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Journey Notes: Writing “Why I Couldn’t Write” and Submitting it to Ghost Heart Literary Journal

Before we begin, please go read the poem here. I am forever thankful to Ghost Heart Literary Journal for giving this special piece a home.

This piece came to me as a result of a online poetry writing hosted by a bookstore for their local lit fest last August and reading Light Filters In by Caroline Kaufman (poeticpoison).

Originally, I had the intention of posting it on Instagram and this was supposed accompanying caption:

I actually wrote something good. 🙏

I know I have been out of sorts since July. I still am. The pandemic is getting to me and it’s stronger than ever. I couldn’t fight it as it held me prisoner with uncertainty about everything. I have no way of knowing and not knowing holds me down, crippling me of actually living out my truths. Knowing that I have this inability to write, I knew I needed something to ground me back and get me to start over. I did. I found an online poetry workshop hosted by a bookstore for their local lit fest.

I have to tell you this: I am untrained for writing. I have no technical background on writing. I have nothing to ground me to it. That is why I attend whatever writing workshop I can to make up for it. It helps, really. Attending workshops helps me hone my skills.

This particular workshop brought me back to the basics and taught me poetry at its best – how it is a translation of the inaccurate, how devices help out, and how to write by looking at it from the inside. The most important thing I got from it is that I need to read in order to be good at writing. I need to study the masters and to realize what they did in order to do it.

As a start, I read @poeticpoison’s Light Filters In and her poems reminded me to let it go. Just let everything go with complete honesty and vulnerability. And that is what I did here. I addressed my unwanted guests. Knowing that they’re here will help me find a way to guide them out of my being.

Easier said than done, yes.

But it’s a start.

I’m scared. I’m in despair. I’m lonely.

This pandemic is getting to me.

But I won’t let it win. I will rise.

That is a very lengthy caption, yes. I remember writing this caption in the middle of the night, right after writing the piece. Everything was laid out but a part of me didn’t want to let this poem go. I am no longer sure what prevented me from sharing that on August. After that, I stopped writing. I focused on my day job and making decisions about how I was going to go about my life in this pandemic. A large part of me wanted to stick it out on my own but yes, a lot of factors were considered and it was best for me to go home.

Somehow, I stumbled upon Ghost Heart Literary Journal’s call for submissions for Chambers and I thought, why not? I have this piece resting on my phone, waiting to be shared. Only did a few tweaks on the original draft before submitting.

Getting the positive response was one of the best things that happened in 2020. I was (figuratively) jumping for joy when I got the acceptance email. If we graph my happiness, it is a very obvious high peak. It was my first-ever poem in a literary journal. It is truly an honor for me to be a part of Ghost Heart Literary Journal’s Chambers.

I, however, wasn’t able to promote it immensely when it got out. I haven’t answered some responses too – which I feel very guilty of. I wanted to do a read through of all my issue-mates and recommend them for reading but I only got to read around eight entries as I got busy with packing and with work. (I shall try again, I suppose.)

Speaking of trying again, I just found out that Chambers for April 2021 is open for submissions, dear friends! This is the tweet from Ghost Heart Literary Journal:

Will I be submitting? Possibly. We’ll see.

Until next time!

Best regards,

Anj

Journey Notes: What Has Been Going On So Far Part 2

Hello everyone!

It has been months since my last update. I am so sorry about that. 😩

To start things off, I did get tested in December and thankfully, it came out negative and I went home without worrying too much. It was such a good relief to be home. I spent the holidays and my birthday surrounded by my family. There has been a couple of hurdles living with my family again but yes, I am wearing my big girl pants and being the leaf!

I don’t go out as often and I was able to work in a safe space, where I don’t have to go hunt down a connection. Work was steady and challenging, as always. (I got promoted last month too!) A lot went on and I think I am in a good safe space right now.

The sad thing is that we’re back to having our Enhanced Community Quarantine for one week. My city is officially back on lockdown in a few hours my time. My country really isn’t doing well in this fight against COVID19 and a lot of us see our government sending us to our doom before COVID19 does. There are a lot of issues – people jumping lines to get the vaccine, cases are steadily rising by the thousands… it’s like we’re back in March 2020 again.

