josh

josh, 6 months ago to poetry

"Practice Makes People by Amanda Gorman

The making of plans, *When this is over;*The *We can't wait,*Really our knuckles rapping Against the future, sounding Out what lies beneath its hull. But tomorrow isn't revealed, Rather rendered, refined. Wrought. Remember that fate isn't fought Against. It is fought for. Again & again.

Maybe there is no fresh wisdom, Just old woes, New words to name them by & the will to act. We've seen life lurching back in stops & starts Like a wet-born thing learning to walk. The air charged & changed. Us, charged & changed. A yoked-out eternity For that needle to pierce our arm. At last: a pain we asked for. Yes, it is enough to be moved By what we might be."

— Amanda Gorman: https://books.josh.tel/book/6076

#AmandaGorman #BlackPoetry #Poetry #TodaysPoem

josh, 6 months ago to poetry

"The Story Wheel by Joy Harjo

I leave you to your ceremony of grieving Which is also of celebration Given when an honored humbled one Leaves behind a trail of happiness In the dark of human tribulation. None of us is above the other In this story of forever. Though we follow that red road home, one behind another. There is a light breaking through the storm And it is buffalo hunting weather. There you can see your mother. She is busy as she was ever— She holds up a new jingle dress, for her youngest beloved daughter. And for her special son, a set of finely beaded gear. All for that welcome home dance, The most favorite of all— when everyone finds their way back together to dance, eat and celebrate. And tell story after story of how they fought and played in the story wheel and how no one was ever really lost at all."

— Joy Harjo: https://books.josh.tel/book/3671, p. 28

#JoyHarjo #IndigenousPoetry #PoetLaureate #Poetry #TodaysPoem

josh, 6 months ago to poetry

"Fill Your Arms by Hannah Emerson

Please try only to go to the place that is just trying kissing us yearning to love this moment instead

of hating it yes. Please try to kiss this place that is probing our sweet soul that is trying to understand just what the hell is going on yes. Please

help kiss the process that is happening in this world now yes. Please fill your arms with the bear the heart the monkey the horse the kissing kissing kissing that they bring to us

today yes. Please try to help them get up to dance in ward to find the strength that will find great great great new wiring that is trying to become the nothing air that we breathe that is sweat we need to let out yes.

Please try to go to the sweat helping yourself go to the salt that will melt you yes. Please try to become the ocean that is becoming yes yes that is becoming lovely life yes yes. Please fill your arms trying to take in the nothing of everything yes yes."

— Hannah Emerson: https://books.josh.tel/book/29767, p. 48

#HannahEmerson #DisabledPoetry #AutisticPoetry #TodaysPoem #Poetry #BookWyrm

josh, 8 months ago to poetry

"I want to say something but shame prevents me

yet if you had a desire for good or beautiful things and your tongue were not concocting some evil to say, shame would not hold down your eyes but rather you would speak about what is just"

-- "If Not, Winter", page 279

#Sappho #AnneCarson #QueerPoetry #TodaysPoem #Poetry #BookWyrm

josh, 11 months ago to poetry

"Queer Earth by Jess X. Snow

"Sexual expression is permitted only within marriage, between man and woman, male and female. Anything else is an abnormality and is against nature." — Pope Shenouda III

You speak of nature as if you invented it. Or gutted it & used its bones to fashion a white castle,

to keep you safe from all the animals you refuse to see.

Tonight, each grain of soil, each blade of grass, each droplet of blood is a time machine. Each cell

rewinds you four & a half billion years back in history. We were once genderless cells splitting our own bodies—

in two—now growing gills, fins and feet. 65,000 queer & trans species.

It's always mating season on planet Earth: look at the way leopard slugs

make love: upside down from trees—two penises coiling into orchids. A penetration

so mutual—it is worthy of bioluminescence.

Look at the way bonobo monkeys resolve conflict: queer polyamorous sex in the morning, evening, and afternoon.

Look at the penguins mating for life, warming the egg of another mother with the heat between their bellies.

When an oyster produces a perfect pearl: they transition from male to female. For crustaceans, gender is a border

that does not exist. Do you hear the orchestra of dolphins? Masturbating against the seabed, penetrating

each other's blow holes, as if this human history never began. If our love defies the logic of your biology,

then what is queer pleasure if not heavenly? Is this queer ocean not the tidal waves roaring

within your bloodstream? Is this queer Earth not the same carbon that birthed your flesh?

To be queer, Earth, and alive is to be hunted & marked *wild.*A beast banished from heaven,

a bleached coral reef, a jungle clear-cut, a planet domesticated like cattle, and butchered in the hands of machines.

Yet, our queerness is an ancient persistence. So tell me: we be against nature.

