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"Who Remembers the Armenians?" by Palestinian poet Najwan Darwish / "Who Remembers the Palestinians?" by Armenian writer Sophia Armen

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Linda Pastan, from Waiting for My Life: Poems; "My Achilles Son"

[Text ID: "Nothing is left to happen. / Only his voice / still keeps me / like an arrow / from my proper rest,"]

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[WHAT I DID IN HIS DREAM

I went away to have a child not his or any man’s. I could have borne one with twenty hearts each a tough muscle, a bird’s determined pulse each attached to the inside dark chest with invisible threads to beat, clamor, need. but the deformity I chose was not the heart. instead I had a child with forked tongues jabbering away in dialects he could not understand.]

KAREN BRODINE

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the lost baby poem

by Lucille Clifton

the time i dropped your almost body down down to meet the waters under the city and run one with the sewage to the sea what did i know about waters rushing back what did i know about drowning or being drowned you would have been born into winter in the year of the disconnected gas and no car       we would have made the thin walk over genesee hill into the canada wind to watch you slip like ice into strangers’ hands you would have fallen naked as snow into winter if you were here i could tell you these and some other things if i am ever less than a mountain for your definite brothers and sisters let the rivers pour over my head let the sea take me for a spiller of seas        let black men call me stranger always        for your never named sake

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Transcript below the cut

[Anna Akhmatova YOU THOUGHT I WAS THAT TYPE

You thought I was that type: that you could forget me, and that I’d plead and weep and throw myself under the hooves of a bay mare,

or that I’d ask the sorcerers for some magic potion made from roots and send you a terrible gift: my precious perfumed handkerchief.

Damn you! I will not grant your cursed soul vicarious tears or a single glance. And I swear to you by the garden of the angels, I swear by the miracle-working ikon, and by the fire and smoke of our nights: I will never come back to you.

Translated by Richard McKane]

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“She dealt her pretty words like Blades...”

by Emily Dickinson

She dealt her pretty words like Blades— How glittering they shone— And every One unbared a Nerve Or wantoned with a Bone—

She never deemed—she hurt— That—is not Steel’s Affair— A vulgar grimace in the Flesh— How ill the Creatures bear—

To Ache is human—not polite— The Film upon the eye Mortality’s old Custom— Just locking up—to Die.

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Venetta Octavia, from “I Set It in Stone”

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[If there is no avoiding a moon then let it be a full one, a full one,]

Mahmoud Darwish, Like a Hand Tattoo in an Ode by an Ancient Arab Poet in Almond Blossoms and Beyond (tr. Mohammad Shaheen)

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To the Young Who Want to Die

by Gwendolyn Brooks

Sit down. Inhale. Exhale. The gun will wait. The lake will wait. The tall gall in the small seductive vial will wait will wait: will wait a week: will wait through April. You do not have to die this certain day. Death will abide, will pamper your postponement. I assure you death will wait. Death has a lot of time. Death can attend to you tomorrow. Or next week. Death is just down the street; is most obliging neighbor; can meet you any moment.

You need not die today. Stay here--through pout or pain or peskyness. Stay here. See what the news is going to be tomorrow.

Graves grow no green that you can use. Remember, green's your color. You are Spring.

#poetry #gwendolyn brooks

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Transcript below the cut

[The grief of time passing, of life moving on half-finished, of empty spaces that were once bursting with the laughter and energy of people we loved. As long as there is love there will be grief because grief is love's natural continuation. It shows up in the aisles of stores we once frequented, in the half-finished bottle of wine we pour out, in the whiff of cologne we get two years after they've been gone. Grief is a giant neon sign, protruding through everything, pointing everywhere, broadcasting loudly, "Love was here." In the finer print, quietly, "Love still is."]

As long as there is love, there will be grief.

