Poem of the Week: Oliver de la Paz

Diaspora 2

 

The way is written in the dark:

it has steel in it, something metallic, a gun,

a mallet, a piece of machinery--

something cold like the sea, something,

a nervous shudder. If it

were to go on, the next stanza

would snuff out sound.

 

It would stand in a forest

that cannot bring you faith and a woman

carrying a basket of glass jars gives one

 

to you. They carry dying fireflies. No,

they’re dried hands holding lit matches

and she tells you it’s your light, it’s your fucking light.

 

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Used with permission.

 

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Oliver de la Paz is the author of four collections of poetry:Names Above Houses, Furious Lullaby, Requiem for the Orchard, and Post Subject: A Fable. He co-edited A Face to Meet the Faces: An Anthology of Contemporary Persona Poetry, and he serves as the Co-Chair of the Advisory Board for Kundiman, a not-for-profit arts organization dedicated to the promotion of Asian American Writing. His work has been published in Tinhouse, Quarterly West, New England Review, American Poetry Review, and in anthologies such as Asian American Poetry: The Next Generation. He teaches in the MFA program at Western Washington University and in the Low-Res MFA program at PLU.

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Split This Rock goes to AWP!

                

We hope to see many friends at the annual conference of the Association of Writers & Writing Programs (AWP), April 8 - 11, in Minnesota. Information on our involvement is below -- including a panel discussion featuring Split This Rock's Executive Director, Sarah Browning. Visit the AWP website for full details on the conference schedule.

Come visit us at the Bookfair!

Splitistas Katy Richey & Jonathan
Tucker at AWP 2013

Split This Rock will be at Table 551 -- Please

stop by to write a Haiku Post Card to President Obama and to enter a drawing for a free registration to Split This Rock Poetry Festival 2016 featuring Jan Beatty, Reginald Dwayne Betts, Nikky Finney, Ross Gay, Juan Felipe Herrera, Linda Hogan and many more! 

Conference Presentations

This Poem Has Multiple Issues: Reimagining Political Poetry
Room 101 H&I, Level 1
Friday, April 10, 2015
4:30 pm to 5:45 pm

Featuring Kathryn Levy, Samiya Bashir, Sarah Browning, Mark Doty, Rowan Phillips. Wikipedia's entry for Political Poetry begins, "This article has multiple issues." Precisely. Such lack of consensus could stem from the contentiousness of politics itself, but it might also be a product of conceptual neglect: when we think of a conventional political poem, what example springs to mind? And how current is it? This panel considers a diversity of approaches to the political poem -- in its subject, poetics, or call to action -- to update our understanding of its multiple issues.

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Reception with CantoMundo, Lambda Literary & Split This Rock

Room 212 A&B, Level 2

Friday, April 10, 2015

6:30 pm to 8:00 pm

Join three great organizations as we celebrate the power of poetry and literature to make a difference in the world. Free drink for the first fifty guests.

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For All Who Leave Their Pens Weeping So Others May Write

Room L100 B&C, Lower Level

Saturday, April 11, 2015

12:00 pm to 1:15 pm

How do organizers and presenters of other writers keep our own creative lives alive? Leaders and staff of CantoMundo, Cave Canem, Kundiman, Lambda Literary Foundation, and Split This Rock discuss the challenges and joys of maintaining a writing life that's often fit in around the edges of demanding leadership roles within literary organizations. Are we writers? Are we administrators? We are both! We prove it to you by reading some of our own poems and memoir excerpts as part of the discussion. Featuring Sarah Browning, Celeste Guzman Mendoza, Vikas K. Menon, Tony Valenzuela, and Nicole Sealey.

