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manwalksintobar · 2 months

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Victims of the Latest Dance Craze // Cornelius Eady

The streamers choking the main arteries Of downtown. The brass band led by a child From the home for the handicapped. The old men Showing their hair (what’s left of it), The buttons of their shirts Popping in time To the salsa flooding out Of their portable headphones,

And mothers letting their babies Be held by strangers. And the bus drivers Taping over their fare boxes And willing to give directions.

Is there any reason to mention All the drinks are on the house? Thick, adolescent boys Dismantle their BB guns. Here is the world (what’s left of it), In brilliant motion, The oil slick at the curb Danced into a thousand Splintered steps. The bag ladies toss off their Garments To reveal wings.

“This dance you do,” drawls the cop, “What do you call it?” We call it scalding the air. We call it dying with your Shoes on.

And across the street The bodies of tramps Stumble In a sober language.

And across the street Shy young girls step behind Their nameless boyfriends, Twirling their skirts.

And under an archway A delivery boy discovers His body has learned to speak, And what does this street look like If not a runway, A polished wood floor?

From the air, Insects drawn by the sweat Alight, when possible, On the blur Of torsos. It is the ride Of their tiny lives. The wind that burns their wings, The heaving, oblivious flesh, Mountains stuffed with panic, An ocean That can’t make up its mind. They drop away With the scorched taste Of vertigo.

And under a swinging light bulb Some children Invent a game With the shadow the bulb makes, And the beat of their hearts. They call it dust in the mouth. They call it horse with no rider. They call it school with empty books.

In the next room Their mother throws her dress away to chance. It drops to the floor Like a brush sighs across a drum head, And when she takes her lover, What are they thinking of If not a ballroom filled with mirrors, A world where no one has the right To stumble?

In a parking lot An old man says this: “I am a ghost dance. I remember the way my hair felt, Damp with sweat and wind.

When the wind kisses the leaves, I am dancing. When the subway hits the third rail, I am dancing. When the barrel goes over Niagara Falls, I am dancing. Music rings my bones like metal.

O, Jazz has come from heaven,” he says, And at the z he jumps, arcing his back like a heron’s neck, And stands suddenly revealed As a balance demon, A home for Stetson hats.

We have all caught the itch: The neon artist Wiring up his legs, The tourist couple Recording the twist on their Instamatic camera, And in a factory, A janitor asks his broom For a waltz, And he grasps it like a woman He’d have to live another Life to meet, And he spins around the dust bin And machines and thinks: Is everybody happy? And he spins out the side door, Avoiding the cracks in the sidewalk, Grinning as if he’d just received The deepest kiss in the world.

#poetry #Cornelius Eady #American poetry #dance #dancing #poems of praise #loving the world anyway #Black American poetry #songs of the street #kiss

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agirlnamedbone · 1 year

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pub. in Blackbird Review

#cornelius eady #op #poem #poetry #grief #black poets #poc poets #terrorism #collective grief #9/11

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allyourprettywords · 2 years

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"A Refusal to Mourn the Deaths, by Gunfire, of Three Men in Brooklyn," John Murillo

“And at times, didn’t the whole country try to break his skin?” —Tim Seibles

You strike your one good match to watch its bloom and jook, a swan song just before a night wind comes to snuff it. That’s the kind of day it’s been. Your Black & Mild, now, useless as a prayer pressed between your lips. God damn the wind. And everything it brings. You hit the corner store to cop a light, and spy the trouble rising in the cashier’s eyes. TV reports some whack job shot two cops then popped himself, here, in the borough, just one mile away. You’ve heard this one before. In which there’s blood. In which a black man snaps. In which things burn. You buy your matches. Christ is watching from the wall art, swathed in fire.

“This country is mine as much as an orphan’s house is his.” —Terrance Hayes

To breathe it in, this boulevard perfume of beauty shops and roti shacks, to take in all its funk, calypso, reggaeton, and soul, to watch school kids and elders go about their days, their living, is, if not to fall in love, at least to wonder why some want us dead. Again this week, they killed another child who looked like me. A child we’ll march about, who’ll grace our placards, say, then be forgotten like a trampled pamphlet. What I want, I’m not supposed to. Payback. Woe and plenty trouble for the gunman’s clan. I’m not suppose to. But I want a brick, a window. One good match, to watch it bloom.

