allthemfingpoems

[allthemfingpoems]

Song Of The Prettybird

I've lived 20 prettybird years

Of this great big prettybird life

And i think i pretty pretty pretty bird bird pretty much know what im talking about

People like to poke fun at my pretty bird pretty preening

At my pretty pretty bird pretty feathers

But look at my long clean coat

At my pretty pretty bird pretty pink legs

When pigeon men track me cross sky highway

tHey are happy to trace hungry orange eyes

between my pretty pretty bird bird feathers

To busy fantasizing pretty bird

Wet dreams swollen chest fluff fest

To pretty poke bird fun

To pretty poke fun bird

To pretty bird bird pretty bird bird pretty pretty pretty

Too busy fantasizing

to poke fun at permanently preening pretty bird

My vanity is insanity unless it helps get you off

What a treat hosting eyes between my thighs

They will spend equal time begging to share bed with me

Condemning mediocrity

How does one achieve complexity when all she was ever taught to be was basic

Pigeon man wants pretty bird to pretty bird

Until pretty bird fulfills ideas of prettiness

Then shes too pretty pretty bird bird paralyzing and preened

Look at my long clean coat

At my pretty pretty bid pretty pink legs

Track me cross sky highway

Take a picture I beg you

Take a picture pretty bird pretty bird

My left side is my best side

I have a best side

I have a better half

I am a half

Pretty cus they want a pretty bird bird

I grew up on a diet of bread crumbs catalog clippings and sidewalk cracks

How do you expect anything else

Pretty sure i know what im talking about

Pretty sure

pretty sure

Maybe not

Sorry sorry sorry sorry

Can i ask a question

Sorry sorrry

May i may i

Pretty bird used to sing

Baby bird used to sing

Baby bird was pretty bird before pretty bird learned to pretty

And baby bird could compose whole symphonies

Acute intricacies melodies capturing vacies poetry

But the reviews came in

and they prefered apology

So she shrank

learned to make herself small enough

to nearly fit back in her eggshell

to tip toe atop eggshells

expanded flight just long enough

for pigeon men to track her cross sky highway

but still she sang too loud

so they caged her up

for her pretty pretty bird bird long clean coat

for her pretty pretty bird pretty pink legs

and they said sing pretty lady sing

but I forgot how

so I said

pretty pretty bird bird look at my long clean coat

at my pretty pretty bird pretty pink legs

but they were bored of me

-Shay Alexi Stewart

[allthemfingpoems]

I was never taught to love myself-

A skill I never picked up,

An instinct trained out of my by receiving the wrong kind of love.

Whispered into innocent ears & kissed into innocent skin-

The kind of love that seeps & saps,

The kind of love that hinges on an “if”.

why would I want anything to do with love, if that’s what it meant?

-K. Maurice

[allthemfingpoems]

Untitled

I’m not lazy, I swear!

My parents, my grandparents, my great-grandparents- they worked and they saved;

They bought their home, fair and square.

I work and I work, as much as I dare;

1 job, 2 jobs, sometimes even 3. 60-hour weeks, 70-hour weeks, to prove that I’m trying.

I eschew sleep, I don’t hang out with friends, I’m following all the advice! Don’t despair.

I don’t buy expensive coffee or avocado toast; I don’t indulge in any kind of self-care.

I work and I work and I wait for the savings to build. I wait, I wait, I wait.

I’m not lazy, I swear!

I pay my bills, I buy my groceries, and where?

Where is the rest of my money? I’m working too much to live; what’s the point?

It’s a revolving door of jobs and promotions, but I just can’t get there!

It’s the definition of insanity, the spinning wheel that gets me nowhere,

I’m a rat in a cage and they tell me “don’t do this” and “don’t do that” while they sit in a house on land that they own; I’ve done nothing.

I’ve worked and I’ve worked; my body is breaking, my mind is in shambles, how is that fair?

They bought their home, fair and square.

I worked and I worked, as much as I could.

I reached for that light at the end, for that pot at the end, but now it’s the end and-

I wasn’t lazy, I swear.

-K. Maurice

[allthemfingpoems]

Good Bones

Life is short, though I keep this from my children.

Life is short, and I’ve shortened mine

in a thousand delicious, ill-advised ways,

a thousand deliciously ill-advised ways

I’ll keep from my children. The world is at least

fifty percent terrible, and that’s a conservative

estimate, though I keep this from my children.

For every bird there is a stone thrown at a bird.

