#zoeglossia

[llovelymoonn]

favourite poems of october

alfred starr a dark dreambox of another kind: the poems of alfred starr: "didn't you ever search for another star?

stephen spender new collected poems: "auden's funeral"

marianne boruch keats is coughing

noa micaela fields zoeglossia: poem of the week, may 17, 2021: "echolalia"

kevin young diptych

richard siken real estate

crisosto apache kúghą/home

mikko harvey for m

nathan hoks nests in air: "the barbed wire nest"

john a. holmes noon waking

crisosto apache 37 common characterisi(x)s of a displaced indian with a learning disability

oliver de la paz requiem for the orchard: "at the time of my birth"

zhang xun jiangnan song (tr. bijaan noormohamed)

paul violi fracas: "extenuating circumstances"

tianru wang after "yellow crane tower"

lloyd schwartz cairo traffic: "nostalgia (the lake at night)"

kamiko han the narrow road to the interior: "the orient"

rigoberto gonzalez unpeopled eden: "unpeopled eden"

adelaide crapsey verse: "to the dead in the graveyard underneath my window"

chester kallman night music

alan shapiro covenant: "covenant"

tom clark light and shade: new and selected poems: "radio"

tc tolbert my melissa,

charlie smith in praise of regret

carolyn kizer cool, calm, and collected: poems 1960-2000: "fanny"

julie sheehan orient point: "hate poem"

arthur sze the redshifting web: poems 1970-1998: "streamers"

joumana altallal everything here...in the voice of tara fares

abid b al-abras last simile

w.s. merwin to lingering regrets

george scarbrough music

shout me a coffee

[capricorn-0mnikorn]

I went onto the Poetry Foundation's website, looking for one of my favorite Emily Dickinson poems.

I found this article on their homepage. It's the introduction to a curated collection of disability and crip aesthetics poetry. The collection was started in 2017, and they'll continue adding to it through the end of this year (2023).

[lesliecschwartz]

Leper on the Lawn, by the Front Door

Leslie Contreras Schwartz

I go outside to dress

in day, its half sun.

It’s been six months

post coronavirus

and my weakened body

can only walk from room to room—

the neighbor does not wave.

A rustle of white-blue sky

trees tossing heads and outright

skipping. Whether I’m lucid

or not—I checked messages.

How could you

infect other people Keep your sickness

Here’s a list of all the ways you have wronged me

I’ll light a candle for you Hope you feel better soon

I’m here, now, beside me the gulping air and a treble

in the vermillion banana-leaf plant next door

or the pluck of the swing in mid-air

my half breath, and my daughter flying.

The certainty of her dark crown.

Above her the feathered green shook,

then stilled.

Heavy, down to the knotted-black chair.

I’m stilled and shorn. I know my neighbors now.

If there were wounds to bear, I’d leave

a trail of blood crossing the street

just to tell my neighbor Shabbat Shalom

and go fuck yourself. I’m alive.

Wishing for that wound,

I drink a steaming hot sip

of a thousand cups

to a rollercoaster heartbeat.

I don’t quit.

[adjacent-thoughts]

They were experiencing the same thing I was experiencing - which is that they were free.

[qaoc]

Today’s QAOC is Rigoberto González!

From his website:

Rigoberto González is the author of five books of poetry, most recently The Book of Ruin, published by Four Way Books. His twelve books of prose include two bilingual children's books, the three young adult novels in the Mariposa Club series, and the memoir Butterfly Boy: Memories of a Chicano Mariposa, which received the American Book Award from the Before Columbus Foundation. He also edited Camino del Sol: Fifteen Years of Latina and Latino Writing, Alurista's new and selected volume Xicano Duende: A Select Anthology, and a 2019 issue of Ploughshares. The recipient of Guggenheim, NEA and USA Rolón fellowships, a NYFA grant in poetry, the Lenore Marshall Prize from the Academy of American Poets, the Lambda Literary Award for Poetry, the Shelley Memorial Award from the Poetry Society of America, The Poetry Center Book Award, and the Barnes & Noble Writer for Writers Award, he is contributing editor for Poets & Writers Magazine and writes a monthly column for NBC-Latino online. Currently, he is professor of English and director of the MFA Program in Creative Writing at Rutgers-Newark, the State University of New Jersey. In 2015, he received The Bill Whitehead Award for Lifetime Achievement from the Publishing Triangle. Additionally, he serves as critic-at-large with the L.A. Times, is a member of the Writers Council for the Center for Fiction, and sits on the boards of three national literary organizations: Zoeglossia: A Community for Writers with Disabilities, the Poetry Society of America (PSA), and the Association of Writers and Writing Programs (AWP).

