#Poem-A-Day

[aaknopf]

Leila Mottley was regularly writing and performing poetry even before she published her novel Nightcrawling at only nineteen, in 2022; today we get an advance peek into her forthcoming first collection, woke up no light. Divided into hoods—sections on Girlhood, Neighborhood, Falsehood, and Womanhood—the poems instruct us, as here, in the art of noticing, speaking boldly, and feeling deeply.

what to do when you see a Black woman cry 

stop. hum a little / just for some sound / just for a way to fill us up it is streetlamp time / all moon-cheeked black girls are mourning / a wailing kind of undoing don’t mistake this as a tragedy / it is sacred don’t mistake this as a glorious pain / we hurt.

don’t tell me it will be alright. make me a gourmet meal and don’t expect me to do the dishes after don’t try to hug me without asking first if i slept last night / if i need some jasmine tea / and a bath in a tub deep enough to fit my grief

and if i say i want a hug don’t touch my hair while you do it / don’t twist my braids around your fingers or tell me my fro is matted in the back from banging my head on the wall of so many askings

you think we are sobbing for the men, but we are praying for the men / their favorite sweat-soaked t-shirts we are screeching for our thighs for our throats / and our teeth-chipping / for the terror and the ceremony / and the unending always of this sky

so if i let you see a tear drip / if i let you see my teeth chatter know you are witnessing a miracle know you are not entitled to my face crack / head shake / sob but i do not cry in front of just anyone so stop. hum a little / just for some sound / just to fill me up

More on this book and author: 

Learn more about woke up no light by Leila Mottley.

Browse other books by Leila Mottley and follow her on Instagram @leilamottley.

Click here to read Leila Mottley's curated list of recommended books about the San Francisco Bay Area. 

Leila Mottley will be in Brooklyn for a Poetry Night reading and conversation with Tatiana Johnson-Boria at Books Are Magic (Montague Street location) on April 24, 2024 at 7:00 PM. The event will also be livestreamed for free on Youtube. 

Visit our Tumblr to peruse poems, audio recordings, and broadsides in the Knopf poem-a-day series.

To share the poem-a-day experience with friends, pass along this link.

[tinkercreek]

The warble of melting snow is the river

is the bleat of the sandhill crane is the hush of the autonomous mind        of the flame above the canyon is the cow drinking water from mud          is the cow and the word cow is the deckled face in the overhang of stone is the bone weathered into wood is the wood weathered to stone is the sentence is the moment that longs to be the sentence hidden in a sentence is the legislated road         is the grass is the grass is the nerve that runs from socket to wrist is the common knowledge of aperture and speed is the hole to be yawned into         its origin         the stone that says the impulse of water         is the moss against is the growing in spite of

by Emily Lee Luan

Originally published in Poem-a-Day on October 18, 2023, by the Academy of American Poets

Hear the poet read this poem aloud here

[gtunesmiff]

2024 APRIL POEM-A-DAY CHALLENGE: DAY 22 ~ SIMPLY WHERE WE ARE

SIMPLY WHERE WE ARE ©2024 G. Smith (BMI) ================== Underneath the pavement, Underneath the steel, Underneath the ever-present, Ever-turning wheels.

Underneath the plastic, Underneath the fumes, Underneath the ever-present, Everlasting gloom and doom.

Underneath the concrete, Underneath the grass, Underneath the gravel, And the artificial grass.

Underneath the heavens, Underneath the stars, Underneath the sun and moon, Is simply where we are. Underneath the sun and moon, Is simply where we are.

[agirlnamedbone]

pub. by Academy of American Poets

[slateblueearthbelow]

[jomiddlemarch]

“But the problem seems to me more fundamental: We stopped writing good poetry because we are now incapable of doing so. The culprit is not bad pedagogy or formal experimentation but rather the very conditions of modern life, which have demystified and alienated us from the natural world.”

UM, NO. 

[usefulquotes7]

[twistedlybroken]

[midnightmindcave]

Today’s poem-a-day from the Academy of American Poets should be shared widely:

“When it Really is Just the Wind, and Not a Furious Vexation” by Kyle Tran Myhre

[loveelizabeths]

love elizabeth s.

[aaknopf]

A poem of girlhood and after by Indigenous New Zealander Tayi Tibble, whose second collection, Rangikura, comes out in America today. In the dictionary of Māori language, hōmiromiro is defined as “a white-breasted North Island tomtit…a little black-and-white bird with a large head and short tail.” It is often used to refer to someone with a tomtit’s keen vision—that is, a sharp eye for detail.

Hōmiromiro

I used to dream about a two-headed goldfish. I took it for an omen. I smashed a milk bottle open

on a boiling road and watched a three-legged dog lick it up and in the process I became not myself but a single shard of glass and thought finally

I had starved myself skinny enough to slip into the splits of the universe but once I did I realised that the universe was no place for a young thing to be and there is always a lot more starving to be had.

When I was a girl I thought

I was Daisy Buchanan. I read on the train. I made voluminous eyes.

Once I walked in front of a bus and it exploded into a million monarch butterflies then I was ecstatic!

As a girl, I could only fathom

time as rose petals falling down my oesophagus. It tickled and it frightened me. I ran around choking for attention.

I had projections of myself at 100 my neck weathered and adorned like the boards of a home being eaten by the earth.

When I was a girl I would lie

on the side of that road in the last lick of sun and wait for the rabbits to come saluting the sky of orange dust

and then I would shoot them into outer space.

