Mic check

I often post my poetry on this site. What I post is by no means the definitive works of Janae from PA. But my work is representative of who I am and I am proud to share it here. I am especially proud that I have begun what will hopefully be a monthly performance of my work at a local open mic, which has already ended my annual spoken word run. I read a few poems last Friday, and among them were two I'd posted here. However, as I often make it known, my work is never finished but always in progress. Before my performance I did some heavy editing of this poem, originally posted last November:

Cover to Cover

i was
wrapped in rainbows
for one hundred years of solitude
listening to krapp's last tape
and waiting
for a streetcar named desire
to take me to
the blackboard jungle
where things fall apart
and i learned that
a tree grows in brooklyn
where
the souls of black folk
are walking with the wind

i was
wounded in the house of a friend
tumbling
in a catch-22
with an invisible man
who had the bluest eye
and white teeth
carrying a bag of bones
he took me to
the learning tree
where we sat
and spoke of mice and men

i was
getting mother’s body
when i met a black boy whose
breath, eyes, memory
stole the heart of a woman
and then let her
drop
into a ring of endless light
before leaving Atlanta
with the prisoner's wife
whose only song in ordinary time
was your blues ain’t like mine

i was
eating the grapes of wrath
in Eden with
the woman warrior
we treasured
the moments, the minutes, the hours
before breakfast
with the dutchman and the slave
and while their eyes were watching god
she told them
“we are the ones we have been waiting for
i know this much is true.”

JGH 2007