Ink

Robert Frost

This pretty much sums up how i feel about graduating at the end of this year...

-M

spaces

                                          

Definitely going to have a custom bookshelf in my house one day

-M

all over the place

“Writing is a socially acceptable form of schizophrenia.”

—	E.L. Doctorow

So true, so true.

-M

food for thought

Blue

BY Chris Abani

                                  I

Africans in the hold fold themselves

to make room for hope. In the afternoon’s

ferocity, tar, grouting the planks like the glue

of family, melts to the run of a child’s licorice stick.

Wet decks crack, testing the wood’s mettle.

Distilled from evaporating brine, salt

dusts the floor, tickling with the measure

into time and the thirst trapped below.

                                  II

The captain’s new cargo of Igbos disturbs him.

They stand, computing the swim back to land.

Haitians still say: Igbo pend’c or’ a ya!

But we do not hang ourselves in cowardice.

                                  III

Sold six times on the journey to the coast,

once for a gun, then cloth, then iron

manilas, her pride was masticated like husks

of chewing sticks, spat from morning-rank mouths.

Breaking loose, edge of handcuffs held high

like the blade of a vengeful axe, she runs

across the salt scratch of deck,

pain deeper than the blue inside a flame.

                                  IV

The sound, like the break of bone

could have been the Captain’s skull

or the musket shot dropping her

over the side, her chains wrapped

around his neck in dance.

Today in my history class we watched a movie and it made me contemplate how much the modern youth don't think about the past. How can we learn and move forward if we neglect our history? I'm not one to dwell on what's done, but life is cyclical and sometimes to see the future you must focus on the past. This poet was recommended by one of my professors and this poem really stuck out to me. I love the imagery and playful word combinations infused into such a heavy topic. 


-M

Confidence

Homage to my Hips

these hips are big hips.
they need space to
move around in.
they don't fit into little
petty places. these hips
are free hips.
they don't like to be held back.
these hips have never been enslaved,
they go where they want to go
they do what they want to do.
these hips are mighty hips.
these hips are magic hips.
i have known them
to put a spell on a man and
spin him like a top

Lucille Clifton

The cold weather has set in and I've been feeling alittle down lately. But when I read this poem, I can't help but put alittle bounce in my step, embrace my swingin' hips, and enjoy that I am a woman. Check out Ms. Clifton reading this poem out loud here! and let it amp up your womanly confidence

-M

Bloglovin'

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Contemporary

from SOUVENIR

i’m sick of love & sad for what I’ve lost:
that bullshit fix of nervy hands has gone &
rude spring’s a bully, sun & wavy cold air
& you are well, i having never been well i,
i want to meet you anew and be loved &
not thought of as silly – to you now i’m
a clown or a dog waiting to be put down
& so my breasts are hairy teats for cubs i love
& are not born, & not for you, my new nude
is atrocious & i wonder who you
think of in the shower, what wets your meat
if not my putrid body you once & gently
fucked & which i, promising it to you, have lost
the receipt for. go away for a long time


& meet me at the airport, run me a bath
as before with water from the kettle so
kind & we’ll shiver in two inches forever,
thigh on thigh never shrinking from the
moment but cycling it around the time
we do have, having been given each other, &
never unadorned or waiting to get broke.
i’d wait to die forever to have unlost
that time & die to lose it all again,
having taken too much, having got
love unspent not wanted & staid unhappy
inside the kettle waiting to be filled kindly,
touched on the cunt or met at the airport with the
ghosts of animal kingdoms still inside me.


Sophie Robinson is a poet living in London and is writin' right now. I dig her bawdy images for sexuality and blunt language.

-M