Nikki Giovanni calls the Poetry Crisis Line

Read “The Laws of Motion” by Nikki Giovanni here.

Transcript:

Jerry (counselor): Poetry Crisis Line, what is your emergency?
Nikki Giovanni: The laws of science teach us a pound of gold weighs as much as a pound of flour
Jerry: Like When Galileo dropped them off the Leaning Tower?
Nikki: …though if dropped from any undefined height in their natural state one would reach bottom and one would fly away.
Jerry: Is that how that experiment went?
Nikki: Laws of motion tell us an inert object is more difficult to propel than an object heading the wrong direction is to turn around.
Jerry: Like a car or like a tennis ball? And you do think we can still turn it around?

Nikki Giovanni calls the Poetry Crisis Line

COUNSELOR:  Poetry Crisis Line, what is your emergency?

CALLER: While it is true

COUNSELOR: What is?

CALLER: (though only in a factual sense)

COUNSELOR: Facts are a good place to start. What are we discussing?

CALLER: That in the wake of a / Her-I-can

COUNSELOR: Is that where a Yes-we-can meets an I’m-with-her?

CALLER: comes a / Shower

COUNSELOR: Wishful thinking, I guess. Are you talking about a rain shower? Or a shower in your bathroom?

CALLER: Surely I am not

COUNSELOR: A baby shower?

CALLER: The gravitating force

COUNSELOR: Uh… a meteor shower?

CALLER: that keeps this house

COUNSELOR: Wait–your house was hit by a meteor?

CALLER: full of panthers

COUNSELOR: Uh… That’s a first. Did they call ahead?

CALLER: Why,

COUNSELOR: If they do, don’t anther.

CALLER: LBJ has made it

COUNSELOR: Do you mean the dead president? Or the LBJ Space Center?

CALLER: quite clear to me

COUNSELOR: If you say so. Do you think NASA makes a practice of packing wild animals into space rocks?

CALLER: He doesn’t give a / Good goddamn what I think

COUNSELOR: I do. Care what you think, I mean. I don’t stuff big cats into meteors.

CALLER: (else why would he continue to masterbate in public?)

COUNSELOR:  I don’t know. Poor impulse control?

 

Read the original here