“America, I forgive you… I forgive you eating black children, I know your hunger.” --Bob Kaufman

You dream of stockpiles—bottles filled with gas and wicks stripped from a dead cop’s slacks—a row of paddy wagons parked, a pitcher’s arm. You dream of roses, time-lapse blossoms from the breasts of sheriffs, singing Calico and casings’ rain. You dream of scattered stars, dream panthers at the precinct, dream a black- out, planned and put to use. You dream your crew a getaway van, engine running. Or, no thought to run at all. You dream a flare sent up too late against the sky, the coup come hard and fast. You dream of pistol smoke and bacon, folded flags—and why feel shame? Is it the dream? Or that it’s only dream?

“& still when I sing this awful tale, there is more than a dead black man at the center.” —Reginald Dwayne Betts

You change the channel, and it’s him again. Or not him. Him, but younger. Him, but old. Or him with skullcap. Kufi. Hoodied down. It’s him at fifteen. Him at forty. Bald, or dreadlocked. Fat, or chiseled. Six foot three, or three foot six. Coal black or Ralph Bunche bright. Again, it’s him. Again, he reached. Today, behind his back, his waist, beneath the seat, his socks, to pull an Uzi, morning star, or Molotov. They said don’t move, they said get down, they said to walk back toward their car. He, so to speak, got down… Three to the head, six to the heart. A mother kneels and prays— Not peace, but pipe bombs, hands to light the fuse.

“Fuck the whole muthafucking thing.” —Etheridge Knight

A black man, dancing for the nightly news, grins wide and white, all thirty-two aglow and glad to be invited. Makes a show of laying out, of laundry airing. Throws the burden back on boys, their baggy wear and boisterous voices. Tells good folk at home how streets run bloody, riffraff take to crime like mice to mayhem, and how lawmen, more than ever, need us all to back them. Fuck this chump, the channel, and the check they cut to get him. Fuck the nodding blonde, the fat man hosting. Fuck the story. Fuck the quick acquittals. Fuck the crowds and camera van. You change the channel. Fuck, it’s him again.

“I enter this story by the same door each time.” --Julian Randall

At Normandy and Florence, brick in hand, one afternoon in ‘92, with half the city razed and turned against itself, a young boy beat a man to meat, and signed, thereby, the Ledger of the Damned. Big Book of Bad Decisions. Black Boy’s Almanac of Shit You Can’t Take Back. We watched, in shock. The fury, sure. But more so that it took this long to set it. All these matchstick years… He beat him with a brick, then danced a jig around his almost-carcass. Cameras caught him live and ran that loop for weeks, all night, all day, to prove us all, I think, one thug, one black beast prancing on the nightly news.

“And when it comes to those hard deeds done by righteous people and martyrs, isn’t it about time for that to be you?” --Gary Copeland Lilley

Not Huey on his high back wicker throne, beret cocked cooler than an Oaktown pimp. Or young Guevara marching into camp, all swagger, mane, and slung M-1. But one less suited, you could say, for picture books and posters, slouching on a northbound Bolt, caressing steel and posting plans to shoot. He means, for once, to be of use. Small axe to massive branches, tree where hangs the noose. He says he’s “putting wings on pigs today,” wants two for each of us they’ve blown away. Wants gun salutes and caskets. Dirges, tears, and wreaths. Wants widows on the witness stand, or near the riot’s flashpoint, brick in hand.

“I itch for my turn.” --Indigo Moor

Like Malcolm at the window, rifle raised and ready for whatever—classic black and white we pinned above our dorm room desks— we knew a storm brewed, spinning weathervanes and hustling flocks from sky to sky. We dozed, most nights, nose deep in paperback prognoses. Wretched and Black Skin, White Masks, our books of revelation. Clarions to would-be warriors, if only we might rise up from our armchairs, lecture halls, or blunt smoke cyphers. Talking all that gun and glory, not a Nat among us. Free to wax heroic. Deep. As bullet holes through Panther posters, Huey’s shattered throne.