& our bones will remember— we've been queer for 3.6 billion springs,

summers, falls & winters. & even after your infant empire

collapses into dust, we will still be queer."

-- "Queer Nature", page 274

A spicey poem for closing out pride month 🔥

#JessXSnow #QueerPoetry #TodaysPoem #Poetry #BookWyrm

josh, 11 months ago to poetry

"From the Chrysalis by Emily Dickinson

MY cocoon tightens, colors tease, I'm feeling for the air; A dim capacity for wings Degrades the dress I wear.

A power of butterfly must be The aptitude to fly, Meadows of majesty concedes And easy sweeps of sky.

So I must baffle at the hint And cipher at the sign, And make much blunder, if at last I take the clew divine."

-- "Selected Poems of Emily Dickinson", page 43

#EmilyDickinson #QueerPoetry #TodaysPoem #Poetry #BookWyrm

josh, 11 months ago to poetry

"HeLa by Jericho Brown for Henrietta Lacks

I won't die. I keep white men up at night. I come from the deepest basin they know. They want to watch me grow so they took me from Mama. When they hold me close, it's always so cold, but when Sister came to see me the other day, she kissed me & called me beautiful & I was warm again, like it always was with Mama, just for a little while. Yemoja olodo awoye Yemoja...

I—two, one hundred, three million, legion, spawn of gall, glory of silt gone sour—make the slack-jawed bow & wish they could drink from my ever-after. Now these men have brought women friends to look at me. They say I'm getting stronger every day. They want me to tell them my secrets, but I don't know what they mean. How can I explain who I am if they can't see, after looking at me? They call me HeLa. Healer. Mama would be proud to know we got healing in us. I hope she understands I didn't want to go... Yemoja Orisha Orisha**Yemoja fun me lowo. Asé. Asé."

-- "The Tradition", page 27

#JerichoBrown #QueerPoetry #BlackPoetry #TodaysPoem #Poetry #BookWyrm

josh, 11 months ago to poetry

"little prayer by Danez Smith

let ruin end here

let him find honey where there was once a slaughter

let him enter the lion's cage & find a field of lilacs

let this be the healing & if not let it be"

-- "Don't Call Us Dead: Poems", page 81

#DanezSmith #QueerPoetry #BlackPoetry #TodaysPoem #Poetry #BookWyrm

josh, 11 months ago to poetry

"The Summer Day by Mary Oliver

Who made the world? Who made the swan, and the black bear? Who made the grasshopper? This grasshopper, I mean— the one who has flung herself out of the grass, the one who is eating sugar out of my hand, who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down— who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes. Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face. Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away. I don't know exactly what a prayer is. I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass, how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields, which is what I have been doing all day. Tell me, what else should I have done? Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon? Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?"

-- "Devotions", page 316

Wishing you a beautiful solstice, whether you're ushering in summer or winter. May yours be a season of joy and meaning ✨

#MaryOliver #QueerPoetry #TodaysPoem #Poetry #BookWyrm #Solstice

josh, 11 months ago to poetry

"We Two Boys Together Clinging by Walt Whitman

We two boys together clinging, One the other never leaving, Up and down the roads going, North and South excursions making, Power enjoying, elbows stretching, fingers clutching, Arm'd and fearless, eating, drinking, sleeping, loving, No law less than ourselves owning, sailing, soldiering, thieving, threatening, Misers, menials, priests alarming, air breathing, water drinking, on the turf or the sea-beach dancing, Cities wrenching, ease scorning, statutes mocking, feebleness chasing, Fulfilling our foray."

-- "Leaves of Grass"

#WaltWhitman #QueerPoetry #TodaysPoem #Poetry #BookWyrm

josh, 11 months ago to poetry

"I Hear It Was Charged Against Me by Walt Whitman

I hear it was charged against me that I sought to destroy institutions, But really I am neither for nor against institutions, (What indeed have I in common with them? or what with the destruction of them?) Only I will establish in the Mannahatta and in every city of these States inland and seaboard, And in the fields and woods, and above every keel little or large that dents the water, Without edifices or rules or trustees or any argument, The institution of the dear love of comrades."

-- "Leaves of Grass"

#WaltWhitman #QueerPoetry #TodaysPoem #Poetry #BookWyrm

josh, 1 year ago to random

"I Know My Soul by Claude McKay

I plucked my soul out of its secret place, And held it to the mirror of my eye, To see it like a star against the sky, A twitching body quivering in space, A spark of passion shining on my face. And I explored it to determine why This awful key to my infinity Conspires to rob me of sweet joy and grace. And if the sign may not be fully read, If I can comprehend but not control, I need not gloom my days with futile dread, Because I see a part and not the whole. Contemplating the strange, I'm comforted By this narcotic thought: I know my soul."

-- "Queer Nature", page 192