#rogerreeves

[hiveandwarehouse]

The Mare of Money by Roger Reeves

from The Poetry Foundation 

[adriantoddzuniga]

Next to the National Museum of African American History stands the Washington Monument. Last night at LDM DC, Ep. 7 I learned from Roger Reeves master poem that George Washington's teeth were not wooden. They were the teeth from his slaves. We must be honest about our history. We must be honest about this present. Wanting to believe a lie does not make it true, it creates a prison for us to live in. Let's live forward being honest about our most painful truths. #georgewashington #washingtonmonument #africanamericanmuseum #blackhistorymonth #awp17 #rogerreeves #slavery (at Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture)

[poetrycenterofchicago]

Roger Reeves finishing the night at the February Six Points | #poetry #poetrycenter #chicago #poet #chicagopoetry #rogerreeves (at Subterranean)

[doorwaydance-blog]

The lungs are a temporary house. And, I am housed in a breathless city. The mosquitoes drifting out from a glass Of champagne gnaw on the skin above My elbow. Tonight, I am glad to be Eaten from the elbow out, the wedding Covered in smoke from lovers' mouths, not-so Lovers drifting in and out of the bone Of their bodies as if it is possible To sift oneself through the screen of a door-- Tonight, I am glad to come to a bench, The yawn light busy in its red yawning, Nothing feeding nothing--mosquito--lover-- Lover--mosquito--Do you take--I do, I do.

Roger Reeves, 'Epithalamium' in King Me 

[farheenm-blog]

Romanticism (The Blue Keats) I want a terrace of bamboo. A stuttering harp. A garden fitted with a grotto and gimp hermit. I want to lose my last name in the crickets Coupling beneath my feet. I want the body’s burden, Four more angels to drag through the streets Of a city that finds the monkey sacred, the fool careful, The monk dumb. I want a painting of persimmons And a persimmon. I want the violence of my love To leave my sleep and my lover alone. I am dedicated To the same baffled heart I have always carried. The diamonds and mud of my mouth. The midsummer  Lurching toward the late-summer heat that will kill The sage and tomato plants tanning on the veranda.  I want the water and the leg my uncle lost coming from the well. If one body will hide another and call this hiding love, I want to always torture myself with another’s wet borders. An ankle clicking against an ankle. The wrists fettered.  There was something I knew before this. Before my hands Tore at the ropes, snapped cedar poles and ripped the silk  Of any tent I lay in. I want to know how the savage Wind loves the house it destroys. I want to know before I am both house and savage wind, before all of the tents  In the city become tattered rags snagged in the hair Of our children and the red-headed trees. I am careful To want nothing that I cannot lose and be sad in the losing. A terrace made of rotting bamboo. A harp lost in its singing.  My last name and the tomatoes falling from the vine. Woman, I want this plum heart. And the dying that makes us possible.

-- Roger Reeves