Elizabeth Alexander's Inaugural Poem

Praise song for the day.

Each day we go about our business, walking past each other, catching each others' eyes or not, about to speak or speaking. All my words speak in vulgar poems. My poems are dirty, naughty, so naughty, and yet I am summoned. What were they thinking? All about us is noise and bramble, thorn and din, and I make up poems that mean nothing, as if they were ebbing, then flowing from my buttocks.

Someone is trying to make music somewhere with a pair of wooden spoons, but surely you all have stopped listening by now. Boom box, harmonica, voice, it doesn't really matter what I say.

A woman and her son wait for the bus. The bus is dirty. Dirty, so very dirty.

I just started my period. No really, just now, as I was reading my poem.

A farmer considers the dirty sky; A teacher says, "Take out your pencils. Begin."

We cross dirty roads and dirty highways that mark the will of someone dirty, and then others who said, "I need to see what's dirty on the other side; I know there's something dirty down the road."

We need to find a dirty place where we are safe; I need to find someone with Midol.

Say it plain, that many have died for this day. Sing the names of the dead who brought us here, who laid on the train tracks, jumped from the bridges, picked the nose and the lettuce, built brick by brick the glittering bricks, they would then keep laying bricks and work inside of bricks. I can't believe I make money writing this.

Vagina.

Praise song for the bricks; praise song for the day. Praise song for every hand-lettered sign. But now my intense cramping has begun.

What if the mightiest word is love, love beyond marital, filial, national flowing. My flowing is really going, but now I have rhymed, and have threatened my artistic credibility.

Love with no need to preempt grievance.

I have no idea what that means.

In today's sharp sparkle, this winter air, I need to find a restroom -- praise song for the light in that restroom.

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