Prince
—Photos by Katy Brown, Davis, CA
THE MELODIES OF THREE SISTERS
—Marchell Dyon, Chicago, IL
Sing! Billie sing!
A mournful sugar
Haunt us!
Remind us to look always to the moon
Make us swoon sweet intoxication
Your life was a bitter fruit to bare
Cry with us the tears we black women share
Bathe us in your Sappho light keep us
Moving and up all night
Sing! Dinah sing!
A slow rhapsody
Drift us
Drown us in melody
Your voice a golden heaven
Bounce us
Off the wall
Float us
Till we fall
Scat! Ella scat!
Make this joint come alive
With that toe tapping
Jump and jive
Give us
Your effortless
Groove for heaven sake
Lead that horn with the brass
Your lips make
Because the night is forever young
And we are too
Because the night‘s forever young
And we are too
Let their voices rain down on us
Harmoniously before our eyes
Forever from silver-lit skies…
_____________________
WHEN THE LADY SINGS THE BLUES
—Marchell Dyon
She wishes she was a bird that flies across the sea
When the lady sings the blues
Or a white wave drifting touched by nothing only air
When the lady sings the blues
Most often she sits at her window dreaming she was somewhere else
When the lady sings the blues
Her lover gone her lips have lost their magic charm
When the lady sings the blues
She looks to poetry for meaning in the rhyme
When the lady sings the blues
Her back is worn out and her voice hoarse
When the lady sings the blues
In her soft subtle way, she finds solace in sisterhood
When the lady sings the blues
When the lady sings the blues
When the lady sings, the blues.
____________________
NIGHT SONG OF SELF (BANTUS)
—Marchell Dyon
The moon looks pale gray like dove feathers
Like my hair, ah wisdom
Like ebony stones pitched into a puddle of rain
Over the years, how my reflection ripples with change
My mirror with the dog-eared edges peels away its sheen in time
Leaving behind crow’s feet and childbearing lines
Wine and jazz still left in these bones
Livelier the melody sweeter the song.
Red Leaves
—Photo by Katy Brown
Shorts by Robert Lee Haycock, Antioch, CA:
Heliotrope
Lizard on the fence
Scrub jay’s forgotten acorn
Stretching for the sun
* * *
Reveille
Solid as shadow
Hollow thunderings of wheels
Sing nessun dorma
* * *
Get the lead out
Even those odd days
Of spinning yellow marbles
The cars went ding-ding
* * *
Strange bedfellows
A window opens
Sky above
Sky above
Sky
A ladder leans
Each to
Each to
Each
All the night
Climb down
Climb down
Climb
Wrestling with my stony pillow
How my hip hurts this morning
Lord
Goats
—Photo by Katy Brown
Bump in the night
Tree crawling under the house
Eyeless face at the window
Lie silent dreaming
They will hear you
* * *
Stellar Day
J-bars and pallet jacks
and blocks and bolts and dollies
and roustabouts and scissor lifts
and door skin
* * *
Phenological
Four rooks a-reeling
A raucous caucus race
Bud is on the lilac
Mocker’s in the rose
* * *
Aubade
Oh, what a moon
and the oak spangled hills
and the dead sing
My, how they sing
____________________
Today’s LittleNip:
The world is full of poetry. The air is living with its spirit; and the waves dance to the music of its melodies, and sparkle in its brightness.
—James Gates Percival
____________________
—Medusa, with thanks to today’s contributors for bringing March in with the roar of a lion and the sweetness of a lamb…
Celebrate Poetry!
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