Hurricane Song
Lady, won’t you wait
out the hurricane
all night at my place—
we’ll take cover like
the lamps & I’ll
let you oil
my scalp. Please, I needs
a good woman’s hands
caught in my hair, turning
my knots to butter.
All night we’ll churn.
Dawn
will lean in too soon—
you’ll leave out into
the wet world, winded
& alone, knowing
the me only
midnight sees.
Copyright © 2015 by Kevin Young. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on October 9, 2015, by the Academy of American Poets.
“‘Hurricane Song’ is an outtake from my book Jelly Roll: A Blues. A series of such bonus tracks are included in my new book Blue Laws: Selected & Uncollected Poems 1995-2015, due out in February of 2016.”
—Kevin Young
Kevin Young
Kevin Young's poetry collections include Brown (Alfred A. Knopf, 2018) and Book of Hours (Alfred A. Knopf, 2014), winner of the 2015 Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize. He was elected a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets in 2020.