“Poems are bullshit unless they are teeth…” —Amiri Baraka

It ain’t enough to rabble rouse. To run off at the mouth. To speechify and sing. Just ain’t enough to preach it, Poet, kin to kin, pulpit to choir, as if song were anything like Panther work. It ain’t. This morning when the poets took the park to poet at each other, rage and rant, the goon squad watched and smiled, watched us shake our fists and fret. No doubt amused. As when a mastiff meets a yapping lapdog, or the way a king might watch a circus clown produce a pistol from a passing car. Our wrath the flag that reads kaboom! Our art, a Malcolm poster rolled up, raised to swat.

“every once in a while i see the winged spirits of niggas past raise out the rubble” --Paul Beatty

Could be he meant to set the world right. One bullet at a time. One well-placed slug, one dancing shell case at a time. One hot projectile pushing through, one body bag zipped shut and shipped to cold store, at a time. Could be he meant to make us proud, to fill Nat Turner’s shoes. Could be he meant to aim at each acquittal, scot free cop, each trigger pull or chokehold left unchecked, and blast daylight straight through. Could be he meant, for once, to do. We chat. We chant. We theorize and write. We clasp our hands, spark frankincense, and pray. Our gods, though, have no ears. And yet, his gun sang loud. Enough to make them all lean in.

“Paradise is a world where everything is sanctuary & nothing is a gun.” --Danez Smith

A pipebomb hurled through a wig shop’s glass— nine melting mannequins, nine crowns of flame. Hair singe miasma, black smoke braided. Scream of squad cars blocks away. Burnt out Caprice and overturned Toyota. Strip mall stripped. And gutted. Gift shop, pet shop, liquor store, old stationery wholesale. Home décor, cheap dinnerware. An old man sprinting, draped in handbags, loaded down with wedding gowns. Three Bloods and two Crips tying, end-to-end, one red, one blue, bandana. Freebase fiend with grocery bags, new kicks, and name brand jeans. Spilled jug of milk against the curb, black cat bent low to lap it. This, your world, burnt bright.

“I love the world, but my heart’s been cheated.” --Cornelius Eady

He thought a prayer and a pistol grip enough to get it done. Enough to get him free. Get free or, dying, try. To stop the bleeding. Blood on leaves, blood at the root. I didn’t root, exactly, when I heard word spread. Word that he crept up, panther like, and let loose lead. A lot. Before he fled the spot, then somewhere underground, let kick his cannon one last time. “One Time,” our name for cops back at the crib. It had to do, I think, with chance. Or lack of. Chickens come to roost? Perhaps. I didn’t root. Per se. But almost cracked a smile that day. The news like wind chimes on the breeze. Or shattered glass.

“We beg your pardon, America. We beg your pardon, once again.” --Gil Scott-Heron

To preach forgiveness in a burning church. To nevermind the noose. To nurse one cheek then turn the next. To run and fetch the switch. To switch up, weary of it all. Then cock the hammer back and let it fall… But they were men, you say, with children. And so close to Christmas. But their wives, you say. Today so close to Christmas… Memory as noose, and history as burning church, who’d come across the two cops parked and not think, Go time? One time for Tamir time? Not think Fire this time? To say as much is savage. Blame the times, and what they’ve made of us. We know now, which, and where—the pistol or the prayer.

“…like sparklers tracing an old alphabet in the night sky” --Amaud Jamaul Johnson

It’s natural, no, to put your faith in fire? The way it makes new all it touches. How a city, let’s say, might become, by way of time and riot, pure. In ’92, we thought to gather ashes where before loomed all that meant to kill us. Rubble now and lovely. Worked into, as if from clay, some sort of monument. To what? No clue. Scorched earth, and then…? Suppose a man sets out, with gun and half a plan, to be of use. To hunt police. Insane, we’d say. Not long for life. In this, we’d miss the point. A lit match put to gas-soaked rag, the bottle flung, may die, but dying, leaves a burning house.

“Afro angels, black saints, balanced upon the switchblades of that air and sang.” --Robert Hayden

But that was when you still believed in fire, the gospel of the purge, the burning house. You used to think a rifle and a prayer, a pipebomb hurled through a shopkeep’s glass, enough, at last, to set the world right. Enough, at least, to galvanize some kin. Think Malcolm at the window, set to shoot, or Huey on his high-back wicker throne. Think Normandy and Florence, brick in hand, a Black man dancing for the camera crews. You change the channel, there he is again, and begging: Find some bottles, fill with gas. Begs breathe in deep the Molotov’s perfume. Says strike your one good match, then watch it bloom.

