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did you guys see the poem from a couple of days ago in poetry dot org’s daily poem it was so good and a treat to read 

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i love you intimacy in reverse order. yes we've had sex before and i know all the details of your pleasure, but i don't know anything else. i don't know what it feels like to embrace you carelessly. i can barely hold your hand, the grip is so slight it makes me lose my breath. i want to kiss you but what pressure is the right one? how much is too intimate? yes we've had sex and i've done all these things before - but without the guise of mutual pleasure, can i be sure you won't turn me away? will you allow me the delicate feeling of your hand in mine when you know it is me asking to hold it? i know i've held you before with our clothes off, but can i hold you even tighter? may i listen to the steady sound of your heartbeat? is it alright to look for it in front of everyone? yes, yes of course we've had sex before. i know what you look like naked, ive touched you with the lights off. is it alright to want see you with them on? in the morning, with the sun flitting through the blinds?is it alright to want you when the sun is up? yes we've had sex before but have we ever been intimate? can we be? tell me that it's alright to hold you. no, not like that. just like this.

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Poems about Mothers & Motherhood by POC

ok this is mostly just a resource for me because i’ve been trying to write about my relationship with my mother & consequently ended up reading a lot of poetry about motherhood but i thought i’d share with the class so enjoy!!

1. My Mother, My Mother by Luther Hughes

2. Knuckle Head by Teri Ellen Cross Davis

3. The Raincoat by Ada Limón

4. The Average Mother by Camille T. Dungy

5. What Shall I Tell My Children Who Are Black (Reflections of an African-American Mother) by Margaret Burroughs

6. June 4, 1974 by June Jordan

7. Ending the Estrangement by Ross Gay

8. Certainty by Sandra Lim

9. The Mothers by Robin Coste Lewis

10. The Daughter by Carmen Giménez Smith

11. Obedience, or the Lying Tale by Jennifer Chang

12. Manuela by Juan Delgado

13. A Practical Mom by Amy Uyematsu

14. Praise Song for Patricia Jabbeh Wesley by Tsitsi Ella Jaji

15. What Remains Two by Truong Tran

16. Smell Is the Last Memory to Go by Fatimah Asghar

17. Black, Poured Directly into the Wound by Patricia Smith

18. Imperatives for Carrying On in the Aftermath by Natasha Trethewey

19. Mom Betty Addresses the Nature of Proportion by Eileen R. Tabios

20. Dusk by Tracy K. Smith

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to keep them in your heart

sarah bernhardt's locket / c.c. aurel / missing faces / mitch albom / unknown / sufjan stevens / lock and key

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labs that are also churches. to me

(1. annie dillard, teaching a stone to talk 2. the deep underground neutrino experiment, a.k.a. DUNE 3. the large hadron collider 4. the sudbury neutrino observatory)

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1. A Primer for the Small Weird Loves - Richard Siken / 2. The Crane Wife - CJ Hauser / 3. Automat - Edward Hopper / 4. Red Doc> - Anne Carson / 5. Melancholy - Edvard Munch / 6. The Village (2004) / 7. So We Must Meet Apart - Gabrielle Bates and Jennifer S. Cheng

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Danez Smith, “It Began Right Here”

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what’s your favorite thing that you have ever written?

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“your boring life is beautiful”

“Picture yourself at the end of your life, on your deathbed. You’ve lived a good full life, but you can barely move or function anymore. Many of your loved ones have already passed on. But you get to go back to one day. You get to go back to this exact day that you’re in right now. You can’t change what you’re doing or anything. You just get to experience it one more time. Would you feel a little different about … that dull life you think you have?”

— Jake Frew

This thought comes from Jake Frew’s video “your boring life is beautiful.” In the video he shares about how frustrating and boring daily life can be, but then he shares this powerful thought about how with a different perspective — our own perspective but from the end of our life — we would view an otherwise dull or boring regular day as something beautiful and amazing. What do you think of this thought? Does it give you a different perspective on your life? Can you see your daily life from the perspective of yourself at the end of your life? How does that perspective change how you experience your everyday existence? Share the thoughts and feelings that come to mind as your consider this perspective.

Narrative option: tell the story of the day you get to relive, from the perspective of yourself at the end of your life.

