I bathed in the Euphrates when dawns were young

Langston Hughes

On the terrazzo floor, I cupid-shuffle with a friend
who, when I was young, fed me mooncakes
while I spent mid-autumn, in-patient psychiatry,
just down Amsterdam Avenue, from where,

now, on your ashes, Langston, we dance.
A decade has passed. Expectations, regrets,
Euphrates, Nile, Congo, Mississippi: river
water under the brass cosmogram.

In Harlem Renaissance drag, grown men.
Old girls with peacock feathers in their curls.
Your presence warms, a ghost-song of kith.
As before, with your Victrola and wandering

cap, at each railway station, with a jazz record
and a ticket to ride, you greeted me with a grin

Contributor’s Notes

Kassy Lee (she/her) is a poet, researcher, and educator. She earned a BA in Comparative Literature from Columbia and an MFA in Creative Writing from the Helen Zell Writers Program at the University of Michigan. She lives in Ypsilanti.