Neither the flag nor the wind is moving.

[A little bonus for any certain remnant who are still reading/syndicating TBA after Poetry Month. Stealing an assignment from the excellent Marie Howe, and in the spirit of Chazz Michael Michaels' Let Me Put My Poems in You, I composed this poem "in my body" walking between 120th and 68th streets.]

The soul sings falsetto at the foot 

of the stoop, tee sleeves pushed up, black

indestructible comb gripped like a microphone.

The rest of the group left one at a time:

the bassman is in Iraq, and the tenor is hoarse

with a week of dreams he woke from screaming

a name. The soul sings alone, in notes

not meant for a man, guided

only by the tiny blast of the pitch pipe.

You have a tin ear. All you can do is trust

that there would be harmony in the streets

if someone were there to answer

when the soul asks, Baby, please

won't you come out tonight?