Read Good Poetry

10 Jan: "DELORES JEPPS" by Tim Seibles

"DELORES JEPPS"

It seems insane now, but
she’d be standing soaked
in schoolday morning light,
her loose-leaf notebook,
flickering at the bus stop,
and we almost trembled

at the thought of her mouth
filled for a moment with both
of our short names. I don’t know
what we saw when we saw
her face, but at fifteen there’s
so much left to believe in,

that a girl with sunset
in her eyes, with a kind smile,
and a bright blue miniskirt softly
shading her bare thighs really
could be The Goddess. Even
the gloss on her lips sighed
Kiss me and you’ll never

do homework again. Some Saturdays
my ace, Terry, would say, “Guess
who was buying Teaberry gum
in the drugstore on Stenton?”
And I could see the sweet
epiphany still stunning his eyes

and I knew that he knew
that I knew he knew I knew—
especially once summer had come,
and the sun stayed up till we had
nothing else to do but wish
and wonder about fine sistas

in imsy culottes and those hotpants!
James Brown screamed about: Crystal
Berry, Diane Ramsey, Kim Graves,
and her. is was around 1970: Vietnam
to the left of us, Black Muslims
to the right, big afros all over my

Philadelphia. We had no idea
where we were, how much history
had come before us—how much
cruelty, how much more dying
was on the way. For me and Terry,
it was a time when everything said

maybe, and maybe being blinded
by the beauty of a tenth grader
was proof that, for a little while,
we were safe from the teeth
that keep chewing up the world.
I’d like to commend

my parents for keeping calm,
for not quitting their jobs or grabbing
guns and for never letting up
about the amazing “so many doors
open to good students.” I wish

I had kissed
Delores Jepps. I wish I could
have some small memory of her
warm and spicy mouth to wrap
these hungry words around. I

would like to have danced with her,
to have slow-cooked to a slow song
in her sleek, toffee arms: her body
balanced between the Temptations’
five voices and me—a boy anointed

with puberty, a kid with a B
average and a cool best friend.
I don’t think I’ve ever understood
how lonely I am, but I was

closer to it at fteen because
I didn’t know anything: my heart
so near the surface of my skin

I could have moved it with my hand.

9 Jan: "The Dream About Shouting" by Dominique Christina

Click here for a short talk and reading from Dominique Christina.

"The Dream About Shouting" by Dominique Christina.

in the dream every word
is red paint
i speak, it look like a murder scene.

they try shutting my lips
with caution tape

but I am burnin' my mouth down.

it's gon' come back to me
a new thing
no troll bridged tongue
no yawping
soundless empty.

in the dream
i am waiting for my mouth to be born

when she is...

everything gon' be loud.

8 Jan: "M&M Stares" by Erin Forrest

a bag of M&M
at me it stares
the gym was lunch
to falter is loss

7 Jan: "Untitled" by Jason Shinder

Untitled by Jason Shinder

If there is no cure, I still want to correct a few things

and think mostly of people, and have them all alive.
I want a door opening in me that I can enter

and feel the clarity of evening and the stars beginning.

One after another, I want my mistakes returning
and to approach them on a beach like a man

for whom there is no division between on way or another.

My most faithful body, you are not in the best of shape,
far from the glitter of the river in which you once swam.

But I want good tears when I stand on the street

and, from the sky, drifts down the finest mist on my face.
Not everything is given and it should not permit sadness.

Let me
Let me keep on describing things to be sure they happened.

6 Jan: "Blue" by Carl Phillips

Blue

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BY CARL PHILLIPS

As through marble or the lining of

certain fish split open and scooped

clean, this is the blue vein

that rides, where the flesh is even

whiter than the rest of her, the splayed

thighs mother forgets, busy struggling

for command over bones: her own,

those of the chaise longue, all

equally uncooperative, and there’s

the wind, too. This is her hair, gone

from white to blue in the air.

This is the black, shot with blue, of my dark

daddy’s knuckles, that do not change, ever.

Which is to say they are no more pale

in anger than at rest, or when, as

I imagine them now, they follow

the same two fingers he has always used

to make the rim of every empty blue

glass in the house sing.

Always, the same

blue-to-black sorrow

no black surface can entirely hide.

Under the night, somewhere

between the white that is nothing so much as

blue, and the black that is, finally; nothing,

I am the man neither of you remembers.

Shielding, in the half-dark,

the blue eyes I sometimes forget

I don’t have. Pulling my own stoop-

shouldered kind of blues across paper.

Apparently misinformed about the rumored

stuff of dreams: everywhere I inquired,

I was told look for blue.

5 Jan: "A Small Needful Fact" by Ross Gay

A Small Needful Fact

Is that Eric Garner worked

for some time for the Parks and Rec.

Horticultural Department, which means,

perhaps, that with his very large hands,

perhaps, in all likelihood,

he put gently into the earth

some plants which, most likely,

some of them, in all likelihood,

continue to grow, continue

to do what such plants do, like house

and feed small and necessary creatures,

like being pleasant to touch and smell,

like converting sunlight

into food, like making it easier

for us to breathe.

4 Jan: "The Woman Is about Hair" by Joshua Jennifer Espinoza

The woman is about hair

gathering on the ground and between the breasts

that move up and down with each breath

in suffering.

In twenty years I will exist.

Even if i’m dead in twenty years I will exist

more than I do now.

I shave my legs in the shower

until my ass goes numb.

The water gathers all of me around

and says “that’s what you get”

the same way men say

“that’s just how the world works”

as if they’re happy about it.

I make a prayer for you in front of the closet mirror

where the light from inside moves

around the room to see itself reflected.

The woman sees herself in everything and nothing.

You can open the news and read

anything you want to.

That’s the magic of being alive here.

You can even read about yourself

long after you’re dead.

3 Jan: "It Is Quiet in the Morning" by Joshua Jennifer Espinoza

It is quiet in the morning.

I am female-bodied.

Last night’s air is still

inside the trees.

A loud clap of thunder

from earlier this month

is stuck in the window.

I dress myself with

a large paper bag

and go outside in the wind.

Nothing happens.

I shudder

and break into pieces

but nothing happens.

You come out and find me

alone in the grass

covered in a purple rash.

You call me lacking

and kiss me with the words

that erase me from existence.

Everything I’ve done

comes from a place of dying.

2 Jan: "The Moon Is Trans" by Joshua Jennifer Espinoza

"THE MOON IS TRANS"

The moon is trans.

From this moment forward, the moon is trans.

You don’t get to write about the moon anymore unless you respect that.

You don’t get to talk to the moon anymore unless you use her correct pronouns.

You don’t get to send men to the moon anymore unless their job is

to bow down before her and apologize for the sins of the earth.

She is waiting for you, pulling at you softly,

telling you to shut the fuck up already please.

Scientists theorize the moon was once a part of the earth

that broke off when another planet struck it.

Eve came from Adam’s rib.

Etc.

Do you believe in the power of not listening

to the inside of your own head?

I believe in the power of you not listening

to the inside of your own head.

This is all upside down.

We should be talking about the ways that blood

is similar to the part of outer space between the earth and the moon

but we’re busy drawing it instead.

The moon is often described as dead, though she is very much alive.

The moon has not known the feeling of not wanting to be dead

for any extended period of time

in all of her existence, but

she is not delicate and she is not weak.

She is constantly moving away from you the only way she can.

She never turns her face from you because of what you might do.

She will outlive everything you know.

1 Jan: "A Woman Speaks" by Audre Lorde

A Woman Speaks