Poem 70

Poem 70

 

Small, common, not tired

Nor weary nor worn,

Powerful I am

I am an infinite eye/

Voice

Reviving, deriving midnight

From a trinity of signifying parrots ---

 

Passing hep to hopping

The jarring jam they

Dream words

Syntax wax

Grammarians

She and he

Who prismed light  --  grandeur

Parents razing towers

From/form a sentence ---me/I

Apple

Stone immune to polish,

To ignorant charms

Clashing by day.

Superlative subparticles endure ---

 

Invited to logic wild

Crazy quilting

Wet bones on a mountain,

Fear no evil we/I

Zillion paragraphs

Am defiant dance of chapters,

Have bibled seventy gospels

Shadowed through

The middle between

Of hardships and the rock of ages.

Have published sleep ---

 

A miracle of invisibility

I am

A purpose to remember.

 

Jerry W. Ward, Jr.

July 31, 2013

On Angles of Ascent: A Norton Anthology of Contemporary African American Poetry

Point One: Charles Henry Rowell and W. W. Norton & Company have published an anthology. Some of the poems in the anthology are extraordinary.

Point Two: Amiri Baraka reviewed this anthology in Poetry. Some of his criticisms of the anthology are extraordinary.

Point Three: Extraordinary points have been made. There is nothing more to say.

Jerry W. Ward, Jr.
August 6, 2013