Poetry Month on WNYC ... my poem got read today!
photo by Shani Hadjian Photography
My poem was semi-famous for a few seconds today, I think. Maybe. A producer wrote to me yesterday and said it would be on WNYC this morning at 7:19. So cool. I was on the subway at the time. The station’s poetry theme is “Good Neighbors.”
Sabbath in the Parlor of Jazz
By Ann Votaw, Washington Heights/Inwood
Each Sunday, Ms. Marjorie Eliot blesses neighbors
in her Harlem parlor, what most people call “a living room.”
My folding chair is two rows back from her piano.
The frail couple in front of me were behind me in line in the hall.
But where the last are first, there is always room for 30, maybe 40 guests.
A plate of cereal bars passes, then bottles of water, or apple juice, if you prefer.
I wonder if I would welcome her, or anyone here, as a stranger in my own home.
My answer is most people’s answer, and so I am extra full on fishes and loaves.
Satisfied to tears by old standards she plays, all sinew and spirit.
Her voice is a soft, pulpy heart.
Her bony hands flash wounds of a savior.
My grandparents, all four of them, dance in a cloud.
The kindness is so easy that the dead are that near.