Aubade: East
Harlem, a.m.
Today’s the day, I can taste it.
Got my gray sweats pouting in a breeze
so soft, I feel like I’m still wrapped for sleeping
as I head uptown in my undercover power-suit,
bitch sunlight fingering the spaced-out tenements.
This morning there ain’t nothing I can’t do.
This is my territory, I know all of it—
ten long blocks flanked by mighty water.
Walking any Avenue is like riding
a cosmic surfboard on the biggest wave
of the goddam century, the East River
twerking her bedazzled behind
while sky spills coin like a luck-crazed
Vegas granny flush at the slots. Today
I’m gonna make out like a bandit myself:
hook up with my buds to drop
a few shots on the courts, ogle the ladies,
then play the rest of the day
as it comes see where it goes
feeling good
feeling good
somewhere over the Hudson
the sun heading home
Rita Dove, via The Georgia Review, Spring 2016 and Playlist for the Apocalypse: Poems.
““Aubade East,” is set in Harlem, N.Y. The cocky speaker, out for a walk, squints into the “bitch sunlight fingering the spaced-out tenements.” This is a hat-tip to Toni Morrison, who famously — famously in my house, anyway — wrote in “Sula,” “The sun was already rising like a hot white bitch.”” Dwight Garner, Houston Chronicle.
