Chasing Utopia Read Online Free Page A
Author: Nikki Giovanni
red
Is Seductive who ever fell in love
Over a glass of white wine
Iâuncharacteristically on timeâ
Would like you to greet me
In a butcherâs apron
I would like to watch you greet me only
In an apron
You would ask me to undress
To undress for you
Before I sit down at the beautiful table
Before you hand me my glass
You would ask me to undress
I would like to watch you watch me
Undressing for you
I would like to watch the movement inside the apron
As I undress for you
I would like to watch you walk
No
Stroll to your closet
Where you bring out your old buffalo plaid dressing gown
Your pilly much-washed dressing gown that smells like you
After you brush your teeth
After you shower After you comb your hair
I would like to embrace your odor
Your odor Your essence as we sit down to eat
I would like for you to cook for me
I would like that
Very much
ONE THING
There is only one
Thing better
Than waking up to Ben Webster
blowing
Monday Morning Blues
In my ear
There is only one
Thing better
Than waking up to coffee
Perking
Bread
Rising
Bacon
Frying
There is only one
Thing better
Than a blue sky
Birds chirping
The garbage being picked up
On time
Yeah
Only one
Thing better
AND EVERYONE WILL ANSWER
I had driven to Buffalo. As a Midwesterner with southern roots driving a car has always been fun and comforting. I had had a 1960 Volkswagen that I had purchased for about six hundred dollars. I was in grad school at the University of Pennsylvania. I was studying Social Work in the hopes of emulating my mother and one of her best friends and an incredible âauntâ to me, Theresa Elliot. All the Social Workers I knew were cool and I had been awarded a scholarship. Unfortunately I was never meant to work in any real sort of system. After a year it was decided by all, respectfully and, I might add, lovingly, that Social Work school was not for me. Through the good offices of a great Social Worker, Louise Shoemaker, I was accepted into the MFA program at Columbia. I had a car, a scholarship, and New York City. Could there be anything better?
Now I was in Langston Hughes territory. I lived in a wonderful apartment building at 84th and Amsterdam. I had exciting neighbors in film, dance, Broadway, and jazz. I was also a bit of a rebel so I knew the young people who were changing the world. I donât care what anyone says: We were the Great Generation. But I lent my car to a friend who took a job in another city and it was towed. I purchased another. But I gave that to my nephew who had other issues and it was totaled. So I purchased a Peugeot diesel which I gave to my sister when she got her 3rd divorce but that would be a few years off.
It was my thought that the MFA program was there to help me/let me/encourage me to write a book. I did. By the end of my first year. I was ready to receive my degree and go on. Columbia didnât look at it that way so I, degreeless, just went on. We in the Black Arts movement, which wasnât really a movement but a group of people who had similar objectives, took a page from the Beats who had taken lessons from Langston Hughes. Read your work to the People. I wasnât afraid of a job but my thought was if I could pay the rent, have some food on the table, gas was twenty-five cents a gallon, and something left over for those things that make life fun like Barbados and clothes, then I would be O.K. After my son was born I understood I need a bit more structure than that but still a job seemed so foreign. Get a lecture bureau, I said to myself. So I began to read poetry and lecture.
I had driven to Buffalo because driving is relaxing. No one can get to you. You can think or daydream or sing old songs to yourself that nobody else knows or cares about. I know it wasnât winter because only an idiot would drive to Buffalo in winter but it wasnât summer either. It seems it was after Christmas so Iâm thinking spring. But
Is Seductive who ever fell in love
Over a glass of white wine
Iâuncharacteristically on timeâ
Would like you to greet me
In a butcherâs apron
I would like to watch you greet me only
In an apron
You would ask me to undress
To undress for you
Before I sit down at the beautiful table
Before you hand me my glass
You would ask me to undress
I would like to watch you watch me
Undressing for you
I would like to watch the movement inside the apron
As I undress for you
I would like to watch you walk
No
Stroll to your closet
Where you bring out your old buffalo plaid dressing gown
Your pilly much-washed dressing gown that smells like you
After you brush your teeth
After you shower After you comb your hair
I would like to embrace your odor
Your odor Your essence as we sit down to eat
I would like for you to cook for me
I would like that
Very much
ONE THING
There is only one
Thing better
Than waking up to Ben Webster
blowing
Monday Morning Blues
In my ear
There is only one
Thing better
Than waking up to coffee
Perking
Bread
Rising
Bacon
Frying
There is only one
Thing better
Than a blue sky
Birds chirping
The garbage being picked up
On time
Yeah
Only one
Thing better
AND EVERYONE WILL ANSWER
I had driven to Buffalo. As a Midwesterner with southern roots driving a car has always been fun and comforting. I had had a 1960 Volkswagen that I had purchased for about six hundred dollars. I was in grad school at the University of Pennsylvania. I was studying Social Work in the hopes of emulating my mother and one of her best friends and an incredible âauntâ to me, Theresa Elliot. All the Social Workers I knew were cool and I had been awarded a scholarship. Unfortunately I was never meant to work in any real sort of system. After a year it was decided by all, respectfully and, I might add, lovingly, that Social Work school was not for me. Through the good offices of a great Social Worker, Louise Shoemaker, I was accepted into the MFA program at Columbia. I had a car, a scholarship, and New York City. Could there be anything better?
Now I was in Langston Hughes territory. I lived in a wonderful apartment building at 84th and Amsterdam. I had exciting neighbors in film, dance, Broadway, and jazz. I was also a bit of a rebel so I knew the young people who were changing the world. I donât care what anyone says: We were the Great Generation. But I lent my car to a friend who took a job in another city and it was towed. I purchased another. But I gave that to my nephew who had other issues and it was totaled. So I purchased a Peugeot diesel which I gave to my sister when she got her 3rd divorce but that would be a few years off.
It was my thought that the MFA program was there to help me/let me/encourage me to write a book. I did. By the end of my first year. I was ready to receive my degree and go on. Columbia didnât look at it that way so I, degreeless, just went on. We in the Black Arts movement, which wasnât really a movement but a group of people who had similar objectives, took a page from the Beats who had taken lessons from Langston Hughes. Read your work to the People. I wasnât afraid of a job but my thought was if I could pay the rent, have some food on the table, gas was twenty-five cents a gallon, and something left over for those things that make life fun like Barbados and clothes, then I would be O.K. After my son was born I understood I need a bit more structure than that but still a job seemed so foreign. Get a lecture bureau, I said to myself. So I began to read poetry and lecture.
I had driven to Buffalo because driving is relaxing. No one can get to you. You can think or daydream or sing old songs to yourself that nobody else knows or cares about. I know it wasnât winter because only an idiot would drive to Buffalo in winter but it wasnât summer either. It seems it was after Christmas so Iâm thinking spring. But
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