A Poem A Day...

This is for the thinkers, the dreamers, those who look at a blank page and see potential. This is for those who dance in the rain when the rest of the world crouches safely beneath rubber roofs. Submit your stuff and let this be inspiration.

[thatadara]

[mymodernmet]

New Visually Satisfying Arrangements of Everyday Objects by Emily Blincoe

[fullcravings]

Apple Doughnuts

[rhirocg-deactivated20190912]

[foodstest]

A healthy dessert

[ridarevita-deactivated20200222]

Literally me

[theafricanbookreview]

The Sun on This Rubble | Dennis Brutus

The Sun on This Rubble | Dennis Brutus

The sun on this rubble after rain bruised though we must be some easement we require unarguably, though we argue against desire. Under jackboots our bones and spirits crunch forced into sweat-tear-sodden slush now glow-lipped by this sudden touch: sun-stripped perhaps, our bones may later sing or spell out their malignant nemesis Sharpevilled to spearpoints for revenging but now our pride-dumbed…

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[thatadara]

Honesty

what I want most is the happiness that comes from safety and accomplishments. But that's not happiness at all is it? That's ephemerality. We were made for risk and discomfort. We can only grow with the thudthudthud fear that comes with doing anything worthwhile. The question is, is this life I'm living. Is this job I have. And these friendships I nurture at all worthwhile?!!

[theafricanbookreview]

If you are alive, there is hope for a better day and something good to happen- Ishmael Beah (A Long Way Gone)

The African Book Review is hosting a #readAfrican campaign. Everyday for a week, we’ll post some of our favorite quotes from popular African Novels.

Reply/Reblog with your favorite quote, tag it #ReadAfrican and you might win a free tote for all your trips to the library! 

[ninuile]

The Love Between The Great Lawn and Red Hook

The Love Between The Great Lawn and Red Hook

         She wrote a poem about him. Some crappy shit about long walks in the East Village, unknown bands, desperate tongues merging against graffiti walls at 3am, vomit in the corner, swirling brown girls in the background.

         She read the first four lines out to her poetry class and stopped. They wanted more but the rest was hers. It was a relationship she imagined, built between thin brown lines in a leather-bound notebook.

         The butterflies she got watching him walk across the classroom, stained white tee-shirt tucked into too tight jeans, loose curls swaying like Puerto Rican hips to Bachata, that one matted strand that either signified something spiritual (he was from Arizona, Indian country, after all) or was just hipster as fuck… All hers. It was a relationship she owned, one she could masturbate to under faded grey blankets on hot summer nights, body matching the rhythm of her cheap air conditioner, its hums, his imagined sighs, her orgasms synchronized to his… solely hers.

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[booksandpublishing]

A few minutes ago, I stopped onto the deck of the house. From there I could see and hear the water, and everything that’s happened to me all these years. It was hot and still. The tide was out. No bird sand. As I leaned against the railing a cobweb touches my forehead. It caught in my hair. No one can blame me that I turned and went inside. There was no wind. The sea was dead calm. I hung the cobweb from the lampshade. Where I watch it shudder now and then when my breath touches it. A fine thread. Intricate. Before long, before anyone realises, I’ll be gone from here.

Raymond Carver, The Cobweb (via booksandpublishing)

[whentherewerebicycles]

In sleep, of a heart attack, let Henry go. The end of tennis. The beginning of the dark. The beginning of the wagon. It is the onward coming terrifies. Now at last the effort to make him kill himself has failed.

Take down the thing then to which he was nailed. I am a boot was moored on the wrong shelf. Love has wings & flies. Amazed it could engineer such agony, Henry tried the world again      & again, falling short of the mark. Unblock! let all griefs flow.

There are more over there than over here, for welcome eerie. The whole city turned out to rustle Henry home. He’d made his peace & would no further roam. He wondered only what it was about. He felt the news was near.