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Kazuo Ishiguro - “Dream Techniques”

1. Unwarranted Emotion 2. Unwarranted Relationship 3. Delayed realization (ENTER/EXIT) 4. Odd postures—figurative postures + escaped metaphors 5. Placing 6. Weird Venues 7. Extended, tangential monologues 8. Distorted time frame 9. Unwarranted recognition of place 10. Private enclaves 11. Unwarranted familiarity with situation (or person or place) 12. Characters from foreign contexts 13. Characters continuing under different surfaces 14. Distorted Logistics 15. Transmuting Narrator 16. Partial invisibility (And odd witnessing) 17. Backward projection of Intentions 18. Bleeding with Memory 19. BACKWARD projection of Judgment 20. Restricted Witnessing 21. Tunnel Memory 22. The Dim Torch Narrative Mode 23. Crowds—Unwarranted Uniformity 24. Robert Altman [illegible] 25. (“More than I expected”) Unwarranted Expectation 26. MIXED PERSONALITY

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IT'S ALL ABOUT THE DIFFERENCE; BETWEEN BEING LONELY & BEING ALONE.

jennifer s. cheng // @camojacketfag // heather havrilesky // @camojacketfag // carol lee // @twinsfawn // jenny slate.

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hi here's a list of contemporary poetry that i have personally read & recommend. currently 173 titles, free PDF download to reference as you look for new books to read <3 enjoy!!

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the world is ending everywhere but when you laugh i don’t notice. we can sit together while everything falls apart somewhere else. there will be time for devastation later. for now, we can watch the trees. what were they like when you were younger? there was a window i used to look out of where one would wait for me. red leaves for most of the year. there are a few reasons why i don’t feel real anymore. the big one being that when people talk to me they talk through me. you are somewhere in my head and i am looking at you instead of them. it’s unfair to everyone else but i’m scared you’ll disappear otherwise. i feel so old lately but today i am younger than yesterday. yesterday i was 70 years old and i was letting you go for the last ever time. but today i’m waiting to meet you. i hope somehow you’ll know where to find me. i’ll be where the river is still. where the birds are mid-flight. where everything wants to bear witness.

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have you been laughing enough? do you dream of them still? do you write? are you eating things that make you think of your childhood? are you taking walks? are you calling the people you love? did it get better? can you write from where you are? what inexplicable things make you sad? i’ll go first. elbow shaped pasta. the sound of a football game. a tweety bird shirt. the whole month of march. the whole month of may. half of september. i love you so much. i never want to dream of you again. are you drinking enough water?  im sorry. everyday feels like sunday. i am putting my ear to the floorboards. tell me if you need anything. i only want to dream of you. im sorry. they aren’t all inexplicable. i cry on airplanes now. do you cry? do you go on planes? are you stuck halfway? im sorry. what are five things you see? four things you hear? the bathroom vent, the football game, a door closing, someone walking outside. i miss you most in the places you’ve never been. i miss you most in the morning after i’ve had my coffee. i miss you most at night when i dream of you. i miss you most when i need a name so the grief makes sense. when do you miss me? im sorry. does it feel like sunday for you too? 

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take a flight. become half daughter. fall in something that is like love but decidedly not. change your mind. change your friends. wait for the 17 year old version of yourself to come back to life. keep waiting. throw her a funeral. keep the guestlist short. only invite the dead. ruin your own birthday. keep them at a distance. keep the pictures under the bed. travel and arrive at the truth that you’re somewhere even you can’t find. sit in the backseat of the car like you did when you were younger. look for the familiar trees. they are still alive somewhere. it’s you who arrived in the wrong place.

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i thought of you all day not letting my mind wander further than your gentleness, not wanting to ruin you with the terrible parts of the world, the parts that took my own gentleness and didn’t give it back. i thought of you all day in the hopes that i would dream of you but if you visited me i was looking somewhere else. i am an engineer building worlds you’d want to visit knowing there are better worlds where i am not. forgive me. i thought of you all day and i ruined your gentleness with the terrible parts the world left in me. i thought of you all day and i ruined you so that you would never visit. so that the loss would stay an imaginary haunting that no one else can find. not even you.