I enlisted

twice and had / To be

hospitalized both times

Ain't never once

no doctor nor no nurse

Discovered me

No for no white woman

I wouldn't have

nothing for her to see

She would want me to know she seen

And I was watching close

How else I'm gone to know myself

When I am called




And what she see is anyway

how is she gonna know for sure

Black man ain't got

a hole down there

How is she know he ain't

A white man born wrong inside out

and twice as big and mean

And got a hole go twice as deep to hell

How is that woman sure

of anything at all

How else I'm etc

 
Copyright © 2012 by Shane McCrae. Used with permission of the author.
About this poem:
Cathay Williams was the first African-American woman to enlist as a soldier in the United States Army. She did so in 1866, disguised as a man, and served for almost two years.

Poetry by McCrae

Mule

November 27, 2012

Shane McCrae is the author of Mule (Cleveland State University Press, 2010). He is the recipient of a 2011 Whiting Writers' Award.

Related Poems
by Gwendolyn Brooks
by Delmore Schwartz
by C. D. Wright

Poem-A-Day started as a National Poetry Month program in 2006, delivering daily poems from newly-published poetry titles.

 

Due to popular demand, Poem-A-Day became a year-round program in 2010, featuring original, never-before-published poems by contemporary poets on weekdays, and classic poems on weekends.

 

Browse the Poem-A-Day archive for selections since 2010. 


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