At the Degas Exhibit – Gregory Fraser The docent wends us to The Dance Class and it all flits back: the studio downtown, few bucks an hour, ragging off the finger grease of toe-shoed cygnets, tutu-ed swans, who glided hardwood blind to both of me—spray of acne, high-top Keds. I would clatter on the local … Continue reading Poem of the Week, by Gregory Fraser
Letter to My Sixteen-Year-Old Self Dear self, This is the only photo I could find of you. You held an instamatic out in front of you, hoping somehow to capture your own face, and pressed the little black button. I remember exactly when you took that photo. You had just gotten out of the shower. … Continue reading From the archives, because it's graduation central around here.
Feared Drowned – Sharon Olds Suddenly nobody knows where you are, your suit black as seaweed, your bearded head slick as a seal’s. Somebody watches the kids. I walk down the edge of the water, clutching the towel like a widow’s shawl around me. None of the swimmers is just right. Too short, too heavy, … Continue reading Poem of the Week, by Sharon Olds
Mother – Ted Kooser Mid April already, and the wild plums bloom at the roadside, a lacy white against the exuberant, jubilant green of new grass an the dusty, fading black of burned-out ditches. No leaves, not yet, only the delicate, star-petaled blossoms, sweet with their timeless perfume. You have been gone a month today … Continue reading Poem of the Week, by Ted Kooser
Timetable – Kate Clanchy We all remember school, of course: the lino warming, shoe bag smell, expanse of polished floor. It’s where we learned to wait: hot cheeked in class, dreaming, bored, for cheesy milk, for noisy now. We learned to count, to rule off days, and pattern time in coloured squares: purple English, dark … Continue reading Poem of the Week, by Kate Clanchy
Objects, Memory and Meaning
If it can't be said in a hundred words, then it can't be said in a thousand.
sewing a handmade wardrobe
"you are not alone," the poem said, in the dark tunnel. ~Louise Glück
Your Source For The Good Things Black People Do, Give and Receive All Over The World
Musings on poetry, language, perception, numbers, food, and anything else that slips through the cracks.
Thoughts on the world around me
the literary asylum
Bipolar is my superpower
