Anything or anyone that does not bring you alive is too small for you.
David Whyte, The House of Belonging
Always Humming
Tag: poetry
Longing to Belong
girl with eyes too large and
milky teeth fairies must wait
years for in country that ripped
her from Mama locked her in
metal cage no laughter crosses
her howl swells into lost
others’ sounds for families
babies resounds past soiled
dreams strips belonging as
those ripping teach children
how arms are weapons
Thank you to Writers Resist for first publishing “Longing to Belong.”
Independence Reenvisioned
“America” by Claude McKay, 1921
Although she feeds me bread of bitterness,
And sinks into my throat her tiger’s tooth,
Stealing my breath of life, I will confess
I love this cultured hell that tests my youth.
Her vigor flows like tides into my blood,
Giving me strength erect against her hate,
Her bigness sweeps my being like a flood.
Yet, as a rebel fronts a king in state,
I stand within her walls with not a shred
Of terror, malice, not a word of jeer.
Darkly I gaze into the days ahead,
And see her might and granite wonders there,
Beneath the touch of Time’s unerring hand,
Like priceless treasures sinking in the sand.
Claude McKay was born in Jamaica in 1889.
Poetry…
is just the shadow of the dog…
The dog is elsewhere, and constantly
on the move.
Communion
Dividing an elementary class into
boys on one side
girls on the other
invites each to imagine one group’s got
cooties! cooties! cooties!
and vulnerable to those who thrive on power
yet united, we eliminate disease, produce
thriving meccas of cultural exchange,
launch ourselves through the universe…
so if you’re invulnerable to ads and rhetoric,
think about a lemon–
thrust your teeth through thick
yellow skin to release zest’s
zinging scent and swallow
tart
puckering
juice.
That saliva now beading your gums…
Thank you to the editors of The Tishman Review for first publishing this poem.
Sound
Poetry doesn’t exist to give you prose. It’s this other thing. It is something that has to do with the sound of words, the sound of letters, the spaces between words, letters, how words connect to the mind and to the throat at the same time.
Gold
Well
It starts with the heart’s pulse
womb’s embrace
nourishment from other as if self
before we’re spit into this slip slap of blue
deafening white
indifferent ground that shatters bone
if we fall too long
too hard
yet sometimes hands, like whispers,
rustle through loss’s deep well
to retrieve silken strands
rewoven then into something like wings
that expand beyond the contraction of loss
and whisper through the dark
you are not alone.
Thank you to the editors of 5AM for first publishing this poem.
Last Days of Winter
War settles like dust for there is no other side
when winds blow particles from Sudan
to Hiroshima to icy rivers that wild coho
struggle against to lay their bright eggs.
On the first day of the first…(more)
Thank you to the editors of Buddhist Poetry Review for first publishing this poem.
Why poetry?
It is difficult
to get the news from poems
yet men die miserably every day
for lack
of what is found there.
From Asphodel, that Greeny Flower by William Carlos Williams and printed by POETRY.