In relation to writing, well… did I write since I got back home? I did, but not as vigorously as before. I submitted two flash fiction stories in The Five Hundred before they closed down: Yes or No and Denouement. Between the two, Denouement ranked better. I wrote that hours before the deadline. (I was already getting ready to sleep until I realized, “f*ck, it’s the deadline!”) Yes or No needed more time and editing.

As for poetry, I wrote my birthday poem because I’ve reached a milestone (haha, you can probably guess my age with that statement). I also wrote poems for a contest and a local call for submissions. The poem I submitted in the contest didn’t make it, sadly. (I will release a revised edition on Ko-Fi as I need content there too.) My birthday poem, however, will be released on my Instagram tomorrow, just to get things rolling in preparation for… you know it, NAPOWRIMO!

Will I finish NAPOWRIMO 2021? I don’t really know. NAPOWRIMO2020 happened because I didn’t have work for the entire month of April. But, nevertheless, I hope I do finish it. We shall see.

A tarot card reader I follow said this and I have written a pretty darn good essay the other night, one that made me cry a bit while writing and had the nicest paragraphs. (I am currently disassociating myself with it so I can turn it into a submit-able object.)

Looking forward to sharing new work on Instagram to everyone on the www.

Please take care and stay safe, dear friends and readers!

Best regards,

Anj

Reading Black Poetry: Inevitable + Black Girl Magic by Mahogany L. Browne

Hi everyone!

For this post, we shall be diving into two poems by Mahogany L. Browne. Honestly, what drew me to check out her work is her name. I have never encountered a person named Mahogany. It’s so unique and gives you the image of being strong and sturdy, like mahogany. (Names can give you that kind of power.)

Mahogany L. Browne is an American poet and spoken word artist. She has published a number of poetry collections and children’s books and received several fellowships and awards.

The first poem we shall read today is called Inevitable.

when I dropped my 12-year-old off at her first
homecoming dance, I tried not to look

her newly-developed breasts, all surprise and alert
in their uncertainty. I tried not to imagine her

mashed between a young man’s curiousness
and the gym’s sweaty wall. I tried not picture

her grinding off beat/on time to the rhythm
of a dark manchild; the one who whispered

“you are the most beautiful girl in brooklyn”
his swag so sincere, she’d easily mistaken him for a god.

This is copied from the American Academy of Poets page.

When I read this, I remembered this movie called Spanglish. There is a scene there where Flor, the mother, watches over the school dance her daughter, Cristina, attended. Cristina is dancing with a boy and suddenly, Flor sees that the boy is moving his hand to touch Cristina’s backside. The scene shows Flor’s abject horror which leads to her decision to find a day job that will pay a lot of money — more than the two jobs she has.

I think that is what every parent’s worry for their daughter, given what our current society is like. Parents should be able to teach their sons to respect women. Actually, it’s more of parents teaching their children (both sons and daughters) to respect other people. I hope that one day, we’d be able to live in a world where parents won’t worry about their daughters being harassed anymore.

The next poem is something that we’d be watching, rather than reading. This is a video of Mahogany L. Browne performing Black Girl Magic.

(You can read the transcript of this video here.)

Wow! This is an absolute favorite!

As a woman, I feel like every little girl, especially Black girls (as this poem is written for them), should read (and watch) this. No woman should ever have to follow the rules set by society and patriarchy. They should be allowed to bloom in their own unique way — to love and be loved, to be who they want to be, and to soar high above the sky.

There are so many things wrong in the world and I hope that we are able to correct them – little by little – as our voices are heard more. With our words and our hearts, we’d be able to inspire, to make a change.

May people of all races and genders be given equal opportunities and rights. May everyone be held accountable and liable if they do wrong. May the world be better for the future generations to come.

Best,
Anj

Reading Black Poetry: All Their Stanzas Look Alike + Sticks by Thomas Sayers Ellis

Hi everyone!

Post for today is a bit late, so sorry about that.

For today, we are reading two poems from contemporary poet Thomas Sayers Ellis. He has received many writing fellowships and grants, with the most recent one being a Guggenheim Fellowship in poetry. He is also a co-founder of the Dark Room Collective, a collective aiming to form a community for African-American writers.

