Bullpen
That first week at the first Cave Cavem
nobody seems to sleep; we have given
them one rule: a new poem before lunch.
They come to the lounge each evening
to print their poems
and never leave.
In Kingston NY there is a Walmart
with cold chicken buckets. Nobody
seems to sleep. We are fitful, almost
stuttering lines between bites. Didn’t
Emma Goldman once say
what good is a revolution
without some God Damn dancing?
We say: lick your fingers, bite
the skin. Toss the bone right
in the middle of the table.
Make sure the flavor stains
tomorrow's page.
Copyright © 2024 by Cornelius Eady. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on October 10, 2024, by the Academy of American Poets.
“‘Bullpen’ is a memory and a celebration of the first summer of the Cave Canem workshop in 1992. The workshop was conceived as a safe space for Black poets to write and hear each other, and my poem highlights one of the many moments that summer when the poets began to turn into a community.”
—Cornelius Eady
Cornelius Eady
Born in 1954, in Rochester, New York, Cornelius Eady is the co-founder of Cave Canem, a nonprofit organization serving black poets