Metta Sama

AND THEN WE SAW THE DAUGHTER OF THE MINOTAUR Poet, comma. It is thus the delay, which is also a beginning. That we can link eyes across her time-space continuum is another hyena. The female elongates, bares fangs, and a trash compactor recycles. Hyena gives in the recycling fashion. Phoenix, no more false flight from holes; now balloons eat at decay. Hunger denuded us, too. But will you give up your death for me? With surgery, I outright hollow the monster to breathe across windows. I don her hollow whole. She writes back in the pauses of haze. Her and her tragic magic. We are all cross-dressing in tiny wings with the machines of bones to go on. ___________________________________________ Of her most recent book from Litmus Press, I Want to Make You Safe, John Ashbery described Amy King‘s poems as bringing “abstractions to brilliant, jagged life, emerging into rather than [...]

To the Night Shark Past dusk I dived Fled without flashlight Went against the current I knew Would bring me to you Tooth-skinned from nose to fin Mortal and counter Clockwise across you Skin I gave up to touch Streamed against the current One moment still mortal I was without struggle without air instinct speech Skin dissolving between each Snaggle-toothed stroke Touch babbling bled Only then With the current Immortal ___________________________________________________ Rosebud Ben-Oni is a playwright at New Perspective Theater, where she is currently at work on a new play. Educated at New York University, the University of Michigan and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Ms. Ben-Oni was a Rackham Merit Fellow and a Horace Goldsmith Fellow. She is also co-editor for “HER KIND,” the official blog of “VIDA: Women in Literary Arts”. Her works have appeared in Puerto Del Sol, Arts & Letters, and The Texas Poetry Review. Her [...]

Three poets name their favorite books and poems from the 2011. b bearhart 1. Sing: Poetry from the Indigenous Americas (UAPress) edited by Allison Adelle Hedge Coke Indigenous Americas. Nuff said. (It’s a poet’s wet dream. Can I say that? Cause I just did.) 2. Mad for Meat (Salmon Poetry) by Kevin Simmonds This collection is honest and beautiful. No frills or tricks. Simply fantastic poems by a very talented human. 3. by Tarfia Faizullah Thank god for poet friends. So many people linked this poem on social networking sites. I love the way this poem builds through sound. 4. “The Blue Dress in Mother’s Closet” by Saeed Jones Who is this dude?! This poem is brilliant. Read it. 5. by Melissa Jones This poem is not like my other picks. Or maybe it is and I’m not getting the connection. I like the jarring nature of this poem. It [...]

A work of art is a problem It’s easy enough to read the thoughts of a newcomer: the one who will come without appointment remembering circles and maps of temperance. Down the avenue of swift and invisible nudes a thin, brittle demon the shade of an autumn leaf is seeking imperfections. Our prophets always speak too soon– you know you want to own a picture of a man carrying a drum made of human scalps. Give me a little more time here– A democracy of strangeness is a reminder that the work of art presents not an expression of identity but a problem ‘I prefer the films that put their audience to sleep in the theatre.’ Now– I’d like a word or two from you. _________________________________________________ Sridala Swami writes poetry, short fiction. Her first collection of poems, A Reluctant Survivor,was shortlisted for the Shakti Bhatt First Book Award in 2008. [...]

Lessons in Solitude from Men 1. To be okay alone is to treasure time like a lode in the stone day, but I can’t figure out how the strong do it, fuse skin to ore against loss that rains like rusted bearings, like the recluse Geryon, the suit he poured his frame into each day, the sheets of impracticable iron he wore to make rounds among sheep, a warrior’s carapace that could not have been his nor do I think the loot of some conquest, but, I suspect, a shepherd’s grief, the weight to him of a lover’s solid clasp, the weight to him of loss. 2. I learned about solitude from men like Aaron in Parry Sound, rasping at canoes with his heart in his heels, from Oliver after Saugatuck stunned hard and heart sick, the timing for us ill, from Matthew the summer I left Harlem naked and [...]

The Blue Dress in Mother’s Closet Her blue dress is a silk train is a river, is water seeps into the cobblestone streets of my sleep, is still raining, is monsoon brocade, is winter stars stitched into puddles, is goodbye in a flooded antique room, is goodbye in a room of crystal bowls and crystal cups, is the ring-ting-ring of water dripping from the mouths of crystal bowls and crystal cups, is the Mississippi River is a hallway, is leaks like tears from window sills of a drowned house, is windows open to waterfalls, is a bed is a small boat is a ship, is a current come to carry me in its arms through the streets, is me floating in her dress through the streets, is only the moon sees me floating through the streets, is me in a blue dress out to sea, is my mother is a [...]

To Women Waiting at the Gynecologist -Anarcha’s Ballad Deep inside this cabin, deeper still into the darkness arising like fumes, like odor of woman, broke, harnessed in a body, by the bodies of men who believe me animal, wild, and numb because my body be black, be able, be stank after childbirth, ruined, cast out into the woods to spoil alone. My savior wears white coats bends spoons, bends me, bends spoon into my crouched hound of body. White women rest easy in clean sheets, while spoons scrape through me, give me new hollows. He will one day find, in me, how to mold the tool, the pressure, his, to relieve those precious as dew drops settled on dove’s wings will be gone. And you, innocent you, lying on cool white slabs, free legs ready, no remnants of me in you until you are pressed wide open, coffee brewing in [...]

He Who Talks With A Fist And The Voyeur How Hippothales hides How he hides behind rice stalks How he is knee deep in rice beds listening _____as bears migrate .How migration is manifold .How it starts to unfold from thigh to ass .How fingers are five migratory birds purposeful _____they move inland _____expand _____one into two __________into three fires and a dialogue How he convinces me that everything feels so much better with prayer. How he prays. How two hands steeple. _____into a pink miigis shell. __________________________________________________ b: william bearhart fell from garage rafters as child. he is a direct descendent of the St Croix Chippewa Indians of Wisconsin. he spent a couple years at a small two-year college learning how to be human. he attended Squaw Valley Community of Writers and Bread Loaf Writers Conference in an attempt to find words, friends, connection, poems. his work has appeared [...]

consider me these hips this alphabet an echo this symbol in the hallway surely this tongue could spin a wow-weaved man could spin a place to rest to rest to rest Lucille Clifton once said, somewhere, that things are better said in threes. She once said that she’d thought of several word options before speaking the one she most fancied. She once said that poetry is about questions, connections. Lucille Clifton said many things outside of poems that felt like poems, and many of us who were blessed to sit in front of her and hear her speak remembers these words. Once, she told us to know beyond the obvious. It’s not difficult to see these little lit bits inside of her poems: my knees recall the pockets worn into the stone floor, my hands, tracing against the wall their original name, remember the cold brush of brick, and the [...]

Here we are in the early days of Black History Month, churning steadily towards Women’s History Month, & chugging heartily towards National Poetry month; it is 2010. We are ending the Year of the Ox, charging headlong to the Tiger’s year; Valentine’s Day will, for some of us, be (wonderfully) subsumed by Chinese New Year. It is 2010 and Brooklyn has finally gotten its “blizzard”. Years ago, when I lived in Binghamton, I thought the fog was lovely, the snow was lovely, all of that weatherly white was lovely. Until I stepped from the dense white of fog, the soft fur of white snow, into a town filled with a severe whiteness. It wasn’t so much the faces as the attitudes. Twice a year, when I head to Vermont to teach, I am reminded of those clouded white faces of Binghamton, faces like flowers, closed to perceived darkness & waiting [...]