[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: Diamond Forde’s debut collection Mother Body was not only a finalist for the Kate Tuft’s Poetry Prize but it also garnered the 2019 Saturnalia Poetry Prize. A Callaloo and Tin House Fellow, Forde has an MFA from the University of Alabama and currently serves as the Assistant Editor of Southeast Review. As poet Patricia Smith says, Diamond Forde ”brands her …work with a subversive, self-assertive signature…”

LYNNE THOMPSON: Today’s poem is "Trying to Write a Music Poem" by Diamond Forde.

Trying to Write a Music Poem

Momma sings in the kitchen,
phonic value of a few small noes
beaten out in egg wash

I try to decide the sound:
solemn sighing of a small dog
sinking to sleep. I’m afraid

to write my mother
with the pots and spitting pans.
The world had written her domestic

already, turned her clattering hand 
hard against the down to motherly 
yoke. I’m so tired of looking

at the lyrics of these lines, at Momma
twisting her wrist to whisk
the egg foam. Momma folding

dough, weaving Toni Braxton
solos through the buttery seams.
There was a time without her music

when the MS took her dead
and weighty legs, the numbness
constant, so constant, she welcomed needles

of pain. Describe the sound
of a woman hollowed and filled
with unsound nerves. Describe

the silence of a woman losing
leg rhythm. This is the way
of writing music. Searing stanzas

for symphonies, missing my mother.
Forgetting I missed my mother.
Present her any way I can:

hips un-blued by rhythm, feet
tapping in staccato, gentle give
of her working hands.

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 56



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