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llovelymoonn · 1 year

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favourite poems of february

brian gyamfi the almost love poem of eloise and kofi

angela jackson and all these roads be luminous: “angel”

sharon olds the promise

laura ma fossil record of a drowning carp

mahmoud darwish the butterfly’s burden: “i didn’t apologise to the well” (tr. fady joudah)

jimmy santiago baca immigrants in our own land: “immigrants in our own land”

james richardson essay on the one hand and on the other

john kinsella peripheral light: selected and new poems by john kinsella: “drowning in wheat”

twyla m. hansen the other woman

monica sok abc for refugees

sumita chakraborty most of the children who lived in this house are dead. as a child i lived here. therefore i am dead

chaelee dalton blood type personality theory

tj jarret of late, i have been thinking about despair

zubair ibrahim siddiqui sun, suna, sunaofying

sun yung shin skirt full of black: “immigrant song”

richard eberhart a dublin afternoon

louise glück aboriginal landscape

michelle cadiz oil and other drugs

hafsa zulfiqar small nightmares i dream in a foreign country

james richardson fire warnings

alberto rios not go away is my name: “immigrant centuries”

n.s. ahmed on becoming memory

andrea krause for our anniversary next year

ajanae dawkins blood-flex

ananya kanai shah my girls & i

aleda shirley the glass lotus

mahmoud darwish almond blossoms and beyond: “think of others”

robert américo esnard dendrochronology of a family tree

buy me a chai latte

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cacchieressa · 1 year

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The Other Woman

as I picture her she has no basil no cumin no sun-hardened hyssop nor sage around her eyes

she never catnips but laughs comfrey tansy with a primula smile

as I think of her she's angelica foxglove and jasmine somewhat peppermint not letting you see all her saffron at once

one day I’ll meet her that rue woman that wild indigo teasel somewhere neutral free of woodruff and of dropwort some summer savory

she's the nose set to lavender eye full of sesame ear ringing rosemary

she's wind through wild thyme

--Twyla M. Hansen

#poetry #national poetry month

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mickpro · 11 months

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For No Good Reason

by Twyla Hansen

As if you needed one,

as if you could help it,

for no good reason

a tune out of nowhere

pops into your head

when you least expect,

riffs effortlessly in the

folds of your cerebrum—

your own private jukebox,

your personal music device

on random minus the earbuds—

drumming itself up to keep

you company: here, a little

Janis Joplin while you vacuum

cat hair; there, a John Denver line

as you peel potatoes at the sink.

How can others not hear it,

this frequent odd gift?

Sometimes you forget

and blurt the words to the chorus,

which, after all, is all you can remember,

those take me home, country roads,

that feelin’ good was good enough

for me, even conjuring

the gas station in Colorado

back where you, wearing

those bell bottoms and that

paisley, were about to fill a tank

of freedom into the blue VW Bug

when Carole King belted out

and it’s too late baby, now it’s too late

though we really did try to make it

and you couldn’t move, couldn’t

quit sobbing to the steering wheel

that would not console those blues

or say what you had left to lose,

wouldn’t question why in hell

you were going down that road

where for no good reason

you seemed to be heading.

“For No Good Reason” by Twyla M. Hansen from Rock. Tree. Bird. © The Backwaters Press, 2017.

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finishinglinepress · 2 years

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FLP CHAPBOOK OF THE DAY: Uncertain Seasons by Ruth Harper

PREORDER NOW: https://www.finishinglinepress.com/product/uncertain-seasons-by-ruth-harper/

Uncertain Seasons reflects on the passage of time through distinct periods of the year as well as stages of life. From “December’s Encompassing Silence” to signs of “Rebirth” — from “Late Summer, Open Field” to the falling leaves of “Northern Ash,” these poems offer original perspectives on the world just outside the door. Authentic emotion and a passion for detail color these observations. A readers’ guide is included, making this collection of interest to book groups.

Ruth Harper is Professor Emerita of Counseling and Human Development at South Dakota State University, where she coordinated the college counseling and student affairs administration specialties for over 20 years. She co-authored four books in her field and has special interest in American Indian college student success, the role of tribal colleges in South Dakota, and college student mental health. Ruth holds a B.A. from Cornell College (Mt. Vernon, IA), an M.Ed. from the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh (Oshkosh, WI), and a Ph.D. from Kansas State University (Manhattan, KS).