The first poem I shall be sharing today is a 2005 poem of Ellis called All Their Stanzas Look Alike.

All their fences
All their prisons
All their exercises
All their agendas
All their stanzas look alike
All their metaphors
All their bookstores
All their plantations
All their assassinations
All their stanzas look alike
All their rejection letters
All their letters to the editor
All their arts and letters
All their letters of recommendation
All their stanzas look alike
All their sexy coverage
All their literary journals
All their car commercials
All their bribe-spiked blurbs
All their stanzas look alike
All their favorite writers
All their writing programs
All their visiting writers
All their writers-in-residence
All their stanzas look alike
All their third worlds
All their world series
All their serial killers
All their killing fields
All their stanzas look alike
All their state grants
All their tenure tracks
All their artist colonies
All their core faculties
All their stanzas look alike
All their Selected Collecteds
All their Oxford Nortons
All their Academy Societies
All their Oprah Vendlers
All their stanzas look alike
All their haloed holocausts
All their coy hetero couplets
All their hollow haloed causes
All their tone-deaf tercets
All their stanzas look alike
All their tables of contents
All their Poet Laureates
All their Ku Klux classics
All their Supreme Court justices
Except one, except one
Exceptional one. Exceptional or not,
One is not enough.
All their stanzas look alike.
Even this, after publication,
Might look alike. Disproves
My stereo types.

This is copied from Poetry Foundation’s page. There is supposedly indentation starting from the second line, followed by the fourth line, the sixth line, and so forth. My HTML skills are lacking. I can’t find the correct code to do the indent. :/

I think this is a big shout out to racism wherein a white person usually gets the job, the promotion, the award, and the bigger opportunities and it makes everything look alike, as if there is no other perspective better than his. This poem, however, breaks the pattern the same way having one different Supreme Court judge is. (I was amazed and saddened that Clarence Thomas is the only Black Supreme Court judge there is – ever. There are a number of women, with one of the most popular ones being Ruth Bader Ginsberg, the first Jewish woman and the second woman who ever served in the Supreme Court.)

But the persona remains hopeful. He thinks that, with this poem, even though it would look get lost in the other stanzas and look like the rest, it would disprove his stereo types — that not all stanzas look alike because one made it through and got published which proved that others can do the same. It’s a wonderful way to look at things — a way to remind ourselves that we have to keep on trying in order to break the pattern and make a change in this world.

The second poem is a more personal one, I think. It is called Sticks.

My father was an enormous man
Who believed kindness and lack of size
Were nothing more than sissified
Signs of weakness. Narrow-minded,

His eyes were the worst kind
Of jury — deliberate, distant, hard.
No one could out-shout him
Or make bigger fists. The few

Who tried got taken for bad,
Beat down, their bodies slammed.
I wanted to be just like him:
Big man, man of the house, king.

A plagiarist, hitting the things he hit,
I learned to use my hands watching him
Use his, pretending to slap mother
When he slapped mother.

He was sick. A diabetic slept
Like a silent vowel inside his well-built,
Muscular, dark body. Hard as all that
With similar weaknesses

— I discovered writing,
How words are parts of speech
With beats and breaths of their own.
Interjections like flams. Wham! Bam!

An heir to the rhythm
And tension beneath the beatings,
My first attempts were filled with noise,
Wild solos, violent uncontrollable blows.

The page tightened like a drum
Resisting the clockwise twisting
Of a handheld chrome key,
The noisy banging and tuning of growth.

This is copied from the Academy of American Poets’ page.

If All Their Stanzas Look Alike is about racism, this one is about sexism – one where the father sees kindness and lack of size, the usual attributes of women, as signs of weakness. There is also a stanza that mentions how the father would hit the mother and how he, as the child, would follow the example. Given that he is the man, the father sees himself as the one who should be followed and believed to be right all the time. The poem’s telling us that being the man makes you the best and makes you right, as shown by those who are older, bigger, stronger than us.

Seeing that he, the child, has the same weaknesses — small and frail and kind, he is able to find a way to fight back: through writing. It may not be physical but the words, he discovered that they they are strong — powerful. With his upbringing, what he wrote first are reflective of his father and his teachings – violent, uncontrollable.

