Posts tagged ginna
Posts tagged ginna
1 note &
It is funny to watch a poet at a funeral.
Not funny exactly,
but interesting –
like watching geriatric lesbians purchase anal beads.
A poet will cry at all the wrong times,
before the service even begins –
like when some child-sized relative of the deceased
starts to whine to their mother,
the poet cries because one time, the deceased was a child.
And look,
there’s his mother sitting quietly in the front row,
impeccably dressed except for her hair,
which feels like the only honest part about her.
She divorced her first husband
and the Catholic Church with the same signature,
but even after 15 years
there is nothing like a dead child
to give us the need to believe in something bigger than us.
See, a poet
winces at the eulogy
because of the bad grammar,
and quietly judges
the relatives in track suits, tank tops & blue jeans
for their disrespect for the dead,
while refusing tissues for her tears
worried about her carbon footprint.
See,
a poet builds distance from grief
so she can write
like she was in the centre of it.
A poet is
funny
that way
See more of Lisa Slater’s work by searching her name on Youtube.
5 notes &
Broken Ghazal
in the voice of my brother Jacob
By Aaron Samuels
Irrefutable fact / my brother is black jewish
Kink hair & a wide nose / that’s gotta be black, jewish
He said look in the mirror / naked / if it ain’t black—jewish
If we don’t do it to ourselves / first / then they do it to us
Said he loves countin’ stacks / is that black? / jewish?
Said we loves eating chicken cause we black-jewish!
Said, you gotta keep it real / listen to black music
If you wanna keep your teeth / you ain’t allowed to act jewish
And that’s jewish / Night of the broken glass jewish
They’ll beat your face in with a bat / until its black. jewish
They raped your great grandma, and that’s a fact, jewish
Say a prayer for the secrets your family keeps, Kaddish
See Aaron, you run / but I learned to attack: jewish
In order to survive, you gotta be black, stupid
Let ‘em tattoo my arm, that’s how I act Jewish
That’s how I be black / but that’s not what you did
Got yourself a “good job,” where nobody’s black / jewish
Cut the slang off your tongue / it’s too black; jewish
And, you never came home / Aaron / where it’s black-jewish
And not coming home / is black
jewish
13 notes &
When I was just a little girl, I asked my mother, “What will I be? Will I be pretty? Will I be pretty? Will I be pretty? What comes next? Oh right, will I be rich?” Which is almost pretty depending on where you shop. And the pretty question infects from conception, passing blood and breath into cells. The word hangs from our mothers’ hearts in a shrill fluorescent floodlight of worry.
“Will I be wanted? Worthy? Pretty?”
But puberty left me this funhouse mirror dryad: teeth set at science fiction angles, crooked nose, face donkey-long and pock-marked where the hormones went finger-painting. My poor mother.
“How could this happen? You’ll have porcelain skin as soon as we can see a dermatologist. You sucked your thumb. That’s why your teeth look like that! You were hit in the face with a Frisbee when you were 6. Otherwise your nose would have been just fine! Don’t worry. We’ll get it all fixed!” She would say, grasping my face, twisting it this way and that, as if it were a cabbage she might buy.
But this is not about her. Not her fault. She, too, was raised to believe the greatest asset she could bestow upon her awkward little girl was a marketable facade. By 16, I was pickled with ointments, medications, peroxides. Teeth corralled into steel prongs. Laying in a hospital bed, face packed with gauze, cushioning the brand new nose the surgeon had carved.
Belly gorged on 2 pints of my own blood I had swallowed under anesthesia, and every convulsive twist of my gut like my body screaming at me from the inside out, “What did you let them do to you!”
All the while this never-ending chorus droning on and on, like the IV needle dripping liquid beauty into my blood. “Will I be pretty? Will I be pretty? Like my mother, unwinding the gift wrap to reveal the bouquet of daughter her $10,000 bought her? Pretty? Pretty.”
And now, I have not seen my own face in 10 years. I have not seen my own face in 10 years, but this is not about me.
This is about the self-mutilating circus we have painted ourselves clowns in. About women who will prowl 30 stores in 6 malls to find the right cocktail dress, but who haven’t a clue where to find fulfillment or how to wear joy, wandering through life shackled to a shopping bag, beneath the tyranny of those 2 pretty syllables.
