Luminary

A villanelle for poet, professor, electric presenter Nikki Giovanni, who passed away Monday, December 9. I had the good fortune to hear her read at my local DC bookshop, Politics and Prose. The quote "I am a beautiful woman" appears in her poem "Ego Tripping (there may be a reason why)."   

 

Nikki Giovanni at Politics and Prose 

We must have been numb

while she was hip she was 

here: "I am a beautiful woman."

 

She paused all of a sudden,

choppers overriding her buzz.

We… must have been numb.

 

DCers, what had we become,

she teased. We had not budged.

Where am I... "a beautiful woman"?

 

Airlift, the fall of Saigon? 

Unfazed, blasé our bias

has been. Must we numb... ?

 

Perched on her chair lissome

as a gazelle, quick her prowess.

Here I am, a beautiful woman.

 

How the reading of the room

and her poetry coalesced.

We have been, mostly, numb.

Hear: "I am a beautiful woman."

~LCMH