Some Poetry on New Year’s Morning

It is about war. It is a beautiful piece of work about war. Click the title to get the background.

All I can see is nothing Sahar Muradi

^{If nothing that can be seen can either be God or represent Him to us as He is, then to find God we must pass beyond everything that can be seen and enter into darkness.
Since nothing that can be heard is God, to find Him we must enter into silence.
—Thomas Merton, from “New Seeds of Contemplation,” 1961}

^{I swear to God, mom, I am exhausted, but praise be to God in all circumstances.
—writing, translated from the Arabic, on the Al-Shifa Hospital walls, April 2024}

All I can see is nothing
Fields of

Hollow
The O that escapes

A pasture of
Mouths

An apartment building
Of locked jaws

The silent weeping
Of rocks

I hear nothing
In the bags of soft limbs sighing

Milk teeth
Sharpening a father’s heart

The cone hat on the small head
Singing to plumes

Iftar in the tents
Flapping pages off the moon

But Your name over and over
On the hospital walls

But Your name stilling
The fire that does not cease

But Your name everywhere
Everything all at once

I see nothing
From this distance

This deepest night
This longest darkness

Fumble at fajr
To loosen my gasps

I repeat Your name
Over and over

Then bow to Your wisdom
To the terror of Your liberation

O that I may not see anything
More

Copyright © 2024 by Sahar Muradi. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on December 31, 2024, by the Academy of American Poets.

Poetry for An Election

You know what to do to find out more.

Morning After The Election by Regie Cabico

I can’t control
the vanishing
of bees

but I can control
the honey I swallow
to soothe
the vocal cords

I can’t control boys
bully-tumbling
another boy

in the classroom
like they’re
in a mosh pit

but I can remember
rolling on hills
with boys being the bully

I can’t change my major
from drama to global peace

but I can write
similes of serenity

& poetic sermons
in temples
of matrimonial fanfare

I know the bombs, the explosives,
and Molotovs are overhead

and I can’t control
the lottery, the multiverses,
and tomorrow’s astrology

but whatever tarot card I pick
or whatever
gets thrown
at my face:

Hangman
or Fallen Towers

I can express
my weathering emotions

to sing while hoarse
to control air placement
to find the chakra

the right amount of air
to pass through my throat

oh sing with me
the octave between

blade & nectar
rubble & clouds
ash & mountain

Some Poetry for Tuesday

Flannel Sheets and Winter Solstice

Saturday Poetry

You know the drill; click the title to get more.

herederos de cero Sheila Maldonado

I’ve returned from the question the motherland
a continually illegitimate relationship
I’m a pretend immigrant afraid of coats and the cold
stunned by space and the sun up in the face
landlocked behind the barbed wire of mama’s house

what did I do there scratch twitch stare
wandered with a prima and her daughters
was asked about the prima      who should have been there
she left the world      after her mama mi tía se fue
nadie era nadie           en esa casa only the men

it made my mama sick to see me leave
into the hot night of her origins
I return for the right to walk in the dark
like the black cat family
that roamed our alley in the valley of Sula

if I woke up at a decent hour I caught the colibrí
little brown red god came around 9 10am
humming into a tree of little red stems
never know names
a place of teeny overlooked gods

I drank tea      at the white iron table
another tía gave mama      they got on so well
about their nests           in the capital of slurs
will I be the only bird to be about the tree
last one flitting           do we want me to be

Finally Friday!

Have a poem. As always, the title is a link to learn more.

Blues Franchise David Henderson

^{Line from a letter, “Blues Franchise.” I believe it is a motif language rather than thought—intimately}

Blues as art as theme as exhibition

Up on a midtown metropolis edifice

Billboard façade 50 feet tall thirty feet wide: BLUE SMOKE

Of a black femme-like face framed by her fingers tapered upward in the V of her palms

Looking off, her eyes below her painted on eyebrows

And Caucasoid wig solid black

touching off of a violet plunging deeper into the decorated pigment

A frame furls hints of blue in a spectral geometry

Framing tightly the face, reposed

A white strap over one deep ochre shoulder as background

Could be trans-shim or a delightful Caledonia,

red skein of a lipstick kiss imprinted invisibly in a nano dimension

Replications across the marquees of legions of subway cars

Her face on the mini billboard above the seat next to

The moving doors

Always looking somewhere else as the

Masses travel to all destinations

Blues smoke surrounding whatever stage as forum

For the franchise

Forever after for as far as the past goes.

Entering the negative space of a corporate behemoth

A lobby of the skyscraper museum or loft like enclosures

interlocking directorates of high art residencies.

Consumer beware of what you purchase with your eyes,

The presence of your body

Out of the blue

You

Out of the blue

And into the blues

You

Out of the blue

You

Out of the blue

Vanish into the blue

you

More Poetry

Re-post: … and … : a #poem

We Have a Poem

Just click on the title.

