Tag: poetry

To temper an obstinate and wicked
Pain that has been burrowing into me for some time
I try, now and again, to cry out piteously
To the one who, oh miserable me, preys upon my heart.
But, a disciple of desire, my voice
Is scarcely heard, and already it moans and shouts.
What a harsh refrain, and so inimical to my longings,
I am deterred from begging for mercy.

And a thought says to me: fool, do you not see
That you always receive both scorn and injury
If you throw yourself meekly at the feet of someone cruel?

Thus, in silence, I breed a poorly concealed
Affliction in my heart, which is where the seed
Of that cruel love that gives me such despair took root.

Paolina Secco-Suardo Grismondi translated from Italian by Alani Rosa Hicks-Bartlett via swwim everyday

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i am a promise awake with knowing

a pull in a thread

sprawling

a sputtering

a stuttering

a slant

a song

a rising

a falling

[…]

longing for the pierce of stars

tonguing the night

brushing away the darkness

til there is light

around

beneath

inside

Desire [even in the time of the tyrant], Leah Umansky

Dove, Rita, Gertrude Clarke Whittall Poetry And Literature Fund, and Archive Of Recorded Poetry And Literature. Rita Dove reading her poems in the Montpelier Room, May 4. 1995. Audio. Retrieved from the Library of Congress, <www.loc.gov/item/95770167/>.

Contents :

From Mother love : Heroes ; Persephone, falling ; The narcissus flower ; Statistic : the witness ; Mother Love ; Breakfast of champions ; Persehpone in hell (section I) ; Wiederkehr ; The Bistro Styx ; Demeter mourning ; Exit ; Afield ; Lost brilliance ; Demeter, waiting ; Lamentations ; Used ; Missing ; Demeter’s prayer to Hades ; Her island — Evening primrose — Incarnation in Phoenix — The first book — Vacation.

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Heroes

A flower in a weedy field
make it a poppy. You pick it.
Because it begins to wilt

you run to the nearest house
to ask for a jar of water.
The woman on the porch starts

screaming: you’ve picked the last poppy
in her miserable garden, the one
that gives her the strength every morning

to rise! It’s too late for apologies
though you go through the motions, offering
trinkets and a juicy spot in the written history

she wouldn’t live to read, anyway
So you strike her, she hits
her head on a white boulder,

and there’s nothing to be done
but break the stone into gravel
to prop up the flower in the stolen jar

you have to take along,
because you’re a fugitive now
and you can’t leave clues.

Although the story’s starting to unravel,
the villagers stirring as your heart
pounds into your throat. O why

did you pick that idiot flower?
Because it was the last one
and you knew

it was going to die.

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Related : Louise Glück’s Persephone the Wanderer

You Are Who I Love by Aracelis Girmay

You cheering for the bees

You with cats in your voice in the morning, feeding cats

You protecting the river

You are who I love delivering babies, nursing the sick

Kenning Editions presents a bilingual reading with Urayoán Noel and Legna Rodríguez Iglesias, to launch TÍTULO / TITLE, a book of poems by the Cuban poet, prose writer, and playwright Legna Rodríguez Iglesias, published for the first time in Spanish, and in English translation by Katherine M. Hedeen.

…she doesn’t write poetry anymore, she does dishes…