National Poetry Month: Writing Prompt #2

As our celebration of National Poetry Month continues, we’re sharing writing prompts from Choir members & friends to help unlock all that poetic majesty that you have in your brain. Today’s prompt comes to us by way of Choir member Mckendy Fils-Aime:  

30.30 Writing Prompt #2:
Write a letter to a species that has gone extinct.

Feel free to post your poems in the comments!

 

For Those Who Whistle Vivaldi

You're standing in line at Walmart 
holding a CD, watching a procession 
of fitted caps.

Today 50 Cent’s Get Rich or Die Trying 
has been released & his fans are here.
Boys swallowed by their father’s jeans,
sporting robe sized hoodies, praising the bullet 
hole halo circling Curtis Jackson’s crucifix. 

It is the year you move to a town
where the people watch gangster rap videos
like National Geographic specials, 
an anxious pearl mob clutching bags 
& backing away when you approach.

You are the only dark skinned G-Unit monk here
so naturally the cashier is taken aback
when you hand her a copy of 
The Johnson Academy presents: 
Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons

When she asks about the CD, you tell her 
about the grocery clerk, 
how you walked into his store, 
headphones bumping Biggie
how the dark lure of you caught his eye.

In an aisle full of white kids, he patted you down, 
hands alive with certainty. After he found
nothing, he told you to never come back.
 

Three Poems – Mckendy Fils-Aime

For Those Who Whistle Vivaldi 

You're standing in line at Walmart 
holding a CD, watching a procession 
of fitted caps.

Today 50 Cent’s Get Rich or Die Trying 
has been released & his fans are here.
Boys swallowed by their father’s jeans,
sporting robe sized hoodies, praising the bullet 
hole halo circling Curtis Jackson’s crucifix. 

It is the year you move to a town
where the people watch gangster rap videos
like National Geographic specials, 
an anxious pearl mob clutching bags 
& backing away when you approach.

You are the only dark skinned G-Unit monk here
so naturally the cashier is taken aback
when you hand her a copy of 
The Johnson Academy presents: 
Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons

When she asks about the CD, you tell her 
about the grocery clerk, 
how you walked into his store, 
headphones bumping Biggie
how the dark lure of you caught his eye.

In an aisle full of white kids, he patted you down, 
hands alive with certainty. After he found
nothing, he told you to never come back.

You figured it was your music,
the slick rhymes spilling from your ears
riding a cavalcade of beats, stampeding 
through the old man's best rendition of Spring. 

You figured if you learned his song, 
branded each note into your mouth
he'd let you back into the store. 
He never did.