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Poetry and the New Black Masculinity, Part Two 

Danez Smith, Tim Seibles, Pages Matam & Kevin Simmonds (not pictured)

Room L100 F&G, Lower Level

Saturday, April 11, 2015

1:30 pm to 2:45 pm

The work of contemporary black male poets reflects assertions and disruptions often missing from mainstream black male representation. As a continuation of the seminal panel at Split This Rock Poetry Festival 2014, five noted black male poets -- at various stages in their careers and representing a wide range of genre-defiant aesthetic and performative practices -- reconvene to discuss themes and conventions emanating from their own social, artistic, and political narratives. Featuring Kevin Simmonds, Danez Smith, Tim Seibles, and Pages Matam. 

Poem of the Week: L. Lamar Wilson

 

A Patch of Blue in Tenleytown

She ambles about this Mickey-Dee kitchen’s din,

unmoved by the hot grease threatening

her ¿puedo tomar su orden? mask.   

No one is supposed to see it here.

A port-wine patch covers the left side of her face

from lash to lip. She’s focused, unblinking. 

Ah, I know this face, its smile a guise

I’ve mastered since I anchored the front row

of my pre-K graduation pic, gummy grin thrust

in front of awkward contortions

of a humerus bone my sky-blue gown

could not hold in place, shoulders propping

a hunched neck, arched vertebrae defying

scoliosis’s grip, hoping no one would notice

the remnants of a failed surgery dimpling

my knuckles like train tracks dividing the haves

& never-wills in a town on a Deep South road

to nowhere. She catches me staring, & I wave

my limp wrist, an SOS. We burst into laughter,

instant familia in this part of this town eager to forget

it was once below the Mason-Dixon line, too,

designed by one brilliant brown man’s mind, one

who knew how to keep enemies out. She pushes

her hair back to show off her patch of blue,

waves both hands wildly. Esa sonrisa ir, por favor!

I want to say but instead order dos bocadillos--

all I can afford. Now we must say goodbye

& return to lives among those who aren’t

in our tribe. I take one last glance at heaven’s kiss

on her peach-pit flesh--mirror image of God,

of a schoolboy’s stance--wave again, then

leave humming Celia’s “No Encuentro Palabras”

for mi hermana all the way home.

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From Sacrilegion (Carolina Wren Press, 2013).

Used with permission.

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Sacrilegion (2013), L. Lamar Wilson's first book, was selected by Lee Ann Brown for the 2012 Carolina Wren Press Poetry Series and was a finalist for the 2013 Thom Gunn Poetry Award; Prime (Sibling Rivalry Press, 2014), a collection of poems and interviews with the Phantastique Five, was named one of last year's best books by the Poetry Foundation. Wilson's poems have appeared or are forthcoming in such journals and anthologies as Callaloo, jubilat, The Los Angeles Review, Rattle, The 100 Best African American Poems, and Please Excuse This Poem: 100 New Poems for the Next Generation. Wilson, a Pushcart Prize nominee and Cave Canem graduate fellow, is completing a doctorate at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in African American and multi-ethnic American poetics.

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Poem of the Week: Roger Reeves

Self-Portrait as Vincent Van Gogh
in the Asylum at Arles

The moths in the orchard squeal

with each pass of the mistral wind.

Yet the reapers and their scythes,

out beyond the pear trees, slay wheat

in sure columns. Christ

must have been made of shocks

of wheat. When they lashed him,

four bundles of fine yellow burst forth

from each welt. And the women,

tarrying as they do now behind the swing

and chuff of the reapers' blades,

gathered and plaited the stray pieces

of wheat falling from his hips into braids,

long braids that would bind a tattered sail-

cloth over his yellow mouth, yellow feet.

Oh to be bound by one's own blood

like a burlap sack cinched around the neck

with a leather belt. Father forgive me

for the moths shrieking in the orchard

of my mouth. Forgive the rattle and clatter

of wings inside the blue of my brain.

Even if these iron bars queer a field,

queer a woman standing too close to a reaper's blade,

a half-moon hung and wholly harsh,

even if this woman, burdened like a spine

carrying a head and a basket of rocks,

forgets the flaw of a well-sharpened tool,

let her not mistake my whimper and warning

for the honk of a goose in heat. Father,

she is not made like our savior,

of straw, of a coarse tender. Nothing will stop

when her blood runs along a furrow.

