Poem of the Week: Reginald Harris

      

 

Photo by: Ocean Morisset         

      

Baltimore Uproar by Romare Bearden 

Upton / Avenue Market Metro Station, Baltimore, Maryland

Get off here. This is a story you've

been told: these streets before the trash,

the rats, the crack-heads nodding to ghost

music. That past a distant gleam of notes,

sound-magicians dreaming, rising

from these streets: diminutive

personifications of the beat, rhythm

made compact flesh; flamboyant

fly-brimmed hipsters high on hi-de-ho,

lexographers of jive; and Our Dark Lady,

transformed from turning tricks to

trickster by the music, through her songs.

From The Avenue to the after-hours you

could hear it in the changes, the shift from

working day to glittering night. Shattering

twists of phrase calling out, the turn of a gloved

hand sheathed in silver from fingertip to elbow

to hide the tracks beneath. Rising from the

platform, the scent of gardenias is in the train's

retreating roar, leaving departing commuters

in spangled shards of sound. These multicolored stones

are her petals, a frozen music always calling,

calling back, urging on -- Rise up. Get off here. Rise

up

-Reginald Harris 

(From Autogeography, Nortwestern University Press, 2013)  

Used by permission.

Reginald Harris is the Poetry In The Branches Coordinator and Information Technology Director for Poets House in New York City. He won the 2012 Cave Canem/Northwestern University Press Poetry Prize for Autogeography. A Pushcart Prize Nominee, recipient of Individual Artist Awards for both poetry and fiction from the Maryland State Arts Council, and Finalist for a Lambda Literary Award and the ForeWord Book of the Year for 10 Tongues: Poems (2002), his work has appeared in numerous journals, anthologies, and other publications. An Associate Editor for Lambda Literary Foundation's Lambda Literary Review, he lives in Brooklyn, where he pretends to work on another manuscript. 

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If you are interested in reading past poems of the week, feel free to visit the blog archive.

October Sunday Kind of Love: Reginald Harris & Susan Scheid

October
Sunday Kind of Love
Featuring

Reginald Harris &
Susan Scheid

    

   

Sunday, October 20, 2013

5-7pm

Busboys & Poets

2021 14th St. NW
Washington, DC 20009

Hosted by

Sarah Browning & Katy Richey
$5 online or at the door

As always, open mic follows!

Co-Sponsored by Busboys and Poets

& Split This Rock

Reginald Harris is the Poetry In The Branches Coordinator and Information Technology Director for Poets House in New York City. He won the 2012 Cave Canem/Northwestern University Press Poetry Prize for Autogeography. A Pushcart Prize Nominee, recipient of Individual Artist Awards for both poetry and fiction from the Maryland State Arts Council, and Finalist for a Lambda Literary Award and the ForeWord Book of the Year for 10 Tongues: Poems (2002), his work has appeared in numerous journals, anthologies, and other publications. An Associate Editor for Lambda Literary Foundation's Lambda Literary Review, he lives in Brooklyn, where he pretends to work on another manuscript. 

Susan Scheid is the author of After Enchantment, her first book of poetry. Her poetry has appeared most recently in Tidal Basin Review, Requiem, Rose Red Review, The Unrorean, Bark! and the chapbook, Poetic Art. Susan currently serves on the Board of Directors for Split This Rock. As Artist-in Residence at the Noyes School of Rhythm in Connecticut, Susan studies dance and teaches daily writing workshops for one week each summer. She lives in the Brookland neighborhood of Washington, DC, where she has been a community organizer for thirty years.  Susan helped open a community-owned grocery (Brookland Co-op Community Market) and also served on its board of directors. Susan has a B.A. in Anthropology from Catholic University. 

Susan Scheid photo by Kelsey Weaver.

Poem of the Week: Reginald Harris

NORMAL
for Shara McCallum

walk long enough
with a pebble in your shoe
and walking with a pebble becomes
normal

you no longer notice
the discomfort...........the limp is just
another thing to live with
pain just another fact of life

until someone you haven’t seen for a time
asks......Why are you limping
and you remember
Oh yes, that’s right –
I have a pebble in my shoe

and then what do you do
take it out.......leave it in because
you are used to its dull and constant ache
do not want to learn how to walk properly again

live long enough
with war
and it becomes
normal

men and women you don’t know –
someone else’s children –
fly off the edges of the map
to places you were never taught existed

photos of the dead close out
nightly news programs.........a familiar tag-
line as the anchor signs off
until tomorrow

images of troops march across
a strange topography....the sound of guns
going off in places so distant
you hardly notice........ one barely hears a noise

until someone says
We’ve been at war my entire adult life
and you remember
Oh, yes, that’s right –
there IS a war still going on

And then what do you do?

-Reginald Harris

Used by permission.

Poetry in the Branches Coordinator for Poets House in New York City, Reginald Harris was a Finalist for a Lambda Literary Award and the ForeWord Book of the Year for 10 Tongues: Poems (2001). A Pushcart Prize Nominee and recipient of Individual Artist Awards for both poetry and fiction from the Maryland State Arts Council, his work has appeared in numerous journals, anthologies, and other publications. Contributor to LGBTQ America Today: An Encyclopedia (2008), he is currently pretending to work on two manuscripts.

Harris was on the panels Gay and Lesbian Poetry in the 40th Year Since Stonewall: History, Craft, Equality and Black LGBTQ Writing as Agents of Change at Split This Rock Poetry Festival: Poems of Provocation & Witness 2010.

Please feel free to forward Split This Rock Poem of the Week widely. We just ask you to include all of the information in this email, including this request. Thanks!

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