poem-day

[poem-day]

from The Argonauts by Maggie Nelson

A friend says he thinks of gender as a color. Gender does share with color a certain ontological indeterminacy: it isn’t quite right to say that an object is a color, nor that the object has a color. Context also changes it: all cats are gray, etc. Nor is color voluntary, precisely. But none of these formulations means that the object in question is colorless. 

The bad reading [of Gender Trouble] goes something like this: I can get up in the morning, look in my closet, and decide which gender I want to be today. I can take out a piece of clothing and change my gender: stylize it, and then that evening I can change it again and be something radically other, so that what you get is something like the commodification of gender, and the understanding of taking on a gender as a kind of consumerism... When my whole point was that the very formation of subjects, the very formation of persons, presupposes gender in a certain way-- that gender is not to be chosen and that “performativity” is not radical choice and it’s not voluntarism... Performativity has to do with repetition, very often with the repetition of oppressive and painful gender norms to force them to resignify. This is not freedom, but a question of how to work the trap that one is inevitably in (Judith Butler). 

[poem-day]

When I Grow Up I Want to Be a List of Further Possibilities by Chen Chen

To be a good ex/current friend for R. To be one last                                                                       inspired way to get back at R. To be relationship advice for L. To be advice for my mother. To be a more comfortable hospital bed for my mother. To be no more hospital beds. To be, in my spare time, America for my uncle, who wants to be China for me. To be a country of trafficless roads & a sports car for my aunt, who likes to go fast. To be a cyclone of laughter when my parents say their new coworker is like that, they can tell because he wears pink socks, see, you don’t, so you can’t, can’t be one of them. To be the one my parents raised me to be— a season from the planet of planet-sized storms. To be a backpack of PB&J & every thing I know, for my brothers, who are becoming their own storms. To be, for me, nobody, homebody, body in bed watching TV. To go 2D & be a painting, an amateur’s hilltop & stars, simple decoration for the new apartment with you. To be close, J., to everything that is close to you— blue blanket, red cup, green shoes with pink laces. To be the blue & the red. The green, the hot pink.

[poem-day]

If We Must Die by Claude Mckay

If we must die, let it not be like hogs Hunted and penned in an inglorious spot, While round us bark the mad and hungry dogs, Making their mock at our accursèd lot. If we must die, O let us nobly die, So that our precious blood may not be shed In vain; then even the monsters we defy Shall be constrained to honor us though dead! O kinsmen! we must meet the common foe! Though far outnumbered let us show us brave, And for their thousand blows deal one death-blow! What though before us lies the open grave? Like men we’ll face the murderous, cowardly pack, Pressed to the wall, dying, but fighting back!

[poem-day]

Still I Rise by Maya Angelou

You may write me down in history With your bitter, twisted lies, You may trod me in the very dirt But still, like dust, I'll rise. Does my sassiness upset you? Why are you beset with gloom? ’Cause I walk like I've got oil wells Pumping in my living room. Just like moons and like suns, With the certainty of tides, Just like hopes springing high, Still I'll rise. Did you want to see me broken? Bowed head and lowered eyes? Shoulders falling down like teardrops, Weakened by my soulful cries? Does my haughtiness offend you? Don't you take it awful hard ’Cause I laugh like I've got gold mines Diggin’ in my own backyard. You may shoot me with your words, You may cut me with your eyes, You may kill me with your hatefulness, But still, like air, I’ll rise. Does my sexiness upset you? Does it come as a surprise That I dance like I've got diamonds At the meeting of my thighs? Out of the huts of history’s shame I rise Up from a past that’s rooted in pain I rise I'm a black ocean, leaping and wide, Welling and swelling I bear in the tide. Leaving behind nights of terror and fear I rise Into a daybreak that’s wondrously clear I rise Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave, I am the dream and the hope of the slave. I rise I rise I rise.

[poem-day]

Mending Wall by Robert Frost

Something there is that doesn't love a wall, That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it, And spills the upper boulders in the sun; And makes gaps even two can pass abreast. The work of hunters is another thing: I have come after them and made repair Where they have left not one stone on a stone, But they would have the rabbit out of hiding, To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean, No one has seen them made or heard them made, But at spring mending-time we find them there. I let my neighbor know beyond the hill; And on a day we meet to walk the line And set the wall between us once again. We keep the wall between us as we go. To each the boulders that have fallen to each. And some are loaves and some so nearly balls We have to use a spell to make them balance: ‘Stay where you are until our backs are turned!’ We wear our fingers rough with handling them. Oh, just another kind of out-door game, One on a side. It comes to little more: There where it is we do not need the wall: He is all pine and I am apple orchard. My apple trees will never get across And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him. He only says, ‘Good fences make good neighbors.’ Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder If I could put a notion in his head: ‘Why do they make good neighbors? Isn't it Where there are cows? But here there are no cows. Before I built a wall I'd ask to know What I was walling in or walling out, And to whom I was like to give offense. Something there is that doesn't love a wall, That wants it down.’ I could say ‘Elves’ to him, But it's not elves exactly, and I'd rather He said it for himself. I see him there Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed. He moves in darkness as it seems to me, Not of woods only and the shade of trees. He will not go behind his father's saying, And he likes having thought of it so well He says again, ‘Good fences make good neighbors.’

