Ode to Bodhi1
Variations on the American Dream2
After Langston Hughes
One handful of dream-dust
In a blue cloud-cloth
I feel and see and hear, Harlem, I hear you.
Sure, call me any ugly name you choose –
They’ll see how beautiful I am
Ancient dusky rivers
The boogie-woogie rumble
With his ebony hands on each ivory key
Rainbow-sweet thrill
And sometimes goin’ in the dark
Till the white day is done.
Hold fast to dreams
Whole damn world’s turned cold.
The street light
Great diamond moon
Stirs your blood
Oh, shining rivers of the soul!
Love Letter to NYC
every story I have begins and ends with you –
every curve of road in nameless states
a convex mirror sluicing me towards
my first glimpse of Lincoln Tunnel traffic
complaints are your love language:
MTA Sunday schedules / siren shrieks / polar vortexes / spilled coffees / lost paychecks
every day for 15 yrs I’ve planned my escape in a blur
worry & hurry an ever-present tang in my blood now
on moonless nights the throb of past selves
becomes a surge I stuff with endless bodies
all the skins I’ve shed – a wedding dress train
tail of a jammed-up parade
I try to explain to relatives far away
that a trio on a late-night subway complete with
sunflowers, stolen Xanax, a blood-spattered clock
falling asleep on my shoulder made this my home now
that until I’d had a homeless man help me
mop up vomit with newspaper
my impression of love was cheaper than
the loosies they sell in bodegas on Jamaica Ave
every day for 15 yrs I’ve dodged my nesting in a whisper
if I admit how much you mean to me we’d be toxic
I didn’t come here to do Brooklyn –
I mean to say, your slang is my Riverside breeze now
whose rooftop parties, whose project stairwells
did you plan to splinter my heart with
I keep a driver’s license (no car)
in case the rat race catches up
what I mean is all your lights are a honeycomb of constellations
that haunting purple-orange sky: a bruise and its balm at once
your glitter made me want to spiral streets & scale stars
when I am with you all I think about is time – the second I wake I scramble to rewind
Smoky Jazz
honey silk ooze
butter satin smooth
pillowy notes cascade & float
caress you into a swoon
candle flame trickles down crystal
piano keys tinkle like teeth on spoons
blue jungle moon on pale blossoms
brass warbles, trembles, balloons
by day, writing fierce in a little brown book
but by night
the rhythm
is syrup
slow
& the mood is indigo
- “Ode to Bodhi”: The Bodhi tree, located in Bodh Gaya, Bihar in India, is a sacred pilgrimage site for Buddhists, as it is considered to be the tree that Siddhartha Gautama (Buddha) sat beneath when he attained enlightenment. ↩︎
- “Variations on the American Dream”: In this cento, each line is taken from a different Langston Hughes poem. The poems in order of appearance are: “Dream Dust,” “The Dream Keeper,” “Theme for English B,” “Let America Be America Again,” “I, Too,” “The Negro Speaks of Rivers,” “The Weary Blues,” “Harlem Sweeties,” “Mother to Son,” “Dream Variations,” “Dreams,” “Po’ Boy Blues,” “Night Funeral in Harlem,” “Lullaby,” “Danse Africaine,” and “Jazzonia.” ↩︎
Megan Skelly is an emerging poet who holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the City College of New York, where she was awarded the Jerome Lowell DeJur Prize in Poetry and the Teacher-Writer Award. She currently teaches creative writing, composition, and various writing across the disciplines courses for CCNY, Fordham University and York College. Her work has appeared in Sixfold, OyeDrum, (Re) An Ideas Journal, Poetry in Performance vol. 47 & 48, and the anthology You May Drink From It. Committed to cultivating the arts in education, she has also served as a mentor for CCNY’s Poetry Outreach program and substitute teaches in the NYC public schools. In her free time, she practices and teaches yoga, seeking the balance between freedom and form that poetry too invites.
The Marbled Sigh 