*Ad libitum*

I sing this body ad libitum, Europe scraped raw between my teeth until, presto, “Ave Maria” floats to the surface from a Tituba tributary of “Swanee.” Until I’m a legato darkling whole note, my voice shimmering up from the Atlantic’s hold; until I’m a coda of sail song whipped in salted wind; until my chorus swells like a lynched tongue; until the nocturnes boiling beneath the roof of my mouth extinguish each burning cross. I sing this life in testimony to tempo rubato, to time stolen body by body by body by body from one passage to another; I sing tremolo to the opus of loss. I sing this story staccato and stretto, a fugue of blackface and blued-up arias. I sing with one hand smoldering in the steely canon, the other lento, slow, languorous: lingered in the fields of “Babylon’s Falling” ...

-- "Sissieretta Jones" by Tyehimba Jess

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/58786/sissieretta-jones

#TyehimbaJess #Poetry #TodaysPoem

Next week (Friday-Sunday) is the 8th Annual #AmherstCollege #LitFest. All events are at Amherst College: #MeganORourke, #IngridRojasContreras, #VictoriaChang, #TyehimbaJess, #TedConover, #CatherineNewman, #MarkVanhoenacker, #MartiDumas, #ValeriaLuiselli, #JenniferAcker, #DennisSweeney, #KirinKapur

See our website for the calendar & to sign up for our weekly #events newsletter: http://www.amherstbooks.com We'll be selling books by all speakers.

Or go to Amherst College's website: https://www.amherst.edu/about/literary-amherst/litfest

It was the tender way
she held my face
and kissed where tears
should have rolled
that told me I’d asked
of her the almost impossible—
to recount my blinding
tale, to tell what became
of the rest of me.

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/90220/blind-boone39s-vision

#TodaysPoem #Poetry #Poem #TyehimbaJess