[poem-day]

Rwanda: Where Tears Have No Power by Haki Madhubuti

Who has the moral high ground? Fifteen blocks from the whitehouse on small corners in northwest, d.c. boys disguised as me rip each other's hearts out with weapons made in china. they fight for territory. across the planet in a land where civilization was born the boys of d.c. know nothing about their distant relatives in Rwanda. they have never heard of the hutu or tutsi people. their eyes draw blanks at the mention of kigali, byumba or butare. all they know are the streets of d.c., and do not cry at funerals anymore. numbers and frequency have a way of making murder commonplace and not news unless it spreads outside of our house, block, territory. modern massacres are intraethnic. bosnia, sri lanka, burundi, nagorno-karabakh, iraq, laos, angola, liberia, and rwanda are small foreign names on a map made in europe. when bodies by the tens of thousands float down a river turning the water the color of blood, as a quarter of a million people flee barefoot into tanzania and zaire, somehow we notice. we do not smile, we have no more tears. we hold our thoughts. In deeply muted silence looking south and thinking that today nelson mandela seems much larger than he is.

[poem-day]

Peers by Craig Morgan Teicher

I’m thinking of you beautiful and young, of me young

and confused and maybe beautiful. There were lots of us—

these were our twenties, when, post-9/11, we were about to

inherit the world, and we had no idea what to do with it. And look

what we did, and we didn’t. And now look at us, and it.

We turned away for a blip, started whispering, kissing, had kids,

bought houses, changed bulbs, submitted claims, changed channels,

FaceTimed, streamed, upgraded, were two-day-shipped to, and midway

through our prime earning years we look up again, decades groggy,

decades late. Forgive us, we thought— but now it doesn’t matter. These are our

outcomes, consequences, faults, forties, when the hourglass

is beeping and bleak and people like us have memories like this

and wonder if the beauty that’s left is really still beautiful, if it was.

[poem-day]

loving like an existentialist by Sav Brown

[poem-day]

The lesson of the falling leaves by Lucille Clifton

the leaves believe

such letting go is love

such love is faith

such faith is grace

such grace is god

i agree with the leaves

[poem-day]

Who Said it Was Simple by Audre Lorde

There are so many roots to the tree of anger   that sometimes the branches shatter   before they bear. Sitting in Nedicks the women rally before they march   discussing the problematic girls   they hire to make them free. An almost white counterman passes   a waiting brother to serve them first   and the ladies neither notice nor reject   the slighter pleasures of their slavery.   But I who am bound by my mirror   as well as my bed see causes in colour as well as sex and sit here wondering   which me will survive   all these liberations.

[poem-day]

Sky Diving by Nikki Giovanni

I hang on the edge

of this universe

singing off-key

talking too loud

embracing myself

to cushion the fall

I shall tumble

into deep space

never in this form

or with this feeling

to return to earth

It is not tragic

I will spiral

through that Black hole

losing skin limbs

internal organs

searing

my naked soul

Landing

in the next galaxy

with only my essence

embracing myself

as

I dream of you

[poem-day]

We Real Cool by Gwendolyn Brooks

The Pool Players.

Seven at the Golden Shovel.

We real cool. We

Left school. We

Lurk late. We

Strike straight. We

Sing sin. We

Thin gin. We

Jazz June. We

Die soon.

[poem-day]

Don’t Allow the Lucid Moment to Dissolve by Adam Zagajewski

Don't allow the lucid moment to dissolve Let the radiant thought last in stillness though the page is almost filled and the flame flickers We haven't risen yet to the level of ourselves Knowledge grows slowly like a wisdom tooth The stature of a man is still notched high up on a white door From far off, the joyful voice of a trumpet and of a song rolled up like a cat What passes doesn't fall into a void A stoker is still feeding coal into the fire Don't allow the lucid moment to dissolve On a hard dry substance you have to engrave the truth

[poem-day]

Leaving

The night before the morning I saw the skid marks on these streets,

I heard the boys chatting, the fireworks, and the screeching tires

But, I could have heard wrong. 

 

Today you say, Do as I say:

Dim all the lights! Rub the oil on the doors!

Lower your voice to a whisper!

We’re leaving. We’re leaving.

We are taking our asses some place better.

 

Trotting our way to the train

The rain begins to fall

Sticking cotton to skin

My heart swells: We are leaving

[poem-day]

Ode to Ope by Arpi Park

[poem-day]

If by Rudyard Kipling

If you can keep your head when all about you      Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,   If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,    But make allowance for their doubting too;   If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,    Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies, Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,    And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise: If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;      If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim;   If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster    And treat those two impostors just the same;   If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken    Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools, Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,    And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools: If you can make one heap of all your winnings    And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss, And lose, and start again at your beginnings    And never breathe a word about your loss; If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew    To serve your turn long after they are gone,   And so hold on when there is nothing in you    Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’ If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,      Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch, If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,    If all men count with you, but none too much; If you can fill the unforgiving minute    With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,   Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,      And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!