INACTIVE

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[laurenliconapoetry-blog]

an excerpt from a personal essay i’m working on about growing up female in a patriarchal culture and the concepts of internalized and externalized misogyny 

[laurenliconapoetry-blog]

table talk, august 2017

tw body image

[laurenliconapoetry-blog]

landmine / december 2017

[lopoetry]

follow my new account ✨

[lopoetry]

fresh start

i’ve had this blog for nearly four years and have been nearly inactive for the past two. while i’m grateful for the followers and the support my work has received on here, i feel that is is best to start over and no long use this platform to display my new pieces as i have grown significantly as both a writer and an individual and no longer have an attachment to this blog and the words shared here. i will be posting on @laurenliconapoetry from now on, and i look forward to providing new and inspired content there. thank you all so much.

yours once more,

lauren 

[oceanwriting]

her words go through me;

not around me, through me.

my mother says something 

in a voice that bleeds sin,

and I have learned long ago 

to let them writhe out of my open window.

i picture my hands gripping the wheel,

i feel my feet jam the pedal to the floor,

i hear the tires screech.

my mother dies, 

choking on her deep red words.

there is the smell of smoke 

and i kiss her goodbye.

[fashionfever]

[literatibookstore]

Have you seen Lemonade? Did you cry (sob)? Have you been thirsty ever since? Here’s our Lemonade-inspired (in no way extensive) reading list. We love these brave, strong, smart, ever-inspiring queens. 

Warsan Shire’s Teaching My Mother How to Give Birth forthcoming.

[oneman-wolfpackk]

Black girl with a Chronic Invisible illness here. The top 2 pictures are what I look like when I am having an okay day, which isn’t often. The rest are a little peek at what my life is actually like. As many of my followers know, I have a brain condition called Chiari Malformation. It is a degenerative disease and there is no cure for it. People are dying from it or are taking their own lives from the excruciating pain it causes because doctors just cannot seem to help us, simply because they are not educated on it, or have never even heard of it! I have wanted to take my own life on many occasions, and still do very often because of what this illness puts me and my body through on a daily basis. There is no escape. It feels hopeless. These pictures were taken in February. Just a few months ago I was going in for my second brain surgery because I was having so many problems again. It was the worst thing in my life to happen. After surgery, I got a CSF leak from ripping the stitches in the back of my neck from throwing up so much because of the anesthesia. I then contracted a strand of meningitis that came from IRAQ. Acinetobacter Baumanni, to be exact. Also known as, Iraqibacter. It is a killer infection. It kills a lot of our troops in Iraq. The mortality rate is high, and there are only 2 antibiotics that can kill it, and they are not even guaranteed to work. So if both antibiotics don’t work, you die. We tried one and it wasn’t working. I ended up unresponsive from it. Almost died from it. I couldn’t even articulate my words or make sense before I became unresponsive. Thank God the only other antibiotic they had was working. They sent me home with a PIC line in my arm, connected to a pole on wheels, with lots of bags of medicine that were to be mailed to my house the next day. My mom was injecting me with the antibiotics weeks after leaving the hospital. Catching the meningitis kept me in the hospital for a month. I thought I was going to die. I lost so much weight and lost all the tone and muscle I had. I had to learn how to walk all over again. It was a terrible experience and I’m glad it’s over. My mom and I do a walk for Chiari every year. We’ve even ended up on the news! We do this walk to raise awareness and money that will be put towards research to find a cure. It would be amazing if everyone could reblog this and spread it around and really get it out there. It’s really important to me and would mean a lot!! We are a little far away from our goal with only 45 days left to donate. Please donate to Team Brianna! ANY amount helps. It all really does add up and it makes me feel good to know it’s all going to research to put a stop to this illness! We desperately need more to be educated on this illness. We desperately need to find a cure. I’m fighting for myself and every other Chiarian out there.

With lots of love, Brianna 💜

Link to donate: http://unitenight.kintera.org/faf/search/searchTeamPart.asp?ievent=1157697&lis=0&kntae1157697=D54108675AB14FF4B94573800F9190BF&supId=0&team=6656316&cj=Y

[jaethefade]

Invisible illnesses suck. Boost tf out of this. Wishing you love Brianna.

[inkskinned]

you promise that you love me alright but there’s a lot more  about love  than crawling in bed late at night   honey i stopped listening  a long time ago, stopped falling for  your drama  just haven’t figured out how to get my ass out of dodge   but i swear honey the pot is on the stove and i’m boiling, got myself planning how good it will be when you’re gone   how i’ll live like the princess  you never treated me as, how i’ll dye my hair again without worrying about you complaining, how i will light up the night without coming home to  passive-aggressive text messages about how unfair it all is   i’m gonna leave you behind,  honey; you kept me warm in the winter   but spring is coming.

r.i.d (via inkskinned)

[buttonpoetry]

Imani Cezanne, from “Protest”. Check out the full poem here.

[lifeinpoetry]

all alone all poets all loved and dying alone that final death less real than those deaths you lived and for which I forgave you.

Audre Lorde, from “A poem for a poet,” The Collected Poems of Audre Lorde (via lifeinpoetry)

[rabbittmouth]

But hearts don’t break, y’all, they bruise and get better. We were never tragedies. We were emergencies. You call 9 – 1 – 1. Tell them I’m having a fantastic time.

Buddy Wakefield, from “We Were Emergencies” (via rabbittmouth)

[elvedon]

Where do I start the poem? By putting my thumb on a bruise? From where the ache is just out of reach?

Ana Lucia, WHERE DO I START THE POEM? (via elvedon)

[buttonpoetry]

Yesika Salgado, from “Brown Girl”. Check out the full poem here.

[pairedaeza]

At the temple and the mosque the rose petals lay all night perfuming the stunned water.

Agha Shahid Ali, ‘Water’, from Call Me Ishmael Tonight (via nightjasmine)

[natalieweepoetry]

in the absence of speech we bake bread. we slow dance. we kiss with  our eyes. instead: our hands kneading love into winged bellyaches. instead: our knees perfect robins’ eggs blushing into orbit. instead: our mouths with nothing left to say.

“The Softly” after Jeffrey McDaniel, Natalie Wee (via chainedtocomets)

[pigmenting]

So this poem is a telegram to let you know that / I still think about you, that I’m still proud of you, / that when I remember you, I always remember you / as beautiful.

Cristin O’Keefe Aptowicz, from “Heavenly Creature” in Oh, Terrible Youth (via pigmenting)