Elizabeth Alexander, “The Texas Prophet”

I am the Texas Prophet who is now in Baltimore.
God blesses those that see me and I’m coming to your town.
I guarantee you without fail a straight and one-way blessing.
I come to bring you luck and by your popular demand.

I’m bringing Mojo hands for those of you can’t win for losing.
All manner of disease is healed. Cash money falls like rain.
If I were you I would come early. He can’t stay all night.
Those who know me know I am no money-hungry Prophet.

I am the Texas Prophet who is now in Baltimore.
I’m bringing good luck talismans and guarantee my work.
Keep looking up keep looking up His help is on the way.
Yours in spirit and in love The Prophet John C. Bates.

Crave Radiance collects twenty years’ worth of poems from Elizabeth Alexander, including “Praise Song for the Day,” which she read at the inauguration of President Barack Obama. Up until then, she was perhaps best known as the author of “The Venus Hottentot,” about which Ta-Nehisi Coates has written, “I’m embarrassed to say that I hated this poem when I first read it. But I was young and foolish. I knew better after I read it ten more times… This is, to my mind, one of the best meditation I’ve ever read on black women and the loss–and I guess reclamation–of control of their physical selves.”

The Academy of American Poets presents some other poems included in this collection: “Blues,” “Haircut,” and “Ladders.” Alexander’s own website also features poems from throughout her career.

1 October 2010 | poetry |