About men wallowing on bar stools, drearily practicing attraction, and everyone who will drift home tonight, crest-fallen because not enough strangers found you suitably fuckable.
This, this is about my own some-day daughter. When you approach me, already stung-stayed with insecurity, begging, “Mom, will I be pretty? Will I be pretty?” I will wipe that question from your mouth like cheap lipstick and answer, “No! The word ‘pretty’ is unworthy of everything you will be, and no child of mine will be contained in five letters.
“You will be pretty intelligent, pretty creative, pretty amazing. But you will never be merely ‘pretty.’”
(Source: the-memoirsofa-madman)
1 note &
Marc says the suffering that we don’t see
still makes a sort of sound — a subtle, soft
noise, nothing like the cries or screams that we
might think of — more the slight scrape of a hat doffed
by a quiet man, ignored as he stands back
to let a lovely woman pass, her dress
just brushing his coat. Or else it’s like a crack
in an old foundation, slowly widening, the stress
and slippage going on unnoticed by
the family upstairs, the daughter leaving
for a date, her mother’s resigned sigh
when she sees her. It’s like the heaving
of a stone into a lake, before it drops.
It’s shy, it’s barely there. It never stops.
21 notes &
“In Guns We Trust” by Houston Hughes
1
I got my first god from my father
Before I even understood what one was.
And even though it seemed centuries old
And was more than a bit worn,
I believed in that god, because I got it from him.
He taught me to respect it,
So I kept it locked up
In a rosewood case
Next to the kitchen table,
And that’s where it stayed until Sunday
When we’d all pile into the dilapidated old station wagon,
And go down to town for the God show.
It wasn’t till I got older that I realized
It wasn’t so much about the gods as it was the community,
A whole group of people gathered together to celebrat
The one thing that that keeps them feeling safe
2.
I keep my god in a steel box underneath my bed,
Between the photograph of my mother
And love letters from an ex girlfriend
Scribbled in eyebrow pen.
I don’t pull them out much anymore
Except when I’m alone
And the whole world seems to be slowly closing in,
I’ll squeeze it between my palms
Till my fingertips tremble,
Or push it against my temple
Whisper my fears to it
And listen to the cold silence
As it echoes in the shells
3.
There’s a man down on the street corner
With a sandwich board
Who’ll sell you the type of god that’s illegal now,
The kind that’s ready to kill a man at the drop of a hat,
The kind you pull out when your woman cheats on you
Or your sun turns out to be gay,
The kind with hammer-cock like held prayer breath,
With barrel like a pulpit,
The kind of semiautomatic brimstone spitter
They don’t allow in pleasant company anymore
4.
Of course the founding fathers intended for us all to have gods!
Look, if someone comes along with a god and threatens you,
You don’t want to be the only one without a god, do you?
And nobody wants us to be like England
Where not even the police carry one!
Really, what’s gonna keep people from raping and stealing
If they don’t think a god will?
That’d be like trying to take
“in guns we trust” off our money!
This country was given to us by our gun almighty
So that we could have the freedom to carry our gods
Where ever we gun-damn please.
And a good conservatives knows
that any form of god control
is un-American;
5.
You haven’t forgotten what happened,
Have you?
All it took was a few men with an unwavering faith in their guns
To take down those two towers.
And they didn’t even have gods.
If everyone on that plane’d had had a god
You know that never would have happened…
It almost makes you doubt the power of your own gun.
6.
The Safety Manual:
Kids,
Never point a god at someone, even to joke around.
If you see a god in the area, please leave immediately.
If your friend wants to show you a god, just say no!
By telling a parent, teacher, or guidance counselor when you see a god,
You could be a hero and save lives!
Parents, Keep your gods away from children!
Children don’t realize
That gods are tools,
And might instead treat them like toys,
To threaten people around them.
Remember:
Gods don’t kill people,
People with gods kill people.
4 notes &
Six hours like this for a few francs.
Belly nipple arse in the window light,
he drains the color from me. Further to the right,
Madame. And do try to be still.