For every loved child, a child broken, bagged,

sunk in a lake. Life is short and the world

is at least half terrible, and for every kind

stranger, there is one who would break you,

though I keep this from my children. I am trying

to sell them the world. Any decent realtor,

walking you through a real shithole, chirps on

about good bones: This place could be beautiful,

right? You could make this place beautiful.

by Maggie Smith, "Good Bones" from Waxwing. Copyright © 2016 by Maggie Smith

[allthemfingpoems]

for my poetry contest I’ve decided to do a villanelle on the topic of freedom. It’ll be hard because a villanelle only has 19 lines w/ 8 of them being the same two repeated. I think it’s the best option for me because I tend to over-describe emotions and being forced to condense everything into 19 lines will make each line that much more impactful and full of meaning. (I hope)

Mad Girl’s Love Song by Sylvia Plath is an example of a villanelle

[allthemfingpoems]

This is the one original poem I’ve posted. I’m thinking about doing a series of 10-15 autobiographical-natured poems centered around a traumatic event in my life (aka: just my life, basically, as it’s been one huge trauma) and publishing them in a short book. This one would definitely feature; it’s very personal.

anger

bled dry

bone dry

wasteland

desert, with its hot

sprawling

endless sea of golden grains of sand

empty

listless

sometimes, a mirage

bountiful, green trees

a beautiful lake of blue

pure, clean, cool water

it flows through and around

quenches

but then

it fades

into nothing

you’re left

with nothing

why?

-K. Maurice

[allthemfingpoems]

i’m entering a poetry contest this month. The theme is freedom. I’ve been thinking about it a lot, trying to decide what freedom means to me and I finally settled on a topic. It makes me introspective, considering how different my answer would have been just a year or two ago. I’ll post the poem when I’ve finished it. I’m very nervous/excited

[allthemfingpoems]

my byline is very misleading; I have only actually put one poem of mine here and mostly shared poems that I love. I’ll try to be better about that

[allthemfingpoems]

Mad Girl’s Love Song

“I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead;

I lift my lids and all is born again.

(I think I made you up inside my head.)

The stars go waltzing out in blue and red,

And arbitrary blackness gallops in:

I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.

I dreamed that you bewitched me into bed

And sung me moon-struck, kissed me quite insane.

(I think I made you up inside my head.)

God topples from the sky, hell’s fires fade:

Exit seraphim and Satan’s men:

I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.

I fancied you’d return the way you said,

But I grow old and I forget your name.

(I think I made you up inside my head.)

I should have loved a thunderbird instead;

At least when spring comes they roar back again.

I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.

(I think I made you up inside my head.)”

-Sylvia Plath

[allthemfingpoems]

Have You Ever Tried to Enter the Long Black Branches?

Have you ever tried to enter the long black branches of other lives–

tried to imagine what the crisp fringes, full of honey, hanging

from the branches of the young locust trees, in early morning, feel like?

Do you think this world was only an entertainment for you?

Never to enter the sea and notice how the water divides

with perfect courtesy, to let you in!

Never to lie down on the grass, as though you were the grass!

Never to leap to the air as you open your wings over the dark acorn of your heart!

No wonder we hear, in your mournful voice, the complaint

that something is missing from your life!

Who can open the door who does not reach for the latch?

Who can travel the miles who does not put one foot

in front of the other, all attentive to what presents itself

continually?

Who will behold the inner chamber who has not observed

with admiration, even with rapture, the outer stone?

Well, there is time left–

fields everywhere invite you into them.

And who will care, who will chide you if you wander away

from wherever you are, to look for your soul?

Quickly, then, get up, put on your coat, leave your desk!

To put one’s foot into the door of the grass, which is

the mystery, which is death as well as life, and

not be afraid!

To set one’s foot in the door of death, and be overcome

with amazement!

To sit down in front of the weeds, and imagine

god the ten-fingered, sailing out of his house of straw,

nodding this way and that way, to the flowers of the

present hour,

to the song falling out of the mockingbird’s pink mouth,

to the tippets of the honeysuckle, that have opened

in the night

To sit down, like a weed among weeds, and rustle in the wind!

Listen, are you breathing just a little, and calling it a life?

While the soul, after all, is only a window,

and the opening of the window no more difficult

than the wakening from a little sleep.

Only last week I went out among the thorns and said

to the wild roses:

deny me not,

but suffer my devotion.

Then, all afternoon, I sat among them. Maybe

I even heard a curl or two of music, damp and rouge red,

hurrying from their stubby buds, from their delicate watery bodies.

For how long will you continue to listen to those dark shouters,

caution and prudence?

