Gwendolyn Brooks Park, Topeka by Ed Skoog

View this email on a browser Forward to a friend July 27, 2015   Gwendolyn Brooks Park, Topeka   Ed Skoog

They carved the letters yellow, and painted the wood around the letters green, chained a picnic table to the grass out near where the roof of the dead mall directs a crack of sunset to radiate the Burger King sign gold. Last place open after midnight: then apartment windows hold stars and satellites in the cold. A creek runs like a paper fold from one corner of park to other, twenty or thirty blocks from where she took her first breaths of infancy in the only city I know of with the letters for poet that does not also carry a port or a point in its name.            Copyright © 2015 by Ed Skoog. Used with permission of the author. About This Poem   “Gwendolyn Brooks, whose work equals or surpasses that of Whitman and Dickinson in significance, for the record, was born in Topeka in 1917, although she moved to Chicago before she was six months old. Topeka is my hometown, and that of many other poets whose names you’d know; there is no explaining it. The modest city park named for her is at Topeka Boulevard and 37th Street, to your right if you’re heading south out of town.” —Ed Skoog   Ed Skoog is the author of Rough Day (Copper Canyon Press, 2013). He lives in Seattle.   Photo Credit: Jill Marquis Poetry by Skoog   Rough Day (Copper Canyon Press, 2013) "The Lovers of the Poor" by Gwendolyn Brooks "Language" by W. S. Merwin "Dawn" by James Laughlin Poem-a-Day   Launched during National Poetry Month in 2006, Poem-a-Day features new and previously unpublished poems by contemporary poets on weekdays and classic poems on weekends. Thanks for being a part of the Academy of American Poets community. To learn about other programs, including National Poetry Month, Poem in Your Pocket Day, the annual Poets Forum, and more, visit Poets.org.   You are receiving this e-mail because you elected to subscribe to our mailing list. If you would like to unsubscribe, please click here.   © Academy of American Poets 75 Maiden Lane, Suite 901, New York, NY 10038