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By D. A. Powell

I play the egg
and I play the triangle
I play the reed
and I play each angle
I play the lyre
and I play the lute
I play the snare
and I play the flute
I play the licorice stick
and I play the juke
I play the kettle
and I play the uke
who ever thought of the triangle
who ever thought of the clarinet
the castanets the cornet the
discotheque the harmonium
the euphonium marimbas and
maracas harmonicas
tom-toms and tatas
I play the fiddle
and I play the jug
I play the washboard
and the washtub
I play kalimba
and I play the koto
I play the organ
and I play the banjo
I play the fool I play it cool
I play hot and I play pranks
I played your mixtape
forgot to say thanks


Source: Poetry (May 2018)

  • Arts & Sciences

Poet Bio

D. A. Powell
Born in Albany, Georgia, D. A. Powell earned an MA at Sonoma State University and an MFA at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. Powell is known for his syntactically inventive, longer eight- or ten-beat lines in poems that are often untitled. As a teacher at Sonoma State, he noticed that most of his students’ poems were written to fit the demands of the page. His experiments with his students in writing on unexpected surfaces (such as candlesticks or rolls of toilet paper) led to his own breakthrough in “subverting the page”: he turned a legal pad sideways and wrote the first poem for Tea. Powell explains that “by pulling the line longer, stretching it into a longer breath, I was giving a little bit more life to some people who had very short lives.” Powell has also taught at Harvard University, Columbia University, and the University of San Francisco.  See More By This Poet

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