Jack Hirschman The black rice arcane 1. I watched a woman pass by me, profile-glimpsed I thought was you; pink slippershoes, coffee-colored legs in a purple skirt and maroon sweater, with a hairnet but of pink satin flowerettes, like in a Detroit garden, shoulder-stooped as if the air itself was burdening on down, and then, at the corner light, that face of jutjawed beauty, feisty, proud, black rice, the staple of the human race. It was more than a decade since I’d heard your voice, only to hear someone’d told me yours decided to become… you know how it goes, the song of the sound of a woman standing still in my skull, then spreading throughout my soul enduring decibels, as she crosses one more gutter, on the green. 2. Go back to “the human race”, the last words, after all, of the most sung song, The Internationale, the song I fight for the meaning of, a meaning I’d die for, no matter the backlashes, contemporary drivel, deviations
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