May 2013
20 posts
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Reading All the Ads in the Back of Magazines -...
You fold two loads of laundry. Your hands, once split by heat, are now calloused, invincible.
You sit at your kitchen table, masturbate next to a half-eaten bowl of cereal- swollen clouds floating in pink sugar milk.
You stand in your living room turn off the television, glare at the reflection of your thickened hips, wipe your hand across the screen tearing through static.
A garbage truck...
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The Hour and What is Dead by Li-Young Lee
Tonight my brother, in heavy boots, is walking through bare rooms over my head, opening and closing doors. What could he be looking for in an empty house? What could he possibly need there in heaven? Does he remember his earth, his birthplace set to torches? His love for me feels like spilled water running back to its vessel.
At this hour, what is dead is restless and what is living is burning.
...
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“The stars dwindle
they will not reward me
even in triumph.
It is possible...”
– Audre Lorde’s “Separation.” 1972. (via bytheseawithoutme)
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“What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why, I have forgotten, and what arms have lain Under my head till morning; but the rain Is full of ghosts tonight, that tap and sigh Upon the glass and listen for reply, And in my heart there stirs a quiet pain For unremembered lads that not again Will turn to me at midnight with a cry. Thus in winter stands the lonely tree, Nor knows what...
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“…
and if i ever touched a life i hope that life knows
that i know that...”
– Nikki Giovanni, When I Die (via loveouthome)
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Stillbirth by Laure-Anne Bosselaar
On a platform, I heard someone call out your name: No, Laetitia, no. It wasn’t my train—the doors were closing, but I rushed in, searching for your face. But no Laetitia. No. No one in that car could have been you, but I rushed in, searching for your face: no longer an infant. A woman now, blond, thirty-two.
No one in that car could have been you. Laetitia-Marie was the name I had chosen....
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“To be nobody but yourself, in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to...”
– E. E. Cummings
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The Hummingbird: A Seduction
by Pattiann Rogers from The Firekeeper
If I were a female hummingbird perched still And quiet on an upper myrtle branch In the spring afternoon and if you were a male Alone in the whole heavens before me, having parted Yourself, for me, from cedar top and honeysuckle stem And earth down, your body hovering in midair Far away from jewelweed, thistle, and bee balm; And if I watched how you fell,...
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Love after Love by Derek Walcott
The time will come when, with elation you will greet yourself arriving at your own door, in your own mirror and each will smile at the other’s welcome, and say, sit here. Eat. You will love again the stranger who was your self. Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart to itself, to the stranger who has loved you all your life, whom you ignored for another, who knows you by...
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For my mother, with ellipses by Sam Cha
—My mother has a brain tumor. She is far away. Thirty years ago she held me over her head and smiled. Sometimes I hold my daughters over my head.
—My mother has a brain tumor. I think of her when I hold my daughters. When I was three, I didn’t know who she was. When I was eight, I couldn’t sleep without telling her good night. When I was ten, I lied to her. She slapped my glasses off....
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"A Servant. A Hanging. A Paper House." by Lucy... →
Interactive Poemsperience, anyone?
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“The mistakes I tend to make in my first draft are too many adjectives. When I...”
– Sharon Olds
April 2013
21 posts
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English Con Salsa by Gina Valdés
Welcome to ESL 100, English Surely Latinized, ingles con chile y cilantro, English as American as Benito Juarez. Welcome, muchachos from Xochicalco, learn the language of dolares and dolores, of kings and queens, of Donald Duck and Batman. Holy toluca! in four months you’ll be speaking like George Washington in four weeks you can ask, More coffee? In two months you can say, May I take your...
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I Go Back to May 1937 by Sharon Olds
I see them standing at the formal gates of their colleges,
I see my father strolling out
under the ochre sandstone arch, the
red tiles glinting like bent
plates of blood behind his head, I
see my mother with a few light books at her hip
standing at the pillar made of tiny bricks,
the wrought-iron gate still open behind her, its
sword-tips aglow in the May air,
they are about to graduate, they...
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First Poem for You by Kim Addonizio
I like to touch your tattoos in complete
darkness, when I can’t see them. I’m sure of
where they are, know by heart the neat
lines of lightning pulsing just above
your nipple, can find, as if by instinct, the blue
swirls of water on your shoulder where a serpent
twists, facing a dragon. When I pull you
to me, taking you until we’re spent
and quiet on the sheets, I love to kiss
the pictures in...
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“Folks, I’m telling you,
birthing is hard
and dying is mean—
so get yourself...”
– Langston Hughes, “Advice”
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“I opened “You slut” and found church pews
I opened church pews and found...”
– -Let’s Start With The Insult, Clementine von Radics (via clementinevonradics)
HI. I love this. Time to play.
(via misiantaylor) So rad to see what comes of my writing exercises! This one comes from here: http://rachelmckibbens.blogspot.com/2013/04/writing-exercise-96.html
(via rachelmckibbens)
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The Nude that Stays Nude
BY WILLIAM LOGAN
Don’t do what all the other little buggers are doing. Don’t try to make the poem look pretty. You’re not decorating
cupcakes, Cupcake. Don’t think you’re the only bastard who ever suffered — just write as if you were. Don’t eat someone else’s lunch. For eat read steal. For lunch read wife. For wife readstyle. Don’t be any form’s bitch. Don’t think...
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: The Butternut Tree at Fort JuniperI called the... →
The Butternut Tree at Fort Juniper
I called the tree a butternut (which I don’t think it is) so I could talk about how different the trees are around me here in the rain. It reminds me how mutable language is. Keats would leave blank spaces in his drafts to hold on to his passion, spaces for the right words to come. We use them sideways. The way we automatically add bits of shape to hold on to...
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growing-orbits:
Turner, Late Painting
This almost empty canvas is sister to an empty page just as a poem enters: white with all its possibilities emerging from the brush— smoke or cloud or beach foam— and there in the corner a patch of burnt orange where the sun will eventually come up.
— Linda Pastan, in Traveling Light
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Ode To The Maggot By Yusef Komunyakaa
Brother of the blowfly And godhead, you work magic Over battlefields, In slabs of bad pork And flophouses. Yes, you Go to the root of all things. You are sound & mathematical. Jesus, Christ, you’re merciless With the truth. Ontological & lustrous, You cast spells on beggars & kings Behind the stone door of Caesar’s tomb Or split trench in a field of ragweed. No...
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March 2013
63 posts
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