Sugar Hill Song
If you walk through
Harlem
real late at night
go over to 147th and
Convent
look in the ground floor window
of the third brownstone
from the corner
I swear you can hear
the ghost of Ms. Eula Mae
singing her favorite Lady Day
song
“The
Man I Love”
Papa say she love
Mr. Johnny Lee
so much she been singing to him
ever since he died of a
heart attack
over at that numbers joint on
Amsterdam ten years ago
Eula Mae been dead two years now
everybody say she
must not be able to find
Mr. Johnny cause she
keep singing
“I’m
dreaming of the man I love”
She sound so beautiful
sometimes I don’t
even
get scared anymore
when we pass her stoop.
Juliet
P. Howard, a native New Yorker, is a poet,
lawyer and Cave Canem fellow. Her poems have
been published in Queer Convention: A Chapbook
of Fierce, Cave Canem XI 2007 Anthology,
Promethean Literary Journal, The Portable Lower
East Side (Queer City) and Poetry in
Performance. She was awarded an MFA in Creative
Writing from the City College of the City
University of New York in 2009 and holds a BA in
English from Barnard College, as well as a JD
from Brooklyn Law School. She currently resides
in Brooklyn, New York with her family.