In college, I was assigned to take a poem I liked and write something based on it. So I chose Erica Jong's 'In the Black Forest', and instead of writing about someone living in a black forest living off "cups of borrowed time," I imagined a woman living in ghetto ass Stevens Square (near my apartment - I lived off campus in Minneapolis during my entire college career) who doesn't need to have a stereo or CDs, because she just leans into the walls and listens to her neighbors' music. Well, hellooooo Mr. Fancy Pants! BONUS: Vanessa Daou turned the original poem into a pretty cool song in the late 90's. Earthquake at Stevens Square after Erica Jong Living all alone in a studio apartment Stevens Square, streetlights stand outside broken, rows upon rows of darkness, clouds of bugs dance beneath them anyway. She opens the fridge and lets the light spill out, with white wisps that disappear into the summer air. Without a stereo to call her own, she leans close to the wall, so close she could be a book case, her story stitched gold down her spine. Her neighbors have stereos loud enough to shake stories down from the trees, her lips move with every tremor fingernails sharp and silver clack against powder blue wall, imagines herself to be a mouse in her neighbor's apartment, staring at rows upon rows of compact discs and equalizer lights, hopping up and down, green and red. Knees cross, bare legs rub like a crickets, she needs no one to run her own fingers through her black, black, black hair. She bumps the fridge door, the light dies by degrees until it slams shut, leaving her alone, a cricket on a wall, singing her song in the dark. 1996

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