Tumgik
#camille t. dungy
havingapoemwithyou · 1 month
Text
Tumblr media Tumblr media
my lover who lives far by Camille T. Dungy
307 notes · View notes
heartmailbox · 1 year
Text
Tumblr media
7 notes · View notes
another-side · 1 year
Text
First Fire
Stripped in a flamedance, the bluff backing our houses quivered in wet-black skin. A shawl of haze tugged tight around the starkness. We could have choked on August. Smoke thick in our throats, nearly naked as the earth, we played bare feet over the heat caught in asphalt. Could we, green girls, have prepared for this? Yesterday, we played in sand-carpeted caves. The store we built sold broken bits of ice plant, empty snail shells, leaves. Our school’s walls were open sky. We reeled in wonder from the hills, oblivious to the beckoning crescendo and to our parent’s hushed communion. When our bluff swayed into the undulation, we ran into the still streets of our suburb, feet burning against a fury that we did not know was change. CAMILLE T. DUNGY
7 notes · View notes
swamp-milkweed · 2 years
Quote
Four days ago, the dogwood was a fist   in protest.   Now look.   Even she unfurls   to the pleasure of the season.   Don’t be   ashamed of yourself.   Don’t be.    This happens   to us all.   We have thrown back the blanket.   We’re naked and we’ve grown to love ourselves.   I tell you, do not be ashamed.   Who is   more wanton than the dancing crepe myrtle?   Is she ashamed?   Why, even the dogwood,   that righteous tree of God’s, is full of lust   exploding into brightness every spring.
Camille T. Dungy, from "What to Eat, What to Drink, and What to Leave for Poison"
2 notes · View notes
stephen-narain · 3 months
Text
youtube
0 notes
poem-today · 6 months
Text
A poem by Camille T. Dungy
Tumblr media
After Opening The New York Times I Wonder How to Write a Poem about Love
To love like God can love, sometimes. Before the kettle boils to a whistle, quiet. Quiet that is lost on me, waiting as I am for an alarm. The sort of things I notice: the bay over redbud blossoms, mountains over magnolia blooms. There is always something starting somewhere, and I have lost ambition to look into the details. Shame fits comfortably as my best skirt, and what can I do but walk around in that habit? Turn the page. Turn another page. This was meant to be about love. Now there is nothing left but this.
Tumblr media
Camille T. Dungy
More poems by Camille T. Dungy are available on the Poetry Foundation site.
0 notes
slateblueearthbelow · 11 months
Text
Tumblr media
1 note · View note
flowersfortheriot · 1 year
Text
Tumblr media
0 notes
Photo
Tumblr media
Soil: The Story of a Black Mother's Garden
By Camille T. Dungy.
Design by Natalia Olbinski.
1 note · View note
Text
Naming what has risen by Camille T. Dungy
Why not a crocus from this bulb? Why not the purple
of bees’ lust so that, in honey, she might taste something
good? Under skin, purple is a private taste, closer
to the blood of her tongue, closer to the blood
she chokes on when she’s gasping, to the clot
behind her blackened eye. The heated force
that slammed her shin, that pushed bone
from the bone, that arched her but did not
approach caress, is another kind of lust. Spring:
a madness of grappling. Isn’t that what she sees outside
every window? And inside? Nothing unique going on.
1 note · View note
hepatosaurus · 2 years
Text
national poetry month, day 22
this beginning may have always meant this end coming from a place where we meandered mornings and met quail, scrub jay, mockingbird, i knew coyote, like everyone else, i knew cactus, knew tumbleweed, lichen on the rocks and pill bugs beneath, rattlers sometimes, the soft smell of sage and the ferment of cactus pear. coming from this place, from a place where grass might grow greener on the hillside in winter than in any yard, where, the whole rest of the year, everything i loved, chaparral pea, bottle brush tree, jacaranda, mariposa, pinyon and desert oak, the kumquat in the back garden and wisteria vining the porch, the dry grass whispering long after the last rains, raccoons in and out of the hills, trash hurled by the hottest wind, the dry grass tall now and golden, lawn chairs, 
eucalyptus, everything, in a place we knew, every thing, we knew, little and large and mine and ours, except horror, all of it, everything could flame up that quickly, could flare and be gone. —Camille T. Dungy
0 notes
havingapoemwithyou · 8 months
Text
Tumblr media
after opening the new york times i wonder how to write a poem about love by Camille T. Dungy
1 note · View note
Photo
Tumblr media
“Because it looked hotter that way” by Camille T. Dungy
0 notes
godzilla-reads · 7 months
Text
Tumblr media
🌿 Black Nature: Four Centuries of African American Nature Poetry edited by Camille T. Dungy
Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️/5
“Black Nature” is the first anthology to focus on nature writing by African American poets. Camille T. Dungy has selected 180 poems from 93 poets that provide unique perspectives on American social and literary history to broaden our concept of nature poetry and African American poetics.
A truly reflective collection of poetry that embraces the beauty, the struggle, and the complicated history of nature and the African American people. With sections titled “Nature, Be With Us” to “Forsaken of the Earth”, this should be on every poetry lovers shelf. These poems have such a powerful impact on how nature is viewed from a non-white lens and they made me consider a type of nature I hadn’t considered before.
Side note: My 3 favorite poems were “The Haunted Oak” by Paul Laurence Dunbar; “the earth is a living thing” by Lucille Clifton; and “Miscarriage in October with Ladybugs” by Amber Flora Thomas.
34 notes · View notes
Text
Silence is one part of speech, the war cry of wind down a mountain pass another.
Language by Camille T. Dungy
7 notes · View notes
Text
"I didn't want you to have this," he whispered. If he could not consume my body, the food he'd given me to eat would have to do.
From "Let Me" by Camille T. Dungy
0 notes