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devious-little-milkmaiden · 4 months

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All The Books I Read in 2023 (and My Personal Ratings)

The Wide Sargasso Sea - Jean Rhys (Fiction)

6/10

Based off of the character of Bertha (Rochester's wife) from Jane Eyre, this is a short read. The writing style isn't my personal favorite, as I feel it's a little bit underdeveloped. I appreciate Rhys' choice to portray Antoinette as a morally gray character (especially regarding her racism, which can't really be passed off as a "product of the time") while still maintaining that she doesn't deserve the treatment she's given. The language does have some good moments. I do recommend this to anyone who's read "Jane Eyre", as it could serve as an interesting re-assessment of Rochester's character, though you should note that I myself have never read Jane Eyre.

Brutal Imagination - Cornelius Eady (Poetry)

10/10

This is an incredible collection of poetry which tackles racism in a really fascinating way. Brutal Imagination is a collection of poems written from the persona of the anonymous black man Susan Smith claimed stole her car and killed her children. If you aren't familiar with the case, Susan Smith, a woman from Union, SC, let her car roll into a lake, killing her two sons. She then made up the story about the armed, anonymous black man. It's interesting to speculate about this detail specifically: why did Smith choose to claim it was a black man? Was it a conscious decision she made, knowing that the race of the supposed suspect would make it more believable? Was the race descriptor a subconscious decision based on her own prejudice?

In this collection, Eady portrays the "armed black man" as materializing into existence when Smith gives her report to police, rather than a concrete person. The collection is rife with nuance and vulnerability, and Eady is an incredible poet. I cannot recommend this collection enough. However, I don't like the final section, which is an excerpt from a completely unrelated collection of poetry by Eady, "Running Man". It feels shoehorned in, maybe per request from the publishing company or something. I recommend just skipping it or reading it separate from the rest of the collection.

The City in Which I Love You - Li-Young Lee (Poetry)

7/10

Another incredibly strong poet language- and structure-wise. Rife with symbolism and references you could analyze and over-analyze for ages. However, it does suffer from some of the stereotypical pitfalls of poetry: intimate scenes for intimacy's sake, and self-referential moments that aren't possible for the reader to understand. However, as a whole, it's pretty good.

The Afterlife and Other Stories - John Updike (Short Stories)

10/10

This is definitely biased, because John Updike is my favorite writer of all time. This short-story collection is quintessential Updike: the mundane being given its beautiful due. Read through completely, the story components can definitely get repetitive: mostly from the perspectives of middle-aged men, married to women with varying levels of satisfaction. While I can recommend Updike as a writer, I can't recommend him as a diverse writer. Therefore, I combine this recommendation with Oyinkan Braithwaite and Mohsin Hamid (I have read very, very little of Hamid's work but from what I have read he is a great writer. I intend to read more of his in the future).

The Fellowship of the Ring - J.R.R. Tolkien (Fiction)

9/10

I have a bit of trouble with sitting down for long periods of time with a book, so this one definitely took a bit of time to finish (but I did it!!). It was a thoroughly pleasant read, mostly due to Tolkien's writing. Brevity is not his strong suit, so if you're more of a fan of action-centered books that keep lengthy passages to a minimum, than this may not be an enjoyable read for you. However, if you don't mind or even enjoy pages-long infodumping (that's the only way I can describe it), this book is right for you. I watched the movie series first and was surprised at how much was left out of them! It was a pleasant surprise, however, as there was so much more to delve into with Fellowship. I do intend on reading the rest of the series, including The Hobbit, at some point.

I usually don't enjoy high fantasy novels as I find that they can get cliche and repetitive without expanding or subverting the cliches they're filling. However, considering that LOTR was one of the first high fantasy series, it doesn't fall into this rut. It definitely possesses the archetypes of a classic hero's journey, yet often expands upon them.

My Immortal - XXXbloodyrists666XXX (Novel)

6/10

A playful "satire" (it's so mindless that I hesitate to label it as a satire) that has several laugh-out-loud moments. Though many readers may become annoyed with its flat-out disobeying of Harry Potter canon without any signaling of it being an AU, it's incredibly entertaining, especially since it's clear that the author has never picked up a single Harry Potter book. Gets more and more unintelligible as the chapters continue. Fantastic.

