Nope

They/them. Oldish. Poetry reblogs & random shitposts. 

[frossk]

[frossk]

From Julian Randall, “The Zero Country.”  Full text: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/151475/the-zero-country

[frossk]

Louise Gluck - “Red Poppy”

Transcript: 

The great thing is not having a mind. Feelings: oh, I have those; they govern me. I have a lord in heaven called the sun, and open for him, showing him the fire of my own heart, fire like his presence. What could such glory be if not a heart? Oh my brothers and sisters, were you like me once, long ago, before you were human? Did you permit yourselves to open once, who would never open again? Because in truth I am speaking now the way you do. I speak because I am shattered.

Link: https://poets.org/poem/red-poppy-0

[firstfullmoon]

Hieu Minh Nguyen, “Heavy”

[frossk]

Transcript: 

The narrow clearing down to the river I walk alone, out of breath

my body catching on each branch. Small children maneuver around me.

Often, I want to return to my old body a body I also hated, but hate less

given knowledge. Sometimes my friends—my friends

who are always beautiful & heartbroken look at me like they know

I will die before them. I think the life I want

is the life I have, but how can I be sure? There are days when I give up on my body

but not the world. I am alive. I know this. Alive now

to see the world, to see the river rupture everything with its light.

Link to poem: https://poets.org/poem/heavy

[oumaimas]

Then We Are In Agreement, Heather Christle (transcript under the cut)

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[mortalpractice]

Seed-hoarder, stream-nester, warm-blooded, beak-lover, bird-speaker— go to the water, bird, love the blue world, bird, money means nothing, bird, clothes mean nothing, bird, keep going into the world, bird, startle the sad spring air with the whirring of your wings. —Ada Limón, from “Bird Bound for a Good World,” Sharks in the Rivers

[frossk]

I do love Ada Limon these days. The repetition here, “bird” becoming mantra...

[firstfullmoon]

Ada Limón, “Love Poem with Apologies for My Appearance”

[frossk]

From “The World Keeps Ending, and the World Goes On“

by Franny Choi

Full poem Link: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/151513/the-world-keeps-ending-and-the-world-goes-on

Text:

                                                                I was born from an apocalypse

and have come to tell you what I know—which is that the apocalypse began when Columbus praised God and lowered his anchor. It began when a continent was drawn into cutlets. It began when Kublai Khan told Marco, Begin at the beginning. By the time the apocalypse began, the world had already ended. It ended every day for a century or two. It ended, and another ending world spun in its place. It ended, and we woke up and ordered Greek coffees, drew the hot liquid through our teeth, as everywhere, the apocalypse rumbled, the apocalypse remembered, our dear, beloved apocalypse—it drifted slowly from the trees all around us, so loud we stopped hearing it.

[frossk]

From “To Memorize the Continuous Lines of Your Bones [An American Lullaby]" by Michael Wasson

Text: 

Every evening, history ruins you.                                Every fallen leaf is your self-portrait where promises are made              on yellow suicide notes, petal-soft when palmed, but we’re left with our hands scattered between blurred centuries. Every evening is another chance        to be gorgeous. To be human. But is it enough to be beautiful & never once ask for forgiveness? What am I even saying? I’m saying                      God forgets you & every lover you leave behind. This is the story we were                                            given & so we make a maze out of each museum we pass by & enter the gallery of our bones. This is the painting we step out of.

[lifeinpoetry]

I like to call myself wound

but I will answer to knife. Sometimes I think we have the same name, Notquitelove. I want

to be soft, to say here is my underbelly and I want you to hold the knife, but I don’t know what I want you to do:

plunge or mercy. I deserve both. I want to hold and be held. 

— Nicole Homer, from “Underbelly,” published in Poem-a-Day

[frossk]

I’m always partial to a good juxtaposition, and here’s a really good one. The wound/knife is familiar and, to me, only works because it’s put into naming. The plunge/mercy is less familiar, and it works better because of the contrast to the more familiar pairing before it. I’m not sure if I like “Notquitelove” - it feels a little precious to me, but “I want // to be soft” is such, such a good stanza break, especially following up on “I will answer to knife.”

[dirtyfilthy]

Lisp - Sam Sax

there are more Ss in possession than i remembered / my name hinges on the S / is serpentine / has sibilance / is simple / six lettered / a symbol / different from its sign / sound shapes how we think about objects / the mouth shapes how sound spills out / how the speaker’s seen / a sigmatism is the homosexual mystique / my parents sought treatments / i was sent to a speech / pathologist / sixth grade / a student / she gave me exercises / i was schooled / practiced silence / syllabics / syntax / my voice sap in the high branches / my voice a spoonful of sugared semen / i licked silk when i spoke / i spilt milk when i sang / when i sang sick men tore wings from city birds / so i straightened my sound / into a masculine i / the S is derived from the semitic letter shin / meaning my swishiness is hebraic / is inherited / it’s semantic / no matter what was sacrificed / the tongued isaac / a son against the stone of my soft palate / still i slipped / my hand inside my neighbor’s / waistband & pulled back pincers / sisyphus with the sissiest lips / parseltongued assassin / sassy & passing for the poisoned sea / now when i say please / let me suck your cock / i sound straight / as the still secondhand / on a dead watch.

[frossk]

I will forever love this poem. Obviously the sibilance is fantastic, but track the consonance even beyond that - “i licked silk when i spoke / i spilt milk when i sang” - my goodness.

The way Sax plays with linebreaks here - incorporating the slashes that would (were we quoting) indicate a new line, doing that to mark phrasing - so often the slashes come off as gimmicky nowadays, but finding a way to incorporate them seamlessly into the piece is just so great.

On my own behalf... beyond the identity connections (hi, it me, an AMAB queer person), as someone who had an accent trained out of me when I was young, I connect to this poem a lot. That idea of something being lost, even though the benefits are real...

[syntaxandsemantics]

the art of falling:

truthfully,

is all in your hopes 

and how they land, like bones,

askew. and a blessing

in response, repose

an ending -

something tasteful,

graceful enough

to fool the bystanders -

this was intention and 

not accident,

the smear of gravity

on your existence.

[frossk]

OK, this is lovely. I wish it were one more line - “the smear of gravity / on your existence” is such a great turn and a great closing - but, those linebreaks, (”graceful enough / to fool the bystanders”), that language (”in response, repose” - mmm).

Side note: From the title and the language, I’m pretty sure this is Kim Moore, but I don’t have the book and haven’t been able to find the poem online. When you post something, please credit the author. 

[oumaimas]

The Author Writes the First Draft of His Wedding Vows, Hanif Willis Abduraqqib (transcript under the cut)

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[frossk]

Love, love this poem. Something wonderful about erasing a suicide note into a love poem, stripping away the ending to find the beginning underneath.  Did you know Virginia Woolf actually wrote two suicide notes? One to her husband (of which this poem is an erasure), and one to her sister: http://virginiawoolfblog.com/virginia-woolfs-suicide-note-to-vanessa-bell/

[oumaimas]

excerpt from “Sand Dabs, Eight” by Mary Oliver (transcript under the cut)

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