poetry reading

greed

Standard

Greed

–Pamela Cochran

I would never have believed
that I’d awake one day
in a lonely cell, having stripped
myself of everything precious
that I’d always taken for granted
by shaking a fist at my creator
for ending the suffering of my beloved
in a way other than I’d imagined while
on my knees;
awaiting transport
to a place no one belongs, except
to the state, whose
main concern is the bottom line; bodies
for which they receive top dollar,
but never humans, never
souls, never mothers whose lives have been nothing
more than a series of tragic events,
and are now doomed to
walk this journey
through the wilderness with
no prophet to lead, no
cloud by day or
fire by night to prevent
the aimless wander
of the hopelessly exhausted, desperate
to be anywhere but here;
or destined—
and placed, precisely
on this map,
at this point—
a testament
that it doesn’t have to end
here, that life’s treasure
chest of grace, hope,
and redemption
can be uncovered if we
don’t
stop
digging.

 

Photo by Chris Yang on Unsplash

of a vanished kingdom

Standard

Of a Vanished Kingdom
–Yehuda Amichai
Put your face to the wind
For I do not know when again
We have too little time left to forget.
We cannot rely on forgetting.
The wind pasted an old newspaper to the olive tree.

Put your face.

Once we stood together
As a symbol of a vanished kingdom:
wild beasts, banners, and obsolete weapons
In one bundle, tied with a band of soothing words
In an ancient language.
A phrase from the prayerbook of history
In your voice a tune still remains
of Talmudic students.
“Do you love me?”
If we don’t remain together, we won’t remain at all.
Let alone live.

Photo by Flor Saurina on Unsplash

forgotten

Standard

Forgotten

–Jennifer DeMott

Like cream skimmed off
the top—
foam
running
down the sides and I
am left,
rich residue
wasted
at the bottom
just to be
wiped up later
and suddenly
nobody
knows
where
I
am.

Photo by Nikolai Chernichenko on Unsplash

of a lack in our administrations

Standard

Of a Lack in Our Administrations
–Hannah Brooks-Motl

In all this system I watched a cloud fall
Carted wet down the design
Need is a big pool
Lo go its creaturely waves
Commerce came open and bright like a starfuck
“I hear, with great shame for our century”
Last zing on the stairs
“So-and-so wants company to Paris; so-and-so is looking for a
          servant with such-and-such qualifications”
Execution too diddled back then
“So-and-so wants a master”

 

Photo by Lee Jeffs on Unsplash

black-handed curse

Standard

Black-Handed Curse
–Wanda Coleman

May the sky widen between your eyes
and a storm twist across your thoughts.

May the false images you create devour all you
give birth to. May the false images you worship obscure love.

May you look in the mirror and see the malignancy.

May you writhe in dishonor. May you writhe hearing the voices
of those you have dishonored. May you writhe knowing the
whole of the pain you’ve caused others.

May the limitations you impose on those more gifted
than yourself steal the beats of your heart.

May you be kept out of the heaven
from which you have kept others.

May no one hear your last words.
May a small rodent eat your last words.

Photo by Giorgio Trovato on Unsplash

 

chimera

Standard

Chimera
–Vievee Francis

She’s not “maternal,” she’s dangerous.

—Jamaal May

I have no charms. Admittedly.
No gold comb can move through
This mane. My skin is not translucent.
Mine is a tail to fear. I know.
And though a mother may destroy,
She too sees fit to create beauty
That would eventually grow into forms
I would swallow if I gave in
To my hungers. But, up from my wounds—
From this goat’s body—
Up from my wood-smoke lungs, from
The milk of me, comes a song, a melody
To open yours, then lick them clean.

 

Photo by Orlando Madrigal on Unsplash

human interest story

Standard

Human Interest Story
–Sandra Lim

Snow would have been breaking the drifts that day, on a mild
mood.

My father was boarding at the home of a missionary couple in
Seoul, getting by on books and the radio and cheap noodles.

His older brother hanged himself that winter in Pusan. They
would say afterward that it was a plain death, funded by bad
numbers, some selfishness, unusual cold.

