Connie Wanek (June 01, 1952 -) for Louis Jenkins We still walk down the hillsidewhere bedrock surfaceslike the back of a huge gray pikecome to glare at youbefore it breaks your line.A raven alights on top of a white pinethen flings himself off,while a cottontail springs awaythrough the clearing where teenagersleave their empty vodka bottles.Everything …
Alejandra Pizarnik – All Night I Hear The Noise Of Water Sobbing
Alejandra Pizarnik (April 29, 1936 – September 25, 1972) All night I hear the noise of water sobbing. All night I make night in me, I make the day that begins on my account, that sobs because day falls like water through night. All night I hear the voice of someone seeking me out. All …
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Hafizah Geter – Naming Ceremony
Hafizah Geter My father, who spends most of his days paintingpictures, says coming home to my motherstroking out was like walking in on an affair.Bending, he demonstrates howan aneurism hugged my motherto her knees. A man alwaysat his easel, my father tries to draw clarityfrom obfuscation. Every retelling:bluer, then redder. His memorya primary color saturatingthe …
Rainer Maria Rilke – The Duino Elegies X
Rainer Maria Rilke (December 04, 1875 – December 29, 1926) The Duino Elegies are among my favorite mystical, existential love poems. I hold Rilke in the same ethereal realm as Rumi and Blake. To ease your enjoyment of Rilke’s creation written over a ten year period, I present them as individual verses, one each day …
Rainer Maria Rilke – The Duino Elegies IX
Rainer Maria Rilke (December 04, 1875 – December 29, 1926) The Duino Elegies are among my favorite mystical, existential love poems. I hold Rilke in the same ethereal realm as Rumi and Blake. To ease your enjoyment of Rilke’s creation written over a ten year period, I present them as individual verses, one each day for the …
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Rainer Maria Rilke – The Duino Elegies VIII
Rainer Maria Rilke (December 04, 1875 – December 29, 1926) The Duino Elegies are among my favorite mystical, existential love poems. I hold Rilke in the same ethereal realm as Rumi and Blake. To ease your enjoyment of Rilke’s creation written over a ten year period, I present them as individual verses, one each day …
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Rainer Maria Rilke – The Duino Elegies VII
Rainer Maria Rilke (December 04, 1875 – December 29, 1926) The Duino Elegies are among my favorite mystical, existential love poems. I hold Rilke in the same ethereal realm as Rumi and Blake. To ease your enjoyment of Rilke’s creation written over a ten year period, I present them as individual verses, one each day …
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Rainer Maria Rilke – The Duino Elegies VI
Rainer Maria Rilke (December 04, 1875 – December 29, 1926) The Duino Elegies are among my favorite mystical, existential love poems. I hold Rilke in the same ethereal realm as Rumi and Blake. To ease your enjoyment of Rilke’s creation written over a ten year period, I present them as individual verses, one each day …
Continue reading "Rainer Maria Rilke – The Duino Elegies VI"
Rainer Maria Rilke – The Duino Elegies V
Rainer Maria Rilke (December 04, 1875 – December 29, 1926) The Duino Elegies are among my favorite mystical, existential love poems. I hold Rilke in the same ethereal realm as Rumi and Blake. To ease your enjoyment of Rilke’s creation written over a ten year period, I present them as individual verses, one each day …
Rainer Maria Rilke – The Duino Elegies IV
Rainer Maria Rilke (December 04, 1875 – December 29, 1926) The Duino Elegies are among my favorite mystical, existential love poems. I hold Rilke in the same ethereal realm as Rumi and Blake. To ease your enjoyment of Rilke’s creation written over a ten year period, I present them as individual verses, one each day …
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Rainer Maria Rilke – The Duino Elegies III
Rainer Maria Rilke (December 04, 1875 – December 29, 1926) The Duino Elegies are among my favorite mystical, existential love poems. I hold Rilke in the same ethereal realm as Rumi and Blake. To ease your enjoyment of Rilke’s creation written over a ten year period, I present them as individual verses, one each day …
Continue reading "Rainer Maria Rilke – The Duino Elegies III"
Rainer Maria Rilke – The Duino Elegies II
