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#contemporary poetry
sweatermuppet · 5 months
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Blessed Be by Sol Rios, published in Ghost of my Ghosts
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chairadventures · 6 months
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by Louise Glück
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newvision · 16 days
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— Ocean Vuong, from Night Sky with Exit Wounds
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bandiera--rossa · 5 months
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Running Orders
They call us now,
before they drop the bombs.
The phone rings
and someone who knows my first name
calls and says in perfect Arabic
“This is David.”
And in my stupor
of sonic booms and glass-shattering symphonies
still smashing around in my head
I think, Do I know any Davids in Gaza?
They call us now to say
Run.
You have 58 seconds from the end of this message.
Your house is next.
They think of it as
some kind of war-time courtesy.
It doesn’t matter
that there is nowhere to run to.
It means nothing
that the borders are closed
and your papers are worthless
and mark you only for a life sentence
in this prison by the sea
and the alleyways are narrow
and there are more human lives
packed one against the other more
than any other place on earth
Just run.
We aren’t trying to kill you.
It doesn’t matter that you can’t call us back
to tell us the people we claim to want
aren’t in your house
that there’s no one here
except you and your children
who were cheering for Argentina
sharing the last loaf of bread for this week
counting candles left in case the power goes out.
It doesn’t matter that you have children.
You live in the wrong place
and now is your chance to run to nowhere.
It doesn’t matter that 58 seconds isn’t long enough
to find your wedding album
or your son’s favorite blanket
or your daughter’s almost completed college application
or your shoes
or to gather everyone in the house.
It doesn’t matter what you had planned.
It doesn’t matter who you are.
Prove you’re human.
Prove you stand on two legs.
Run.
Lena Khalaf Tuffaha
Arab-American poet
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Photos by Mohammed Talatene and Mohammed Saber - Palestinians leaving Nothern part of Gaza - October 2023.
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hacked-wtsdz · 5 months
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Modern poetry often doesn’t seem like poetry to me. If you take away the structure and write it down into a normal one-paragraph text, it takes nothing away from the poem. The author could have said it in prose better than in poetry, even. And I know that poetry is a very subjective art, with its edges blurred, with many styles and ways to express oneself. You have haikus and different kinds of rhyming poetry and blank verse. But I’ve seen many poems, and blank verse isn’t the same as putting prose in poetry format.
To me, poetry is allegory. Poetry is symbolism. Poetry is metaphor. Poetry is the ‘wine-dark sea’. You read Whitman or Margaret Atwood or Richard Siken or Mary Oliver or Anna Akhmatova, and you know that if the structure is taken away, you are left with something nearly nonsensical. You think that you’re reading, when in reality you’re looking at a painting and listening to a symphony and watching geese fly to the south.
You read Nikita Gill and think ‘yes, I agree. I agree but I don’t feel anything. You could’ve written for journals, and your talent wouldn’t have gone to waste’.
Not to upset any Nikita Gill fans but i am tired of calling something that only looks like poetry to me poetry.
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theladyonfire · 4 months
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Dear Memory by Victoria Chang
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fragmentsofgrief · 2 months
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Forough Farrokhzad poetry for today
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moon poem by svetlana kim
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grocerystoretrip · 1 year
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pluto probably has a hole in his heart and we will never know
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pagansphinx · 1 month
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Black History Month
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Maya Angelou (American, 1928-2014)
Phenomenal Woman by Maya Angelou
Pretty women wonder where my secret lies.
I'm not cute or built to suit
a fashion model's size
But when I start to tell them,
They think I'm telling lies.
I say,
It's in the reach of my arms
The span of my hips,
The stride of my step,
The curl of my lips.
I'm a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That's me.
I walk into a room
Just as cool as you please,
And to a man,
The fellows stand or
Fall down on their knees
Then they swarm around me,
A hive of honey bees.
I say,
It's the fire in my eyes,
And the flash of my teeth,
The swing in my waist,
And the joy in my feet.
I'm a woma
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That's me.
Men themselves have wondered
What they see in me.
They try so much
But they can't touch
My inner mystery.
When I try to show them
They say they still can't see.
I say,
It's in the arch of my back,
The sun of my smile,
The ride of my breasts,
The grace of my style.
I'm a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That's me.
Now you understand
Just why my head's not bowed.
I don't shout or jump about
Or have to talk real loud.
When you see me passing
It ought to make you proud.
I say,
It's in the click of my heels,
The bend of my hair,
the palm of my hand,
The need of my care,
'Cause I'm a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That's me.
from And Still I Rise • Copyright © 1978
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vesselsofmercy · 2 years
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– Ada Limón, Bright Dead Things
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days-of-reading · 2 years
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Yanyi, The Year of Blue Water (2019)
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newvision · 10 months
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— Danez Smith, iv. not an ode for John Crawford (a bop) from Black Movie
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thenextdoormatilda · 3 months
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I am only kind to my father in poems he will never read.
I try to imagine him small the way my grandmother tells it:
patient, deerlimbed, pondering polynomials. Wanting only
a Toblerone bar for his birthday to eat alone in his room
away from the violence of exploding raindrops, pitiless Madras summer.
I wonder if he is proud of his life like I am proud
of my poems-the best we could do. In another world
I would go down the stairs to where my father is sitting alone
with his wine glass and I would tell him I'm sorry. But I am a woman
the same way my father is a man: always a little embarrassed.
Somehow it is easier to say I hated practicing piano in the morning
than it is to say I loved the way you turned the pages for me.
I cringed being woken up each morning, pulled blinds and tough light, but I loved
your warm and capable hands on my forehead brushing away the remnants of a dream.
–The Truth by Natasha Rao
Still from the film "Aftersun"
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leechteethwrites · 4 months
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part of a poem i wrote. this one is really personal. hope someone relates :)
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"even the small poems mean something. they are often whales in the bodies of tiny fish."
— Nayyirah Waheed, Salt, 2013
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