Maus, Vol. I and II - Art Spiegelman (Graphic Novel)

10/10

Not only should you read banned books, you should read this banned book. The art style is incredibly expressive considering that everybody is represented by animals. I'm not going to say it has "dark moments" because it is quite literally a book about the Holocaust. I learned several things I did not know before about concentration camps and the Holocaust as a whole: there's so much in here that textbooks didn't teach me. It's a very fascinating intersection between personal and universal history. Here's a quote from my thesis statement from an essay about Maus, because I am lazy, but also because I think it's an effective summary on my feelings about these graphic novels: "Heroic tales conventionally have morals at the end of them, something about how someone’s good character led to them being able to make it out of an experience others did not. But Maus does not congratulate Vladek [Art Spiegelman's father] for his savviness: it comes off less as a gift and more as a survival instinct. Vladek and Anja [Art's mother] lost their home, their family, and their sense of safety. The importance of Vladek’s story is not to congratulate him for his intelligence, but rather put into perspective the brutality of the Holocaust: even Vladek’s intelligence could not save him from the horrific experiences the Jews were subjected to. It was a lose-lose situation: live the torturous experience or die from it."

I cannot stress enough how incredibly important it is to read this book.

Interview with the Vampire - Anne Rice (Novel)

7/10

I am a HUGE fan of the movie, which I watched first, then decided to read the book. (Side note: I know people have their qualms about watching the movie before reading the book, but I think in some cases it helps to visualize scenes from the book. Also, most of the time, books have more in the story than movies, so it's sort of like bonus content--and you aren't getting all annoyed while watching the movie and going, "They left this out!! How could you leave that out?!" Of course, this doesn't apply to every book and its movie adaptation.)

The book version of IWTV was quite the enjoyable ride! Anne Rice... she gets it. I don't know what "it" is, but she just does. Her writing is strong, her characters tactile and brimming with energy, and her storytelling ability absolutely magnificent.

However:

There is something really weird going on with the relationship between Claudia and Louis, and I don't think Rice intended it to be pedo-y?

It is a bit bloated, which can make it hard to recognize thematic parallels.

Above Us the Milky Way - Fowzia Karimi (Novel, Autofiction)

6/10

Based on Karimi's personal experiences growing up in Afghanistan and being forced to seek refuge, AUTMW takes a highly abstract and speculative approach to this personal history with an abecedarian chapter structure. It has several strong moments, but overall it feels very disjointed. I do recommend reading this book, though I wouldn't say it's the most important book you could read regarding this subject.

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1605001 · 1 year

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#words #poetry #poem #cornelius eady #african american poetry #american poetry

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timebythetail · 1 year

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Cornelius Eady - Crows in a Strong Wind Off go the crows from the roof. The crows can’t hold on. They might as well Be perched on an oil slick. Such an awkward dance, These gentlemen In their spottled-black coats. Such a tipsy dance,

As if they didn’t know where they were. Such a humorous dance, As they try to set things right, As the wind reduces them.

Such a sorrowful dance. How embarrassing is love When it goes wrong In front of everyone.

#cornelius eady #eady

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llovelymoonn · 1 year

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do you have a web weave for march? or perseverance?

ha jin a distant centre: "a centre" \\ james merrill collected poems: "voices from the other world" \\ st. paul \\ cornelius eady i am here because somebody survived \\ mahogany l. browne on meditation \\ andrew marvell a dialogue, between the resolved soul and created pleasure

here's the one i made for march last year ... totally forgot this year

kofi

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april-is · 15 days

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April 14, 2024: The Wordsworth Effect, Joyce Sutphen

The Wordsworth Effect Joyce Sutphen

Is when you return to a place and it's not nearly as amazing as you once thought it was,

or when you remember how you felt about something (or someone) but you know you'll never feel that way again.

It's when you notice someone has turned down the volume, and you realize it was you; when you have the

suspicion that you've met the enemy and you are it, or when you get your best ideas from your sister's journal.

Is also-to be fair-the thing that enables you to walk for miles and miles chanting to yourself in iambic pentameter

and to travel through Europe with only a clean shirt, a change of underwear, a notebook and a pen.

And yes: is when you stretch out on your couch and summon up ten thousand daffodils, all dancing in the breeze.

