Poem Sunday

a dialogue, an exchange, a (never) finished project

[poemsunday]

More proverbs from the path to Aryabal Meditation Temple.

[poemsunday]

The path up to Aryabal Meditation Temple in Terelj is beautiful and lined with proverbs.

[taiey]

The curtains were blue because everything in the room was carefully colour coordinated, reinforcing the character’s stylish and controlled characterisation. The curtains were blue because everything in the room was a different colour, reinforcing the character’s eclectic and globe-trotting personality. The curtains were blue because the character is elsewhere established to hate the colour blue, subtextually implying that their deceased spouse was responsible for that decoration choice.

The curtains were blue because throughout their filmography the director consistently uses cool tones to mark moments of distance between characters. The curtains were blue to tie the events in that room into the broader oceanic motif of this particular novel. The curtains were blue because the assonance evoked a contrast with the following stanza of the poem.

Even the curtains looked expensive: floor to ceiling velvet drapes, in a flawless royal blue. She tucked the saucer up on the windowsill and tied back faded blue curtains with a loop of string. The narrow blinds were the same navy blue as the pinstripe suit of the man who served eviction notice that sent them to this office.

The curtains were blue because the author’s childhood home had blue curtains, which they discussed in their letters related to their feelings of comfort in that place. The curtains were blue because the author’s childhood home had blue curtains, which they discussed in their letters related to their feelings of grief in that place.

The curtains were blue as an allusion to the contemporary joke about literary criticism, an extension of the author’s autocritical approach that will be further discussed in section seven.

The curtains were red, as a pun on;

The curtains were read.

[grendel-menz]

burning food is an inherited trait

[sxcvghjm]

I thought the earth remembered me, she took me back so tenderly, arranging her dark skirts, her pockets full of lichens and seeds. I slept as never before, a stone on the riverbed, nothing between me and the white fire of the stars but my thoughts, and they floated light as moths among the branches of the perfect trees. All night I heard the small kingdoms breathing around me, the insects, and the birds who do their work in the darkness. All night I rose and fell, as if in water, grappling with a luminous doom. By morning I had vanished at least a dozen times into something better.

(mary oliver, sleeping in the forest)

[grendel-menz]

my farm girl blues

[great-and-small]

Was looking for a book today when I saw these various animal books all on the same shelf and noticed their titles made a nice little impromptu poem about veterinary medicine

[druid-for-hire]

[image id: a four-page comic. it is titled “immortality” after the poem by clare harner (more popularly known as “do not stand at my grave and weep”). the first page shows paleontologists digging up fossils at a dig. it reads, “do not stand at my grave and weep. i am not there. i do not sleep.” page two features several prehistoric creatures living in the wild. not featured but notable, each have modern descendants: horses, cetaceans, horsetail plants, and crocodilians. it reads, “i am a thousand winds that blow. i am the diamond glints on snow. i am the sunlight on ripened grain. i am the gentle autumn rain.” the third page shows archaeopteryx in the treetops and the skies, then a modern museum-goer reading the placard on a fossil display. it reads, “when you awaken in the morning’s hush, i am the swift uplifting rush, of quiet birds in circled flight. i am the soft stars that shine at night. do not stand at my grave and cry.” the fourth page shows a chicken in a field. it reads, “i am not there. i did not die” / end id]

a comic i made in about 15 hours for my school’s comic anthology. the theme was “evolution”

[poemsunday]

Do not ask your children to strive, by William Martin

[poemsunday]

Fairy Tale with Laryngitis and Resignation Letter, by Jehanne Dubrow

You remember the mermaid makes a deal,

her tongue evicted from her throat,

and moving is a knife-cut with every step.

This is what escape from water means.

Dear Colleagues, you write, for weeks

I’ve been typing this letter in the bright

kingdom of my imagination. Your body

is a ship of pain. Pleasure is when you climb

the rocks and watch the moonlight

touching everywhere you want to go,

a silver world called faraway. Dear Colleagues,

you write, this place is a few sentences

contained by the cursor’s rippling barrier—

what happened here is only beaks

and brackets, the serif’s liquid stroke.

