Warren Wilson alumni and faculty member A. Van Jordan’s new poem “Do the Right Thing” is online at Poetry Daily:

Do the Right Thing

    (Spike Lee, 1989)

The days were a skillet on a red-hot eye of a stove.
The men on the corner, the couple in their apartment,
the kids playing under a fire hydrant’s relief
were all sitting, loving, or playing in a skillet.

Heat rose off the assonance of summer language.
Some called it music; others called it fire.
The days were a skillet but the nights were a match
lighting the gas. No moon appeared, only steam

rising off the sidewalks from the day. Feet
danced on the skillet, and smoke alarms sounded...[Keep Reading]…

Jordan’s newest collection Quantum Lyrics (2009, W.W. Norton) explores cultural identity by moving among historical, fictional, and autobiographical figures.  “Do the Right Thing” originally appeared in the Winter 2012 issue of Michigan Quarterly.

You can also hear Jordan reading “The Structure of Scientific Revolutions,” from the same collection, at Poetry Out Loud.