It’s the end of June, and I’m at the poetry workshop in Squaw Valley. While I hardly ever publish long poems here, I heard one tonight that just blew me away. Evie Shockley talked about how poets use time, especially the way they use it to address race and history, and her first example was this poem by Ross Gay:
spoon
for Don Belton
Who sits like this on the kitchen floor
at two in the morning turning over and over
the small silent body in his hands
with his eyes closed fingering the ornate
tendril of ivy cast delicately into the spoon
that came home with me eight months ago
from a potluck next door during which
the birthday boy so lush on smoke
ad drink and cake made like a baby
and slept on the floor with his thumb
in his mouth until he stumbled through my garden
to my house the next morning where I was frying up
stove top sweet potato biscuits, and making
himself at home as was his way,
after sampling one of my bricks
told me I could add some baking powder
to his and could I put on some coffee
and turn up the Nina Simone and rub, maybe,
his feet, which I did, the baking powder,
stirring it in, and I like to think, Continue reading “At Squaw Valley”