#tanaya winder

[bookishjules]

i've seen you carry family

wild horses - grace power // 2x06 - bridgerton // oil study - liza sivakova // jungwan chae // the mask - matt maeson // queen of air and darkness - cassandra clare // @/mothercain // 2x07 - bridgerton // benny - luke hemmings // the brothers - john clark // a man leaning on a parapet - georges seurat // greywaren - maggie stiefvater // queen of air and darkness - cassandra clare // uncharted territory of grief - tanaya winder // exhale - sabrina carpenter // lady midnight - cassandra clare // @ihopeucomehomesoon //greywaren - maggie stiefvater

[haveyoureadthisbook-poll]

[lunchboxpoems]

from UNCHARTED TERRITORY OF GRIEF

Take me back to when we were all children given songs to sing. The ones you proclaimed were anthems, predictions for how we would love. Take me back to when we were all children saying let’s pretend. We’d yet to swim through grief. Our spirits hadn’t been crushed by fists breaking through bedroom walls and I could still hold your hand in the dark. Let’s pretend our ghosts have been fed. Let’s make-believe our hearts are ours so we can walk again. Reverse the journey, playback the boombox, rewind the cassette tape to our favorite part where we all sing along         to the na na na nas, until my lungs can remember what it’s like to breathe in a world where you are still here and I am still waving at ghosts through the back window, singing: now it’s your turn girl to cry.

TANAYA WINDER

[stress-level-midnight]

Elisa Gonzales | Tanaya Winder | Louise Glück | Sappho tr. Anne Carson | Steven Berkoff

[girlfictions]

Tanaya Winder, from “Uncharted Territory of Grief”

[taitavva]

He never could tell the taste between a scar and its wounding, an angel or demon.

Ask me if I can still hear his exhaled prayers: I am still waiting to be found. To be found, tell me why there is nothing more holy than becoming a ghost.

[Tanaya Winder, “Becoming a Ghost”]

[beesbeesthrees]

Interior with Book, Richard Diebenkorn, 1959 / Interior with Doorway, Richard Diebenkorn, 1962 / I Cast It Away, My Body, b: william bearhart, 2016 / Ruby Lustre Design with Chameleons, William De Morgan, 1879 / Becoming a Ghost, Tanaya Winder, 2020 / Composition, Electric Chair, Wayne Thiebaud, 1957 / After the Hurricane, Edgar Holloway, 1988 / "undetectable", Danez Smith, 2018 / Chamäleon cristatus, Josef Maria Eder, 1896

(Some tiny part of him, a part he ignores, whispers even now: things can always get worse.) Tim watches, and waits, and daydreams of death sharpen him like a whetstone sharpening a knife.

inspired by Calumma by @cassiopeia721

[i-will-talk-fish]

“The poet, too, can be a mystic, and I consider a mystic as one who sees beyond the obvious world, and moves accordingly.”

Joy Harjo, “Soul Talk, Song Language: Conversations With Joy Harjo” by Barbara Kingsolver and Tanaya Winder

[roakkaliha]

7 by frank waln ft. tanaya winder is one of The songs. u know.

[lifeinpoetry]

                                       I dream                   there are words inside me so anxious they jump because they’re stuck              in my heart dying to be given breath. I swallowed them years ago . . .

— Tanaya Winder, from "sometimes i dream a reservation resides inside me,” Words Like Love

[the-final-sentence]

When did this world start disappearing you?

Tanaya Winder, from “And I wonder where you are”

[kabbalicgay]

— Tanaya Winder, “Becoming a Ghost”, published by the Academy of American Poets in Poem-a-Day (November 17, 2020)

[thesefevereddays]

Being

BY TANAYA WINDER

Wake up, greet the sun, and pray.

Burn cedar, sweet grass, sage—

sacred herbs to honor the lives we’ve been given,

for we have been gifted these ways since the beginning of time.

Remember, when you step into the arena of your life,

think about those who stand beside you, next to, and with you.

Your ancestors are always in your corner, along with your people.

When we enter this world we are born hungry,

our spirits long for us to live out our traditions

that have been passed down for generations.

Prayer, ceremony, dance, language—our ways of being.

Never forget you were put on this earth for a reason—

honor your ancestors.

Be a good relative.

[halfpaces]

Sacred stars blanket a nighttime sky, / each light reminds us of the preciousness of life. / Your memory lives along the Milky Way, / each twinkle saying don’t forget my name.

It’s an epidemic, a sickness of the earth, / a war we enter as soon as we are birthed. / Indigenous women, girls, our two-spirit, too. / When did this world start disappearing you?

And I Wonder Where You Are. Tanaya Winder.

[literarycatchall]

Ask me about the first time we drowned in history.

“Becoming a Ghost,” Tanaya Winder (2020)