The sun will not sag with a red scowl.

The field will not refuse water. Father,

I am unsure of what I am-

a fragrant mistral wind or a pile of moths' heads

at the foot of a pear tree. Father,

give me a scythe. Father, let me decide.

* * *

From King Me (Copper Canyon Press, 2013).

Used with permission.

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Roger Reeves's poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Best American Poetry, Poetry, Ploughshares, American Poetry Review, Boston Review, and Tin House, among others. Reeves was awarded a 2014-2015 Hodder Fellowship from Princeton University, a 2014 Pushcart Prize, a 2013 National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellowship and 2008 Ruth Lilly Fellowship, King Me, his first book of poems, was published by Copper Canyon Press in 2013. King Me has been awarded the 2014 Larry Levis Reading Prize by the creative writing program at Virginia Commonwealth University and the PEN Oakland/Josephine Miles Literary Award. He is an assistant professor of poetry at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

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Poem of the Week: Peter J. Harris

 

Don't Even Pretend
(The Saturn Poem)

From the Washington Post - November 13, 1980:

BRAIDED SATURN RING ASTOUNDS SCIENTISTS

PASADENA, CALIF., -- "It defies the laws or orbital mechanics as I understand them but two components of the fifth ring out are braided," said Dr. Bradford Smith of the University of Arizona, one of the scientists gathered at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory to study photographs being transmitted from [Voyager I]. "If the distribution of these braids is uniform around the entire ring then there are as many as 1,000 braids in the ring."

Not only is the fifth ring in braids, Smith said, but the 500-mile long braids appear to have kinks in them. Smith said that as bizarre as the braids are the kinks are even more bizarre. "If you look closely, you see abrupt bends in the braids, as if somebody took the surface and bent it," Smith said. "I don't even pretend to understand what this means."

Saturn's rings was all nappy

spread out from her head

like she just woke up

took a shower & aint dried them yet

dread locks

cluttered with moons/meteors/mysteries

so God, She said:

"girl...now you know

I can't let you be orbiting round me

looking like that. suppose we have company.

what they gon think of me?"

God took off from work

unscrewed Her Afro Sheen jar

washed Her comb & pick

sat under constellations

& told Saturn to sit on the space

between Her legs.

"honey, I got to plait your rings

even if I miss a day's pay."

      God got to cornrowing Saturn's rings

aint nothing more coaxing than God's hands

spreading each ring into 3 strands

sifting through rocks that was worlds eons ago

She finger Afro Sheen down the part

softening scalp/loosening crusty moons

stuck in orbit

She start humming Nina Simone

while threading wisdom down each row

"here comes the sun

little darlin

here comes the sun..."

hands so knowing

they tug/twist/twirl those knotty rings

& Saturn don't whine

just listen to the lyrics

& feel tight lightness

creeping along her scalp

down her back into infinity

Saturn close her eyes

& feel peaceful

like when God rubbed Her palms

for the sixth time & rolled rings

from the swirls in the fingerprints

of each hand

"here comes the sun

little darlin

here comes the sun..."

God weave bright beads, baubles & shells

yellow curves/purple swoops/blue loops

decorate the arcs spreading now

like the stiff necklaces

around the throats of Masai sisters

"there child. I'm finished!

my my, you look like a magic pinwheel

gracing space. Here, look in my corona

& see how pretty you are."

God hum & sigh

She got to rest these few more hours

work again tomorrow

smiling early from the east

glinting off Saturn's rings

like a fawn darting quenched from a water hole

and back into the forest

***

From Bless the Ashes, poetry (Tia Chucha Press/Northwestern, 2014).

Used with permission.

Photo by Adenike A. Harris.

