Tag Archives: poetry

Poetry: Light Makes Motion

books poetry lit November 18, 2014 Leave a comment

Naked boy makes light like
mosquito, like

key drunk and the door.
I name a ghost for him.

I don’t care – all boys end.
Light goes, popped story like

wanting any him pushed, sucked
flat mosquito, to door.

I name the ghosts for them. Light
goes, breaking out like

wound-touch, like
school child, like

boy become naked can door.

Light goes.
Naked boy crawls shadow to bed.

His name says he will have
greater fortunes than this.

Sound for ghost goes
kwi-shin

like
boy swallows mosquito, like

boy I kissed once, boy
who swallows his name.

Like

like
boy kiss drunk and the noraebang

song loud as junk food and light
light sour stomach humming light

crystal-spun light
like

anyone turned on,
turned off.

My name says I will have
greater ghosts than this.

-Kat Dixon, Kenning Journal

Morning Love Poem

books poetry lit November 14, 2014 Leave a comment

Dreamt last night I fed you, unknowingly,
something you were allergic to.

And you were gone, like that.

You don’t have even a single allergy,
but still. The dream cracked. Cars nose-dived

off snow banks into side streets. Sometimes
dreams slip poison, make the living

dead then alive again, twirling
in an unfamiliar room.

It’s hard to say I need you enough.

Today I did. Walked into your morning
shower fully clothed. All the moments

we stop ourselves just because we might
feel embarrassed or impractical, or get wet.

-Tara Skurtu, first published in the minnesota review, found via Poetry Storehouse where you can also hear a beautiful recording

Quotidian: Writers and Empathy

creativity, quotidian November 14, 2014 Leave a comment
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“Writers don’t write from experience, though many are resistant to admit that they don’t. I want to be clear about this. If you wrote from experience, you’d get maybe one book, maybe three poems. Writers write from empathy.”
– American activist, writer, educator and commentator, Nikki Giovanni

How to Find Literary Open Submission Periods and Calls for Poetry, Art, Fiction Submissions

books poetry lit, creativity November 13, 2014 Leave a comment

literary journal call for submissions

(image via Ninth Letter)

1. Keep endless lists of literary journals. Mark which ones actually publish your style, and archive the rest. Note open submission periods per year.

2. Follow LitMagNews on Twitter, where Jonathan Crowl posts and retweets calls for submissions from literary journals.

3. Join the Facebook Group for Poetry, Fiction, and Art Calls for Submissions. It’s approve-only but it’s fairly easy to get approved.

Submit!!

The White Water Lily

books poetry lit November 12, 2014 Leave a comment

Sum up with a glance the virginal absence dispersed
in this solitude and, as one gathers, in memory of a
site, one of those magical, closed water lilies which
spring up suddenly, enveloping nothingness with
their hollow whiteness, formed from untouched
dreams, from a happiness that will never take place,
and from the breath that I am now holding in fear
of an apparition, depart with it: steal silently away,
rowing little by little …

-STÉPHANE MALLARMÉ, Monet’s Garden

Poetry: Information Age

books poetry lit November 10, 2014 Comments: 2

Those weekends, while
Bradleys gathered
on Kuwait’s northern border, their barrels
raised, the tankers’
breath drawn, our father
on the kitchen table, arranged
the hulking Macintosh he’d brought
home in his Chrysler Horizon.
Five

that year, as yet
unlettered in the epic
of disasters passing
beyond our block, I watched
with my sister the flickering
disk-drive light
its small beacon beneath
his touch. The dull
screen shimmered
to life.
Like

this, he’d say taking
our hands in his own & holding
our thin fingers to the keys. & we,
first
in terror then
in awe watched
the strange combinations of letters rend
the darkness. DOS. The chalky
cursor. The whir
& clicking the disk-
drive, like
a man, moved
through its work with.
When,

in fin de siècle Boston, Bell
to the mouthpiece plucked
a reed, he
heard first the same mechanical static. He flattened
his ear to the signal’s hissing as if,
there in his basement, hailed
by the great & ruined future. Our father

huddled
before the screen. Oh son
et lumière machine. Oh we
who in that new light looked
like a family folding
in on itself on the shores
of a burning empire. On the Tigris,

tanks in formation. In the basement, Bell
to Watson—do you understand
what I am telling you?
Yes, he said.
We entered
our names & erased them.

-Christopher Kempf, The Kenyon Review

Poetry: Ghazal for My Sisters

books poetry lit, life & love November 9, 2014 Leave a comment

Be the woman you’re destined to be in this life;
graceful in motion, dance free in this life.

Buy tickets for any train, bus, plane or cab.
So much to hear, do, think and see in this life.

Speak up with body and voice, flowing hands—
you don’t always have to agree in this life.

Lay burdens down on altars, by lakes,
places to which you can flee in this life.

Eyes to the heavens, fingers to the sky,
hands up to feel the glee in this life.

All numbers on the scale act shady—
not everyone’s size three in this life.

Beads and bracelets, bridges and bayous.
Don’t have to be one she in this life.

A book, a pen, a solemn afternoon.
Savor your cups of green tea in this life.

Poems should be courted like a bride.
Get down on one knee in this life.

Come up for air beneath the glamour;
listen for your own plea in this life.

Every taste and flavor, every grain—
so glad you’ve come to me in this life.

-Allison Joseph, Valparaiso Poetry Review

Poetry: Brother Returns As Chrysanthemum

books poetry lit November 9, 2014 Leave a comment

Didn’t we think we were more than this―
little suns unfurling above the earth?

We thought we were constellations
in soil, entire galaxies anchored to dust.

Ravenous, we believed our thousand
arms could hoard the horizon―

eclipsing ourselves even as we waned,
bereft of all but shadow.

-Marci Calabretta, Thrush Poetry Journal

A Long Way from the Hamptons

books poetry lit November 7, 2014 Leave a comment

There ain’t no cure for the summertime blues. —Eddie Cochran

You can’t spend summers pulling auto parts at the Queens
warehouse without learning how tough it is to walk on concrete floors.

Not a shoe will cushion you as you trek from shelf to cart,
filling cardboard cartons with windshield wipers.

You wheel your cart around the corner to grab a Balkamp 1729
and discover Thelma leaning up against the metal cabinets,

sniffling and rubbing her foot. This is temporary for me, you think.
You are so bored you pull three or four orders at once,

boxes stacked up in the cart, tiny screws hop-skipping
into the wrong order. The checkers on the packing line call you

for pulling a 1728 instead of 29, and you run
the correct part to the front. You are still so bored

you vow you’ll never complain about droning lectures
and fall term classes that were not your first choice.

Afternoons, you smoke a joint with the boss’s daughter, ruining
your accuracy for the rest of the day. You can’t afford to get fired.

Going home in your red Chevy with rotted floorboards, you watch
the street roll under you like a conveyor belt studded with rocks.

You idle at the stop sign, next to a Mustang with a sun-tanned boy
at the wheel. His radio is turned to all the songs of summer.

You don’t know what you know, just that your legs ache, and
still you tap them to the music before the boy drives away.

-Elizabeth Drewry, Cooper Street Journal

Poetry: Burdens

books poetry lit November 7, 2014 Leave a comment

Already my daughter’s looks
are something to bear.
Gold hair heavy
on her small shoulders.
Eyes big as burdens.

She can’t escape
people looking at her,
so lets bangs grow
over her face
like thick curtains
almost closed.

Once, on the street,
a man touched
the glowing tip
of his cigarette
right to the center
of her forehead.

A crazy man, you say.
But I know
it was beauty
leaving its hot kiss.

-Francesca Bell, Blue Lyra Review