Ruth lives in Brookings, South Dakota, and is married to Lawrence Rogers, mother to adult daughters Libby and Maggie, and Nana to grandsons Max and Miles. She is currently on the board of the local PFLAG (Parents, Families, & Friends of Lesbians & Gays+) and the Advisory Council of the Boys & Girls Club of the Northern Plains (Brookings).

For Ruth, reading fiction and poetry has been a lifelong joy; in retirement, writing poetry is a meaningful pursuit and challenge.

Original artwork by Meghan Peterson, [email protected]

ADVANCE PRAISE FOR Uncertain Seasons by Ruth Harper

There’s such a wide variety of soulful epiphanies in this beautiful little book, the author expressing, again and again, so creatively and persuasively, the conclusion she has come to after many years of consideration and re-consideration: “that love,/ is why we exist.” I urge you to spend some quiet time with these deeply meaningful poems. If you give them the time they deserve, you’ll be informed and heartened by them.

–Charles Woodard, Distinguished Professor Emeritus of English, South Dakota State University

In Ruth Harper’s debut poetry chapbook Uncertain Seasons, she draws readers into mindfulness. She turns chunks of floating ice into a way to see her own “jaggedness,” and the colors and sounds of spring into a language of exaltation. These still moments of awareness reflect her deep engagement with seasonal cycles and the stories they suggest, yielding surprising descriptions: a “thunderstorm / shoulders its way through town / like a lumberjack;” a “solitary woodpecker” becomes “a maestro /of potent nods.” Spend an afternoon reading Harper’s chapbook aloud; it will delight your ears and refresh your perceptions of the natural world.

–Christine Stewart-Nunez, South Dakota State Poet, 2019-2022, Author ofThe Poet & The Architect (2021, Terrapin Books)

Ruth Harper’s poems are filled with keen observations of the natural world and her place in it, noting jet contrails forming cottony patterns (“Sky-blue Quilt”), the cosmos, and an empty street through the eyes of a child (“On Turning 70”). She honors native people and their language, as well as her own family and the past. “Longest Night, Brightest Planets,” is set in the moment, ending with these fine lines: “On this longest night/ of the loneliest year,/ two planets align/ beneath a gleaming crescent moon,/ reminding us/ during bleak pandemic days/ that always/ in this astonishing,/ indifferent universe/ extraordinary beauty awaits/ within the depths of darkness.”

–Twyla M. Hansen, Nebraska State Poet 2013-2018, Author of Feeding the Fire(2022, WSC Press)

Please share/please repost [PROMO]

#flpauthor #preorder #AwesomeCoverArt #poetry #chapbook #read #poems

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godsopenwound · 3 years

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“Sorting” from Rock * Tree * Bird by Twyla M. Hansen

#when my father was a hero and not a man #on death #twyla m. hansen #rock * tree * bird #exit wound #m

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iwt-v · 6 years

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When you are gone it will be indelible as a leaf fossil in ice, brief, no answer in the night to the call of your name, morning minus the light, forever non-communion.

--Twyla M.Hansen

#black sails #blacksailsedit #james flint #captain flint #twyla hansen #mine #this just...happened?#UGH @me #how weird and wrong it must have felt #to walk back in that house and see no trace of miranda #but instead a sea of strangers #rough and hard #tramping about #and *whispers* i can't even talk about that teacup

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mycoolstoryworld · 6 years

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Lapis: "The art of sleep isn't tough for those who have the gift"

- Twyla M. Hansen

#su #lapis lazuli #lapis #incorrect lapidot quotes #su lapis #lapis su #lapis lazuli steven universe #su lapis lazuli #lapis lazuli su #incorrect quotes #incorrect lapis quotes

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julesofnature · 7 years

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“With my arms raised in a vee, I gather the heavens and bring my hands down slow together, press palms and bow my head.

I try to forget the suffering, the wars, the ravage of land that threatens songbirds, butterflies, and pollinators.

The ghosts of their wings flutter past my closed eyes as I breathe the spirit of seasons, the stirrings in soil, trees moving with sap.

With my third eye, I conjure the red fox, its healthy tail, recount the good of this world, the farmer tending her tomatoes, the beans

dazzled green al dente in butter, salt and pepper, cows munching on grass. The orb of sun-gold from which all bounty flows.”

