Your Poem Capsule #1

Nikki Giovanni: The Women Gather

The staff at the Mall of Love just installed a toy vending machine that dispenses poetry.

After you insert a coin and turn the dial, this machine makes a sound like “gacha gacha” and delivers you a capsule with a poem inside.

You open your capsule and a poem comes out. Sometimes the poem is rolled up like a scroll, sometimes accordion folded, sometimes crumbled up. We don’t know who stocks such delights. Sitting down at the fountain of the Mall of Love, you sit and read

The Women Gather // Nikki Giovanni

The women gather because it is not unusual to seek comfort in our hours of stress.

A man must be buried.

It is not unusual that the old bury the young though it is an abomination.

It is not strange that the unwise and the ungentle carry the banner of humaneness though it is a castration of the spirit.

It no longer shatters the intellect that those who make war call themselves diplomats.

We are no longer surprised that the unfaithful pray loudest every Sunday in church and sometimes in rooms facing east though it is a sin and a shame.

So how do we judge a man.

Most of us love from our need to love not because we find someone deserving.


Most of us forgive because we have trespassed not because we are magnanimous.


Most of us comfort because we need comforting, our ancient rituals demand that we give what we hope to receive.


And how do we judge a man.


We learn to greet when meeting, to cry when parting and to soften our words at times of stress.


The women gather with cloth and ointment, their busy hands bowing to laws that decree willows shall stand swaying but unbroken against even the determined wind of death.


We judge a man by his dreams, not alone his deeds.


We judge a man by his intent, not alone his shortcomings.
We judge a man because it is not unusual to know him through those who love him.


The women gather strangers to each other because they have loved a man.


It is not unusual to sift through ashes and find an unburnt picture…

Sitting with this magic you tuck your poem away - the way only you know how. Tucked in a book, crumbled in your pocket, rolled up neatly and tucked back in its capsule. Receiver’s choice.

Imagine your delight to find you can listen to Nikki Giovanni herself recite this poem, alongside music that sounds like a dark night illuminated by a wash of glittering starlight. That’s right.

At the record store the staff encourage you to listen to the album. You set the record on a turntable (carefully!) and put on the headset.

As you listen you read a gorgeous summary of the album:

It is our job as the listener to be open to all possibilities of truth and change. On this album we bear witness to the power of poetry and we witness a poem in master form free and without fear but full of love. This album is a testament to what poetry can do and how it can transform and unite. Nikki Giovanni is a poet for us, a true champion for the people. – Camae Ayewa aka Moor Mother (Irreversible Entanglements)

You like this job as a listener, so you listen.

Rest in power Nikki.