Poetry
I stand before the painting a decade and a half/
before I am transformed. Oil on wood panel/
lush in detail—blood curdling into script, black velvet gown,
It is not advertised on the pill bottle, merely mentioned/
in the product description from the drug store.
That night, I dreamed of a city older than knowledge/
Dreamed of Serratia, climbed up from the soil
Sometimes, however, the poetry in a first book leaps fully formed like Athena from Hera’s (no, not Zeus’s) head. In any case, a first book, like any beginning, is something to celebrate.
Nkosi Nkululeko reads “What Happened Over the Weekend,” a poem by Heather Taylor Johnson
Left, my bright half, gets all of it…/
soft sharp prickly wet lined./
But press your head against my right shoulder,/
I sense weight but no warmth.
Her lovely face captured the one/
available male in the old folks’ home./
She’s found, at long last, Mr. Right
Nkosi Nkululeko reads “Her Marked Black Body,” a poem by Cynthia Parker-Ohene