The Now of Gwendolyn Brooks

Abstract

The Now of Gwendolyn Brooks Carolyn Joyner (bio) Like a full moon in winter,her light comes inside,gives breath to voicespeaking behind plain-folkeyes, to song hummingsway at their core. Long-limbed words with big souls—a collective embrace, armoring.There's no looking up or downon her charted journey, justthe challenge of being human,assorting humanness. Soon I'll be done wid the troublesof the world, soon… We dance, stride, gallop the idiom,rhythmic riffs resonant in portraitsof young men dangling hopeby the foot (but they cool, real cool),the bourgeois raining condescensionon the poor, that old yellow pairsharing broken-dreamed devotion. She seats us in kitchenette buildings,gives us a whiff of hallway's over-ripenedgarbage after strutting our stuff downBronzeville streets with Satin-legs Smith.We neighbor with a young girl namedAnnie Allen, grow into adulthood with her. Black urban poor skin slips on easily,reshapes truths that speak of our own, reachinto modernity's chest, illuminate it,like a full moon in winter. —inspired by Dolores Kendrick [End Page 113] Carolyn Joyner Carolyn Joyner, a Washington, DC poet, has been featured in various literary magazines and anthologies, among them, Obsidian, Beyond the Frontier, Gathering Ground and Beltway Quarterly. She has a Master of Arts degree in creative writing from The Johns Hopkins University, is a Cave Canem fellow, and has been awarded artist fellowship grants from the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts (VCCA) and the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities. Copyright © 2019 Pleiades and Pleiades Press