Rainer Maria Rilke (December 04, 1875 – December 29, 1926) The Duino Elegies are among my favorite mystical, existential love poems. I hold Rilke in the same ethereal realm as Rumi and Blake. To ease your enjoyment of Rilke’s creation written over a ten year period, I present them as individual verses, one each day …
Continue reading "Rainer Maria Rilke – The Duino Elegies II"
Rainer Maria Rilke – The Duino Elegies I
Rainer Maria Rilke (December 04, 1875 – December 29, 1926) The Duino Elegies are among my favorite mystical, existential love poems. I hold Rilke in the same ethereal realm as Rumi and Blake. To ease your enjoyment of Rilke’s creation written over a ten year period, I present them as individual verses, one each day …
Barbara Kingsolver – How to Survive This
Barbara Kingsolver (April 08, 1955 -) O misery. Imperfectuniverse of days stretched outahead, the string of pearlsand drops of venom on the web,losses of heart, of lifeand limb, news of the worst:Remind me againthe day will comewhen I look back amazedat the waste of sorry saltwhen I had no more than thisto cry about.Now I …
Jessica Cohn – Spring
Jessica Cohn It was the spring when dry goodsheld our fascination. We bottled goldhand-pumped mucous. Toilet paperbecame currency. The cut of ethylalcohol sharpened elbows. We tookour contact in fluid ounces, returnedto fire escapes, back steps, the oppositeside of the street. The public squareemptied, and the crosswalk followed.Masters of airports called the airplaneshome. The cars stopped …
Matthew Dickman – Stroke
Matthew Dickman (August 20, 1975 -) The hotel sign blinkingin the brainof my bodystops blinking but notthe whole sign,you know, just a coupleof the letters,the H and T.Then the E and Lso all that is leftwhen the whole leftside of my bodycomes to an endis the O. I am sitting acrossfrom a beautifulwoman, drinking coffee,and …
Jasmin Roberts – Self-Selection For Preservation
Jasmin Roberts My grandmother will tell you thatshe does not like white people,does not look them in the eye. W.E.B. Du Bois coined the term double consciousness in 1903.It refers to the psychological experience of viewing oneselfthrough the lens of a racist white society. He meant that to grow up black in Americais to be …
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Barbara Lydecker Crane – Mother And Child
Barbara Lydecker Crane Portrait painting, so long out of fashion,was all I did. Not by commission—I’d aska friend whose face was lined by life and passionto sit. Then I’d distort a bit: a maskwould simplify and heighten their emotion.This Harlem neighbor’s eyes are spelling fearas she holds her baby tightly with devotionand protection from who …
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Kamilah Aisha Moon – Storm
Kamilah Aisha Moon Night squall raging,black branchesbatter every windowas the sky lashesthe city. Without devices,all I can do is shelter in place& wait the latest nightmareout, find other sourcesof power as I sit in the darksave for a candle burningfor my mother writhingin an ICU & for the worldto make it against all odds.In every …
Natalie Diaz – The Facts of Art
Natalie Diaz (September 04, 1978 -) woven plaque basket with sunflower design, Hopi, Arizona, before 1935 from an American Indian basketry exhibit in Portsmouth, Virginia The Arizona highway sailed across the desert— a gray battleship drawing a black wake, halting at the foot of the orange mesa, unwilling to go around. Hopi men …
Dorianne Laux – Lord Of The Flies
Dorianne Laux (January 10, 1952 -) “Coronavirus Conference Gets Canceled Because of Coronavirus.”—Bloomberg News, March 10, 2020 I can already see the streetsfilling with corpses piledtenderly along the curbs.First the homeless, thenthe poor, then those whowere lost, depressed, lonely,alone. The rich will be last,top of the pile as they werein life. Dressed in their finery.Oh …
Claudia Serea – Parallel Heavens
Claudia Serea Doors closed,lawns freshly mowed,the heavens line up,a row of suburban houseson a quiet street.I imagine mine painted white,silent and sleepy,a provincial art museumwhere all the angels have been assignedto perpetual paperwork.One can't even thinkto jump from one heaveninto anotherwithout wings,or breaking a bone.And each heavenhas its own way to get to iton parallel …
Erika L Sánchez – Instructions For Living
Erika L. Sánchez It was the way summer hunted me:a sequence of instructionsin the folds of a flower.How do I explain the hatred of the sun,the terrible wonder of being alive?Fuck the fucking birds. I lookedto the sky to join the storms. I couldn’thave imagined you, swift as the lightningI traced with my finger, a …
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