#slam poets

When I Say That Loving Me Is Kind Of Like Being A Chicago Bulls Fan
Hanif Abdurraqib

what I mean is that my father can tell a bunch of cool stories about back in the day when I was truly great. there is a mountain of gold that has gathered dust in the corner where I used to sleep, and look at all of these pictures. in this one, I am wearing rainbow shorts and hurling rocks at a shoreline. in this one, I am smiling in the glow of 13 lit candles pushed into a sheet of dark sugar. you may ask why I allow my face to drown in less and less joy with each passing year and I will say I just woke up one day and I was a still photo in everyone else’s home but my own. or I will say I promise that my legs just need another season, and then I will be who you fell in love with again. and then I will probably just say I’m sorry that there was once a tremendous blue sky and then a decade of hard, incessant rain.

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See the poet read this.  BuyA Fortune for Your Disasteror The Crown Ain’t Worth Much. 

Today in: 

2020:fromChildren Walk on Chairs to Cross a Flooded Schoolyard, Patrick Rosal
2019:If Life Is As Short As Our Ancestors Insist It Is, Why Isn’t Everything I Want Already At My Feet, Hanif Abdurraqib
2018:Bliss and Grief, Marie Ponsot
2017:Verge, Mark Doty
2016:Ever, Meghan O’Rourke
2015:The Two Times I Loved You the Most In a Car, Dorothea Grossman
2014:May Day, Phillis Levin
2013:The Triumph of the Infinite, Mark Strand
2012:Mermaid Song, Kim Addonizio
2011:the laughing heart, Charles Bukowski
2010:from Jenny, Genya Turovskaya
2009:A Step Away From Them, Frank O’Hara
2008:Entry, Lisa Sewell
2007:Meanwhile, Richard Siken
2006:Preface to a Twenty Volume Suicide Note, Amiri Baraka
2005:Holy Sonnet XIV, John Donne

You Mean You Don’t Weep at the Nail Salon?
Elizabeth Acevedo

it’s the being alone, i think, the emails but not voices. dominicans be funny, the way we love to touch — every greeting a cheek kiss, a shoulder clap, a loud.

it gots to be my period, the bloating, the insurance commercial where the husband comes home after being deployed, the last of the gouda gone, the rejection letter, the acceptance letter, the empty inbox.

a dream, these days. to work at home is a privilege, i remind myself.

spend the whole fucking day flirting with screens. window, tv, computer, phone: eyes & eyes & eyes. the keys clicking, the ding of the 
microwave, the broadway soundtrack i share wine with in the evenings.

these are the answers, you feel me? & the impetus. the why. of when the manicurist holds my hand, making my nails a lilliputian abstract,

i close my fingers around hers, disrupting the polish, too tight i know then, too tight to hold a stranger, but she squeezes back & doesn’t let go & so finally i can.

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(Published in 2018. I love when poems seem eerily prescient, or take on a whole new resonance.)

Today in:

2020: Let Me Begin Again, Philip Levine
2019:Hammond B3 Organ Cistern, Gabrielle Calvocoressi
2018:Siren Song, Margaret Atwood
2017:A Sunset, Ari Banias
2016:Coming, Philip Larkin
2015:The Taxi, Amy Lowell
2014:Winter Sunrise Outside a Café Near Butte, Montana, Joe Hutchison
2013:The Last Night in Mithymna, Linda Gregg
2012:America [Try saying wren], Joseph Lease
2011:Boston, Aaron Smith
2010:How Simile Works, Albert Goldbarth
2009:Crossing Over, William Meredith
2008:The World Wakes Up, Andrew Michael Roberts
2007:Hour, Christian Hawkey
2006:For the Anniversary of My Death, W.S. Merwin
2005:The Last Poem About the Snow Queen, Sandra M. Gilbert