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2003-04-27
Nina Simone (b. Eunice Waymon)
2.21.33 Tryon, North Carolina / D. 4.21.03 Carry-le-Rouet, France
Mood Indigo
Nigger nine times in one conversational burst
I counted last week
sitting next to a young black guy on the Q train.
Nina Simone
left the country in 1973, living in Liberia and Barbados before settling in France. In a 1998 interview, she said she had left the United States because of a racial situation she called �worse than ever.�
I said nigger out loud for the first time maybe two years ago
it slipped out
like my brain pan was Pandora�s box and my precious gray matter
not at all not at all.
Nigger
wing�d like discord; like discord spread.
Three, four months later my tongue found another one loitering under my palate.
When �ghetto�
as if it were Sweet �n� Low
fails to satisfy.
How many girlfriends used to say, as if only to bug me,
�Not a criticism, just an observation�?
At least one
maybe two. Years ago.
Nigger
like I�m knowledgeable and it�s a distinction I�m making:
them not the well-behaved
them not you
or yes you (loutish, NBA-branded)
not me, the one with the mouth like a razor.
When France isn�t far enough.
Quotation from The New York Times Obituary (4.22.03)