I Read Langston Hughes

I read Langston Hughes in an inhale

sucking in his words through my nostrils

and breathing him deep into my lungs

until they cling to each air sac like

oxygen moving across paper-thin walls

that can’t hold back his essence.

I read Langston Hughes in my skin,

absorbing images of Harlem dreams 

and Renaissance, dark beauty and

an America mumbling in the dark,

my hairs standing on end with excitement, 

electricity simmering over the expectation

of the negro artist and racial mountain.

I read Langston Hughes in my eyes,

rapidly blinking the dreams deferred

holding fast to my lashes like stars

clinging to a dark sky that holds no judgment

except the vast universe that it holds

in the black palms of its hands, carrying

the words of a generation, of an entire race.

I read Langston Hughes in my fingertips

as they press down on my chewed-up pen 

and scribble poetry written in inkblots, 

the memory of my people seeping 

into each line until, someday, I too, 

can travel through time 

in someone else’s poem.

 

 

Everett Spruill