LANGSTON HUGHES TRIBUTE ISSUE
Sarah Browning
DOO WOP HIP HOP GO-GO CLANG
A clang beyond all clangs
A clang to the heart of clangs
The mother of all clangs
A clang of no return
Who ever forgets their first time
through a prison door –
King Clang – heartbeat of clang
pre-clang, post-clang
Ku Klux Clang
Who forgets the guard’s beltful of keys,
how he’s a jangle of walking
Silence and then clang
Calling Yo! and clang
Hearts of clang, temptation’s clang
Supreme clang, doo wop clang
hip hop clang, go-go clang
rock and clang, clang of the blues
jazzy joint clang, folk song clang
funky clang, clang
Clang
Sarah Browning is director of Split This Rock Poetry Festival: Poems of Provocation & Witness and DC Poets Against the War. She is the author of Whiskey in the Garden of Eden (The Word Works, 2007) and co-editor of D.C. Poets Against the War: An Anthology (Argonne House Press, 2004). The recipient of an artist fellowship from the DC Commission on the Arts & Humanities, she has also received a Creative Communities Initiative grant and the People Before Profits Poetry Prize. She was founding director of Amherst Writers & Artists Institute, an organization providing creative writing workshops for low-income women and youth, and Assistant Director of The Fund for Women Artists, which supports socially-engaged art by women. She co-hosts the Sunday Kind of Love reading series at Busboys and Poets in Washington, DC, where she lives with her husband and son.
Published in Volume 12, Number 1, Winter 2011.
To read more by this author:
Sarah Browning
Sarah Browning: Whitman Issue
Browning's Intro to The Wartime Issue: Vol. 7, No. 2, Spring 2006
Sarah Browning: DC Places Issue
Sarah Browning: Split This Rock Issue
Sarah Browning: Museum Issue
Sarah Browning: Tenth Anniversary Issue
Sarah Browning on DC Poets Against the War: Literary Organizations Issue
Sarah Browning: Floricanto Issue
Sarah Browning on Lucille Clifton: Poetic Ancestors Issue