#philly poets

[therabbitcatcher]

I received a tentative acceptance (they want some revisions) from a small press for a chapbook I wrote back in April of this year!!!! I’m gonna have a book out!!!!

[astral-words]

Eternal (1) by Ryan Jones.

[wildmischief-blog]

[getthelowdown-blog]

Poet kirwynsutherland performing one of my favorite pieces. This always brings me to tears

[getthelowdown-blog]

kirwynsutherland kills me softly every time he performs this piece. To me it's the definition of Black Lives Matter

[juliaperchance-blog]

NE

i still remember that highway buzz and smell of hot sun and cars and air and stale AC on roosevelt blvd, twice.    1. the time we broke down, the car filled with heat so quick, no cell phones, a cab on the opposite side of the freeway saw us and came over. how?? i think we called triple A from a gas station. then my mom called my dad at work. phone calls. the natural order of things. we still remember but it smells, feels old.  2. another time, a different time, just me and my mom. probably on the way back from the mall. what else? that carousel, bath & body works, people trying to sell you sunglasses. anything to escape the heat. my mom looked really young in her sunglasses, hair newly dyed. those were years when she seemed full. fuller. so many cotton dresses and a smile ear to ear. it was nice. i think everything i was wearing was from limited too, already too tight. i couldn’t keep up. in the car, we heard kissed by a rose come on the radio, my sister’s favorite song. at this point, there was a cell phone. heavy, like an oversized paperweight. my mom called the house, my sister screened the call, we all did, everybody screened, i thought it was normal but i hated it at the same time. phone calls, the natural order of things. the excitement of needing to use the cell phone, a true rare thrill. my mom left a message: “turn on Q102!!!” we listened to the rest of the song wondering if she’d turned on the radio, if she was hearing it too, at home, where we were headed. the highway buzz turns to the night kind of buzz, air cooler, but not cooled. everything above and around us was cement. everything was different then, harder maybe, easier too, full of possibilities. try to get it back, feel the hot cement sidewalk on your back and feet, see the voicemail button flashing on the kitchen phone, hear the sound of the screen door shutting, picture the neighbors waiting for you in the driveway, but you can’t.

[metropolarity]

LITTLE GIRLS DON'T DESERVE THIS MUCH ATTENTION

PERFECT TEXT BASED WIT: Ras Mashramani reads at Moonstone Arts Center

[apiarymagazine-blog]

April 25: "Neighborhood Watches" by Ryan Eckes

Your name: Jacob Russell http://jacobrussellsbarkingdog.blogspot.com/

Author’s name: Ryan Eckes

Author’s blog: http://ryaneckes.blogspot.com/

What’s the Philly (love) connection?:

Why’d you nominate this poem?: I can answer these last two as one. Ryan nails the sound of blue collar, middlebrow white neighborhood Philly: in snatches of dialog, in the rhythm and cadence of his lines, in the drop dead understated logic & ill logic, perceptions and misconceptions– & never fails to let you know how limited the points of view in expressed in his poems…or of any point of view… a kind of wise humility that’s almost, but not quite, unconscious of what it’s up to.

-

neighborhood watches

another guy brags his mother was a mother before she had babies, tidy streets broke from her hands, one man attached to a motor car, another to a motion picture house.                          what’s showing? at is-a-bella’s, COUNTER GIRL WANTED. she rides a bike, gets honked at, gets told to get off the road. the neighborhood watches. if tragedy strikes who will pay your mortgage. oh watches never worked on me, mom says, i don’t buy them. me neither, i say. but what’s difficult about watching reruns is the policeman between my sister’s legs looking out. he’s got my eyes and winks, nodding to the neighborhood north—watch out over there, he says, they’re animals, you know, you gotta treat em like animals . . .