Calling Things What They Are
BY Ada Limón

I pass the feeder and yell, Grackle party! And then an hour later I yell, Mourning dove afterparty! (I call the feeder the party and the seed on the ground the afterparty.) I am getting so good at watching that I’ve even dug out the binoculars an old poet gave me back when I was young and heading to the Cape with so much future ahead of me it was like my own ocean. Tufted titmouse! I yell, and Lucas laughs and says, Thought so. But he is humoring me; he didn’t think so at all. My father does this same thing. Shouts out at the feeder announcing the party attendees. He throws out a whole peanut or two to the Stellar’s jay who visits on a low oak branch in the morning. To think there was a time I thought birds were kind of boring. Brown bird. Gray bird. Black bird. Blah blah blah bird. Then, I started to learn their names by the ocean, and the person I was dating said, That’s the problem with you, Limón, you’re all fauna and no flora. And I began to learn the names of trees. I like to call things as they are. Before, the only thing I was interested in was love, how it grips you, how it terrifies you, how it annihilates and resuscitates you. I didn’t know then that it wasn’t even love that I was interested in, but my own suffering. I thought suffering kept things interesting. How funny that I called it love and the whole time it was pain.

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/162174/calling-things-what-they-are?mc_cid=56deb727c3

#poem #poetry #literature

Two Poems from Sarah Carson

https://electricliterature.com/two-poems-by-sarah-carson/?mc_cid=3631611afe

#poem #poetry #literature

Myth
by Joseph J. Capista

Cross a thin ribbon of sky which is, of course, the river. A child pits a bowl of olives with the bone-handled paring knife. Its blade is whetted too thin; it holds everyone's reflection but her own. She is eight. Off with your finger she says to no one, then lops off a tip, pinches its skin, and extracts with her teeth the olive pit, which she spits into another bowl. Three bowls, in all: one for what is hard, one for what is soft, one for what remains untouched. From the hook she has lifted, draped along her neck, and tied at the small hollow of her back the night. Clock, upon clock, upon clock. Still, who is prepared for this moment? If you want to hear better, close your eyes, she says. If you want to hear better, cover your ears. Each olive in the yellow bowl is black. Lining the river bridge are houses identical to this house; windows on one side hold the world, but windows on the other side hold the world. She counts sparrows on ratlines. When you stop dreaming of ghosts, she explains, then you have become a ghost. When she dreams, the olives in her dreams are green.

from the journal SOUTH DAKOTA REVIEW

Joseph J. Capista on "Myth"
Art makes problems by solving problems, I tell students, and solves problems by making problems. After stepping away from the writing desk for some time―COVID chaos, teaching obligations, family preoccupations―I returned to it disenchanted with problems of received forms and accentual-syllabic verse. Where better to turn than the prose poem? Russell Edson defined the prose poem as “a burst of language following a collision with a large piece for furniture.” No injuries occurred during the making of this poem.

#poem #poetry #literature

https://mailchi.mp/poems/todays-poem-myth-joseph-j-capista?e=6ec42bce63

I Hear America Singing
By Walt Whitman

I hear America singing, the varied carols I hear,
Those of mechanics, each one singing his as it should be blithe and strong,
The carpenter singing his as he measures his plank or beam,
The mason singing his as he makes ready for work, or leaves off work,
The boatman singing what belongs to him in his boat, the deckhand singing on the steamboat deck,
The shoemaker singing as he sits on his bench, the hatter singing as he stands,
The wood-cutter’s song, the ploughboy’s on his way in the morning, or at noon intermission or at sundown,
The delicious singing of the mother, or of the young wife at work, or of the girl sewing or washing,
Each singing what belongs to him or her and to none else,
The day what belongs to the day—at night the party of young fellows, robust, friendly,
Singing with open mouths their strong melodious songs.

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/46480/i-hear-america-singing

#poem #poetry #literature

To measure internal activity while it turns all I know to rubble
By Rusty Morrison

I repeat “dead” aloud enough times for its meaning to loosen

from sense. Once the word I repeat is no longer comprehensible,

it begins to attack everything else I know.

Giorgio Agamben says devastation is one face of a Genius

that exists inside us. The other face is creation.

The two sounds that begin and end “dead” echo in my ears.

Then a third appears between them. The middle sound, between

the coronal plosives of the letter d, is the ghost.

