JC Hopkins

JC Hopkins is a poet, painter, playwright and Grammy nominated songwriter and jazz big band leader who lives in a part of Brooklyn known as Windsor Terrace. He curates a monthly poetry reading series for Spoonbill and Sugartown Booksellers called Poetry 99 and is managing editor of the literary pulp fiction journal Noir Nation.

THE BITTER TASTE OF COFFEE

first thing in the morning
is as symbolic
as anything

the unopened poppies
and the overstuffed hamper
are somehow in conjunction

the broken flower vase
that used to be an urn
which is now in a white plastic bag
that contains a chicken carcass
corn husks, the brooklyn rail covered in parakeet shit
and other detritus

listening to strauss
metamorphosen
admiring a latest painting
an abstract made of gold, white and black
that hangs above the poppies
the unopened poppies
everything seems to be
in its proper place