Family poems
/ page 43 of 43 /The Idea of Ancestry
© Etheridge Knight
I have at one time or another been in love with my mother,
1 grandmother, 2 sisters, 2 aunts (1 went to the asylum),
and 5 cousins.I am now in love with a 7-yr-old niece
(she sends me letters in large block print, and
her picture is the only one that smiles at me).
Crossing the Frontier
© Alec Derwent Hope
Crossing the frontier they were stopped in time,
Told, quite politely, they would have to wait:
Passports in order, nothing to declare
And surely holding hands was not a crime
Until they saw how, ranged across the gate,
All their most formidable friends were there.
The Death Of Art
© Emanuel Xavier
Reading well is one of the great pleasures that solitude can afford you.
-critic Harold Bloom, who first called slam poetry "the death of art.