Also: Dorothy Wordsworth, Jennifer Chang

Another by Joyce Sutphen: Living in the Body

Today in:

2023: Spring Poem, Colleen O’Connor 2022: Red, Mary Ruefle 2021: Bathing, Allison Seay 2020: A Small Moment, Cornelius Eady 2019: You Meet Someone and Later You Meet Their Dancing and You Have to Start Again, David Welch 2018: Henry Clay’s Mouth, Thomas Lux 2017: When Your Small Form Tumbled into Me, Tracy K. Smith 2016: Eve Recollecting the Garden, Grace Bauer 2015: from I Love A Broad Margin To My Life, Maxine Hong Kingston 2014: Gift, Czeslaw Milosz 2013: This Be The Verse, Philip Larkin 2012: We Did Not Make Ourselves, Michael Dickman 2011: Happiness (3), Jean Valentine 2010: When I Think, Jeanne Marie Beaumont 2009: The Poem, Franz Wright 2008: Morning Poem, Robin Becker 2007: Supple Cord, Naomi Shihab Nye 2006: Wish For a Young Wife, Theodore Roethke 2005: The Benjamin Franklin of Monogamy, Jeffrey McDaniel

#re: wordsworth #memory #writing #travel #poetry #joyce sutphen

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anastasiaoftheironwood · 4 months

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The Gwenn A. Nusbaum-WWBA Scholarship For Emerging Poets:

Walt Whitman Birthplace Association (WWBA) invites applications for the Gwenn A. Nusbaum-WWBA Scholarship. The $1800 scholarship is offered in the spirit of Walt Whitman’s poem, “O Me! O Life!” He writes: “That you are here – that life exists and identity, / That the powerful play goes on, and you may contribute a verse.”

Applications are sought from those poets at the early stages of their careers, ages 25-35 years. This scholarship, awarded every year, aims to encourage and assist an emerging poet in their creative poetry writing endeavors. Their emerging poetry career should be of exceptional artistic quality and should demonstrate a passion for poetry, an awareness of the power of the poem, an originality of perspective and skillful use of expressive language. They will be expected to produce additional strong work during the scholarship timeline of one year, July 1, 2024 – July 1, 2025.

The application is open January 1 – April 1, 2024.

There is no application fee.

The winner will be notified May 20, 2024.

An Award Ceremony will be held as a Zoom and/or at the Walt Whitman Birthplace State Historic Site, the last week in June 2024, date TBA.

The Scholarship is administered by WWBA. The winner is selected by an independent and diverse panel of three (3) judges who may include, but are not limited to, poets, professors, scholars, writers and WWBA representatives. Past Panelists included Victoria Chang, Cornelius Eady, Juan Filipe Herrera, Jane Hirshfield, Dean Kostos, Molly Peacock, and WWBA representative Trustee Robert Savino. Panelists for 2024 include Kwame Dawes and Dorianne Laux.

#poetry #scholarship #Walt Whitman Birthplace Association

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valiumvenus · 1 year

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"On May 19, the birthday of the late Malcolm X, join the GETTING WORD COLLECTIVE for a virtual celebration of the Black Literary Arts community, highlighting the work of five premiere literary arts organizations that are helmed by Black women:

The Hurston/Wright Foundation,

Cave Canem,

Furious Flower Poetry Center,

Obsidian Literature & Arts of the African Diaspora and

The Watering Hole

[...] This celebration features appearances or performances by Duriel Harris, Yolanda J. Franklin, Cornelius Eady, Toi Dericotte, Mars. Marshall, Khadijah Ali-Coleman and more."

This event will be held online. General admission is free (follow the link to register).

#literature #upl

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violettesiren · 6 months

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— for Kamilah Aisha Moon, with a line after Cornelius Eady’s ''Gratitude''

Dear Aisha, I mean to be writing you a birthday letter, though it’s not September, the winter already nearing, the bareness of trees, their weightlessness, their gestures — grace or grief. The windows of buildings all shining early, lit with light, & I am only ten & riding all of my horses home, still sisterless, wanting sisters.

You do not know me yet. In fact, we are years away from that life. But I am thankful for some inexplicable thing, let’s call it “freedom,” or “night,” the terror & glee of being outside late, after dark, my mother’s voice shouting for me beneath stars which, I learned in school, are suddenly not so different from the small salt of fathers, & gratitude for that, & for the red house of your mother’s blood, & then, you, all nearly grown, all long-legged laughter, already knowing all the songs & all the dances, not my friend, yet, but, somehow — Out There.

