You kinda hate to see such rude behavior, but the upside is Patton sometimes has the time to respond with a artful, comical composition. In this case, she remixed Maya Angelou's "Phenomenal Woman" for a stirring response.
Whereas Angelou opens with "Pretty women wonder where my secret lies. / I'm not cute or built to suit a fashion model's size," Patton opens with "Racist white women wonder where my secret lies. I'm not sweet or here to soothe your fragile alibis."
Patton continues with amusing reworkings of Angelou's famous poem. She reconfigures the toast mode of Black verbal artistry that Angelou employed in this case to respond to a troll.
At one point, she writes, responding directly to her adversary, "You call me dumb but I saw your face. You look like mold grew shame into a race." And later still, "You say I sound dumb but I've stacked degrees. While you misquote scriptures and season with cheese."
"I'm not Maya," writes Patton addressing her foe directly. "But here's what's true. She wrote poems. I write eulogies for MAGATs like you."
Angelou closes her poem with "I’m a woman /Phenomenally. /Phenomenal woman, /That’s me." Patton closes her own version with this: I'm a woman--Phenomenally. Phenomenal Black woman, who dragged you dragged you poetically."
If we're placing all of this into the history of Black poetry, we can link Patton with Angelou because of the poem. But then, there's some Amiri Baraka there too because he was the king of embedding hard-hitting insults into his poetry. Patton is unique, but in terms of Black verse, she's a cross between Maya Angelou and Baraka in this response.
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