Fall in! Fall in!

A woman standing in the weeds.

A small boat flounders in the deep waves, and what’s coming next

is coming with its own heave and grace.

Meanwhile, once in a while, I have chanced, among the quick things,

upon the immutable.

What more could one ask?

And I would touch the faces of the daises,

and I would bow down

to think about it.

That was then, which hasn’t ended yet.

Now the sun begins to swing down. Under the peach-light,

I cross the fields and the dunes, I follow the ocean’s edge.

I climb, I backtrack.

I float.

I ramble my way home.

-Mary Oliver

[allthemfingpoems]

women’s voting rights at one hundred (but who’s counting?)

eenie meenie minie moe

catch a voter by her toe

if she hollers then you know

got yourself a real jane crow

* * *

one vote is an opinion

with a quiet legal force ::

a barely audible beep

in the local traffic, & just

a plashless drop of mercury

in the national thermometer.

but a collectivity of votes

/a flock of votes, a pride of votes,

a murder of votes/ can really

make some noise.

* * *

one vote begets another

if you make a habit of it.

my mother started taking me

to the polls with her when i

was seven :: small, thrilled

to step in the booth, pull

the drab curtain hush-shut

behind us, & flip the levers

beside each name she pointed

to, the Xs clicking into view.

there, she called the shots.

* * *

rich gal, poor gal

hired girl, thief

teacher, journalist

vote your grief

* * *

one vote’s as good as another

:: still, in 1913, illinois’s gentle

suffragists, hearing southern

women would resent spotting

mrs. ida b. wells-barnett amidst

whites marchers, gently kicked

their sister to the curb. but when

the march kicked off, ida got

right into formation, as planned.

the tribune’s photo showed

her present & accounted for.

* * *

one vote can be hard to keep

an eye on :: but several /a

colony of votes/ can’t scuttle

away unnoticed so easily. my

mother, veteran registrar for

our majority black election

district, once found—after

much searching—two bags

of ballots /a litter of votes/

stuffed in a janitorial closet.

* * *

one-mississippi

two-mississippis

* * *

one vote was all fannie lou

hamer wanted. in 1962, when

her constitutional right was

over forty years old, she tried

to register. all she got for her

trouble was literacy tested, poll

taxed, fired, evicted, & shot

at. a year of grassroots activism

nearly planted her mississippi

freedom democratic party

in the national convention.

* * *

one vote per eligible voter

was all stacy abrams needed.

she nearly won the georgia

governor’s race in 2018 :: lost by

50,000 /an unkindness of votes/

to the man whose job was purg

maintaining the voter rolls.

days later, she rolled out plans

for getting voters a fair fight.

it’s been two years—& counting.

-Evie Shockley

This poem was co-commissioned by the Academy of American Poets and the New York Philharmonic as part of the Project 19 initiative, and appeared in the Spring-Summer 2020 issue of American Poets.

[allthemfingpoems]

not an elegy for Mike Brown

I am sick of writing this poem

but bring the boy. his new name

his same old body. ordinary, black

dead thing. bring him & we will mourn

until we forget what we are mourning

& isn’t that what being black is about?

not the joy of it, but the feeling

you get when you are looking

at your child, turn your head,

then, poof, no more child.

that feeling. that’s black.

\\

think: once, a white girl

was kidnapped & that’s the Trojan war.

later, up the block, Troy got shot

& that was Tuesday. are we not worthy

of a city of ash? of 1000 ships

launched because we are missed?

always, something deserves to be burned.

it’s never the right thing now a days.

I demand a war to bring the dead boy back

no matter what his name is this time.

I at least demand a song. a song will do just fine.

\\

look at what the lord has made.

above Missouri, sweet smoke.

-Danez Smith

from The Quarry: A Social Justice Poetry Database

[allthemfingpoems]

Slave Sale: New Orleans

To begin with, the slaves had to wash themselves well,

and the men who had beards had to shave them off;

the men were then given a new suit each,

cheap but clean, and a hat, shirt, and shoes;

and the women were each given a frock of calico

and a handkerchief to tie about their heads.

They were then led by the man selling them into a large room;

the men placed on one side, the women at the other;

the tallest at the head of each row

and then the next in size

and so on to the shortest.

Many called to look at the slaves for sale

and the seller kept talking about their qualities;

made them hold up their heads and walk about briskly;

and those who might buy had them open their mouths

to look at their teeth,

and felt their arms and bodies,

just as they might a horse for sale;

and asked each what they could do.

