POET NIKKI GIOVANNI in a review of her new book of poems in today’s Times:

‘There is no / way not to like Black Americans,” she writes in “Lemonade Grows From Soil, Too.” “We try to practice love. / We use the chicken feet to make a stew; we take the scraps of / cloth to make the quilt. We find the song in the darkest days / to say ‘put on your red dress, baby, ‘cause we’re going out / tonight,’ understanding we may be lynched on the way home / but knowing between that cotton field and that house party / something wonderful has been shared.’

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/16/books/nikki-giovanni-make-me-rain.html?referringSource=articleShare

CURTAINS

He Trump has always been 

pathetic 

more so now—

the stage no longer wants him.

‘I will not serve that in which I no longer believe whether it call itself my home, my fatherland or my church: and I will try to express myself in some mode of life or art as freely as I can, using for my defense the only arms I allow myself to use---silence, exile and cunning.’ 
― James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

ONE MORE

We would wonder

my friend and I

bottles or pints in front of us 

who were the people

who went right home

on Friday.

Sometimes the algorithms bring you something you find you’re grateful for. Those on youtube brought me this poet from Cork City, Ireland reading her poem:

https://youtu.be/7kN59KAVsvk

LIKE I DON’T HAVE ENOUGH BOOKS GOING. I bought this today. Like you do when you have a list with you of people to buy gifts for and you decide oh it’s not really crunch time yet. The first five volumes were a big deal to me. This one is about Hitler and many people have said it isn’t great like the other five. A book mostly about Hitler? I’ve resisted it. I’ll see.

PRIVATE PRACTICE

I’m embarrassed now that

I hollered WHOA! so loud the other night

to tell whatever neighbor that their little dog’s

yapping was beyond.

Since, I’ve wondered what I have sounded like to them

playing my harmonica 

which in March I bought late one optimistic night 

from Amazon. 

When Dylan plays his—sometimes on that neck holder he wears—

you stop what you’re doing.