The following poem was performed by C.C. Carter Dec. 10, 2005, at the closing night of Mountain Moving Coffeehouse for Womyn & Children. MMCH closed its doors after 31 years with a concert featuring Deidre McCalla, Artemis Singers, Radical Nuances, and Tricia Alexander, Diana Laffey, Laurie Lee Moses, Jorjet Harper, Paula Walowitz and Toni Armstrong, Jr.
BY C.C. Carter
I was born here
Second row third seat from the left
listening to icon women
who had helped create a dynasty
for all us young artist wanna be’s and
in that moment
the spirit of woman’s work washed over me and
respect for woman’s space became my belief
I was born into womanry
Birthed by three midwives
who didn’t smack me into screams
but dared me to speak and
those three became my surrogates
I first crawled here
Stepped to a mic and
long before there was a thing called
spoken word poetry
I spoke words and claimed them as poetry and
the women of the house encouraged me
I took independent first steps here
Wrote five poems
(Dear Butch, Dear Femme, Dear Just You,
Women Are Music, I Want to Go Back)
They took up ten pages
Folded them in half and stapled them
Sold over a hundred Letters to My Love in a night
because the neighborhood women supported me
I came out here
A debutante at the ball
No longer an opening act
I was my own headliner
C.C. Carter was created here and
200 women in the village uplifted me
I graduated from here
No longer K-12, I was coached
by my surrogates to leave the nest to attend
higher learning at other women’s institutions and
3,000 women of this secret society now know me
I came back home and got married here
Pledged my devotion
Betrothed my heart to love
honor and respect women artists
I renew these vows out loud to over
5,000 women worldwide yearly
I gave birth here
to an idea that women’s theater
needed its own platform
That the greatest novels never read and
the greatest stories never told
could be staged and produced here
Harriet Tubman Visits a Therapist
Bull Jean Stories
Say Jesus and Come to Me and
a new generation of women
came to know Mountain Moving’s Legacy
I became a certified midwife here
Learned the value of women’s space and the need
for young women to know they are worthy
Created a model of Mountain Moving on the South Side
But every February we follow the North Star on a journey
Bring our Daughters to the motherland
A pilgrimage of rites of passage to their herstory
Cause I was born here
Birthed into womanhood
by Papi Jackie
Mami Kathy and
my fierce aunt Toni
who created a house for women artists
That’s why I speak my last lines of poetry
in the house that I grew up in with so many memories
Cause they were the three that birthed me
And this is the house that raised me
And you are the women that watched over me
And that’s why I’m the woman that I turned out to be