#birdfeast

[bostonpoetryslam]

Who will I be untrue to today? My body has been at war with itself since I learned how to cry. I will betray myself if only to feed myself a myth.

Teo Mungaray, “Haematopoiesis,” published in Birdfeast

[danielriddlerodriguez]

THIS IS NOT A COMPLAINT —Ruth Baumann There is a type of safety that makes me talk & a type that makes me quiet. Because our bodies are mostly water, it could be argued we are monsters. The immortal jellyfish are a lie: what falls apart in us falls apart in us. I don't mean anything bad. I don't mean anything.

[lifeinpoetry]

We learn to live with that sawtoothed loudness, caught halfway between the wonder & the wanting.

— Topaz Winters, from “When my First Boyfriend Learned I Was on Anti-Psychotics, He Laughed & Told Me He Always Suspected I was Crazier than I Let On,” published in Birdfeast

[pigmenting]

I'm mean sometimes, I'll admit it. I press my face against the window just to feel its voicelessness. Across the street the leaves on the tree turn at once in the wind like a school of fish, and I think how everything shifts, how he flipped onto his back in his sleep, how the light touched our bodies until our bodies were no longer there to be touched.

Patrick Dundon, from “Shut Up”, published in Birdfeast

[words-in-lines]

Time Travel Blues An Ode to Black Sci-fi Movies That Can't Exist The moment time travel is invented I will have to wait for the invention of spray-on-white-face or temporary-Caucasian-gene-therapy. Otherwise, looking this black, I don't want to go back to last year or even yesterday. If they do find a way to recycle used white faces, organic masks stored in those pressurized cans with the roll top lids that they used to make in World War I; masks that will slip over squish thick noses, and thin and fine and bury and bully kissing lips behind handle bar mustaches, well then I won't go back. I'll explore my time as an American eagle and not a blackened canary in a coal mine. At first I'll be simple, I'll ride bus, and walk, and drive, and not be looked at or frisked or fussed with or pulled over. Then I'll mask everyone. I'll spend years proving to Fox news that race is real, because men with guns and chains and ships have made it that way. Then Rodney King, Trayvon Martin and Emmett Till will wake up with white faces, and the world will watch how beautifully safe and soft it can be to wake up with a cotton expression. I'll likely find that Elvis wasn't a thief but a fellow black time traveler. Then maybe I'll find a George Wallace or a Pat Robertson, put a black face on them, and cut them loose in Lake City, Florida at 3 am in 2014. Not 1925 but 20, fucking, 14 where the Police chief and Judges were still members of the KKK. But I probably won't be able to, why would they make black masks?

Herve Comeau, “Time Travel Blues”

[bostonpoetryslam]

So many times my body has been more ache than human. In which direction must I search to find a name for the curdle in my throat?

Topaz Winters, “When my First Boyfriend Learned I Was on Anti-Psychotics, He Laughed & Told Me He Always Suspected I was Crazier than I Let On,” published in Birdfeast

[lifeinpoetry]

I the same mass more down and away I pluck & wilt & vanish I stained the hollow floor

— Diana Arterian, from “Introduction,” published in Birdfeast

[pigmenting]

I couldn't say what love is anymore but could / use the word love in a poem and really mean it.

Patrick Dundon, from “Shut Up”, published in Birdfeast