Like countless poets around the nation, and probably the world, I will be participating in the 30 poems in 30 days challenge. The drafts will be listed here. In addition, I'll be posting photos, poems, reviews, links and other things of a poetic nature to celebrate the poem, past, present and future. So here's poem 1 of 30.
Adrenalin(e)
Hadassah Ayodele
boy, you so beautiful
you make me wanna
drop my flashlight
& find the sun
before the earth trembles
again & this shaft
collapses around me
girl, you so sweet
you make me wanna
swallow the ocean
& drown you
in saline carcasses
bait-strung bellies
& busted gills
4.1.09
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I'm also reading/skimming a book of poetry every day.
Today's selection: Speak These Words: a Guerilla Poets anthology. (click the link to see this title on Amazon.com)
Edited by Janaka Stucky and published in 2001, this anthology features the work of 16 poets who posse'd up to take poetry to unsuspecting masses "on street corners, in subways, in shopping malls, in fast-food joints, in public restrooms, on piers, in stores and anywhere else."
Their goals?
"to celebrate the outloud art of poetry"
"paying special attention to the aesthetic beauty of the spoken word"
"to knock the walls down around poetry"
"to keep poetry a living and accessable [sic] language."
(from the back cover)
excerpts from a couple of poems in the collection:
He is the one who calls me beauty,
who keeps digging his fingers into me,
into every pocket of skin,
grabbing onto veins and muscles
bones and blood cells,
but his fingers are beginning to hurt
my spine and I cannot believe
he has found anything alive in me.
from Exhuming the Body of a Loved One
by Lauren Mazurek
how on Thursday afternoons,
the knife sharpener rides his bike in circles
and plays his high pitched whistle
until the red-haired housewife comes out
with her longest knife and says
"I'm so glad you came, I still have to chop a pig's thigh
for tomorrow's soup,"
he amuses her with the tiny fireworks show
between the whetstone and a blade
"How much do I owe you?"
"It's free for beautiful ladies like you"
and she blushes again.
how in the evening, soccer teams are formed
by the best player and the kid who owns the ball.
And then it's either the fat kid or the ugly girl
who gets upset
when they're chosen last--
and it's always one of them who's chosen last."
from Remember, please remember
by Jacobo Bergarche
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