Playing Amazing Grace for George

Phyllis Capello

George Perry Floyd, Jr.  October 14, 1973-May 25, 2020

Play it.  Not for the perfect—

for would there be any songs at all?

Play it for folks who’re blind,

but may, somehow, come to see.

How sweet the sound, your name

becoming song; two syllables

echoed in the streets of the world!

to save a wretch like me.

On the split screen of my heart:

murderer’s knee/all the realms stolen

from you, George: your place

as father, husband, brother, friend.

For this cruel indignity we’ll manifest

with feet and words/song and laws

that now will be that precious time

when grace appears.


•••
Bordighera Press published writer/musician Phyllis Capello’s collection, Packs Small Plays Big, in 2018. A NYFA fiction fellow, & a winner of an Allen Ginsberg Poetry Award, her work appears in The Dream Book, From the Margin, The Milk of Almonds, The Voices We Carry, Embroidered Stories, & many other anthologies. Her poetry is included in Reading, Writing & Reacting, a college literary textbook. She works as a musician/clown, entertaining children, families, & older adults in hospitals with Healthy Humor. Phyllis teaches poetry to students in schools and libraries all over NYC with Community-Word Project. She loves The Poetry Barn.