-Berryman, Dream Song #359

[amourcali]

Hijabs, hoodies, afros, locks Teddy bear, liquor bottle shrines, rocks Tanks, prayer rugs, church pews, Mexican corn stands Blood, sweat, and tears, police batons Gas masks and bullets create graffiti on corners Murals that salute freedom or death for liberty Be it Inglewood/Englewood or Egypt, Bedstuy or Baghdad Syria or Liberia, the west bank or the west side of Chicago Where food and liquor stores still occupy the block While police and community watchmen justify why they shot Emmit Till and Malice Green, Rekia Boyd and Trayvon Martin Better not wear that hoodie while shopping for a carton Or whatever they sellin’ in your food desert Cause your soul is dessert and will be dissected and consumed On the Fox evening news while we sing the blues The new Jim Crow caged bird sings Cause he’s tired of occupying his misery and of our marching He wanna fly to a higher consciousness But his school on academic probation They gave him medicine, diagnosed him with a felony and mental retardation So he refuses to cease the firin’, nobody’s hirin’ In Illinois, 67 is the new age when you retirin’ Class lines have blurred, those who used to have, have not Pensions bein’ snatched Those who never have keep their hands stretched Social services being cut Sterilization clinics giving out pills to numb the womb Young girls referring to their vaginas as tombs Thinkin’ protests are temporary and trendy Well rock a t-shirt and carry a poster And two weeks later it’s back to normal But they say times are changin’ The revolution is becoming second nature, causes are combining People carrying torches, hope burning from their hands Attaching explosive devices ‘cause they keep stealing their lands In the name of freedom. Hijabs, hoodies, afros, locks Teddy bear, liquor bottle shrines, rocks Tanks, prayer rugs, church pews, Mexican corn stands Blood, sweat, and tears, police batons Gas masks and bullets create graffiti on corners

(via amourcali)

[ezibota]

[ninuile]

“Reading Africa”

We don’t whisper here We sigh, we gasp, we moan We cry, we shout, we groan No, we don’t whisper here. -Segun Akinlolu, Can’t You See?

As the child of academics growing up in Nigeria, I was introduced to books at a young age. My first book was a paper-thin story about a corn princess and ants. As I grew older I read more books, mostly European and American; Judy Blume’s novels, The Babysitters Club, Enid Blyton’s mysteries, stories in which curly-haired little girls yelped ‘Golly!’ and sucked on lollies in the summer (in Nigeria, we had Fan-Ice. I testify it was just as good).

However, the stories I remember most were those set in other parts of Africa. Books such as The Boy Slave by Kola Onadipe, An African Night’s Entertainment by Cyprain Ekwensi, Without a Silver Spoon by Eddie Iroh, and many other books within the African Readers Series. They taught me about other aspects of different Nigerian ethnicities and the African world at my doorstep, stories from Kenya, Cotonou, Sierra Leone, etc., full of house boys who retained their integrity in the face of poverty, slaves who became kings, queens who defended their kingdoms in lieu of kings, greedy waziris’ whose greed led to their downfall, cryptic stories about the crafty tortoise, and so on. These were the stories in which I encountered my first notions of Africa.

Literature is how we document our lives, fictionalized stories often reveal truths and subjective experiences that other sources cannot. Learning about the Rwandan genocide in school was so much different than reading Murambi, The Book of Bones by Boubacar Boris Diop, which gave me an inside look at the genocide, the forces at work that caused it, the fears and that characterized that period. At the start of Europe’s ‘civilizing’ mission in Africa (read: colonization, slavery, mass violence, and theft of culture), great steps were taken to erase any ideas of Africans as a people with history or methods of conveying that history (see: Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad). Today, the world knows more about Africa, we know about her peoples, we know her history before colonization and slavery. At the same time, Africa is still constantly presented as a victim; the lovable yet inevitably doomed junior brother of the world. A classmate once suggested that while she knew South Africa was a well developed country, the other African tribes were still struggling, (Nigerians riding Bugattis in Abuja beg to differ). The thread of discourse that has coded Africa in a specific light of backwardness and victimization still exists today.

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[timemachinin]

Filtered Water

my worn canvas bag always holds a pack of smokes although i never touch them  they kind of give me hope and keep the memories warm of us sharing your last lucky strike at 5am on your lawn 

[ninuile]

3 reasons you need this tote in your life

1. Cute. 

2. Yes! He’ll (or She’ll) notice you strutting around when you have this on your shoulder. 

3. Handmade. Eco-friendly. Machine Washable. Can be turned inside-out. FREE SHIPPING!!!!

Bonus: It may make you look as cute as the model above, see handsome Nigerian men everywhere, and bring out your natural swag.

Buy here

(The above actions may or may not occur, but still ;) ) 

[thelostcanary]

A bird lived in me. A flower traveled in my blood. My heart was a violin. I loved and didn’t love. But sometimes I was loved. I also was happy: about the spring, the hands together, what is happy. I say man has to be! (Herein lies a bird. A flower. A violin.)

“Epitaph” by Juan Gelman (via thelostcanary)