Hi folks: I hope you had a better Valentine's Day than I did. I couldn't get a date. Oh well, I'm better now and my very first interview was done in December and published in January and just went live online yesterday so the week has NOT been a total loss. (YYYYYYYYAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY!)
If you want to read the article here's a link:
https://www.facebook.com/notes/the-other-herald/instant-poetry-just-add-words-by-t-f-rice-from-jan-2011-issue-of-the-other-heral/177694175608113
Check it out and leave me an opinion in the comments for this blog if you would. I'd Love to hear your thoughts. You can also email me to arrange future interviews. Alright, enough with the snappy banter! Here's this weeks poem:
Your customs are different from my own
By " Laughing" Larry Berger
The sun was just setting in it's daily ritual when I met him
A rather small and diminutive man .
He stopped me on the street and we started talking.
He tells me his name is James and that he's a "Third Class"
citizen of Johanesburg, South Africa.
He shows me a letter from his priest stating that
he and his familyy could not keep the$50,000
he had come to America to claim.
If he brought it through customs at the airport
he and his family would be shot to death.
We walk to vine and sunset and turned right towards the Jack In The Box
restaurant there and we go into the men's room when he opens the satul he's carring
and shows me the $50,000 is real.
We walk out of the bathroom and I by a Jumbo Jack for each of us
We sit at a table and his eyes light up.
He says " I heard in America that you have a 'magic card' that will let you put money into a bank or take it out at any time."
I say" Yes,It's called an ATM card" and I show him mine so that he can see it.
His eyes grow large with wonder and he asks me if I would take $600.00 or so for myself and give the rest to the " Poor People"
I explain that since it was a Sunday It might not help him and get me into trouble because you had to report any deposits over $9,000.
His hole body slumps when I say this and he tells me he'd need to make a "smoke sacrifice"
I finish my burger and we part ways but before we do he makes me promise not to tell anyone we'd met.
I nod and tell him I'll wait five years till I mention it and head on to the Oynx.
A couple of weeks later I'd headed out to what is arguably the best reading in Southern California, The Anansi Writer's workshop and reading at The World Stage in Leimert Park .
This is the heart of south central LA on the corner of 106th and Crenshaw . The reading lives up to its reputation and I have a fabulous time! Going from the reading to the bus stop was only about ten feet but it was about midnight and pitch black . I see the lights of an oncoming bus so I stand up and I could see that the bus was slowing down.
I heard a voice behind me yell "DIE WHITE BOY!" and a bullet hist the window of the bus and I'm totally convinced that If the driver had not opened the door and let me in at that moment there would have been a second shot and I would not be alive today!
I loved the reading but in the six years beyond this that I lived in LA I never went back
now you know why.
see you next week.
