The Roots Do a Live Cover of Mayfield's “Move On Up”
Copyright © 2021 by Cynthia Dewi Oka. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on March 30, 2021, by the Academy of American Poets.
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Redacted from a Know-Your-Rights Training Agenda—
That a potholed street in the middling borough of Collingswood, New Jersey, bears the name Atlantic, after an all-consuming body of water.
That all-consuming is Atlas’ curse to bear the heavens on his shoulders.
That after the fall of the gods, half of the heavens is darkness.
That inside the car speeding down the street, I believe I am safe from being halved.
2018
Portrait of My Father as a Pianist
Behind disinfected curtains,
beyond touch of sunrise
devouring the terrible gold
of leaves, a man could be
his own eternal night. City
flattened to rubble, his
surviving height a black flight
of notes: the chip-toothed
blade and oldest anesthetic.
Escaped convict, he climbs
wild-eyed, one hand out—
running its twin on the rails
of a broken Steinway.2017