In one version of our lives, it is November. Through a window I see one of our elders is a black eye of a woman, is a thinker, & magnificent. At a desk, she builds her house with her hands, with paper, wood & clay, the years of light & the years of dark. She sees oblivion & turns, crowns her head, instead, with flowers, the upper & the lower worlds. Lightning streaks the black mind of her hair, she leaves it there, then cleans the house with laughter, dances broadly in each room, a pirouette, a wop. Out of doors, she dares to wear the house key from a silver hoop recalling the moon, the gleaming syllable: of a planet dark with fires & time. She is glorious, isn’t she? It is always her birthday. She has always lived to tell a part of the story of the world, what happened here.

If not a moon, what can we bring this woman who walks ahead? For whom you were named, & whose name has been added to by you whose language crowns the dark field of what has been hushed, of what is beautiful & black, & blue.

Moon for Aisha by Aracelis Girmay

#aracelis girmay

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manwalksintobar · 7 months

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The Second Amendment // Cornelius Eady

Driving out to Long Island over the Williamsburg Bridge I spot the young white men on the rooftop. There’s a bottleneck as the ribbons of feeder lanes Merge, and the boys on the roof laugh, one of them Cradles a mock rifle, another cocks his thumb and forefinger Into a pistol—the way of cowboys and Indians, the way of kids, Wishes whistling, aimed and fired—the driver with the hijab, The driver with the dreads, the driver with the darkest skin? Burst water balloon, hacked limb, fucked-up puppet, cut free.

The boys are not quite ready. This is not the day after the dress Rehearsal, the day someone regrets putting on a bright hat, Or zigs instead of zags, or wisely detours the parade Or street fair, then wishes they could drive the afternoon back To its tame beginning and choose again. This is the day we will Ride, spotless, through their blank mercy.

#poetry #Cornelius Eady #American poetry #Black American poetry #poems of protest #politics #American racism #gun violence #mercy #boys

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selenival · 7 months

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Photo: Eleni Vasilaki

"And under a swinging light bulb Some children Invent a game With the shadow the bulb makes, And the beat of their hearts. They call it dust in the mouth. They call it horse with no rider. They call it school with empty books."

Cornelius Eady

https://youtu.be/A0jNtvTr5AU

#rijksmuseum #amsterdam #the netherlands

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aaknopf · 1 year

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In the introduction to Together in a Sudden Strangeness, an anthology of American poems written into the cataclysm of 2020, editor Alice Quinn, another student of Emily Dickinson, quotes the lines “There’s been a Death in the Opposite House, / as lately as Today—”: words with increased resonance in that first Covid spring, when poets across the land were writing their way through fear and illness. Some, we learn in the anthology’s pages, were also working doctors on the front lines; some were teachers learning to Zoom; many were mourning the systemic inequalities the pandemic brought urgently to the fore. It’s hard to choose just one from this vivid congress of poets; we offer a trio on the theme of communication in isolation.

Corona Diary by Cornelius Eady

These days, you want the poem to be A mask, soft veil between what floats Invisible, but known in the air. You’ve just read that there’s a singer You love who might be breathing their last, And wish the poem could travel, Unintrusive, as poems do from The page to the brain, a fan’s medicine. Those of us who are lucky enough To stay indoors with a salary count the days By press conference. For others, there is Always the dog and the park, the park And the dog. A relative calls; how you doin’? (Are you a ghost?) The buds emerge, on time, For their brief duty. The poem longs to be a filter, but In floats Spring’s insistence. We wait.

If Indeed I Am Ill, Brother, by Julia Guez

Tell me about London, the weather there in spring outside the walls of the Great Hall.

These things matter less to me than the sound of your summary, shadows cast on the watery

surfaces of my mind by invisible fingers whose energy is everything, as you know.

These sonatas, these scores, tell me what of them will last when everything falls away—

Tea for You, Too by Ron Padgett

My friends, I want to tell you that in general things are all right with me, relatively speaking. Just a second, here’s Einstein asking where the tea is. I reassure him it will be ready soon, relatively speaking, and he shuffles back to the room that holds him, with plenty of space for that cup of tea, even though the cup is twelve feet in diameter, about the same size as my thinking of you this morning.

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