The old story has witches, a prince in love

with the surging silence of women,

a knife that turns the water red. You write,

Dear Colleagues, now these years are filed

in the infinite oceans of bureaucracy.

Everything bleaches or fades. In other words,

goodbye. Sometimes it’s possible to walk,

although you’ve been told inside the oyster

shell of your heart there is no soul.

Creatures like you must end as a spray of salt,

green droplets floating breathless in the air.

[poemsunday]

An excerpt from Be(loved), by Dakota Adan

[poemsunday]

Dead Stars, by Ada Limón

Out here, there’s a bowing even the trees are doing.

Winter’s icy hand at the back of all of us.

Black bark, slick yellow leaves, a kind of stillness that feels

so mute it’s almost in another year.

I am a hearth of spiders these days: a nest of trying.

We point out the stars that make Orion as we take out

the trash, the rolling containers a song of suburban thunder.

It’s almost romantic as we adjust the waxy blue

recycling bin until you say, Man, we should really learn

some new constellations.

And it’s true. We keep forgetting about Antlia, Centaurus,

Draco, Lacerta, Hydra, Lyra, Lynx.

But mostly we’re forgetting we’re dead stars too, my mouth is full

of dust and I wish to reclaim the rising—

to lean in the spotlight of streetlight with you, toward

what’s larger within us, toward how we were born.

Look, we are not unspectacular things.

We’ve come this far, survived this much. What

would happen if we decided to survive more? To love harder?

What if we stood up with our synapses and flesh and said, No.

No, to the rising tides.

Stood for the many mute mouths of the sea, of the land?

What would happen if we used our bodies to bargain

for the safety of others, for earth,

if we declared a clean night, if we stopped being terrified,

if we launched our demands into the sky, made ourselves so big

people could point to us with the arrows they make in their minds,

rolling their trash bins out, after all of this is over?

[poemsunday]

Ancestors’ wildest dreams

by Kinsale Drake

r drunk on the sticky floor

of a Denny’s texting gma Ayóó anííníshní;

& crying in the same hot breath abt

not knowing the right word for apology

if one exists keyboard smashing

resilience resilience reslienceResielance

as we delete IG so we don’t

have to see ppl out-sacred-ing

each other Maybe we’re only sovereign

in bed sometimes drowning

in the dark and in the soft pools

of their eyes, living off the hard tack

of their thighs moving to an MCR mixtape

We froth Ancestors’ sleep-paralysis

demon caught in cold sweat and skipped

therapy untangling our bodies

from sheets always untangling

hair out from under somewhere

Fractals left in corners, under juniper

berry branches Do we even remember

how gma baked her pies? The cornstalks

stretched higher than Holy People

that yr ... & we came home buzzed

on lemonade & an auntie’s laughter ... 

Everyone is always talking about

an ancestor that is or isn’t

pleased

BUT—

I saw a strawberry moon tonight rising ... 

I learned the word in my language for laugh ...

We found it together:

Dloh dloh dloh dloh

We eat it

We setting-spray it to the page

[poemsunday]

Mimesis, by Fady Jousah

[poemsunday]

Good Bones, by Maggie Smith

[poemsunday]

Mouthful Of Forevers, by Clementine von Radics

[poemsunday]

For M, by Mikko Harvey

FOR M

​I don’t

want you

to be

nervous. Maybe

thinking of

a walrus

would help.

Have you

seen the

video of

the penguin

accidentally stepping

on a

sleeping walrus?

It thought

it was

a rock.

The walrus

wakes up

like what

the fuck

and the

penguin scurries

off like

oh shit.

Sometimes it’s

funny watching

a surprise

happen, and

not just

funny but

kind of

amazing — like,

you never

really know

what’s what

when it

comes to

this planet.

Then again,

when it’s

you getting

surprised, that’s

different. Especially

for tender

ones like

us. What

are we

supposed to

do? It’s

bad for

our hearts,

you know.

I hope

you won’t

need pills

like I

do. I

think I

get so

scared because

I’m greedy —

I want

to hold

onto everything,

the world

wants to

take it

away. What

the fuck.

The number

of hours

we have

together is

actually not

so large.

Please linger

near the

door uncomfortably

instead of

just leaving.

Please forget

your scarf

in my

life and

come back

later for

it.