Today’s poem is Fourth Wall Arpeggio by A. Van Jordan.The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Sometimes, a speaker in a poem will acknowledge its own artificiality by addressing the reader directly or by making a self-referential remark, all to say, Hey, reader; I know you’re there, listening in. Breaking the fourth wall in poetry removes pretense and lays bare a vulnerability that creates an intimacy and collapses distance.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp