Fool's Joy

a 30/30 is no joke.

Sydney Vernon, Untitled, 2020

Fool’s Joy | 02/30

the mouth of a fool feeds

on folly - unruly woman

lifting her skirt to the winds

fabrics a flag pelvis their

post flying over his feast

a checkered tablecloth. he

whispers a blessing into

her abdomen on bended

knees he eats. stolen water

is sweet food devoured in

secret is delicious - she is

simple and knows nothing

couldn’t name who she’s

invited to the banquet so

the ghosts gather full off

of fool’s joy

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Today’s poem, “Fool’s Joy,” came from a few places. My dear friend and most trusted reader, Saint, suggested the title. Since it’s the day after April Fool’s… the prompt is “a fool’s joy.” I’m not joking about writing a poem a day. In 2023, I successfully completed a 30/30 challenge for the first time. I credit it all to Saint, my accountability partner, whom I met just days before poetry month at ‘A Love Letter to LA,’ Superposition’s homecoming exhibition. Sentimental now as I come back home to this newsletter. That April, eager to meet Saint’s anticipation, fueled into a fury, I penned 52 poems. That feat was supported by daily check-ins and ideas when I had none of my own. Now I lean on y’all Substakers as this year’s accountability group.

Have you written a poem today? I asked Denim over lunch; we met at last week’s Toni Cade Bambara Scholar-Activism Conference, where her piece for Iran opened the TCB-Doc screening. Despite the timely political topics, she told me she’s a love poet, and that the two are hardly different (June Jordamn!). The perspective is a healthy balance to the shudder-shock-second-hand-embarrassment I get when open mic love poems immediately turn erotic. Denim and I crooned for more expansive definitions of love. I turn to Alysia Nicole Harris, Ph.D. Her belief in sacrificial love (which poem is it?) and especially her words on ‘Joy.’

I haven’t written many love poems, they’re typically heartbreak poems or elegies. They’re not quite love poems, rather lust and longing? Saint’s post-April-Fool’s prompt had me thinking of folly, “foolish ignorance,” a vocabulary word all over the Bible. It falls under moral darkness, wrongheadedness, self destructiveness. My poem focuses on the invitations to wisdom and folly in Proverbs 9:2-18. The parable represents a profound choice between two paths in life, personified by two women planning a house party. A woman known as Wisdom has everything in order, a clean house and curated company. Lady Folly opens her door to sinister strangers with a smile, her friendly ignorance seducing evil spirits.

As I race to clean the house before mom arrives for Easter weekend, I leave you with ‘Folly,’ a Gabby’s World x Mitski track I’ve had stuck in my head since high school.

Black Blessings,

ming