Birthday Cakes (#2sdayPoems)

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#2sDayPoems, Barbara Crooker, Birthday Cakes, Hanif Willis-Abdurraqib, I Want to Write a Poem to Celebrate, Pinwheel Journal, Rihanna--Birthday Cake, Whale Road Review

 

Poets Hanif Willis-Abdurraqib and Barbara Crooker have wildly different takes on the celebration of passing years.

 

RIHANNA–BIRTHDAY CAKE

by Hanif Willis-Abdurraqib

rarely is it a good idea to tell someone when they have appeared
in a dream that came to you during a long and hot

week. You know, the kind of week where you do not sleep
much, and instead drag your fingertip along the fluorescent

graves. The kind of week where you say how or oh,
not again. This week, the politician on television says that we are fighting

a different kind of war and I wonder if this means
the kind where everyone returns to their homes unburied, a candle

pushed into a sheet of sugar for every year they’ve missed.
I think I’m saying that a different kind of war is maybe not a war

at all, but then what here would keep us up at night.
I shake my worry for the born and unborn alike out

of a pill box and swallow it with a glass of water. And I hesitate
to say this, friends. But when I finally let go and closed my eyes…

FULL TEXT HERE (Pinwheel Journal)

 

 

I WANT TO WRITE A POEM TO CELEBRATE

by Barbara Crooker

the body, as it ages, its mystery and majesty,
the scars, the lines, the silver threads
unwinding. I no longer care about air-brushed
perfect people in glossy magazines. I want to celebrate
the real: weak ankles courtesy of afternoons
chasing a puck on a frozen pond. Thighs, more Venus
of Willendorf than Kate Moss or Twiggy. Upper arms
that wobble like jello no matter how many reps
I do at the gym. Belly that stretched big as a watermelon,
then spit out (how did that happen?) sweet pink babies.
Breasts that fed them, rivers of thin blue milk.
Yes, I’ve made the turn onto the unpaved road,
where fat yellow leaves hang overhead. Things…

 

FULL TEXT HERE (Whale Road Review)

 

Enchanting Ladies (#2sdayPoems)

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#2sDayPoems, Aimee Nezhukumatathil, Alchemy for Cells& Other Beasts, Copper Canyon Press, Empty Mirror, Entre Rios, Fairytale Review, Little Spells, Maya Jewell Zeller, Oceanic, The Woman Who Eats Soil, women poets

Today’s #2sdayPoems brings together selections from Maya Jewell Zeller’s  “little spells” at Empty Mirror and Aimee Nezhukumatahil’s Hao Fenglas poem from the Green Issue of Fairytale Review. Scroll to the end for a little bonus podcast.

 

LITTLE SPELL WITH CHEST X-RAY

by Maya Jewell Zeller

sweet girl made of dust & water/ please leave
jewelry at home/ wear open, loose clothing/
this will not hurt a bit/ possibly we will ask you
to don this gown/ you are going to experience
a small dose of ionizing radiation/ you will not
feel it at all/ but possibly you will see the way…

 

FULL TEXT HERE

from Alchemy for Cells & Other Beasts (Entre Rios, 2017)

 

 

THE WOMAN WHO EATS SOIL

by Aimee Nezhukumatathil

What can the unfortunate insect do
if it is found wanting in weight?
A pill-bug rolls into a bead of silent news.
The damselfly can bend a petal

back without leaving her mark. Trickster.
There is a woman named Hao Fenglas
who cupped soil to her lips
for over seventy years. In the hem

of her blouse, in the roll of her pant leg,
she brings back a crumble of earth.
Knives stripe a feathered neck
in the kitchen for a thin broth so no one

hears her first….

 

FULL TEXT HERE

forthcoming collection: Oceanic (Copper Canyon)

BONUS: Aimee Nez Live Stream replay at Copper Canyon

#2sdayPoems (2×2) featuring Natalie Young

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#2sDayPoems, #readwomen, Drunken Boat, Hurricane Maria, Natalie Young, Puerto Rico, Rock and Sling, Sugar House Review, Superstition Review, Terrain, women poets

Natalie Young is my kind of poet, art director by day, wordsmith by night, a leftie, a mixed blood, a fan of Tom Selleck, purple pototoes and Oscar the Grouch. She also happens to be the founding editor of Sugar House Review, a poetry gem. And although I question her taste for green olives and swiss cheese, I find her poems always absolutely delectable.

On more of a down-note, as the terrible fly-over footage of Puerto Rico’s devastation from Hurricane Maria rolls on, I keep thinking about her monster poems from one of the 2015(?) issues of Rock And Sling. Yes, they are about the personified Great Salt Lake, but the lonely orphan “island” felt like PR.

Anyway, I can only give you one of the monster poems (from her own website), but I’m throwing in three more on other “alien” subjects from their various online homes.

THE GREAT SALT LAKE HAS BEEN SHRINKING SINCE THE ROUNDING OF THE LAST ICE AGE

The monster has lasted centuries

            with little light, in one place.