#by J Marion Brown #photographers on tumblr #fox #fox kit #nature photography

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brentbill · 7 years

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Trying to Pray

by Twyla Hansen

Listen Online

With my arms raised in a vee, I gather the heavens and bring my hands down slow together, press palms and bow my head.

I try to forget the suffering, the wars, the ravage of land that threatens songbirds, butterflies, and pollinators.

The ghosts of their wings flutter past my closed eyes as I breathe the spirit of seasons, the stirrings in soil, trees moving with sap.

With my third eye, I conjure the red fox, its healthy tail, recount the good of this world, the farmer tending her tomatoes, the beans

dazzled green al dente in butter, salt and pepper, cows munching on grass. The orb of sun-gold from which all bounty flows.

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finishinglinepress · 3 years

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FLP CHAPBOOK OF THE DAY:

We Give Birth to Light: Poems by Benjamin D. Carson

TO ORDER GO TO: https://www.finishinglinepress.com/product/we-give-birth-to-light-poems-by-benjamin-d-carson/

RESERVE YOUR COPY TODAY

Benjamin D. Carson is a Professor of English at Bridgewater State University. His creative work has appeared in many literary journals, including Rumble Fish Quarterly, Poetry Porch, Dunes Review, Yellow Medicine Review, and October Hill Magazine. He lives with his dog Dora in Bridgewater, MA.

ADVANCE PRAISE FOR We Give Birth to Light: Poems by Benjamin D. Carson

Benjamin Carson’s debut collection confronts mortality and love lost with the balm of reflection. Even when sundogs transform into “linear tombs of light” (“Halos”), the wisdom he’s gathered from a variety of lineages—ancestral and poetic—asks us to slow down and contemplate our common humanity. We Give Birth to Light is bound by light in all its celestial permutations: the sun, stars, moon, as well as the relational light of constellations and the moving light of falling stars. Carson even imbues kerosene and whiskey with the power of potential light—fire—and plumbs its opposite, the absence of light. The power of each poem pools until their collective light cracks us open and we must consider, indeed, what we give birth to.

–Christine Stewart-Nuñez, South Dakota Poet Laureate and author of Untrussed and Bluewords Greening

In Ben Carson’s gorgeous and moving new chapbook, a fishing rod seen in the last hours of the day “becomes a single thirsty limb,” its line, “a silver tongue” that disappears. And here, in a place of death and stars, a mother says, “We give birth to light . . . so that / darkness too can have its day.” Please read this work. It promises both suffering and solace. Bravo!

–Hilda Raz, author of LIST & STORY

Ben Carson’s poetry teaches us that what light we have, the light we give birth to, arises out of the losses, suffering, and pain that inevitably come with being alive in this world. Our mortal selves, loves, desires, and days all burn brightly and briefly across an existential night sky, then disappear into the darkness they came from. With unflinching, almost Zen-like clarity of image and syntax, Carson’s poetry brings us as close as we hope, or dare get, to the flame of what is real.

–Fred Marchant, author of Said Not Said

Benjamin Carson’s poems in We Give Birth to Light are filled with memorable and detailed images: haunting (“Black Hole Moon”); serious injury (“The Numbing Drift”); indiscretions of youth (“What It Cost Us”); and poems of place and humor. He makes excellent use of heritage in family stories, and captures the elusive nature of relationships (“Beach Stones”). Ultimately, his love poems remind us of loss (“For a Time”), and lead us to the last line of the title poem: “We give birth light . . . so that / darkness too can have its day.”

–Twyla M. Hansen, Nebraska State Poet 2013-2018, author of Rock • Tree • Bird

#flpauthor #preorder #AwesomeCoverArt #poetry

#poetry #chapbook #preorder #flp authors #flp #poets on tumblr #american poets #leah maines

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julesofnature · 7 years

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With my arms raised in a vee, I gather the heavens and bring my hands down slow together, press palms and bow my head. I try to forget the suffering, the wars, the ravage of land that threatens songbirds, butterflies, and pollinators. The ghosts of their wings flutter past my closed eyes as I breathe the spirit of seasons, the stirrings in soil, trees moving with sap. With my third eye, I conjure the red fox, its healthy tail, recount the good of this world, the farmer tending her tomatoes, the beans dazzled green al dente in butter, salt and pepper, cows munching on grass. The orb of sun-gold from which all bounty flows.

http://writersalmanac.org/episodes/20170715/

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