Sign by Sahar Romani

What aren’t you willing to believe. A heart
graffitied fuchsia on the street, a missive from another life.
Remember the stem of lavender you found
in a used copy of Bishop’s poems, a verse underlined:
The world is a mist. And then the world is
minute and vast and clear. Suddenly, across the aisle
a woman with your mother’s bracelets, her left wrist
all shimmer and gold, you almost winced.
Coincidence is the great mystery of the human mind
but so is the trans-oceanic reach of Shah Rukh Khan’s
slow blink. Each of us wants a hint, a song
that dares us to look inside. True, it takes whimsy
and ego to believe the universe will tap your shoulder
in the middle of a random afternoon. That t-shirt
on a stranger’s chest, a bumper sticker on the highway upstate.
Truth isn’t going anywhere. It’s your eyes passing by.

Cookies In The Oven

but this is so nice, I had to share it. Sorry about the cookies, though. Our moon isn’t full here until 3:01 Sunday AM.

december full moon by onecloud

fri 13, 2024 over richmond st. at spadina ave. Read on Substack

december full moon

over richmond at spadina

at 5 PM

under full moon 
traffic west bound 
bound for home

at oxford st

at richmond

None on Friday, Two on Saturday

As always, the titles are links to learn more about the poets and their poems.

Rican Issues Carmen Bardeguez-Brown

Say What?
Could you please, Pleeeeeeeeeeease repeat
Did you say: Molleta?
Prieta?
Morena?
Ohh African!
Hmmm Soy Puertorriquena
Yes, Puertorican

That I don’t look What ?
Oh, I guess I don’t look cafe con leche
mancha de plátano
Mulata,
high yellow
grifa
By the way
I did not know that there was a puertorican look.
And what exactly is that?
That I just look more what?
Well,    Y   Tu   abuela    dónde      Está?
I should say abuela, tío, Tía, y to el barrio
Let me tell you something
FOR YOUR INFORMATION
Most ricans are a mix of Africans, Spaniards, and Native Americans called
Taínos
By the way, no one has seen a Taíno in the last 500 years.
Sooooo   exactly … You know what that means
My     English is covered with spices
spices from the Caribbean
Spices that you might find Strange
Because you were born in this cold fast food of a mall of a country
Where Spanish is a foreign word
That you are ashamed to learn

And when you try
Is not there
Only mumbles of a murmur
Susurando el olvido
A reganadientes
Pretendiendo
Escondiendo la vergüenza
You remember Puerto Rico on the 2nd Sunday of every June
When everybody is suddenly proud to be Puerto Rican
No the word is Boricua
Boricuas Here, Boricuas THERE, Boricuas everywhere
And everyone waves the flags
The flags that they don’t even understand
And no one knows why they are here
Yes HERE Now
Do you Know?
why your parents or grandparents vinieron aqui?
De que Pueblo?
Cuando te bañaste en las aguas calientes del Caribe?
Better yet
Do you really know that …?
We all came from the Motherland
Africa
Even the Spanish people that came with Colon, Columbus
However you want to say it
Lived 700 hundred years under the Moors
You heard that right
The moors as in Arabs as in black Arabs
SO … in other words
Not only I
But we
Have over 500 years of African mestizaje
The so called “white people” that everyone is so proud of
As in “my grandparents are from Spain
Well if they are …
They
Too have negrITOs in them
Remember the Gitanos
But that is another story …
Getting back to the Boricua’s issue

What history do you know?
Ever heard of
Agüeybaná
Albizu Campos
Luis Palés Matos
Rafael Betances
Arturo Schomburg
Francisco Oller
Julia De Burgos
Rafael Hernández
Segundo Ruiz Belvís
Enrique Laguerre
Mariana Bracetti
Pedro Pietri

Still havING problems figuring me out?
Or is it that you just don’t know
Who you are?

=====

Domino Nights Puma Perl

On Water Street,
scaffolds envelop the buildings,
wire screens surround the benches,
iron fences line the street.
You must walk a hot summer block
in either direction to cross.

To the east, construction continues.
To the west, trucks sit, waiting.

Approaching or leaving,
it feels like a detention center
without passports or means of escape.

Late nights on Water Street,
beneath the scaffolding,
behind the steaming sidewalks,
and the screens and the fences,
the men set up their dominoes table
and their friends watch them play,
awaiting their turns.

We wave on our way to walk our dogs
and when returning home in the humid air.

There are no passersby on Water Street,
no loitering without intent or purpose
but I will reply to the questions
they might have asked had they existed.

Why, they might wonder, do the men sit
at a bridge table in the stifling heat
beneath scaffolds, behind screens and fences?
Surely, there are air-conditioned apartments
where they might socialize and yell Capicu!

Because, I would answer, it is our street,
this is our Lower East Side that we breathe,
this is our space where neighbors smile
as they pass by and call out, Otra vez
you’re still at it, as time slowly propels
us closer to wherever we are headed,
but until we get there, the table is set
for another night of apocalyptic dominos.