But as he kept on writing, he realizes that it is wrong. The words he is writing is being thrown back at him, making him see the errors in his ways and his views — how it is wrong to hit women, how he is not always right, and how violence is not the right answer to anything at all. His words help him resist being a wind-up copy of his father and grow into a better person — which is a good thing.

I remember reading something on Facebook that went something like this: children with homophobic parents grow homophobic. (I couldn’t find the post but it was circulating after a Grade 1 student answered a very old, stereotypical, and sexist module in a very modern way.) This poem is showing us something similar: violent parents create violent children. And it is up to the child to grow up and be a better person than his/her parents.

The world is a really effed up place. But that does not mean that we should stop being kind to one another. Just like in the first poem, one change can be a start, an example, and eventually disprove existing stereo types.

I typed a lot today, really feeling the poems tonight. I loved them a lot. The poems are published in a collection called The Maverick Room. (It is a rather old book so there’s not many new copies left, as per Amazon.)

That’s all from me for now. I shall share the third-to-the-last poet later!

Best regards,
Anj

Reading Black Poetry: Still I Rise + Caged Bird by Maya Angelou

Hey everyone!

Today’s post is all about the marvelous poet, Maya Angelou. She was many things: mother, dancer (at one point), mechanic (at one point also), poet, storyteller, activist, screenwriter, autobiographer, and an inspiration to many.

I will say this early on; I LOVE HER POEMS. I feel so energized and full of hope after reading them. They have very vivid imagery and easy to understand, that ordinary people can easily imagine what is happening and can empathize with her poems.

Our first Maya Angelou poem is what I think to be one of her most famous ones, Still I Rise.

You may write me down in history
With your bitter, twisted lies,
You may trod me in the very dirt
But still, like dust, I’ll rise.

Does my sassiness upset you?
Why are you beset with gloom?
’Cause I walk like I’ve got oil wells
Pumping in my living room.

Just like moons and like suns,
With the certainty of tides,
Just like hopes springing high,
Still I’ll rise.

Did you want to see me broken?
Bowed head and lowered eyes?
Shoulders falling down like teardrops,
Weakened by my soulful cries?

Does my haughtiness offend you?
Don’t you take it awful hard
’Cause I laugh like I’ve got gold mines
Diggin’ in my own backyard.

You may shoot me with your words,
You may cut me with your eyes,
You may kill me with your hatefulness,
But still, like air, I’ll rise.

Does my sexiness upset you?
Does it come as a surprise
That I dance like I’ve got diamonds
At the meeting of my thighs?

Out of the huts of history’s shame
I rise
Up from a past that’s rooted in pain
I rise
I’m a black ocean, leaping and wide,
Welling and swelling I bear in the tide.

Leaving behind nights of terror and fear
I rise
Into a daybreak that’s wondrously clear
I rise
Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,
I am the dream and the hope of the slave.
I rise
I rise
I rise.

This is borrowed from the Poetry Foundation page.

So powerful! I think this is something we all need to read and to remember. Regardless of what other people view us to be, what color our skin is, what our size is, and what society dictates to be what’s “right”, we should be who we truly are especially if being true to ourselves does no harm to ourselves and to others. We may fall because of this, but we must always remember that we will rise at the end of it.

The next poem by Maya Angelou is called Caged Bird.

A free bird leaps
on the back of the wind
and floats downstream
till the current ends
and dips his wing
in the orange sun rays
and dares to claim the sky.

But a bird that stalks
down his narrow cage
can seldom see through
his bars of rage
his wings are clipped and
his feet are tied
so he opens his throat to sing.

The caged bird sings
with a fearful trill
of things unknown
but longed for still
and his tune is heard
on the distant hill
for the caged bird
sings of freedom.

The free bird thinks of another breeze
and the trade winds soft through the sighing trees
and the fat worms waiting on a dawn bright lawn
and he names the sky his own

But a caged bird stands on the grave of dreams
his shadow shouts on a nightmare scream
his wings are clipped and his feet are tied
so he opens his throat to sing.

The caged bird sings
with a fearful trill
of things unknown
but longed for still
and his tune is heard
on the distant hill
for the caged bird
sings of freedom.

