by Jeremy Nathan Marks
-for Roberta Flack
Today Roberta Flack reunites with Donny Hathaway at a Carter Barron concert among crowds of Washington’s famed cherry trees peeper frogs visiting dignitaries
Marvin Gaye in attendance an alternate inauguration out of doors among glorious birds
Ben Shahn might paint a syrinx chorus oh how the capital creek flows Amanda Gorman
Richard Blanco Robert Frost Maya Angelou read their work
I grew up here and I’ve strolled the park with the crows and the deer
watching winter turn to spring
from far away its song of the public good is still softly killing me
Roberta Flack is about as well known among the mandarins in the Maison Blanche
as Richard Wright James Baldwin and Ralph Bunche Emmanuel Macron comes to town
and between correcting facts and straightening records he says France isn’t just a remembrance
of past things like the Somme the Ardennes and Maginot it’s also Nina Simone Josephine Baker
I grew up here have often wondered
where is the love?
not among trees and flowers natives and exotics imperial gifts and the green thumbs
of Lady Birds in our quondam swamp of Camelot the Brain Trust on the Potomac
Rather within those amnesiacs who cannot see what it takes to get to be how great we already are
the ranging octaves and ingenious melodies rhapsody of a people who keep offering everything
after every betrayal because getting my own means putting it out but as Ms. Flack asked
Compared to what?
Jeremy Nathan Marks lives in the Great Lakes Region of Canada. His latest book is the short fiction collection, Captain's Kismet (Alien Buddha Press, 2025). You can follow him @Sandcounties on Substack.
