When the blackberries hang
swollen in the woods, in the brambles
nobody owns, I spend
all day among the high
branches, reaching
my ripped arms, thinking
of nothing, cramming
the black honey of summer
into my mouth; all day my body
accepts what it is. In the dark
creeks that run by there is
this thick paw of my life darting among
the black bells, the leaves; there is
this happy tongue.
11 Aug 2020
☕️ june 8, the smiley barista remembers my name by Wo Chan
Beauty on earth so blue, even the cheese flowers
a culture with no democracy... Yesterday (for example),
I ate the same sandwich I eat every week: eggplant
roasted in red pepper aioli, a focaccia jammed full
by arugula, capers sweaty in browned butter. How
have I come to love routine? I’m thirsty and abashed.
The fabric of my childhood underwear triple axels in the wind—wow.
The whole neighborhood watches me do emails, go to therapy: she shed
revenge for forgiveness. I said it, “i forgive you” slipping
like a key beneath a door, where never was a house attached.
Is it beauty on earth, so blue? Each side stalled, you are touched,
forstanding the sun. Its fat macula borne down grips
(i wish! i saw! i fear! i heard! i dream) like an emotion.
This is not a feeling. This can be, I think, a conversation.
10 Aug 2020
🧬 A Litany For Survival by Audre Lorde
For those of us who live at the shoreline
standing upon the constant edges of decision
crucial and alone
for those of us who cannot indulge
the passing dreams of choice
who love in doorways coming and going
in the hours between dawns
looking inward and outward
at once before and after
seeking a now that can breed
futures
like bread in our children’s mouths
so their dreams will not reflect
the death of ours;
For those of us
who were imprinted with fear
like a faint line in the center of our foreheads
learning to be afraid with our mother’s milk
for by this weapon
this illusion of some safety to be found
the heavy-footed hoped to silence us
For all of us
this instant and this triumph
We were never meant to survive.
And when the sun rises we are afraid
it might not remain
when the sun sets we are afraid
it might not rise in the morning
when our stomachs are full we are afraid
of indigestion
when our stomachs are empty we are afraid
we may never eat again
when we are loved we are afraid
love will vanish
when we are alone we are afraid
love will never return
and when we speak we are afraid
our words will not be heard
nor welcomed
but when we are silent
we are still afraid
So it is better to speak
remembering
we were never meant to survive.
9 Aug 2020
🐥 “Hope” is the thing with feathers (314) by Emily Dickinson
“Hope” is the thing with feathers -
That perches in the soul -
And sings the tune without the words -
And never stops - at all -
And sweetest - in the Gale - is heard -
And sore must be the storm -
That could abash the little Bird
That kept so many warm -
I’ve heard it in the chillest land -
And on the strangest Sea -
Yet - never - in Extremity,
It asked a crumb - of me.
7 Aug 2020
📚 Beginning My Studies by Walt Whitman
Beginning my studies the first step pleas’d me so much,
The mere fact consciousness, these forms, the power of motion,
The least insect or animal, the senses, eyesight, love,
The first step I say awed me and pleas’d me so much,
I have hardly gone and hardly wish’d to go any farther,
But stop and loiter all the time to sing it in ecstatic songs.
4 Aug 2020
🚗 A Parking Lot in West Houston by Monica Youn
Angels are unthinkable
in hot weather
except in some tropical locales, where
from time to time, the women catch one in their nets,
hang it dry, and fashion it into a lantern
that will burn forever on its own inexhaustible oils.
But here—shins smocked with heat rash,
the supersaturated air. We no longer believe
in energies pure enough not to carry heat,
nor in connections—the thought of someone
somewhere warming the air we breathe
that one degree more . . . .
In a packed pub during the World Cup final,
a bony redhead woman gripped my arm
too hard. I could see how a bloke might fancy you.
Like a child’s perfect outline in fast-melting snow,
her wet handprint on my skin, disappearing.
The crowd boiling over, a steam jet: Brrra-zil!
And Paris—a heroin addict
who put her hypodermic
to my throat: Je suis malade.
