Sunlight softens helicopters hoverSkies above Brooklyn PresidentialVisit, murder investigation, matters little.Noise in the skies, noise on the ground.You should prune the morning gloriesI tell my elderly neighbor.She refuses. She likes the way the vine hasCurled around her fence with a ferocityThat cannot be so easily cut back. I get that.Wildness is rare on a Brooklyn city block,Old roses return late May as if to say, ha! youThink we do not know the season? SquirrelsRoam the bricks of buildings, while the gleanersFight with raccoons for the spoils of left-out trash.Huge green leaves for plants with namesUnknown to me sparkle on mornings brightAnd dead tree leaves demand constant sweeping away.The tabby is big, old, and tired—too many kittensNot enough food—these are ungenerous cat lovers.Neighbors greet each other and shake their headsAt the young men and women, mostly, but notAll Whitefolk running running—or their facesDrowning in a pool of handheld devices.You almost wish they smoked or cursedHad personality—but they run and run and runThus, the joy of this vibrant morning-glory vineRooted in her garden’s disarray—happily dominating.Oh, morning glory—purple, greenLeaves plump as Italian cookies, blossomYour hearty display for all to see, hold yourVine’s haven on Macon Street. OnlyWinter, harsh winter will take your vinesBack to the ground your wildness calmed.
Morning Glory
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- January 12, 2024
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“Morning Glory” from THE BELOVED COMMUNITY: by Patricia Spears Jones.
Published by Copper Canyon Press on September 26, 2023.
Copyright © 2023 by Patricia Spears Jones.
All rights reserved.
Reproduced by Poetry Daily with permission.
Rachel Eliza Griffiths
Patricia Spears Jones is a poet, playwright, anthologist, educator, and cultural activist. She is the winner of the 2017 Jackson Poetry Prize from Poets & Writers and the author of A Lucent Fire: New and Selected Poems. Her work is anthologized in African American Poetry: 250 Years of Struggle and Song; Of Poetry and Protest: From Emmett Till to Trayvon Martin; and BAX 2016: Best American Experimental Writing. Her poems have been published in The New Yorker, The Brooklyn Rail, The Ocean State Review, Ms., and Cutthroat, A Journal of the Arts. Patricia Spears Jones edited THINK: Poems for Aretha Franklin’s Inauguration Day Hat and Ordinary Women: An Anthology of New York City Women. Mabou Mines commissioned and produced her plays Mother and Song for New York: What Women Do While Men Sit Knitting. Patricia Spears Jones co-curated the Wednesday Night Series for St. Mark’s Church Poetry Project. She has taught graduate and undergraduate creative writing at Hollins University, Adelphi University, Hunter College, and Barnard College. She leads poetry workshops for the 92nd Street Y, The Workroom, Hugo House, Community of Writers, Truro Center for the Arts at Castle Hill, Gemini Ink, and Brooklyn Poets. She organizes the American Poets Congress and is a Senior Fellow Emeritus of the Black Earth Institute.
Port Townsend, Washington
“These poems could easily sag under the weight of their grief, yet Jones’ short, sharp-talking lines, staccato sentences, and light-on-feet litanies propel the reader down the paths she has paved.”
—Arden Levine, Under a Warm Green Linden
“Spears Jones’s imagistic internationalist, docu-political sentences resemble conversation but stop you in your tracks.”
—Diane Mehta, Electric Lit
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