just for kicks & comments & utter drunkenness at 7 pm:

my own words.

Evensong for Nina Simone

She's giving up prayer &
praying to god; hums to the duet
of swamp ghost & moonlight.
Under the welkin,
she whistles Mister,
I've got more
to sell than these
white teeth & hips.
She's got love songs & propositions
to harvest. The quick of her step
tills the footpath.
With only the silver dust
of her voice
& a clumsy stilleto heel,
she's gonna get from North
Carolina to anywhere
in as many wings as it takes.
Some say the rhythm in her shiver
has been buried by
a few centuries, in the notches
that mark time in a ship's plank.
But it looms in the ivory
that accompanies her.
In the clouds above the South,
she stirs up a rainstorm.
Every rumble echoes of an anthem.
We're all made
of bone and bellow, but
few can feel them at once.