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Poem-a-day

Oracle

^{for Gloria Foster}

Neo and Morpheus are looking for you
in between the in between.
You sit like any wise woman, sister in your kitchen.

Forget the walnut wood table, platter of cookies
against a corner wall like some kind of altar
where all truth is dispensed.

No time to play with cowrie shells, tea leaves, coins,
objects of performance; no time for ritual either.

You stand cooking much of nothing, offering
neither tea nor directions to the way.

What light can you shine into brilliance of an overly lit sky?

Just cookies.
You offer fresh from the oven, warmed cookies.

It comes down to an ordinary woman,
in a Marshall’s running suit
gently opening a doorway to the extraordinary.

What Neo wants to know,
you have rightly already forgotten.
You tell him “Nothing is preordained.”

read the rest

One does such work as one will not,
And well each knows the right;
Though the white storm howls, or the sun is hot,
The black must serve the white.
And it’s, oh, for the white man’s softening flesh,
While the black man’s muscles grow!
Well I know which grows the mightier,

James D. Corrothers

1922

Compensation

O, rich young lord, thou ridest by
With looks of high disdain;
It chafes me not thy title high,
Thy blood of oldest strain.
The lady riding at thy side
Is but in name thy promised bride.
Ride on, young lord, ride on!

James Edwin Campbell

1922

A Poem for My Wife

I’m in my room writing
speaking in myself
& I hear you
move down the hallway
to water your plants

I write truth on the page
I strike the word over & over
yet I worry you’ll pour too much water on the plants
& the water will overflow onto the books
ruining them

If I can’t speak out of myself
how can I tell you I don’t care about the plants?
how can I tell you I don’t care if the books get wet?

David Meltzer

2005

I Have Folded My Sorrows

I have folded my sorrows into the mantle of summer night,
Assigning each brief storm its allotted space in time,
Quietly pursuing catastrophic histories buried in my eyes.
And yes, the world is not some unplayed Cosmic Game,
And the sun is still ninety-three million miles from me,
And in the imaginary forest, the shingled hippo becomes the gray unicorn.
No, my traffic is not with addled keepers of yesterday’s disasters,
Seekers of manifest disembowelment on shafts of yesterday’s pains.

Bob Kaufman

1965

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Poem-a-day

Oracle

Jacqueline Johnson

Poems

In The Matter Of Two Men

Compensation

A Poem for My Wife

I Have Folded My Sorrows