E. Ethelbert Miller

“But you know I always find

that if I have an opportunity to open doors,

that’s what I’m committed to doing”

Photo: C.B. Claiborne, 2004

A writer and literary activist, E. Ethelbert Miller is the founder and director of the Ascension Poetry Reading Series, one of the oldest literary series in the Washington D.C. area. Author of Women Surviving Massacres and Men (1977), Migrant Worker (1978), Season of Hunger/Cry of Rain (1982), and Where are the Love Poems for Dictators? (2001), at the time of the 1994 conference, Miller had most recently published First Light: Selected and New Poems (1994) and In Search of Color Everywhere (1994), an anthology of African-American poetry which was awarded the PEN Oakland Josephine Miles Award. Miller has also been honored with other distinctions, such as the Mayor’s Art Award for Literature (1982), the Public Humanities Award (1988), the Columbia Merit Award (1994), and the Barnes & Noble Writers for Writers Award (2007). In 1979, the Mayor of Washington, D.C. named September 28th “E. Ethelbert Miller Day.” Since the conference, Miller has served on the D.C. community Humanities Council and as senior editor for the Washington Review of the Arts. In 2015, he was inducted into the Washington D.C. Hall of Fame.

Featured Poems

“Omar’s House”

“Rebecca”

          Photo: C.B. Claiborne, 1994
Photo: C.B. Claiborne, 1994

Interviews, Talks, and Readings

/ E. Ethelbert Miller reads “Omar’s House”

Omar’s House

most of my socks have holes in them

so when I get to omar’s house

the first thing I hear

in my head is my momma’s voice

talking about

you never know what might happen

to you when you go out the door

that’s why you gotta have clean undies

and socks without holes

   

and i’m thinking about this when

I see all them shoes waiting by

the front door of omar’s house

like the beginning of one of those

samurai movies

  

omar pushes me away from the door

while I balance on one leg trying to get

my shoes off and maybe get a chance

to twist my sock around so no one

notice the big hole

but then omar’s daddy extends his hand

and says as salaam alaikum

and I just mumble something like i’m

happy to be here and I really don’t know

where I am except I know that omar

is a muslim

   

the first one I ever met who

didn’t wear a bowtie or try to sell

me a newspaper

omar looks like me except he has

hair you can comb quickly

my momma say don’t be talking about

good hair and bad hair anymore because

that type of thinking is backwards

what’s important is what’s under your hair

and if you have a hat rack instead of a head

then it don’t mean no never mine about what

kind of hair you have and as salaam alaikum

omar’s daddy says again

   

so I smooth the top of my head and stand

up straight and look him in the eye

and he smiles and tells me to put my shoes down

so now i’m ready to enter omar’s house

and the first thing I notice is the living room

don’t have no furniture

no couch

no lamp

no coffee table

just some nice rugs

the kind you see in the street and nobody

buys because they’re too expensive and if you

don’t have a vacuum cleaner or you have a dog

or cat there will be no way for you to keep it clean

so it be best for you to just look at it and

think it’s a magic rug and maybe one day you fly

away from the garbage on the sidewalk and near

the curb

  

omar touch me on my arm so gentle you think he was a girl

he is a quiet boy and my momma says he different from the rest

he doesn’t curse and everything he does

he does with his right hand and then his daddy says

it’s time for prayer and I look at him confused

because what am I suppose to do

the last time my momma took me to church was easter sunday

and the only reason we went was because she

got herself a mink coat and she said

I want everyone to see what your daddy got me

so I don’t remember too much about jesus or the crucifixion

only thing I know is that my momma was the 

happiest momma alive when she walked down the

aisle and sat in the front row of sweet savior

of the regiment first congregational church

everyone nodded at my momma and she whispered to me

and said

every believer in the lord should dress well

god don’t like no riffraff

   

I look at my socks and i’m about to die

omar says the holy quran is the book I should read

and why his house seems like a church I don’t know

all I know is that I like it here

the sweet smell of incense

the plants in the window

the soft music coming from the next room

   

you omar’s friend his daddy asks

yes sir I say

i’m omar’s friend from school

we in the same class and I live around the corner

and I never met a muslim before

not a real muslim

not in this neighborhood

no–and you ain’t no a-rab

because my momma saw you in the supermarket

and she told my daddy you was black and nice

because you said excuse me in front of the vegetables

as you reached for a plastic bag

and in all her years of shopping

nobody ever said excuse me to my momma

especially on a saturday morning

/ E. Ethelbert Miller reads “Rebecca”

Rebecca

will i hate mirrors?

will i hate reflections?

will i hate to dress?

will i hate to undress?

 

jim my husband

tells me it won’t matter

if i have one or two

two or one it doesn’t matter

he says

 

but it does

i know it does

 

this is my body

this is not south africa or nicaragua

this is my body

losing a war against cancer

and there are no demonstrators outside

the hospital to scream stop

 

there is only jim

sitting in the lobby

wondering what to say

the next time we love

and his hands move towards

my one surviving breast

 

how do we convince ourselves

it doesn’t matter?

how do i embrace my own nakedness

now that it is no longer complete?

Related Links

Interactive Program Day I

Timeline: History, Witness, and the Struggle for Freedom in African American Poetry