Category: Poems & poem-like things

Original poetry, translations and videopoems by the authors of this blog. (See Poets and poetry for criticism, etc.)

Posted on by Luisa A. Igloria

On Privilege

“To be a god is to be totally absorbed in the exercise of one’s own power, the fulfillment of one’s own nature, unchecked by any thought of others except as obstacles to be overcome…” ~ Bernard Knox, quoted by seon joon
 

Is privilege the dubious gift of the gods
to those who might otherwise be indistinguishable
from the rest of us, if not for some intensity

that sets them apart? And is it privilege as well,
to have more propensity for feeling, be more thin-
skinned, unable to see It’s just a joke,

get over it, be stung too easily to rankle
or protest the cavalier ways in which immortals
break the rules, eat their young, wrap the best

parts in their golden parachutes while leaving
crumbs, rut with bulls and swans and tumble women
bathing at the spa or riverbank? And when the gods

take what they please, incite wars, turn
friends and kin against each other, is it
privilege too that those who speak up—

start signature campaigns, write letters
to the editors of major newspapers, step
forward to witness— wind up with the pink

slips, possessions repossessed, the missing limbs,
or worse, under the sod in an unmarked grave?
And what of those who struggle to piece the sleeves

of days together, the milk to the bread, the health
to the body, the ink to the letter, the soul to the law,
the song to the mouth, the pigment to the dream?

 

In response to thus: terrible to hear....

Posted on by Dave Bonta

Heels

This entry is part 27 of 29 in the series Conversari

High heels.
Portable pinnacles
to teeter on for others’ titillation,
back arched as if on the edge
of orgasm or some lovers’ leap.
The spine loses its spring
& the feet their feeling.
Toes in a too-small toebox
jostle & twist like
a litter of kittens
tied up in a sack.

Posted on by Luisa A. Igloria

In the grove

This entry is part 7 of 29 in the series Morning Porch Poems: Winter 2012-13

I believe you, poet, when you write
of how the night is now more night
in the grove, how lightning

has nestled among the leaves*—
And you know that something heavier
than lightning glints in the branches,

has come to roost there too, ancient evil
waiting as if with forked ghost hands,
ghost wings to descend upon a passing bus

and tear the girl’s clothes from
her body, ram the metal heft
of that old, ineradicable hate

into her sex, into her gut—
In the cold of New Year’s day, hundreds
sit in a Darjeeling square to sing

a song: imagine the blood of evidence
made visible, not washed away; imagine
how the body wants only to arch

toward the infinite, how the smallest
fingernail or severed tendon wants to be
restored to the un-butchered whole—

~ *Octavio Paz

 

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.