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Peter J. Harris is a native of Southeast DC and an alumnus of Ballou High School and Howard University. He is the author of Bless the Ashes, poetry (Tia Chucha Press), and The Black Man of Happiness: In Pursuit of My 'Unalienable Right,' a book of personal essays. He has published his work in a wide variety of publications since the 1970s. Since 1992, he's been a member of the Anansi Writers Workshop at the World Stage, in LA's Leimert Park. Visit his website at: www.blackmanofhappiness.com.

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Poem of the Week: Ailish Hopper

 

Ways to be White in a Poem

Tension makes
a form resound

and so the many lines I am told
not to cross

Do not go out alone at night
Do not call attention to yourself

Closer to the color line
the more I am
            White girl

fool

It is a while before
the other girls

correct me, gently. Good timbre needs
more air
          Shout out!

Muscles flex, quick-shift
          I stomp, impious

impervious, now

Do not dance suggestively
Hold a stranger’s eyes

That first day in the gym
I asked the row

Could I

             thinking
about cheers

elbows sharp, foregrounded

feet, cloud-

stepping

Never of

A cheer

as the body 

went up

As if I were.        Were not

Branch creaking

Rope taut

And, maybe you, too---
whoever you are---reading this

flicker

Do not touch
Or eat

Their food
Do not drink

From the same cup

***

From Dark~Sky Society (Western Michigan University, 2014). Used with permission.

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Ailish Hopper grew up in DC, and is the author of Dark~Sky Society (2014), selected by David St. John as runner up for the New Issues prize, and the chapbook Bird in the Head (2005), selected by Jean Valentine for the Center for Book Arts Prize. Individual poems have appeared in Agni, APR, Blackbird, Harvard Review Online, Ploughshares, Poetry, Tidal Basin Review, and other places. She has received support from the Baltimore Commission for the Arts and Humanities, the MacDowell Colony, Maryland State Arts Council, and Yaddo. Her essays on art and literature that deal with race have appeared in or are forthcoming in Boston Review, The Volta, and the anthology,A Sense of Regard: Essays on Poetry and Race. She is currently at work on an essay about imagining the world after the reign of white supremacy. She teaches at Goucher College.

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Poem of the Week: Bettina Judd

THE INAUGURATION OF EXPERIMENTS,

December 1845

Lucy didn’t scream like most.  Though sometimes she 

would moan--deep,   long   and   overdue.     I’d wake 

thinking death. It’s her, knees curled under, head face 

down, her body trying to move out of itself. Anarcha 

and  I  take  turns  wiping  her  head  with  cool  rags, 

warming her feet with our hands, singing to her. She 

would join  in  a  voice  so  low  it wasn't like she was 

singing at all but whispering a prayer that hushed on 

long after we finished.

Doctor spent a lot of time with Lucy. He would stand 

at the foot of her bed looking. Not mad    just like he 

had a whole lot of questions and wanted answers from 

her. I had questions too, so I looked to Anarcha.

She thought a long time.   Finally said, She too sick to 

die.  We too well to be living.

***

From Patient (Black Lawrence Press, 2014). Used with permission.
Photo by Rachel Eliza Griffiths. 

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Born in Baltimore and raised in Southern California, Bettina Judd is an interdisciplinary writer, artist, and performer. She is an alumna of Spelman College and the University of Maryland, and is currently Visiting Assistant Professor of Gender, Sexuality, and Women's Studies at the College of William and Mary. She has received fellowships from the Five Colleges, The Vermont Studio Center, and the University of Maryland. She is a Cave Canem Fellow and has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize in poetry. Her poems have appeared in Torch, Mythium, Meridians, and other journals and anthologies. Most recently, her collection of poems titled Patient. won the Black Lawrence Press Hudson Book Prize and was published in November of 2014. As a singer, she has been invited to perform for audiences in Vancouver, Washington DC, Atlanta, Paris, New York, and Mumbai.

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