Think of a needle dropped into the sea.

He had a pleasantly objective feeling about himself that morning,
as the early sky gently ripped into red. He thought about Business
English, the truth of money.

Across town, a diary opened. And there were the white, cooling
coals in barrels.

There was a pretty young wife and one serious boy and one very
quiet girl. They awakened one day to a new planet, where the
spaces between people appeared slightly widened.

Maybe you can’t penetrate events with reportage, but facts have a
sly, unanswerable texture that appears social.

To relieve ourselves of open-ended narrative, we read into the
winter stars all evening. There are just stars and stars and stars.

We know what it’s like to fall in love and be disassembled, but we
still want to pull death right off the bodies of one another.

These were spectacular nights, said my father. They were full of
philosophy and political theory, noisy reversals, French movies.

The romantic grace we comprehend sits with ease in the real
world; it is almost nothing.

Now he is carrion, stitched forever in the cramp of a trial.

No one can evict us from books! he used to say, running through
astonishment at full speed.

Photo by Adrien Olichon on Unsplash

‘lost’ first

Standard

‘Lost’ First Languages Leave Permanent Mark on the Brain, New Study Reveals

–Tiana Nobile
To experience the world muffled
through the wall of skin
is like wearing earmuffs
while deep sea diving.
Cacophony of whalesong
and sunken earthquakes,
tonal pitches seep in.
*
How do I translate
the sound of my mother’s
moaning? It’s a soft wail
I hang on the wall
of my windpipe.
*
They say the circulatory system
is the first to develop
in an embryo.

That the body generates cells
to divide and multiply, to form
a swelling ball.

That your blood weaved and whirled
to become my blood.

Who was the first you told?
*
At week eleven, fingernails begin to appear.
I bet you didn’t know that nails
are made of dead blood cells.
How something could grow inside you
that’s both alive and dead.
*
Once I learned how to talk, I did not
stop. I drew blood and licked my teeth
with language, English spilling down my chin.
Later, I learned how words can wound
without touching, and I tucked myself
in a bed of silence.

Photo by Diana Polekhina on Unsplash

death wish

Standard

Death Wish
–Josh Alex Baker

I ask when
is the last time you returned yourself to yourself. I
am a hypocrite to make
you answer what I cannot. Love
is a death wish between two men bold enough to believe in it. To
love you is to fade daily. To leave you
is to die sooner. When I
was a boy, I would try
to see how long I could hold my breath. With-
holding would become a weapon one day. Each
theft, my pride and possession. Every stroke
of midnight brings its own lost slipper. Full of
beg, I wait for a prince longing to give my
breath back to me. Heretic tongue,
I will never admit what he means to
me. Will say
he was simply a game I
could not pass up. Love
is a death wish between you
and the you you’re becoming. I will never admit to
him that his love feels like a tease
from God. A gift I
only deserve as prelude to punishment. Love
is a bluff  between goodbye and forever. You
give yourself to the gamble, to
the breathlessness that is a hammer
on your chest. I
will never admit what his love
is to me. Could you
blame me? Firm as ice, given over to
the power of his touch. Left to melt
into a nothingness that I
no longer recognize. Love
is a death wish, paid in blood.  Just for you

 

Photo by alexandru vicol on Unsplash 

flatline

Standard

Flatline
–Margaret Atwood

Things wear out. Also fingers.
Gnarling sets in.
Your hands crouch in their mittens.
Forget chopsticks, and buttons.

Feet have their own agendas.
They scorn your taste in shoes
and ignore your trails, your maps.

Ears are superfluous:
What are they for,
those alien pink flaps?
Skull fungus.

The body, once your accomplice,
is now your trap.
The sunrise makes you wince:
too bright, too flamingo.

After a lifetime of tangling,
of knotted snares and lacework,
of purple headspace tornados
with their heartrace and rubble,
you crave the end of mazes

and pray for a white shore,
an ocean with its horizon;
not, so much, bliss
but a flat line you steer for.

No more hiss and slosh,
no reefs, no deeps,
no throat rattle of gravel.

It sounds like this:

 

Photo by Christof Görs on Unsplash