Agamben tells us that the Genius is within us only as long as

we realize it does not belong to us. Just as existence does not.

Now I begin to voice only the ghost, and watch it ‘not appear.’

Is the narrow space between my Genius’s two faces

where that ghost lives? When I listen for what will not appear,

I hear my own voicelessness amplify.

My hearing is most acute when I’m naked

in front of the bedroom mirror.

I want voicelessness to create an echoing hollow

inside every word I type.

I feel how listening to find disappearances makes my nipples erect.

Disappearance is my new self-seduction.

---

“I was dealing with the death of someone close. My feelings were complicated, leaving me exhausted. But something in me shifted when reading Giorgio Agamben. He freed me from grieving, allowing me to find a fierceness—a fierceness that asked me to plunge into this moment, then the next, to dive into everything changing. The poem took time to finish. I was standing in front of my mirror, as I describe, when I opened to see the many selves I am disappearing, as I asked myself who I am. Then I wrote the last lines, or the poem wrote them for me.”
—Rusty Morrison

Rusty Morrison
Rusty Morrison is the copublisher at Omnidawn. She has authored several poetry collections, including Risk (Black Ocean, 2024) and Beyond the Chainlink (Ahsahta Press, 2014), which was a finalist for the Northern California Book Award. The recipient of fellowships from UC Berkeley’s Arts Research Center, Civitella Ranieri, and Djerassi Resident Artists Program, Morrison lives in Richmond, California.

https://mailchi.mp/poets/september-02-2024-poemaday-12138304-331miebijr-12140576?e=2706955217

#poem #poetry #literature

Mrs. Butterworth, Uncle Ben & Aunt Jemima
BY Frank X. Walker

...walk into a bar in America.
Butterworth says, I’m being repackaged.
Ben says, I’m being rebranded.
Jemima says, I remember
when they branded my mama on her back.

The bartender says, I could stand in the middle
of Main Street and kill somebody
and I wouldn’t lose any voters.
Butterworth says, then I’ll take eight bullets
in my sleep. Ben says choke me to death
with your knee. Jemima says,
lock me in a holding cell and say
I decided to hang myself.

The bartender poured the drinks,
said he felt threatened
and was simply standing his ground
when he thought the thug
was reaching for a gun.

The headlines said Well-Loved American
Foods Resisted Arrest, Failed
to Comply, and Were Delicious While Black.

Butterworth’s daughter said here’s to progress,
we might finally get an anti-lynching bill.
Ben’s son said I’d rather they abolish
qualified immunity. Jemima’s kid said you know
they abolished slavery once,
then they hung my mama on that box.

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/162299/mrs-butterworth-uncle-ben-aunt-jemima?mc_cid=a052b77ac1

#poem #poetry #literature

WHY WOULDN’T AUTONOMOUS CARS CRY AT NIGHT?
by Ryan McCarty

Awake and acutely aware
of each other’s proximity
to streetlights and the shifting
shapes of moons on their own
empty interiors, with enough
of them huddled in the lots,
why not honk? Why not holler
at the silent ones, identically dark
and empty on their left and right,
the whole still pile like a flicker
of a future scrapyard in the making?
Why not scream to call a crowd
of ghosts down from their squares
of light up there, those past
wanderers of these same streets,
subjects of their own lonely stories
now forgettable as algorithms,
broke codes that used to commute
in packs, hunter gatherers
heading into the sunrise chatting,
now silent, autonomous, floating
like a disconnected signal? And how
do we hear our children in the night
calling, but tomorrow all the same
just ride them silently to work?

—from Poets Respond

---

Ryan McCarty: “I keep thinking about this story about a lot full of autonomous vehicles that ‘get confused’ at night and start wandering around beeping at each other. It immediately seemed like they were scared or lonely or just kind of riled up, exactly like we might be when left alone on those dark nights when a little of that other kind of darkness starts to creep in. And it made me wonder what we’re making or, for that matter, what we’ve already made.”