I shall be represented analytically and hung
in great museums. The bourgeoisie will coo
at such an image of a river-whore. They call it Art.Maybe. He is concerned with volume, space.
I with the next meal. You’re getting thin,
Madame, this is not good. My breasts hang
slightly low, the studio is cold. In the tea-leaves
I can see the Queen of England gazing
on my shape. Magnificent, she murmurs,
moving on. It makes me laugh. His nameis Georges. They tell me he’s a genius.
There are times he does not concentrate
and stiffens for my warmth.
He possesses me on canvas as he dips the brush
repeatedly into the paint. Little man,
you’ve not the money for the arts I sell.
Both poor, we make our living how we can.
I ask him Why do you do this? Because
I have to. There’s no choice. Don’t talk.
My smile confuses him. These artists
take themselves too seriously. At night I fill myself
with wine and dance around the bars. When it’s finished
he shows me proudly, lights a cigarette. I say
Twelve francs and get my shawl. It does not look like me.
1 note &
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.
Someone tell him he should sleep now.
My father keeps a light on by our bed
and readies for our journey.
He mends ten holes in the knees
of five pairs of boy’s pants.
His love for me is like sewing:
various colors and too much thread,
the stitching uneven. But the needle pierces
clean through with each stroke of his hand.
At this hour, what is dead is worried
and what is living is fugitive.
Someone tell him he should sleep now.
God, that old furnace, keeps talking
with his mouth of teeth,
a beard stained at feasts, and his breath
of gasoline, airplane, human ash.
His love for me feels like fire,
feels like doves, feels like river-water.
At this hour, what is dead is helpless, kind
and helpless. While the Lord lives.
Someone tell the Lord to leave me alone.
I’ve had enough of his love
that feels like burning and flight and running away.
3 notes &
4 notes &
The stars dwindle
they will not reward me
even in triumph.It is possible
to shoot a man
in self defense
and still notice
how his red blood
decorates the snow.
2 notes &
Gray is one of my favorite poets, and when I contributed to helping his team get to the National Poetry Slam, I got a poem just for me. I think I’m aware of two other poems written for me in my life, which as a poet who writes poems steady for others (sometimes whole books about one poor sucker), this is an extra nice treat. Doesn’t hurt that it’s also really well written. Follow the link at the end to support the Wasatch Wordsmiths and get a poem of your own written just for you!
2 notes &
“It was the winter…”
by Hieu Nguyen
One of the submissions in the 2013 contest to get published by Write Bloody. Go to youtube and search 2013 Write Bloody to see more, vote by clicking “like” under videos you like.
3 notes &
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.
No longer an infant. A woman now, blond, thirty-two:
I sometimes go months without remembering you.
Laetitia-Marie was the name I had chosen:
I was told not to look. Not to get attached—
I sometimes go months without remembering you.
Some griefs bless us that way, not asking much space.
I was told not to look. Not to get attached.
It wasn’t my train—the doors were closing.
Some griefs bless us that way, not asking much space.
On a platform, I heard someone calling your name.
3 notes &
“The Balance”
by Megan Falley
This is one of the videos submitted by poets competing to get published by Write Bloody. You can vote by going to youtube and searching for 2013 Write Bloody, then clicking “like” on the videos you think deserve to win.
0 notes &
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, plummeting before me,
And how you rose again and fell, with such mastery
That I believed for a moment you were the sky
And the red-marked bird diving inside your circumference
Was just the physical revelation of the light’s
Most perfect desire;
And if I saw your sweeping and sucking
Performance of swirling egg and semen in the air,
The weaving, twisting vision of red petal
And nectar and soaring rump, the rush of your wing
In its grand confusion of arcing and splitting
Created completely out of nothing just for me,
Then when you came down to me, I would call you
My own spinning bloom of ruby sage, my funnelling
Storm of sunlit sperm and pollen, my only breathless
Piece of scarlet sky, and I would bless the base
Of each of your feathers and touch the tine
Of string muscles binding your wings and taste
The odor of your glistening oils and hunt
The honey in your crimson flare
And I would take you and take you and take you
Deep into any kind of nest you ever wanted.
0 notes &
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 heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,
the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.
