Often after a Public Event

(Morning Sun, woodblock print by Gustave Baumann,
1881-1971, German-born American artist and puppeteer)

“There can be no Friendship where there is no Freedom,” wrote William Penn. “Friendship loves a free Air, and will not be penned up in straight and narrow Enclosures. It will speak freely, and act so too: and take nothing ill where no ill is meant; nay, where it is, ’twill easily forgive, and forget too, upon small Acknowledgments.”

~ William Penn (1644-1718), English Quaker and founder of the colony of Pennsylvania

OFTEN AFTER A PUBLIC EVENT

often after a public event
a pretty girl curly black hair
framing literary ambition
or a shy tall boy black curly
hair burning with sympathy

will say something in a foreign
accent to me we are from bosnia
hungarians or jews my mother
was born near your city back then
it was another country

now we are from here
what should we do with our accents

do like me I say
keep talking

~ Andrei Codrescu, born in 1946 in Romania, American poet, essayist, and novelist