This is also borrowed from the Poetry Foundation page.

I found myself empathizing with the caged bird since I — and all of us really — are more or less, caged birds. We have been in this pandemic for over six months and most countries haven’t gotten back on their feet yet. (My country hasn’t, unfortunately, and many of us here are suffering and having a hard time dealing with our new normal on top of the political turmoil here.)

But I strongly believe that we must not let our current situation — our oppressors — stop us from singing, like the caged bird. We have a voice and we will be heard. Soon enough, our voices will be too loud to ignore and we would be free. I hope that day would come soon enough.

There’s many more works of Maya Angelou that’s worth reading and sharing. On the Pulse of Morning is an inaugural poem she recited for then President Bill Clinton. (The one in the link is only an excerpt but you feel its strength… its power!) Phenomenal Woman is the best feminist poem out there. READ IT!

That’s all for me from now. Until tomorrow’s post!

Best,
Anj

Reading Black Poetry: Washington Mews + Death and the City by Rowan Ricardo Phillips

Hello, everyone!

We are reading two poems from poet Rowan Ricardo Phillips. He is a poet and literary & art critic in New York City. He is the author of two poetry books: Heaven (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2015), which was a longlist finalist for the National Book Award, and The Ground (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2012), for which he received the 2013 Great Lakes Colleges Association New Writers Award for Poetry and the PEN/Joyce Osterweil Award.

The first one we are reading is called Washington Mews.

I won’t ever tell you how it ended.
But it ended. I was told not to act
Like it was some big dramatic moment.
She swiveled on her heels like she twirled just
The other day on a bar stool, the joy
Gone out of it now. Then she walked away.
I called out to her once. She slightly turned.
But she didn’t stop. I called out again.
And that was when, well, that’s just when
You know: You will always be what you were
On that small street at that small time, right when
She left and Pluto sudsed your throat and said,
Puedo escribir los versos mĂĄs tristes esta noche
TĂș la quisiste, y a veces ella tambiĂ©n te quiso.

This is copied from the American Academy of Poets page.

I think, by now, you may have noticed that I am a sucker for imagery. I like how vivid the images are in this short, bittersweet poem of a good-bye to a lover — how they were once happy and how she left, how he felt when she left.

The last two lines, once translated, means:

I can write the saddest verses tonight
You loved her, and sometimes she loved you too.

The flash fiction writer in me sort of thinks that maybe she didn’t truly love him at all but just led him on. He only wants to believe that there are times that she loved him too. But we’ll never really know.

Moving on to the next poem, we are reading Death and the City.

Yesterday’s newspaper becomes last week’s
Newspapers spread out like a hand-held fan
In front of the face of the apartment
Door. A dog does the Argos-thing inside,
Waiting beside O as though his body
Is but an Ithaca waiting the soul’s
Return. Neil the Super will soon come up
With the key but only in time to find
Doreen, the on-the-down-low-friend-with-perks,
There already, kneeling between the two,
Stroking the hair of both O and the dog,
Wondering who had been walking the dog.

This is copied from the American Academy of Poets page as well.

I love how this poem incorporates Greek mythology and imagery. This, however, is very morbid. We have Odysseus and Argos, his faithful dog who waited for his return. Argos is remembered as a strong and fast dog but when Odysseus returned, he is found in very bad shape, surrounded by manure and had lice.

I think what happened here is that O is dead and Argos is faithfully staying by his master’s side, waiting for him to come back to life. There are two possible suspects – Neil the Super (who I think is a superintendent) who has the key, or Doreen who was there first (and most likely has a copy of the key). Well, O could have died of natural causes too. What do you think?

Do let me know in the comments section below. I’ll try to answer as soon as I can.

Thank you for reading!

Best regards,
Anj

Reading Black Poetry: Shed + Headwind by Amber Flora Thomas

Hello, everyone!

For today, we will be reading two amazing works by poet Amber Flora Thomas. She is a poet from North Carolina who won the 2004 Cave Canem Poetry Prize and has three books as of 2018.

The first poem that I wish to share is called Shed, which originally appeared in Callaloo, Vol. 36, No. 2.

