With No Immediate Cause by Ntozake Shange

With No Immediate Cause - Poem by Ntozake Shange

This memorial is part of the Estuary Project by Kendra Rosalie Hicks

This is dedicated to the memory of the 11 Black women murdered in racially polarized 70s Boston

This poem was written by the late novelist/playwright/poet Ntozake Shange.  This poem is dedicated to the 1979 Boston murders that still haunts the city 40 years later.  Black  and the Black feminist communities were outraged that those murders of 11 young Black and one White women weren't taken seriously by the police and local media.

This is dedicated to the 12 murdered women of Boston.

With No Immediate Cause bye Ntozake Shange

every 3 minutes a woman is beaten

every five minutes a

woman is raped/every ten minutes

a lil girl is molested

yet i rode the subway today

i sat next to an old man who

may have beaten his old wife

3 minutes ago or 3 days/30 years ago

he might have sodomized his

daughter but i sat there

cuz the young men on the train

might beat some young women

later in the day or tomorrow

i might not shut my door fast

every 3 minutes it happens

some woman's innocence

rushes to her cheeks/pours from her mouth

like the betsy wetsy dolls have been torn

apart/their mouths

menses red & split/every

three minutes a shoulder

is jammed through plaster and the oven door/

chairs push thru the rib cage/hot water or

boiling sperm decorate her body

i rode the subway today

& bought a paper from a

man who might

have held his old lady onto

a hot pressing iron/i don't know

maybe he catches lil girls in the

park & rips open their behinds

with steel rods/i can't decide 

what he might have done i only
know every 3 minutes
every 5 minutes every 10 minutes/so
i bought the paper
looking for the announcement
the discovery/of the dismembered
woman's body/the
victims have not all been
identified/today they are
naked and dead/refuse to
testify/one girl out of 10's not
coherent/i took the coffee
& spit it up/i found an
announcement/not the woman's
bloated body in the river/floating
not the child bleeding in the
59th street corridor/not the baby
broken on the floor/
there is some concern
that alleged battered women
might start to murder their
husbands & lovers with no
immediate cause'

i spit up i vomit i am screaming
we all have immediate cause
every 3 minutes
every 5 minutes
every 10 minutes

every day

women's bodies are found

in alleys & bedrooms/at the top of the stairs

before i ride the subway/buy a paper/drink

coffee/i must know/

have you hurt a woman today

did you beat a woman today

throw a child across a room

are the lil girl's panties

in yr pocket

did you hurt a woman today

i have to ask these obscene questions

the authorities require me to

establish

immediate cause

every three minutes

every five minutes

every ten minutes

every day. 

Ntozake Shange

With thanks from the late poet/playwright Ntozake Shange, activist/feminist Barbara Smith, and artist/activist Kendra Rosalie Hicks.  Thank you for keeping the memories of the murdered young women alive.  😃😃💘💘