Madam and the Phone Bill
You say I O.K.ed
LONG DISTANCE?
O.K.ed it when?
My goodness, Central
That was then!
I’m mad and disgusted
With that Negro now.
I don’t pay no REVERSED
CHARGES nohow.
You say, I will pay it –
Else you’ll take out my phone?
You better let
My phone alone.
I didn’t ask him
To telephone me.
Roscoe knows darn well
LONG DISTANCE
Ain’t free.
If I ever catch him,
Lawd, have pity!
Calling me up
From Kansas City.
Just to say he loves me!
I knowed that was so.
Why didn’t he tell me some’n
I don’t know?
For instance, what can
Them other girls do
That Alberta K. Johnson
Can’t do – and more, too?
What’s that, Central?
You say you don’t care
Nothing aobut my
Private affair?
Well, even less about your
PHONE BILL, does I care!
Un-humm-m! . . . Yes!
You say I gave my O.K.?
Well, that O.K. you may keep –
But I sure ain’t gonna pay!
*
Hello Friends —
Today’s poem is from Langston Hughes‘s “Madam poems,” a series of dramatic monologues in the voice of Madam Alberta K. Johnson, published in his 1949 collection One-Way Ticket. This poem is also included in The Collected Poems of Langston Hughes (1995).
April is National Poetry Month, and I am celebrating by emailing out my own eclectic selection of one poem per day for the duration of the month. If you wish to be unsubscribed from this Poem-a-Day email list at any time, please reply to this email with a friendly unsubscribe request (preferably in heroic couplet form). You may also request to add a consenting friend to the list, or even nominate a poem.
To learn more about National Poetry Month, or to subscribe to a more official-like Poem-a-Day list, visit www.poets.org.
Enjoy.
Ellen
“Madam and the Phone Bill” by Langston Hughes was featured again for Poem-a-Day April 18, 2009.
Poet Langston Hughes was also featured for Poem-a-Day April 10, 2011.