i need to know their names
those women i would have walked with
jauntily the way men go in groups
swinging their arms, and the ones
those sweating women whom i would have joined
after a hard game to chew the fat
what would we have called each other laughing
joking into our beer? where are my gangs,
my teams, my mislaid sisters?
all the women who could have known me,
where in the world are their names?
Tag: Poetry
Strength by Ijeoma Umebinyuo
i am writing for
the women
who were once girls
judging themselves
through the eyes
of souls
who couldn’t comprehend
their light
i am writing for
the women
who stammered
just to speak
and
who forced themselves
into silence
when ugly words
were once thrown at them
i am writing for
the women
who keep kneeling
screaming at their phone
as lovers leave
as friends depart
i am writing for
all these women
who still
show up
with a smile
after battling their demons
the night before.
i am also writing
for the women
who do not smile
the next day,
the women who
need
a day or two
to recover
from the brutalities
of the world.
Vulnerability Study by Solmaz Sharif
your face turning from mine
to keep from cumming
8 strawberries in a wet blue bowl
baba holding his pants
up at the checkpoint
a newlywed securing her updo
with grenade pins
a wall cleared of nails
for the ghosts to walk through
Patis by Romalyn Ante
If there is one vivid memory I have of Batangas,
it is of a favourite dish: sheen pieces of bullet tuna
wrapped in banana leaves, with earth-dark kamias,
simmered in a terracotta pot.
If there is one vivid memory I have of that house,
it is the plastic table mat. Floral-printed, sleek
in the light sifting through the window rails.
I cringed at the thought that the mat would coil
when the hot pot was laid.
My grandma’s specialty. Sour-salt to the bone
best eaten with boiled rice, using bare hands.
Two decades on, no one cooks patis anymore.
My grandma, in her wheelchair, calls me ‘sister’.
The locals no longer nap in the afternoon.
The grove of mango and bilimbi, the cornfields,
the water buffalos – all replaced by tiles and lifts.
There is a certain sour-salt taste
I always long for.
by nayyirah waheed
do not choose the lesser life.
do you hear me
you you hear me
chose the life that is yours
the life that is seducing your lungs
that is dripping down your chin
Che Fece … Il Gran Rifiuto by C. P. Cavafy translated by Edmund Keeley
For some people the day comes
when they have to declare the great Yes
or the great No. It’s clear at once who has the Yes
ready within him; and saying it,
he goes from honor to honor, strong in his conviction.
He who refuses does not repent. Asked again,
he’d still say no. Yet that no—the right no—
drags him down all his life.
You Who Want by Hadewijch II (Antwerp, 13th century) translated by Jane Hirshfield
You who want
knowledge,
see the Oneness
within.
There you
will find
the clear mirror
already waiting.
The Sunlight by Miguel Murphy
You wouldn’t know it could feel so redundant—
the wolfish starlings plunder the grass
and nothing burns. Big Sur. We came here to rest.
The coast, a color. The thought of nothing,
the blue middle of my life—
A cliff side and a footpath
down to the small beach. And fire, there
a cold wind. Long waves the whole year—restless,
leafy and metallic,
the brightness of ash. The sunlight
like something from Tarkovsky, one pointless, small ambition
in which passion turns into a terrifying tenderness. Deep
cargo in the hull; heartache. And somehow you knew
you should light the match, like a person condemned
to whom the starlight is
another brief monument to what
is fallible. Your life,
little fireling, little warlike starling, flickering indignantly, all
erotic umbrage. Broken wing in my hand. Pathological, shy
flame, I will care for you. Little shape of my fate, my
certain failure. What
is desire, if not
this burden. Dearth and glut
cupped in your hands: wild, deadheaded, and blue.
Stolen Moments by Kim Addonizio
What happened, happened once. So now it’s best
in memory – an orange he sliced: the skin
unbroken, the knife, the chilled wedge
lifted to my mouth, his mouth, the thin
membrane between us, the exquisite orange,
tongue, orange, my nakedness and his,
the way he pushed me up against the fridge –
Now I get to feel his hands again, the kiss
that didn’t last, but sent some neural twin
flashing wildly through the cortex. Love’s
merciless, the way it travels in
and keeps emitting light. Beside the stove
we ate an orange. And there were purple flowers
on the table. And we still had hours.
The Solitude of Night by Li Po Translated by Shigeyoshi Obata
It was at a wine party—
I lay in a drowse, knowing it not.
The blown flowers fell and filled my lap.
When I arose, still drunken,
The birds had all gone to their nests,
And there remained but few of my comrades.
I went along the river—alone in the moonlight.
Compassion Camp 