In the Spirit of National Poetry Month
30th Anniversary
Heavy on the ancestors this month.
The first time I laid eyes on Nikki Giovanni’s work and pulled it from a shelf, I was in the fourth grade at Marshall Elementary School in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. I was wide-eyed, awakened, stepping into her bold, cosmic, ancestral language—dripping in color and audacity.
The first time I hugged her and had a conversation, I was working as the Policy Editor at Voice of America. We walked the long corridor, around the bay of radio studios and through the hum of history in motion—and I told her everything: how I found her in the fourth grade, how I’d been writing poetry since age six, how poetry wasn’t something I did but something that grew me—as a conscious writer, a prophet, a truth-seeker, a woman becoming. Our brief time together was magical—surreal in the way that destiny feels when it finally catches up to you.
This offering, Ego Tripping (there may be a reason why), is one of Giovanni’s most celebrated works, first published in her 1972 collection My House. It stands as a declaration of Blackness, of womanhood, of selfhood uncontained. My connection to Nikki Giovanni and this poem revolves around mythical powers and African ancestry, the transformation of the ego, and a celebration of Black resilience. This isn’t just a poem. It’s a remembering. A return. A refusal to be small in any lifetime.
Ego Tripping (there may be a reason why)
Nikki Giovanni 1943-2024
I was born in the congo
I walked to the fertile crescent and built
the sphinx
I designed a pyramid so tough that a star
that only glows every one hundred years falls
into the center giving divine perfect light
I am bad
I sat on the throne
drinking nectar with allah
I got hot and sent an ice age to europe
to cool my thirst
My oldest daughter is nefertiti
the tears from my birth pains
created the nile
I am a beautiful woman
I gazed on the forest and burned
out the sahara desert
with a packet of goat’s meat
and a change of clothes
I crossed it in two hours
I am a gazelle so swift
so swift you can’t catch me
For a birthday present when he was three
I gave my son hannibal an elephant
He gave me rome for mother’s day
My strength flows ever on
My son noah built new/ark and
I stood proudly at the helm
as we sailed on a soft summer day
I turned myself into myself and was
jesus
men intone my loving name
All praises All praises
I am the one who would save
I sowed diamonds in my back yard
My bowels deliver uranium
the filings from my fingernails are
semi-precious jewels
On a trip north
I caught a cold and blew
My nose giving oil to the arab world
I am so hip even my errors are correct
I sailed west to reach east and had to round off
the earth as I went
The hair from my head thinned and gold was laid
across three continents
I am so perfect so divine so ethereal so surreal
I cannot be comprehended
except by my permission
I mean . . . I . . . can fly
like a bird in the sky . . .
Copyright © 1968 by Nikki Giovanni.
