ELECTION 2008

Election

for P.

 

I.

This rainy morning spent with you enwraps

and warms me by the window, braced for work,

as September’s downpour augurs summer’s end,

a summer in which we made each other legally

one, and live here—together softly and strong—

a conjoining we have chosen and called it home.

 

II.

I vote because I love my life and those held dear,

aware that greed’s vice-grip is present and prepared

to claim our private world as legally their own

for use in gain. Each private world exists of course

at the same crossroads with the public sphere, and so

ideas of justice are born from private mirrors.

 

III.

The ancient war god Mars is smiling above, aloof,

and Venus, that wily love, lounges on cloud-puffs,

each awaiting who next will be summoned to bring

their blessings to the massive world.

 

Poem by Gregg Mosson. Gregg Mosson is the author of Season of Flowers and Dust, and an editor of this blog.

SINGING

Marvin Gaye Sings “The Star Spangled Banner”

NBA All Star Game, 13 February 1983

This is about Love. About Pain.

About how sweet it is,

the Real Thing.

Direct.

Unrequited.

One-sided.

Can I get a witness?

But he’s known One More Heartache.

He knows all about that.

About Love trapped in the blood no getaway

Even after you’ve gone:

Leave her

My mistake

Leave town

Was to love You

Leave the country.

When did You

Stop loving me…?

Marvin sings.

If this world were mine

He knows words can lie, conceal

Heard it through

The grapevine

Makes this song a promissory note,

Makes (Midnight) love to

The Dream

Hushed, sensual,

Slow healing.

His tribe Last of the Believers

Makes me wanna holler

The only Real Americans left

The way They do my life

Yearning.

Marvin sings. Caresses words.

The nation, fickle,

Seduced by the familiar:

A distant lover persuaded to do right

That’s the way love is

gently

Before she gives up her Secret,

Releases Freedom,

A river, soft as her kiss

All I need to get by

Then strong and sudden, true,

Says, Let’s Get It…

With bombs bursting in air

Can I get a WIT-ness?

By Dawn’s

Early

Light

(Do you know the meaning of

“Been Sanctified?”)

 

Reginald Harris is the author of 10 Tongues (Three Conditions Press, 2001), and recent work has appeared in The Ringing Ear: Black Poets Lean South and Poems Against War: Ars Poetica.

THE NEWS OF POETRY

The News

 

In the morning, the sun paints Venetian stripes

on my bedroom wall. When a cloud passes,

 

the pattern fades then returns, a camera

going in and out of focus. The brighter the sun,

the darker the shade: that’s what I like best.

 

That, and the way we are unable to stop

the stream of information

we open our eyes to each morning, turning toward

the nightstand to read the big and little hands,

 

waiting for the pattern of stripes to tell us,

as if we were fish turning upstream

and opening the pages of our daily gills,

what kind of life lies waiting.

 

Poem by Kim Roberts. Kim Roberts is author of two books and editor of The Beltway Quarterly, an online journal based in Washington D.C. This poem first appeared in The Broadkill Review.

 

The News

 

Warning—sudden calamitous events

have stunned the most responsible women and men

but broadcasts undust old narratives again.

 

I think it better to assess my house:

promises honored, self-regards undone.

I find in silence improvement, slightly though,

 

and so that old battle with myself. I go

and ride that road past the gallery of masks

to reach a field where ancient ghouls and gods

 

welcome my second self, who knows his roots,

and wrestles the world within, demanding order

and life, while worldly fortunes rise and die.

 

Poem by Gregg Mosson. Gregg Mosson is the author of Season of Flowers and Dust, and an editor of this blog.

MUSIC AND CHANGE

Change

 

After miles and months of being stuck –

my same old self and all the same problems –

springtime comes to me even ‘though it’s fall

and the old pain melts away, leaving only light.

 

I find myself standing here

at Charles and Read Streets, like old times,

and, just as in my hippie days,

I’m holding my hand out for change.

 

Poem by Karen S. Elliott. Ms. Elliott is president of the Baltimore Ethical Society.

 

A Lesson from Miles

 

Only jazz can understand this—
music the first place Black and White
came together like unwritten notes
in a jazz composition; back then
everybody played what they felt
listened to what each was adding
to the conversation. Miles
enters me on the umpteenth
playing of My Funny Valentine.
I remember the album
Black and glossy like a child’s
face covered in Vaseline, see
faces of musicians he played
with, always ready for new
vibe, the change in music
a collaboration of love,
like Obama’s campaign.–

 

Poem by Mary E. Weems. Ms. Weems is a professor and author of “”An Unmistakable Shade of Red and the Obama Chronicles” (Bottom Dog Press, Ohio).