For many years I watched them bouncing on the moon. But then I stopped caring and so I stopped looking.

More on this book and author:

Learn more about Rangikura by Tayi Tibble.

Browse other books by Tayi Tibble and follow her on Instagram @paniaofthekeef.

Hear Tayi Tibble and Harryette Mullen read from their new poetry collections at Beyond Baroque in Los Angeles, CA on April 10 at 8:00 PM. Tayi Tibble will be joined by Sasha LaPointe in Washington for a series of readings and conversations at Elliot Bay Book Company in Seattle on April 13 at 7:00 PM, at King's Books in Tacoma on April 14 at 1:00 PM, at Bainbridge Island Museum of Art in Bainbridge on April 15 at 7:00 PM, and at Third Place Books in Seattle, Lake Forest Park, on April 16 at 7:00 PM. Tayi and Sasha will also be at Broadway Books in Portland, OR, on April 17 at 6:00 PM. Tayi will be at the LA Times Book Festival signing books at the ALTA booth (Booth 111) on April 20 at 11:00 AM.

Visit our Tumblr to peruse poems, audio recordings, and broadsides in the Knopf poem-a-day series.

To share the poem-a-day experience with friends, pass along this link.

[tinkercreek]

If Night You Were a City

I would return to you in a jacket of gold leaves  drawn tight against the city wind  whipping around corners through button holes over  cobbled streets park lanes  cordoned-off barbarian herds  of steel and glass and concrete ground zero for crowds  of absence. We’d lift off beyond the brick  toward choked stars, moons outshined by neon  and by anxious day, moons perched on dark spires  golden lions we’d wrap our naïve wings around  to embrace the artifice of it all  and the reality: the heat here is unbearable  and I miss the need to be warm, that need to look  forward to nights alone with you with no morning on our minds  no time  no need to claw through  restaurants packed with bridge and tunnel drunk  on the filth and the beauty.  For here there is no comparison  no autumn as autumn no snow to justify  a hot drink or a fat meal the fish is delicious  and the beer even better but not the same.  Some say the grass is greener as if it’s law  and more that I try to recreate  metropolis each time a baobab drops a beetle  to flee every time winter floods the sand  to mute the night— boats eclipsing the mainland sprawl  trading with another language transformed before my ears:  tell me how you lived your dream and I will tell you who you are  every night, every single night and with a wingspan  I resurrect in a cold sweat  and off in the distance  there are drums drums beating the island

Adam Wiedewitsch for Jan. 1, 2024 Poem-a-Day

listen to Adam read "If Night You Were a City" on the Academy of American Poets website

[gtunesmiff]

2023 NOVERMBER POEM-A-DAY CHAPBOOK CHALLENGE: DAY 28 ~ SOME DAYS

SOME DAYS © 2023 G. Smith (BMI) ================== Some days a victory! Some days – defeat… Some days excited; Some days – just beat. Some days a lion, Some days – the meat Some days a victory! Some days – defeat.

Some days you seize, Some days you survive. Each day is different, Part of being alive. Some fly by quickly, Some, a long nine to five. Some days you seize, Some days you survive.

Some are a battle, Some are a dance. Each one is different, You just take your chance. A walk in the park, A long rush-hour drive. Some days you seize, Some days you survive.

Some days a victory! Some days – defeat… Some days excited; Some days – just beat. Some days a lion, Some days – the meat Some days a victory! Some days – defeat.

Some days you fumble, And some days you thrive, Some days you stumble, And bumble and strive, To climb high on the mountain, And not take a dive. Some days you seize, Some days you survive.

Some days you push, Some days you pull. Some days are lonely, Some days are full, Some days are family, Some just husbands and wives. Some days you seize, Some days you survive.

Some days a victory! Some days – defeat… Some days excited; Some days – just beat. Some days a lion, Some days – the meat Some days a victory! Some days – defeat.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

A 2-fer-Tuesday prompt:

SEIZE THE DAY

SURVIVE THE DAY

[slateblueearthbelow]

Between midnight and eternity

Kettly Mars

translated from the French by Nathan H. Dize

The rain has shelved its watering can  A sweet dew rises from the earth  Everything is calm now  The bed beneath the mosquito netting awaits  Your eyelids grow heavy  You cannot wait to slip into the void  But the poem suddenly clings to you  As though your desires mean nothing  It clings to you, overpowering you  The poem slides under your skin  Hides itself in your bloodstream  You must conceive it, there and now  You must carry it in your womb  You must give it life  So your night can finally begin  Midnight splits the darkness in two  The day changes its course  But the poem clings to you

Entre minuit et l’éternité

La pluie a rangé son arrosoir  Une douce fraîcheur monte de la terre  Tout est calme à présent  Le lit t’attend sous la moustiquaire  Tes paupières s’alourdissent  Tu as hâte de sombrer dans l’oubli  Mais soudain il te tient le poème  Comme si ta volonté n’importait pas  Il te tient il est plus fort que toi  Il est sous ta peau  Il se cache dans ton sang  Tu dois l’inventer là maintenant  Tu dois t’en engrosser  Tu dois le mettre bas  Pour que ta nuit commence enfin  Minuit fend l’obscurité en deux  Le jour a changé de cap  Mais il te tient le poème

[oof-i-did-it-agaaiiin]

Beautiful from Ordinary Days