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.

She muscled benumbing... 

hear "I am a beautiful woman."

~LCMH