There is No Fried Chicken in Heaven.

• Author: Thomas, Truth
• Position: Poem - Poem

(after Gerald Stern)

In all these bank glass pawn shops in all this wounded hardware I have never seen a broader bottomed boom box nor heard Kirk Franklin spin the way I did at the annual Martin Luther King, Jr. Community Church picnic, where plates were filled with barbeque and belches as summer steamed with candied sweets and greens nor laughed quite as long as I did then-- so hard I thought my heart might explode from deacons playing the dozens dancing dominoes in 2006--in Washington, DC home of Go Go and mosquitoes with a work ethic as horseshoes fell with thuds like severed tree limbs my mother's arms all hugs, holding me like she would never let me go--and playing tag running like I would die if someone got me-- running...