April is always as strange month for me because it is Nation Poetry Month (NaPoMo), Nation Jazz Appreciation Month (JAM), ahem... Fred Joiner Appreciation Month (FAM); with all the reason to celebrate I often find myself not in the mood until after this day passes. This day begins the reflective moment that I usually find myself in when my birthday arrives. I was born three months premature on April 14th 1975. 10 days from now I will turn 33. Although it's hard for me to think about that because of the significance that this day holds in our lives as Americans. April 4, 1968 is a day that changed life in many American cities indefinitely, in the fallout of Dr. King's assassination; including the city I currently live and love in, Washington DC.

I try to imagine the streets of the Washington before the riots, sometimes my mind wanders even further back to when Alain Locke, Sterling Brown, Langston Hughes, Jean Toomer, Georgia Douglas Johnson and so many of the other great writers lived and worked in around Washington. I try to think out what their thoughts would be like on a day like this and what their responses not only as human beings would be but also as artists ...

Last week I was sitting in a poetry workshop while on a residency at St. Mary's College of Maryland, and the professor prompts us to start writing a poem of thanks... sounds easy enough right? Well, lets just say the page is still blank. These types of writing prompts just shut me down because of the expansiveness of such an idea. How do you reduce everything you are thankful for to syllables? What algorithm do you use to query memory to try to recall all the times the fatal news story could have been you or a loved one?

I could go on... but as my family and move through this day (and season) of thanks, mourning (for our Indigenous brothers and sisters), harvest, giving and receiving. I will be collecting words and memories in an effort to create a body of work that always speaks to this spirit of gratitude.

In the poem below Yusef Komunyakaa examines thanks in the language his experiences has given him, check it out....

Yesterday September 23rd marked what would have been the 81st birthday of an artist that has been central in how I have come to see myself as an artist; John William Coltrane or affectionately known to the world simply as, Trane.