https://www.rattle.com/why-wouldnt-autonomous-cars-cry-at-night-by-ryan-mccarty/

#poem #poetry #literature

ONE LAST POEM FOR LOULOU
by MICHAEL CHANG

the oldest story is richard gere in east hampton

& allen ginsberg ruining my marriage

in 1983

i was pronounced dead for several minutes

thinking of all the emails being sent

that i knew nothing abt

finally seeing what any nice girl wants:

testicles

apartment paid for

invasive species in the mystic river

in that order

(“ is that all there is ??? ”)

the slovenly gallerist chanting less is more

looks up at the big map of texas

failing to heed the age-old adage

that bald is better than bald-ing

remind me not to disappoint u

janelle monáe

the original supervillain

eminently-fuckable julien

red for the judges / black for the priests

we could for instance

change outcomes w. words

he writes down then crosses out

(“ who cleans on a monday ??? ”)

stupid hot

like ur from another decade

walked off the set of wayne’s world

underwear sorta crusty

baby pissy bully sassy

the only sadder job than poet laureate

is former poet laureate

hell if i know

the ballcap says kinda nasally

why don’t u google it

hang on ur prob a bing guy

before they discovered manscaping

i would bury my face in it

MICHAEL CHANG (they/them) is the author of TOY SOLDIERS (Action, Spectacle, 2024) & THINGS A BRIGHT BOY CAN DO (Coach House Books, 2025). They edit poetry at Fence.

https://www.havehashad.com/hadposts/one-last-poem-for-loulou

#poem #poetry #literature

Stuart Dybek and Edward Hopper

https://nancybishopsjournal.com/2016/05/20/art-and-the-poetry-of-solitude-stuart-dybek-and-edward-hopper/

#poetry #painting #literature

Golden Retrievals
BY Mark Doty

Fetch? Balls and sticks capture my attention
seconds at a time. Catch? I don’t think so.
Bunny, tumbling leaf, a squirrel who’s—oh
joy—actually scared. Sniff the wind, then

I’m off again: muck, pond, ditch, residue
of any thrillingly dead thing. And you?
Either you’re sunk in the past, half our walk,
thinking of what you never can bring back,

or else you’re off in some fog concerning
—tomorrow, is that what you call it? My work:
to unsnare time’s warp (and woof!), retrieving,
my haze-headed friend, you. This shining bark,

a Zen master’s bronzy gong, calls you here,
entirely, now: bow-wow, bow-wow, bow-wow.

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/47252/golden-retrievals

#poem #poetry #poets #literature

LaFurie

[Prisca Munkeni Monnier]

🇨🇩 𒈱 https://furiephotographe.com/

#PriscaMunkeni #LaFurie #PriscaMunkeniMonnier #visual #poetry #personal #identities #congo #portrait #mixedmedia #photo #art

la vie EST belle

by LaFurie [Prisca Munkeni Monnier]

🇨🇩 https://furiephotographe.com/La-Vie-est-Belle

#PriscaMunkeni #LaFurie #PriscaMunkeniMonnier #bodies #waste #trash #design
#junk #material #masks #ornaments #visual #poetry #congo #portrait #photo #recycling #art

TRUE STORY
by Bob Hicok

I can’t escape the possibility
I was meant to own a Zamboni
but got stuck with three can openers instead.
Or that I should have kissed your knees
last night when you got home
from being with your friend
who just had her cat killed. I know
I’m supposed to write “put to sleep,”
but can she wake her up now? No.
And it was kind of you to rush over
right after work and you deserved praise
in some form and your knees
don’t get enough attention, I guess
I’m saying. Where would we have gone
on the Zamboni? Dunno, but how
is certain: slowly. Here’s a headline
you never have to worry about:
Three Canadians Killed
in Zamboni Drag Racing Accident.
I’d buy a newspaper to tell the world
how much I love you. Tons. Geegobs.
And how many cats have we cried over
so far? Four, and one dog, and soon
we’ll start adding parents
to that list, then one of us
will look at empty chairs around the house
and hate them. So knees, elbows, hair,
and of course the more famous bits:
I kiss thee in life and in poems,
which are not life, more like a flashlight
turned on in a black hole. Geegobs
is a lot. Geegobs squared is more
accurate. But is amount really
the correct measure of love?
I love you greenly, gymnastically, variously
and Stradavariusly, I love you
with my heart shadow and my brain fog
and my suitcase-packing skills. The suitcase
I’m packing for when you go
to the next room and I have to follow.
Poor kitty. Poor friend. Poor us.
Who have to deal with mortality
using a limited toolkit. There’s crying,
drinking, toking, injecting, breaking
dishes and popsicle sticks, and loving
longer and softer those who remain.
How long ago did there cease to be a time
I can remember being without you?
1897, I think, the year the jumping jack
was invented, the year levitating
was added to the Olympics, the year
I first dreamed I was alive
and saw you coming around the corner
and thought, So this
is the famous happiness
I’ve heard so much about.