A good read: Butterfly Boy: Memories of a Chicano Mariposa

Heartbreaking, poetic, and intensely personal, Butterfly Boy is a unique coming out and coming-of-age story of a first-generation Chicano who trades one life for another, only to discover that history and memory are not exchangeable or forgettable. Growing up among poor migrant Mexican farmworkers, Rigoberto González also faces the pressure of coming-of-age as a gay man in a culture that prizes machismo. Losing his mother when he is twelve, González must then confront his father’s abandonment and an abiding sense of cultural estrangement, both from his adopted home in the United States and from a Mexican birthright. His only sense of connection gets forged in a violent relationship with an older man. By finding his calling as a writer, and by revisiting the relationship with his father during a trip to Mexico, González finally claims his identity at the intersection of race, class, and sexuality. The result is a leap of faith that every reader who ever felt like an outsider will immediately recognize.

2007 Finalist, Randy Shilts Awards for Gay Nonfiction, Publishing Triangle Winner, American Book Awards, Before Columbus Foundation

[finishinglinepress]

FLP CHAPBOOK OF THE DAY: Politics or Disease, please… by Sean J Mahoney

TO ORDER GO TO: https://www.finishinglinepress.com/product/politics-or-disease-please-by-sean-j-mahoney/ RESERVE YOUR COPY TODAY

Sean Mahoney lives in Santa Ana, California with Dianne, her mother, 4 dogs, and 4 renters. He believes that Judas was a way better singer than Jesus, that String Theory is more than just a plucked instrument, and that dark chocolate is extraordinarily good for people. No really.

Sean J. Mahoney has had work published at Poets Reading the News, The Good Men Project, Nine Mile Literary Magazine, Antithesis Journal, Catamaran Literary Reader, and Wordgathering among others. He’s pretty sure he was nominated for a Pushcart a few years ago for a poem. Sometime in 2021 Sean will be digitally attending the Zoeglossia retreat for writers with disabilities. He was chosen as one of the 2020 fellows. He co-edited the first 3 volumes of the MS benefit anthology series Something On Our Minds. Sean lives in Santa Ana, California with Dianne, her mother, 4 dogs, and 4 renters. There is a large garden cuz garden tomatoes are simply awesome. Sean helps run the Disability Literature Consortium booth at the annual AWP bookfair…lit by crips. Except 2020 and 2021 year…Covid.

ADVANCE PRAISE FOR Politics or Disease, please… by Sean J Mahoney

This is a stunning collection, technically proficient, verbally acute, outlining a vision that links the disability of the body with the disability of the nation and the nation’s politics. This is not, however, a dour book; there is music and energy, beauty of metaphor and composition, the ha-ha’s of black humor, the brute bite of wit. It is a book of intense, energetic questioning, of wonderings, and of compassion. It is a book of poems that by a poet who knows his voice, and knows how thin is the line between truth and untruth, ignorance and inattention. I believe that this is a book forged in love, seeking, for all of us, the good route between all the calamities that will lead finally to the place of our better selves.

–Bob Herz, Editor, Nine Mile Magazine

email: bobherz@ninemile.org

website: http://ninemile.org

https://talkaboutpoetry.wordpress.com

https://soundcloud.com/bobherz

https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/talk-about-poetry/id972411979?mt=2

“The tongue does its best work untethered from polite conversation.” So says poet Sean Mahoney in Politics or Disease, please… and from first poem to last Mahoney tackles issues of politics, disability and disability poetics. Viewed through the lens of a daily life with MS, the poems in this book advocate ardently for disability rights while not yielding to the pressure to couch their language in pre-approved parlance, making them an important contributor to the conversation.

–Mike Northen, Editor, Beauty is a Verb: The New Poetry of Disability

“The tongue does its best work,” Sean Mahoney writes, “ when untethered from polite conversation.” In these poems, the lost public promise of a benevolent nation is intertwined with the lost personal promise of an individual human body, and this collection urgently calls for a new way of speaking about disability and disease—as both personal and national conditions. Mahoney speaks of the “opacity of the familiar” and his poems often turn familiar tropes inside out, twisting and tweaking them until we hear the language in a new way—until we see what the old language has been hiding. It’s a powerful book, stunningly grounded in physicality and fact—the details of contemporary life—and filled with intense questioning, heart-piercing humor, and an unflinching voice. It will change you.

–Corrinne Clegg Hales, Author of To Make it Right

In Politics or Disease, please…the reader is given the privilege of watching Mahoney work. Mahoney does the rare thing of commenting on his own writing. His book is an exploration of form, beauty, disability, and inclusion. It is an important book by a wonderful, emerging poet.

–Jennifer Bartlett, author of (a) lullaby without any music, and co-founder of Zoeglossia.org.

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