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DPRAM Quartet

"My Mother's Spirit Speaks To Me, Whispering Of Eternity" video

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Jack Groves' video

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DON V, KJ DP, 'Jack Groves' JFA also good.png
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DP with left arm up before full house at close of JFA at NOJM set Sept 3 2025 copy.png

Don Paul and Rivers Answer Moons

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"Get Your JAM On!" audio

'Marsha's' audio

MARSHA’S

Sticky-warm March Friday in New Orleans,
Near suppertime evening, got kids
Wheeling and chasing in their tennies
Along the aslant sidewalk and up grated stairs,
Through the back door, got more--
Friends' and neighbors' and Marsha's girls--
Spread at cards on the kitchen floor.
Jeez, I think, stepping over,
Is this how Black people live?

Scouting out street-lit windows,
By plants hanging and standing
And walls of luteous ("Beauteous!" Marsha says)
Fall foliage, Nikki ('Nicole"), age 11,
Cries: "Momma 's home! Momma's home!"
Danni ("Danielle", she'll tell you),
Hops out like a pixie.
"Momma 's home! Momma 's home!"
Jason, the middle, age 8,
Corrects his sisters: "Naw she ain't."
Then: "Now she is," Jason says.
"Momma 's home! Momma 's home!"
Nikki and Danni rush to clean
The two bedrooms
Where all of the apartment sleep.

Marsha climbs the front stairs.
In her black boots,
Lacy shawl, white blouse and flower-strewn dark
"Hippie skirt", her stature could be a great athlete's.
She sits on the couch, eyes like a
Tired, brooding lioness's
After asking her "darling sugarpuddins"
What they've done. They know not to press.

Saturday, C.C., one brother,
And a friend, in from Biloxi, are sacked out
On chair and couch, kids and me in bedrooms,
When Marsha gets up to wash clothes
Before putting in the morning at Ronnie
The dentist's office, his "handy lady".

Sunday morning, it's S.R.O.--
Children bumping, swatting, spatting round their
"Grand-daddy Joe" Cordier, as
Other "so-called adults" figure out
Who gets whom and what this day.
More than once Marsha says:
"I know everybody else here is crazy."

She holds scenes together.
Their energy centers in her
Who calls friends "Boo",
Who similarly tells her kids of their
"One-and-only beautiful mother
In the whole, wide world."

Apart out of pride,
Like a plant herself,
The strong and tender
And most essential animal. Animal. Mother. Animal. Mother.

                           First version April 1980

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