Archive

#183

in autumn I remember that we are cold-smitten

#182

Wish you could be here / to talk about it like it was so important. / Wish you could. /

#181

Thunder grumbles on the horizon / I buy time with another story

#180

All the Earth has borne beguiles us / & battered bodies build our acres.

#179

I repent better in the waning / season

#178

We might find a humanity that is not asking to be seen, but demanding instead.

#177

I mean, / what pearl forms around a grain of plastic in an oyster?

#175

the dead are changeless. / They grow no older. / It is I who have changed,

#174

i want to talk about respect. / how even the desperate deserve it.

#173

did you know roots are easy / to snap?

#172

The being of some is: to be. Of others: to be without.

#171

Invisible until you won’t see them / won’t bend and lift their comfort

#170

The After Party: "community must not mean a shedding of our differences, nor the pathetic pretense that these differences do not exist"

#169

Just take the imagists. Their heads explode.

#168

Do not raise your small voice against it. And do not / take cover.

#167

It feels better to move with time than it does to constantly race against it.

#166

a different kind of life

#165

hope bleeds slowly from my mouth / into the dirt that covers us all

#164

The After Party: "Identity is a hallucination...and everything is a story"

#163

You are trying to be precise but everything is a carbon-like surface that scrolls by with pinpricks emitting memory’s wavy threads.

#162

The magic settles uneasy; it turns out fairy dust was always / fake.

#161

I ask that they describe / an object right in front of them, to make / it come alive, and one writes about death,

#160

Reporters & fathers call your generation “the worst.”

#159

a deputizing of hundreds. a machine gun on standpipe hill. a dropping of bombs from chartered planes.

#158

Everyone loves that familiar warbeat: I know all the words to this war.

#157

Is it from a dimly lit stone that wars flare up?

#156

It doesn’t matter that / there is nowhere to run to.

#155

Metaphors about death are for poets who think ghosts care about sound.

#154

running and running until she reaches / at last the one and only door

#153

Time is a nice medium, but very little can be made from it. And perhaps one of its finer qualities is its tendency to go on.

#152

I learned it’s okay to glance down / into the sea. So many lessons bubble up if you know / where to look.

#151

we used our words we used what words we had to weld, / what words we had we wielded

#150

There are politics to death / and here politics performs / its own autopsies

#140

by cowardice or courage / the one who find our way / back to this scene

#139

I would laugh if I was not being smothered by the violence of imagination

#137

To live another person’s biography is not the same as to live his or her life.

#136

I address you aftermath, you as vengeance.

#138

I want to be the woman who sits

#135

She meant

#134

What if we joined our sorrows, I’m saying.

#133

When it comes to Asian-American grief, do Americans want to know?

#132

The After Party: Dispatch from Fantasy Island

#149

I tire so of hearing people say,

#148

Because you still listen, because in times like these

#131

This tart sermon

#130

I need to learn

#129

There’s more to MLK than “I Have a Dream”

#128

I always thought language was / Akin to the body

#127

Everyone is crying out for peace

#126

i am running into a new year

#125

The perfect moment is now.

#124

you cannot catch / my rhythm

#123

what advice do the drowned have for the burned?

#122

And still a world begins its furious erasure—

#121

You cannot legislate music to lockstep nor can you legislate the spirit of the music to stop at political boundaries—

#120

After that came a sadness so big it made everyone

#119

Inhale. So many of us are breathless,

#118

Peace.

#117

is not protecting

#116

Many of them remain unaware of . . .

#115

Guilt is not a response to anger;

#147

I write about you all the time, I said aloud.

#114

How am I to understand the fluidity with which we continue in our days?

#113

I must write the same poem over and over,

#146

i / haven't enough room to both rage and weep.

#112

You do own to hear me faintly /

#111

tired i count the ways in which it determines my life

#110

Everything was not all right.

#109

Between the idea / and the reality

#108

For it is important that awake people be awake,

#107

There is something that those who have been to hell and back possess.

#106

The challenge is in the moment /

#105

This email respects your privacy

#104

Feel the water cannons start to press through the walls and soak your feet.

#103

There comes a time when you have to say something. You have to make a little noise.

#102

Perhaps we are always hurtling our body towards

#101

but when we are silent

#100

There are so many roots to the tree of anger

#99

I will no longer lightly walk behind

#145

I wondered how long 400 years is, / how many bodies, /

#144

it’s hard to / relate to folk who don’t consider their own demise fifty ’leven times /

#98

Each time it begins in the same way, it doesn't begin the same way, each time it begins it's the same.

