Nightlight Ghazal
Up from smolder, smoke sits knitting its braid in the dark.
Tuck the tip into your locket, curled and frayed in dark.
I took sad receipt of your last letter, a scratch of ink
and ash borne on the edge of a spade in the dark.
Bury the memory in your little black dress. One bite
of bourbon and dirge becomes serenade in the dark.
Sarah J Sloat, Citron Review
Share this:
Poetry: Muslim Christmas
It sat downstairs on the air hockey table,
its shedding needled branches, its copper wire arms.
With care, our mother draped its false twigs in silver
garlands, two for a dollar on the clearance rack,
and the ornaments–her mother’s, long dead–
we cradled in our palms like baby Jesus might have
been held, our non-savior swathed in hay in the barn-crib, safe
and human.
Leila Chatti, Linebreak
Share this:
Poem: Secret
I’ve spent a whole lifetime
trying to explain what homesickness feels like
inside my body, but when I open my mouth
I say your name.
Hannah Nahar , One Sentence Poems
This hit me right in the gut – it’s so rare as a third-culture kid to find someone who can put into words what you’ve been feeling your whole life..amazing.
Share this:
Poem: Elvis and Me
I like the kind of rain
that upsets people
postpones the softball game
stops traffic and the radio
I am the man
Salvation Army shoes
straightening cigarette butts
in front of the laundry mat
personal Jesus t-shirt
Scott Nolan, Puritan Magazine
Share this:
Sparks Fly in USA’s “Playing House”
My recent absolute obsession has been USA’s Playing House, a comedy that recently wrapped its second season. It’s flown a little under that radar due to being on USA, which is just now branching out to comedy, but it is hysterical, warm, and at times, giddily romantic. I’m in it not least for the sizzling, ongoing chemistry between Jessica St. Clair’s Emma and her high-school boyfriend/first love-turned-cop Mark (Keegan-Michael Key from Key and Peele). Emma rejected his proposal, took off out of town, and has come back thirteen years later. Let’s just say the sparks aren’t dead, and since I’m a huge sucker for old friends or people with a history falling back in love, this is right up my alley.
Share this:
Poetry: Daughter
Let us take the river
path near Fall Hill.
There we will negotiate
an outcrop with its silvered
initials & other bits of graffiti,
all the way to the broken edge
that overlooks the bend,
& hold hands until
we can no longer tell
where the river ends.
-Jon Pineda, via Poets.org
Share this:
Poetry: Pull my ends/ and see if/ they return/ to centre
Will we breathe
like ballet
dancers, learn
to bleed song—
toes pointed?
Will you still
learn this dance?
This is me
trying to
lengthen my-
self. To stand
on the thin
ends of my
swollen toes
and fool my-
self into
Marlin M. Jenkins, Puritan Magazine
Share this:
Poem for the Giraffe Marius
upon his execution by bolt gun at the Copenhagen Zoo
Because, they said, genetics. Et
cetera. Said
inbreeding. Because
when the steel bolt retracts, the giraffe’s
skull crumpling
in on itself like a cup, blood
from the heart circulates ‘still
in the edible flesh. He felt,
we are told, nothing. Not
the bolt’s cold lobotomy. Not
Not his slack body hauled
to the stage. The Danes
—babies in the arms of their mothers, in one
photograph a dad with his son—have come
hungry to the zoo’s cruel—
they call it—lesson. The lions
beside the stage circle.
-Christopher Kempf
Share this:
Yong Pal “Old Money” Music Video
Lana Del Rey’s “Old Money” + Yong Pal is an inspired combination. Gorgeous.
Coffee and Irony 