#US poetry

[elskanellis]

Coffee

Matthew Dickman

The only precious thing I own, this little espresso cup. And in it a dark roast all the way from Honduras, Guatemala, Ethiopia where coffee was born in the 9th century getting goat herders high, spinning like dervishes, the white blooms cresting out of the evergreen plant, Ethiopia where I almost lived for a moment but then the rebels surrounded the Capital so I stayed home. I stayed home and drank coffee and listened to the radio and heard how they were getting along. I would walk down Everett Street, near the hospital where my older brother was bound to his white bed like a human mast, where he was getting his mind right and learning not to hurt himself. I would walk by and be afraid and smell the beans being roasted inside the garage of an old warehouse. It smelled like burnt toast! It was everywhere in the trees. I couldn't bear to see him. I sometimes never knew him. Sometimes he would call. He wanted us to sit across from each other, some coffee between us, sober. Coffee can taste like grapefruit or caramel, like tobacco, strawberry, cinnamon, the oils being pushed out of the grounds and floating to the top of a French Press, the expensive kind I get in the mail, the mailman with a pound of Sumatra under his arm, ringing my doorbell, waking me up from a night when all I had was tea and watched a movie about the Queen of England when Spain was hot for all her castles and all their ships, carved out of fine Spanish trees, went up in flames while back home Spaniards were growing potatoes and coffee was making its careful way along a giant whip from Africa to Europe where cafes would become famous and people would eventually sit with their cappuccinos, the baristas talking about the new war, a cup of sugar on the table, a curled piece of lemon rind. A beret on someone's head, a scarf around their neck. A bomb in a suitcase left beneath a small table. Right now I'm sitting near a hospital where psychotropics are being carried down the hall in a pink cup, where someone is lying there and he doesn't know who he is. I'm listening to the couple next to me talk about their cars. I have no idea how I got here. The world stops at the window while I take my little spoon and slowly swirl the cream around the lip of the cup. Once, I had a brother who used to sit and drink his coffee black, smoke his cigarettes and be quiet for a moment before his brain turned its Armadas against him, wanting to burn down his cities and villages, before grief became his capital with its one loyal flag and his face, perhaps only his beautiful left eye, shimmed on the surface of his Americano like a dark star.

©2008

[menandwomanofhistory]

John Ashbury

[muchlovefleursblog]

[lotrmusical]

never let anyone tell you that trawling through mediocre victorian poetry isn't worth it. we just happened upon an absolute BANGER of a worm poem. go read it or else 🪱🪱🪱

[aluminumneedles]

I'm knitting in the corner at a party

and guys my age stop by to tell me I remind them of their aunt, of their grandmother. This is a compliment and I take it as such. They confess to having tried crochet once, and I smile. They get back in line for the bathroom.

I'm knitting in the corner at a party and a queer woman sits on the floor next to me, arranges her skirt, and smiles up at me. (I try not to blush.) She asks me all the questions on her mind about my craft and I answer them, hands still moving. We swap yarn sources. She doesn't stay, but she knows where to find me.

I'm knitting in the corner at a party and everyone knows where to find me when they need a minute, when socializing is too much and the music is too loud and they need to catch their breath. They pretend to be checking in on me, which is sweet, but I can see the relief in their eyes the moment they stop performing for a house full of people. They sit down and tell me things and all the while they never take their eyes off my hands.

The party has wound down and I'm still knitting and the hosts, two guys in their twenties, thank me for "helping to curate the vibe." I had no idea that's what I was doing. I leave the party having forgotten to drink anything and without that woman's number but with many rows added to my top-down raglan sweater. I call it a night, and a good one.

[sentientsky]

on usefulness. on becoming both the blade and the lamb

tumblr user @/divorcefemme // Anaïs Nin // tumblr user @/willowcrowned // Mitski, “I Don’t Smoke” // Lilith Kerr, "bite back" (from unloving the knife)

[roseforviolet]

[hinamie]

subject, specimen, spectacle;

should i say that you're dead?

[liaisboring]

[elskanellis]

The Illiterate

William Meredith

Touching your goodness, I am like a man Who turns a letter over in his hand And you might think this was because the hand Was unfamiliar but, truth is, the man Has never had a letter from anyone; And now he is both afraid of what it means And ashamed because he has no other means To find out what it says than to ask someone. His uncle could have left the farm to him, Or his parents died before he sent them word, Or the dark girl changed and want him for beloved. Afraid and letter-proud, he keeps it with him. What would you call his feeling for the words That keep him rich and orphaned and beloved?

.

[ghostlycod]

girlies who love ghost will be like “and then he puts his cock in your cunt and it feels good” and price girlies will be like “the cataclysmic avalanche of primal lust which hath consumed you both, flesh rendered asunder, as he bares his teeth and the man burns away to reveal a beast, your desire aching like saccharine sweets to sensitive teeth, and the evidence of it oozes from you like ichor, pearlescent and impure” and I love that for both of us

[taimanzano]

One of one. One, alone, one.

[sorren-sews]

benthic angel

was writing about lake sturgeon for a class assignment and showed one of my friends what i'd written.. he then sent part of it back to me with line breaks to turn it into a poem! i just had to draw something for it :]

poem text under the readmore:

lake sturgeon don't know that they're endangered. They don't know anything - other than the muck at the bottom of the water column and the occasional passing touch of another.

really touched by how my friend turned my technical writing into poetry. i haven't tried to write creatively in months, so it's nice to see i've still got it- and nicer still that i could get so inspired by my friend, since i haven't made nature art in a little while, either :>!!

[ccomelantartidee]

“Too well tangled”🤍

[lindseyarchive]

“The forest kept shrinking, and the trees kept voting for the axe. It was made of wood, so they thought it was one of them.”

Old Turkish Proverb