She is not afraid of gods. She leaves her skin,
still coiled, a great throat collapsed.
Gods have entered and left.

The door sounds like a throat clearing
in its rusty evolution toward shadow,
an atrium from scalding noon.

She treats the dark like a cathedral.
She is all swallow, the heart working
under every scale to outgrow a fortified spiral.

The cathedral swallows the heart.
Take up your broom. No gods are left.
She finished the mice in time for autumn’s gloom.

There are some cathedrals like this shed
behind the house where she shunned her body
and in the dark was not afraid of gods.

Sunlight pulls past our legs
on the plywood and pools in the coiled skin
that overwintered.

Dig your broom into corners.
She is not afraid of gods or matriarchs.

This is copied from the Academy of American Poets website.

I LOVE THE IMAGERY. It is so powerful. I just love it so much.

I think of this as a story of a woman – a snake, really – left in the darkness after being used and abused who is now shedding her former self, the one that is captured in the cathedral of darkness and merging out of it, unafraid of anything or anyone.

*I think the woman/snake could be dead so there is no need for the brooms to swat her away. I’d like to hear what other poets and readers think about this poem.

The next poem from Amber Flora Thomas is called Headwind.

Weak motion of grasses and tern before the sea.
Worry’s school cresting here and everywhere
as failings.

I pace the cliff path, my hands cupped above my eyes.
The glare steals your progress, a kayak needling
the wide open.

Love means you answer, this the child’s rebuke.
A pattern crosses the point, hemming
the horizon: steamship.

I didn’t know you were the green pitch
unable to beat the storm to shore.
You didn’t know I was the lookout.

Get accustomed to the sad girl picking you
out of the sea, the knot caught in her throat,
and the unraveling of her speech: an endless rope
thrown out of me.

This is copied from the Academy of American Poets website as well.

After the first reading, I thought of it as a romantic poem but as you dig deeper and take it apart, verse by verse, you see that it is a tragic tale of a love that was not meant to be. A girl standing on a cliff, overviewing the sea, sees her beloved’s boat capsizing, never making to the shore. Regret overcomes her as she is unable to give her answer. It shows us how there is no certainty in life and that you should say what you wish to say to the ones you love.

Wow, just wow!

That’s it for today. ‘Til the next feature!

Best,
Anj

Reading Black Poetry: We Should Make a Documentary + Wind in a Box – after Lorca by Terrance Hayes

Hello everyone!

I am sorry that I have been gone for months. A lot of things has happened and decisions have to be made. But I do intend to finish this series, with seven more Black poets to go – as I do enjoy reading poetry from our Black brothers and sisters and I wish to let the world know that there are many amazing poems from the Black community.

For the next feature, we are going to be reading two poems from Terrance Hayes.

The first poem is quite powerful and meaningful. It is called We Should Make a Documentary about Spades.

And here is all we’ll need: a card deck, quartets of sun people
Of the sort found in black college dormitories, some vintage
Music, indiscriminate spirits, fried chicken, some paper,

A writing utensil, and a bottomless Saturday. We should explore
The origins of a derogatory word like spade as well as the word
For feeling alone in polite company. And also the implications
Of calling someone who is not your brother or sister,

Brother or Sister. So little is known of our past, we can imagine
Damn near anything. When I say maybe slaves held Spades
Tournaments on the anti-cruise ships bound for the Colonies,
You say when our ancestors were cooped on those ships

They were not yet slaves. Our groundbreaking film should begin
With a low-lit den in the Deep South and the deep fried voice
Of somebody’s grandmother holding smoke in her mouth
As she says, “The two of Diamonds trumps the two of Spades

In my house.” And at some point someone should tell the story
Where Jesus and the devil are Spades partners traveling
The juke joints of the 1930s. We could interview my uncle Junior
And definitely your skinny cousin Mary and any black man

Sitting at a card table wearing shades. Who do you suppose
Would win if Booker T and MLK were matched against Du Bois
And Malcolm X in a game of Spades? You say don’t talk
Across the table. Pay attention to the suits being played.

The object of the game is to communicate invisibly
With your teammate. I should concentrate. Do you suppose
We are here because we are lonely in some acute diasporafied
Way? This should be explored in our film about Spades.