— Heidi Priebe

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“there are, on this planet alone, something like two million naturally occurring sweet things, some with names so gorgeous as to kick the steel from my knees: agave, persimmon, stick ball, the purple okra I bought for two bucks at the market. Think of that. The long night, the skeleton in the mirror, the man behind me on the bus taking notes, yeah, yeah. But look; my niece is running through a field calling my name. My neighbor sings like an angel and at the end of my block is a basketball court. I remember. My color’s green. I’m spring.”

— Ross Gay, excerpt of “Sorrow Is Not My Name”, in Bringing the Shovel Down

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- Matthew Nienow, Lupa.

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The Ship of Theseus is a story of a ship which, over time, has part after part replaced. By the end, 100% of the original ship's pieces have been replaced. The paradox begs the question of whether it is still the same ship.

The Ship of Theseus is a story of a ship which has its pieces replaced one after another. By the end, every single piece of the original ship has changed. The paradox asks if this is the same ship.

The Ship of Theseus tells the allegory of a ship whose crew are replaced one at a time. Eventually every single crewmate has been swapped for a new one. No one left knows what the carved initials in the mast mean. The paradox wonders whether the ship is still the same ship.

The Ship of Theseus refers to a company which has experienced complete turnover and rebranding. The query wishes to know if it is still the same company. The debtors are asking.

The Ship of Theseus is about a family. The original constituents are dead now, replaced by younger generations which have dispersed, found love, married and gained new names. No one is Theseus anymore. No one remembers the bones. But the genes never forget. Who is the family now?

The Ship of Theseus is you, shed of all the cells which first made you. They're stardust again. You'll be stardust many times over. Who are you?

The Ship of Theseus is me. All my words have changed. Who do I get to be now?

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Transcript below the cut

[My friend was advised to italicise all the foreign words in her poems. This advice came from a well-meaning woman with NZ poetry on her business card and an English accent in her mouth.

I have been thinking about this advice.

The convention of italicising words from other languages clarifies that some words are imported: it ensures readers can tell the difference between a foreign language and the language of home.

I have been thinking about this advice.

Marking the foreign words is also a kindness: every potential reader is reassured that although you're expected to understand the rest of the text, it's fine to consult a dictionary or native speaker for help with the italics.

I have been thinking about this advice.

Because I am a contrary person, at first I was outraged -- but after a while I could see she had a point:

when the foreign words are camouflaged in plain type you can forget how they came to be there, out of place, in the first place.

I have been thinking about this advice and I have decided to follow it.

Now all of my readers will be able to remember which words truly belong in Aotearoa and which do not.]

[A gif of Prof Farnsworth from Futurama saying, 'To shreds you say']

Alice Te Punga Somerville, Always Italicise: How to Write While Colonised - Kupu rere kē

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I stared at a tree against dusk Till it was a girl Standing beside a country road Shucking cane with her teeth. She looked up & smiled & waved. Lost in what hurts, In what tasted good, could she Ever learn there’s no love In sugar?

—Yusef Komunyakaa, closing lines to “Sugar,” from Magic City (Wesleyan University Press, 1992)

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It’s you in the future, we both know that. You’ll be here but not here, a muscle memory, like hanging a hat on a hook that’s not there any longer.

Margaret Atwood, from “Invisible Man”, Dearly

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A REFUSAL TO MOURN THE DEATHS, BY GUNFIRE, OF THREE MEN IN BROOKLYN

“And at times, didn’t the whole country try to break his skin?”                                           —Tim Seibles

You strike your one good match to watch its bloom and jook, a swan song just before a night wind comes to snuff it. That’s the kind of day it’s been. Your Black & Mild, now, useless as a prayer pressed between your lips. God damn the wind. And everything it brings. You hit the corner store to cop a light, and spy the trouble rising in the cashier’s eyes. TV reports some whack job shot two cops then popped himself, here, in the borough, just one mile away. You’ve heard this one before. In which there’s blood. In which a black man snaps. In which things burn. You buy your matches. Christ is watching from the wall art, swathed in fire.

JOHN MURILLO

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