#97

and may you in your innocence

#96

I would call my friends on other devices;

#95

The woman in front of me had been reading

#94

Even what was beyond us / was recast in our image;

#93

I am glad / you are so small,

#92

We are spendthrifts with words,

#143

Sweet is it, sweet is it

#91

who strain in the mud and the muck to move things forward, /

#90

I’m waiting for my right mind.

#89

Sometimes the moral arc of the universe

#88

Someone is dancing us.

#87

I have been woman / for a long time

#86

All I want / is to be the river though I return

#85

One way to erase an island is to invent the waters

#84

Please remain calm,

#83

Not the blue the orthodoxy of the day

#82

The worst injury is feeling you don't belong so much

#81

Our bodies spun / On swivels of bone & faith, / Through a lyric slipknot

#80

Beyond dreams and the arc of justice

#79

running and running until she reaches

#142

awards medals to generals

#78

Not everything that is faced can be changed;

#77

Listen.

#76

to dare to have nothing so much to lose

#75

Does it tell you that your heart is afire?

#74

I do not believe as some / that the vote is an end

#73

Some requests for hiring managers

#72

Now each of us

#71

No air. Breathe in.

#70

Free people keep afever

#69

let this be the healing

#68

All of it has always seemed so arbitrary to me,

#67

No one can stop her.

#66

and i become relic

#65

To learn which questions are unanswerable, and not to answer them:

#64

I love your hair / You always wear such interesting things

#63

“Put your hands up! Show me your hands!”

#62

get up and try to do something

#61

Fear is the paralyzing agent,

#60

In the beginning before the beginning, there were drums, and hymns,

#59

T.S. Eliot said that humankind cannot bear very much reality.

#58

But this was a kind of joy, too, forged

#57

because the low of my back believes what the sea told it

#56

O whatever God or whatever ancestor that wins in the next life

#55

Tell me, what is it you plan to do

#54

No faith comes without cost /

#53

How many iambs to be a real human girl?

#52

Here, blackness isn’t a commodity; it isn’t inherently political;

#51

There is no end / To what a living world / Will demand of you.

#50

I give you / a legacy / of doers

#49

What to do with this knowledge

#48

“Where I came from” is the sky, the ground, the sea, the very air we breathe

#47

It is time to ask very hard questions and to take very rude positions.

#46

What are you demanding / That we feel?

#45

Play it away. Be ceremony.

#44

The first Pride was a riot

#43

I can’t get over that, & wonder if it’s true,

#42

I am scared / is not a good enough reason to not get out of bed

#41

Eventually it comes to you:

#40

i can’t stand your ground.

#39

I say I, too, am a romantic,

#38

The press is so powerful in its image-making role

#37

To describe my mother would be to write about a hurricane in its perfect power.

#36

“I did know, though, and I was silenced.”

#35

May you be comforted

#34

If you surrendered to the air, you could ride it.

#33

Your silence will not protect you

#32

I didn’t know and nobody told me

#31

Decide, or the world will decide for you

#30

"Hey, what's keeping you busy these days?"

#29

And you will ask: why doesn’t his poetry speak of dreams and leaves

#28

Create whatever causes a revolution in your heart

#27

The way to grow your power is to give it away

#26

They call you black because

#25

The dwarfs found out how to turn lead into gold by doing it the hard way.

#24

Self-awareness is not the same thing as peace

#23

Somehow, blackface wasn’t even the worst of it

#22

Never again is now

#21

Instructions for living a life

#20

What is the work that moves you?

#19

Imagine everything you ever wanted

#18

Bask in your own heartbreak

#17

"What if everyone disobeyed the law?"

#16

we protested but not enough

#15

To all the tweets I didn’t send before

#14

i'm just doing my job

#13

if you can’t make your own neurotransmitters

#12

Good year to hate lettuce

#11

these are the answers, you feel me?

#10

what are you doing to make revolution irresistible

#9

& who, this time, will serve the reminder

#8

are you ok is code for we are not ok

#7

The striking aphorism requires a stricken aphorist.

#6

Go the way your blood beats

#5

I am splintered by great waves

#4

Instead of stressed I lie here charmed

#3

Do inconvenient things

#2

Let the horizon be what it is

#1

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