J’ai besoin de medicaments.
Grabbing her wrist, I saw
her forearm’s tight net sleeve of drying blood.
I don’t like to be touched.
I stand in this mammoth parking lot,
car doors open, letting the air conditioner
run for a while before getting in.
The heat presses down equally
everywhere. It wants to focus itself,
to vaporize something instantaneously,
efficiently—that shopping cart, maybe,
or that half-crushed brown-glass bottle—
but can’t quite. Asphalt softens in the sun.
Nothing’s detachable.
The silvery zigzag line
stitching the tarmac to the sky around the edges
is no breeze, just a trick of heat.
My splayed-out compact car half-sunk
in the tar pit of its own shadow—
strong-shouldered, straining
to lift its vestigial wings.
1 Aug 2020
🥀 Nature’s Minor Chords by H. Cordelia Ray
Nature's Minor Chords
The stirring of a feathery cloud
May wake a thought of richest worth,
The dew upon the lily's rim
To deepest reverie give birth.
Half glimpses caught in idle hours
Of shifting lights upon a stream,
Some sudden glory in the skies
May give the soul a magic dream.
The scent of wood-glades when glad Spring
Is penciling the dainty leaves,
Like subtlest music, round the heart
A web of strange enchantment weaves.
The robin's carol to the dawn
Soothes like the answer to a prayer;
The cushat's melancholy plaint
May change our mood quite to despair.
In Nature's wondrous orchestra,
The quiver of a single strain
Will poise a thought, and give the soul
Most exquisite repose or pain.
30 Jul 2020
🏚 Foreclosure by Lorine Niedecker
Tell em to take my bare walls down
my cement abutments
their parties thereof
and clause of claws
Leave me the land
Scratch out: the land
May prose and property both die out
and leave me peace
28 Jul 2020
👥 Making It by Audre Lorde
My body arcing across your white place
we mingle color and substance
wanting to mantle your cold
I share my face with you
but love becomes a lie
as we suffer through split masks
seeking the other half-self.
We are hung up
in giving
what we wish to be given
ourselves.
27 Jul 2020
📈 Risk by Anaïs Nin
And then the day came,
when the risk
to remain tight
in a bud
was more painful
than the risk
it took
to Blossom.
26 Jul 2020
🐝 The Bees by Audre Lorde
THE BEES
by Audre Lorde
In the street outside a school
what the children learn
possesses them.
Little boys yell as they stone a flock of bees
trying to swarm
between the lunchroom window and an iron grate.
The boys sling furious rocks
smashing the windows.
The bees, buzzing their anger,
are slow to attack.
Then one boy is stung
into quicker destruction
and the school guards come
long wooden sticks held out before them
they advance upon the hive
beating the almost finished rooms of wax apart
mashing the new tunnels in
while fresh honey drips
down their broomsticks
and the little boy feet becoming expert
in destruction
trample the remaining and bewildered bees
into the earth.
Curious and apart
four little girls look on in fascination
learning a secret lesson
and trying to understand their own destruction.
One girl cries out
“Hey, the bees weren’t making any trouble!”
and she steps across the feebly buzzing ruins
to peer up at the empty, grated nook
“We could have studied honey-making!”
21 Jul 2020
🐚 The Sea Shell by Marin Sorescu
I have hidden inside a sea shell
but forgotten in which.
Now daily I dive,
filtering the sea through my fingers,
to find myself.
Sometimes I think
a giant fish has swallowed me.
Looking for it everywhere I want to make sure
it will get me completely.
The sea-bed attracts me, and
I’m repelled by millions
of sea shells that all look alike.
Help, I am one of them.
If only I knew, which.
How often I’ve gone straight up
to one of them, saying: That’s me.
Only, when I prised it open
it was empty.
9 Jul 2020
✊🏿Harlem by Langston Hughes
What happens to a dream deferred?
Does it dry up
like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore—
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over—
like a syrupy sweet?
Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.
Or does it explode?
9 Jul 2020
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