—from Rattle #84, Summer 2024

---

Bob Hicok: “I like starting poems. After I start a poem, I like getting to the middle, and after the middle, an end seems a good thing to reach. When the end is reached, I like doing everything that isn’t writing poems, until the next day, when my desk is exactly where I left it, though I am a slightly different person than the last time we met.”

https://www.rattle.com/true-story-by-bob-hicok/

#poem #poetry #literature

A quotation from La Bruyere

There are certain things in which mediocrity is intolerable: poetry, music, painting, public eloquence. What torture it is to hear a frigid speech being pompously declaimed, of second-rate verse spoken with all a bad poet’s bombast!

[Il y a de certaines choses dont la médiocrité est insupportable: la poésie, la musique, la peinture, le discours public. Quel supplice que celui d’entendre déclamer pompeusement un froid discours, ou prononcer de médiocres vers avec toute l’emphase d’un mauvais poète!]

Jean de La Bruyère (1645-1696) French essayist, moralist
The Characters [Les Caractères], ch. 1 “Of Works of the Mind [Des Ouvrages de l’Esprit],” § 7 (1.7) (1688) [tr. Stewart (1970)]

#quote #quotes #quotation #amateur #art #dullness #inferiority #lowquality #mediocrity #music #oratory #ordinary #painting #poetry
Sourcing / notes: https://wist.info/la-bruyere-jean-de/70975/

My gimp #photo the hesitant exit platform, liable to mine, those leaving by n’ by a timetable, await the station, momentum by the indiscretion of departure. #poetry #sundaygimp #manipulation

Firewalker

Stars,
tell me of the torture of the night;
of how, beyond perception, before time,
a crucible of violent flame was lit,
that gave you life,
ignited holy fire.

Speak,
of being cast, lonely, to the void;
how, in a greater mind, you swung through space,
a thurible of incence, smoking charms
across the sky,
for beauty's sake, alone.

Sing,
incantations of strange alchemy;
how you became the forging furnace blaze,
through endless deaths, the anvil of Time's craft,
to build vast worlds,
bring light to living eyes.

Be,
to me – to all, glad to suffer love –
a kiln, to burn this clay to rich-fired glaze;
that all, who see the jewels of your hands,
may honour home,
and know life's greater fire.

© Simon J Ashcroft, 2024

#SJAshcroftsPoems #poems #poetry #PoetryCommunity #MyWordsMyWork

Jigsaw

Are we not children
of the universe? Splinters,
connected by mind?

© Simon J Ashcroft, 2024

#haiku #poem #poetry #PoetryCommunity

BUYING PRODUCE FROM THE MARKED-DOWN CART
by Lynn Levin

The Minor Virtues

I rescue them at times from the back of the store—
cellophaned oranges and apples
packaged good-side-up.
I imagine them as little brains
thinking of the days when they were on the tree
and full of promise.

Mostly I leave the rusty beans, blotched pears
to the gleaners, calling to mind my days
as a gleaner at Dominicks and Star
when I approached with furtive hunch
the scratched and bruised, bought them

with my meager pay. What a bounty of salads and pies
they made me who saved them from the heap.
More than anything I hate waste
and yet how much
of my own life have I let go unused.

—from Rattle #49, Fall 2015

#poem #poetry #literature

Aja Monet ~ Black Joy

https://youtu.be/H3em39BgL04?t=0
or
https://piped.video/watch?v=H3em39BgL04 (trackers free)

Full album : https://ajamonet.bandcamp.com/album/when-the-poems-do-what-they-do

#music #musique #usik #musica #ajamonet #blackjoy #whenthepoemsdowhattheydo #poems #poesie #poetry #jazz #soul #spokenword #Brooklyn

Time's Mystery

Where have these years gone?
Where may I find all they took
and hid, in darkness?

© Simon J Ashcroft, 2024

#haiku #poem #poetry #PoetryCommunity