This lake once spanned hundreds of monsters,

           millions of gallons to roam.

Now he has a small city, a village

           deep enough to safely travel. He doesn’t mind much,

but wonders about humans and sun.

What will be done when the many things collected

           are uncovered? Bones and rings and rocks.

What was lost. Cast off.

           The trash of time. He and his house release

only what breathes oxygen or is…

FULL TEXT HERE (you may have to scroll)

 

notes on earth life

A child in a pink coat leaves her music lesson. Her cheeks match her coat. Her father sells
insurance based on how long an equation expects a person to stay alive.

The old man died. Sometimes humans just die. And you cannot save them.
Sometimes humans do not die, and you cannot save them.

There is a television program about a real human family doing normal earth things—there are
many programs with real people doing what people always do. Humans stop doing what they do
to watch.

When humans determine an animal is too ill, they…

FULL TEXT HERE (w/audio)

the mums are always dying

We’re gonna do it easy, but then we’re gonna do the finish rough.
—Tina Turner’s intro to “Proud Mary”

Holding out a bundle of mums
from the grocery store
to offset a bad day,

She tells the alien how hard it is
to remember everything, every day to do
every thing, how proud she feels

to have shopped and gathered
so much, saved
dollars with coupons and…

FULL TEXT HERE (w/audio)

 

bird of war

Today let’s talk about the bird who wages his own war.
He flutters shades of late summer: cloudless sky, cornfields,
early-morning sun, asphalt.

He clangs his black beak against his cage in rapid fire, hurls
steel bowl to ground, a landmine of fruity pellets. His head full
of mischief juts to the hum of vacuum erasing siege.

Tomorrow he will…

FULL TEXT HERE

Symbols of Life, Rebirth & Renewal (#2sdayPoems)

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#2sDayPoems, Alice Walker, Andrea Cohen, blue bowls, Cherries, Daily Painter, flash fiction, Fourway Books, Furst Not Mine, Graywolf Press, Jane Kenyon, Kathy Wochele, New England, Orion, Poetry Foundation, Southern, women painters, Women writers

Kathy Wochele–“Cherries ” 8×10

Today’s picks are from New England masters, and are poems short in length but long on symbolism–life (blue bowls), rebirth (cherries) and renewal (robin), to name a few.  I also wanted to gift you with a beautiful bit of flash fiction centered around the same symbolism.

BONUS ALERT===> Click Alice Walker’s “My Mother’s Blue Bowl” to read the piece in its entirety.  And be sure to check out more work from Daily Painter Kathy Wochele, whose painting “Cherries” is featured above.

 

THE BLUE BOWL

by Jane Kenyon

Like primitives we buried the cat

with his bowl. Bare-handed

we scraped sand and gravel

back into the hole. It fell with a hiss

and thud on his side,

on his long red fur, the white feathers

that grew between his toes, and his

long, not to say aquiline, nose.

We stood and brushed each other off.

There are sorrows much keener than these.

Silent the rest of the day, we worked,

ate, stared, and slept. It stormed

all night; now it clears, and a robin…

 

FULL TEXT HERE (w/ audio)

from Collected Poems (Graywolf, 2005)

 

CHERRIES

by Andrea Cohen

 

In the minute it took
to fetch the blue bowl

from the kitchen
to pick the just-ripe

cherries, the blackbirds
had come. They picked

the branches clean, ascending
into their own blue bowl.

Lacking wings, I…

 

FULL TEXT HERE
latest collection: Furs Not Mine (Fourway, 2015)

2 Views on the Oyster (#2sdayPoems)

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#2sDayPoems, Anne Sexton, British Women's Poetry, ellen bass, Food Poems, Like a Beggar, Oysters, Selected Poems of Anne Sexton

The phenomenal poets Anne Sexton & Ellen Bass bring two different views on the much-loved, summer favorite:

OYSTERS

by Anne Sexton

Oysters we ate,
sweet blue babies,
twelve eyes looked up at me,
running with lemon and Tabasco.
I was afraid to eat this father-food
and Father laughed and
drank down his martini,
clear as tears.
It was a soft medicine
that came from the sea into my mouth,
moist and plump.
I swallowed.
It went down like a large pudding.
Then I ate one o’clock and two o’clock.
Then I laughed and then we laughed
and let me take note –
there was a…

FULL TEXT HERE

from Selected Poems of Anne Sexton

 

REINCARNATION

by Ellen Bass

Who would believe in reincarnation
if she thought she would return as
an oyster? Eagles and wolves
are popular. Even domesticated cats
have their appeal. It’s not terribly distressing
to imagine being Missy, nibbling
kibble and lounging on the windowsill.
But I doubt the toothsome oyster has ever
been the totem of any shaman
fanning the Motherpeace Tarot
or smudging with sage.
Yet perhaps we could do worse
than aspire to be a plump bivalve. Humbly,
the oyster persists in….

 

FULL TEXT HERE (w/ audio)
latest collection: Like a Beggar