Sometimes a man or woman would be taken to a small house

in the yard,

to be stripped and looked at carefully:

if they had the scars of whips on their backs

that would show they had been troublesome.

During the day a number of sales were made;

and a planter from Baton Rouge bought Eliza’s little son.

Before that the boy had to jump and run across the floor

to show his activity.

But all the time the trade was going on,

his mother was crying and wringing her hands

and kept begging the man who was thinking of buying the boy

not to buy him unless he bought her, too,

and her little daughter:

and Eliza kept saying that if he did she would be “the most

faithful slave that ever lived.”

But the man from Baton Rouge said he could not afford to

buy her,

and then she began to cry aloud in her grief.

The man selling the slaves turned on her, his whip lifted,

and told her to stop her noise:

if she would not stop her “sniveling”

he would take her into the yard

and give her a hundred lashes.

She tried to wipe away her tears

but could not

and said she wanted to be with her children

and kept begging the man selling the slaves and the man from

Baton Rouge—

who by that time had bought her son—

not to separate the three of them, mother, son, and daughter;

and over and over again kept saying how faithful and obedient

she would be

and how hard she would work day and night.

But the man from Baton Rouge

said again he could not buy mother and son, let alone the three,

and that only the boy must go with him.

Then Eliza ran to her son, hugged him and kissed him

again and again

and her tears kept falling on his face.

The man selling the slaves kept cursing her

and called her a blubbering, howling wench

and ordered her back to her place in line

and to behave herself

or he would give her something really to cry about.

-Charles Reznikoff

from 12 Years A Slave (1853) by Solomon Northrup (A Documentary History of the Negro People in the United States edited by Herbert Aptheker)

from The Poems of Charles Reznikoff by Charles Reznikoff, edited by Seamus Cooney. Reprinted by permission of Black Sparrow Books, an imprint of David R. Godine, Publisher, Inc. Copyright 2005 by Charles Reznikoff.

Source: Poems 1918-1975: The Complete Poems of Charles Reznikoff (Black Sparrow Press, 1977)

[allthemfingpoems]

Do not stand at my grave and weep.

I am not there. I do not sleep.

I am a thousand winds that blow.

I am the diamond glints on snow.

I am the sunlight on ripened grain.

I am the gentle autumn rain.

Do not stand at my grave and cry.

I am not there.

I did not die.

-Anonymous

[allthemfingpoems]

Bilingual/Bilingüe

My father liked them separate, one there,

one here (allá y aquí), as of aware

that words might cut in two his daughter’s heart

(el corazón) and lock the alien part

to what he was- his memory, his name

(su nombre)- with a key he could not claim.

“English outside this door, Spanish inside,”

he said, “y basta.” But who can divide

the world, the word (mundo y palabra) from

and child? I knew how to be dumb

and stubborn (testaruda); late, in bed,

I hoarded secret syllables I read

until my tongue (mi lengua) learned to run

where his stumbled. And still the heart was one.

I like to think he knew that, even when,

proud (orgulloso) of his daughter’s pen,

he stood outside mis versos, half in fear

of words he loved but wanted not to hear.

-Rhina P. Espaillat

from Three Genres: The Writing of Literary Prose, Poems, and Plays (page 209)

[allthemfingpoems]

Nuclear Winter

After the first terror

people

Were more helpful to each other-

As in a blizzard

Much comradeliness, help, even

laughter:

The pride of getting through tough times.

Even, months later,

When snow fell in June,

We felt a kind of pride in

our

“Unusual weather”

And joked about the wild geese

Migrating south,

Quacking over the 4th of July presidential honkings.

It was, people said,

The way it had been in the Old Days...

Until the hunger of the next year.

Then we came to our senses

And began to kill each other.

-Thomas McGrath

from Three Genres: The Writing of Literary Prose, Poems, and Plays (page 220)

[allthemfingpoems]

The Mapmaker’s Daughter

the geography of love is terra infirma

it is a paper boat

navigated by mates

with stars in their eyes

cartographers of the fiery unknown

it is the woman’s sure hand

at the helm of twilight, the salt

compass of her desire

the map of longing is at the edge

of two distant bodies

it is the rain that launches thirst

it is the palm leaf floating on waters

far from shore

the secret passage into the interior

is in my intemperate estuary

the sweet and languorous flowering

is in the caliber of your hands

the circular motion of our journeying

is the radius of sky and sea, deep

territories we name

after ourselves

-Anita Endrezze

from Three Genres: The Writing of Literary Prose, Poems, and Plays (page 220)