Because it is one of the ways I am still learning what it is
To be black, tonight I am ready to master Spades. Four players
Bid a number of books. Each team adds the bids
Of the two partners, and the total is the number of books

That team must try to win. Is that not right? This is a game
That tests the boundary between mathematics and magic,
If you ask me. A bid must be intuitive like the itchiness
Of the your upper lip before you sip strange whiskey.

My mother did not drink, which is how I knew something
Was wrong with her, but she held a dry spot at the table
When couples came to play. It’s a scene from my history,
But this probably should not be mentioned in our documentary

About Spades. Renege is akin to the word for the shame
You feel watching someone else’s humiliation. Slapping
A card down must be as dramatic as hitting the face of a drum
With your palm, not hitting the face of a drum with a drumstick.

You say there may be the sort of outrage induced
By liquor, trash talk, and poor strategy, but it will fade
The way a watermark left on a table by a cold glass fades.
I suspect winning this sort of game makes you feel godly.

I’m good and ready for who ever we’re playing
Against tonight. I am trying to imagine our enemy.
I know you are not my enemy. You say there are no enemies
In Spades. Spades is a game our enemies do not play.

Text is copied from the Academy of American Poets’ page.

I ended up choosing this piece for the last feature on Instagram as I think it is an apt reminder that even if we had big wins during this movement, there is still so much to do and so much to learn from the Black community. (This poem taught me that there is a game called Spades and that a spade is an offensive name for a Black person.) As I end this seven-day tribute, let us all be reminded that the battle is not done yet but with more informed people, we are ready to move onward and strive harder to gain equality for our Black brothers and sisters.

The second poem by Terrance Hayes is one he wrote for fellow poet Federico Garcia Lorca, which is called Wind in a Box – after Lorca.

I want to always sleep beneath a bright red blanket
of leaves. I want to never wear a coat of ice.
I want to learn to walk without blinking.

I want to outlive the turtle and the turtle’s father,
the stone. I want a mouth full of permissions

and a pink glistening bud. If the wildflower and ant hill
can return after sleeping each season, I want to walk
out of this house wearing nothing but wind.

I want to greet you, I want to wait for the bus with you
weighing less than a chill. I want to fight off the bolts

of gray lighting the alcoves and winding paths
of your hair. I want to fight off the damp nudgings
of snow. I want to fight off the wind.

I want to be the wind and I want to fight off the wind
with its sagging banner of isolation, its swinging

screen doors, its gilded boxes, and neatly folded pamphlets
of noise. I want to fight off the dull straight lines
of two by fours and endings, your disapprovals,

your doubts and regulations, your carbon copies.
If the locust can abandon its suit,

I want a brand new name. I want the pepper’s fury
and the salt’s tenderness. I want the virtue
of the evening rain, but not its gossip.

I want the moon’s intuition, but not its questions.
I want the malice of nothing on earth. I want to enter

every room in a strange electrified city
and find you there. I want your lips around the bell of flesh

at the bottom of my ear. I want to be the mirror,
but not the nightstand. I do not want to be the light switch.
I do not want to be the yellow photograph

or book of poems. When I leave this body, Woman,
I want to be pure flame. I want to be your song.

This is copied from Poetry Foundation’s page.

I did a bit of digging and found out that Lorca is a name, the surname for a Federico Garcia Lorca. Federico Garcia Lorca was many things: a poet, playwright, and theatre director from Spain who is said to have been killed due to the political and social tension in Spain in 1936. With his outspoken socialist views, Lorca was seen as a suspect and was, eventually, arrested and then, killed. His remains were never found.

I think that this poem’s speaker is Lorca, talking about how he wishes to be something new in his next life — something that is free and powerful that he will not be taken down so easily because of his voice, his opinions, and his views of the world. I love how Terrance Hayes was able to write this powerful poem and filling its readers with hope that one day, we will be reborn with the strength and the freedom we were once denied of.

**Wind in a Box is also the title of Hayes’ third poetry collection, published by Penguin Books in 2006.

Thank you so much for reading this blog post. I hope and pray that everyone is safe and well.

Best regards,
Anj