This is my second time using the Langston’s Titles prompt in The Daily Poet, by Kelli Russell Agodon and Martha Silano. The prompt presents the titles of a number of poems by Langston Hughes; the challenge is to use eight or more of them in a poem. The poem is to be about ‘something beautiful or something you wish would happen’, but I wanted to avoid using any of the same titles I used in last year’s poem, so it ended up being something different…

The media presence
at a night funeral in Harlem
does not constitute
cultural exchange
or acceptance of daybreak in Alabama

even if Geraldo does bring a bouquet

It was a bad morning
so when the genius child
sings the April rain song
to ease our sorrow
it does not help

because the snake is still free

(21 May 2015)