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[Music intro]
LYNNE THOMPSON: Hello! My name is Lynne Thompson, Poet Laureate for the City of Los Angeles and I’m so happy to welcome listeners to this installment of Poems on Air, a podcast supported by the Los Angeles Public Library. Every week, I’ll present the work of poets I admire, poets who you should know, and poets who have made a substantial and inimitable contribution to the art and craft of poetry.
LYNNE THOMPSON: It’s always a pleasure to come across a writer that I was previously unacquainted with. One such writer is Aurielle Marie who identifies as "a Black queer storyteller, a political organizer, and child of the Deep South by way of Atlanta.” Her debut collection of poems Gumbo Ya Ya was the winner of the Cave Canem Poetry Prize. Marie won the 2019 Ploughshares Emerging Writers Award for Poetry and was the Lambda Literary Poetry Emerging Writer-in-Residence that same year.
LYNNE THOMPSON:Today’s poem is no name in the street by Aurielle Marie.
no name in the street
they called him Money & he had none. ion even gotta tell you how funny that aint. they called him June mint or, that June, he tasted of pepper. i forget. i remember they called his hands to the front the smoke was thick & the bullets carved— no, he had a name. i think it was dark & my mouth let out a sound & suddenly there he was. grinning over the song of artillery & bruise-laughter, you rang? & i never asked for help but i ended up saved. anyway someone told me he died casually, like the world stalled his noise & gave us the broth to recall him by. i laid with him & never told no one. never called him nothing but a cool blush of smoke. he asked me to gift him a way out, a name to be welcomed home inside & i couldn’t offer anything up, not even all me. anyway. someone told me he died casually. i called him up & ask is it true? he say something bout there being no war in the blues. he aint never answer my question. directly after, the whole room got to smelling like pepper, like June. gunpowder is a Ferguson sky. & i be damned there aint no word to call this what it is
LYNNE THOMPSON: The Los Angeles Poet Laureate was created as a joint program between the City’s Department of Cultural Affairs and the Los Angeles Public Library and this podcast is available wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks for listening!
[Music outro]
- Back to Poems on Air: Episode 63
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