#ForTheLoveOfPoetry

Gabrielle Bates

"I started this poem at a writing residency, where one night I found myself drunkenly stargazing with a group of men. It was an altogether pleasant moment; our bellies were warm with whiskey we hadn’t paid for, and the stars were bright, and the men seemed, in the week or so I’d spent interacting with them, like good, kind men. But as pleasant as the moment was, there was a voice in my mind that never stopped saying They could rape you, if they wanted. I ran my hands over the blades of grass at my sides as if searching for something that could be used as a weapon, if necessary. There was nothing, and I thought about how strange it was that they were called blades, these things that could not cut butter, let alone flesh. I continued to take in the beautiful stars. And the next morning, I woke up and wrote the first line of what would become this poem (an earlier version of which appeared in the journal Smartish Pace). One of the many things that keeps me coming back to poetry is that it provides an arena for grappling with these sorts of complicated, frightening feelings."

[WHO HASN’T LAIN IN A YARD WITH BOYS]
​Who hasn’t lain in a yard with boys
                                                she trusts, wondering
            How blade-like are the blades?
 
Who hasn’t thought of the owls,
            the ones her father loved to watch
watching the field of rabbits from an A-frame’s peak--
                                    Hasn’t thought of them in years.
 
Blur of stitches: Blur of pitch: Hands:
            relaxed as rabbit meat, braced to break
teeth--
 
            Who hasn’t mistaken collapse for comfort,
flinched at the thrown ball arcing across her eye.
 
A limb of white ash slivered
            slender into a Louisville Slugger:
A gift for Who to sleep with. Because
                        in all enclosures it’s possible.
 
                                                See?--
Who is watching them.
            Shadows full of bones, full of maybes, breed beneath,
and the owls don’t betray her
                                    to anyone in particular.
​

Photo: courtesy of the artist

Gabrielle Bates works for Open Books: A Poem Emporium, cohosts the podcast the Poet Salon, and serves as an editor for a variety of literary journals and small presses. Her poems and poetry comics have appeared in the New Yorker, Poetry, New England Review, Gulf Coast, and the Adroit Journal, among other venues. www.gabriellebat.es / Twitter: @GabrielleBates

The Art of Trusting the Invisible

Kelli Russell Agodon

...The gift of every poem happens during the creation portion of it, those moments when I am lost in its words. Maybe the best writing we can do comes from this hope that writing poetry can save us. Maybe it’s allowing things to happen, walking through the garden to watch to lilac bushes grow wild without feeling the need to prune every branch that leans onto the path. We don’t have to control everything. Maybe as we walk we should bend a bit or take a new route. Maybe we should just pause to admire what’s around us.

Photo: courtesy of the artist
I’ve grown both as a writer and a person in realizing that the satisfaction in my art is not in what it brings me when it’s completed--publication, awards, status—but the fulfillment I find is in the act of making something where there was once nothing before. I’ve become better at just allowing things to happen, realizing the writing life is a hazy path worth traveling on and no two routes are the same. On my best days, I sit down at my desk and trust the journey, trust what I can’t see, and the inner sense that can guide us to wherever we need to be. 

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For The Love Of Poetry

Chelsea Dingman

It’s still January 2019. It’s been a tough stretch for many. Timeout, anyone? Some decency, please. Hate is ugly. Twisted games never pay off in the long run. Forget heartbreaks, disappointments, and temperatures dropping to record-breaking numbers. Grab a cup of hot cocoa, with whipped cream and marshmallows if you’d like, or a double espresso, or hot tea or whatever tickles your fancy.
 
Read something new by Chelsea Dingman. She is a real-world superwoman whose work does not get all the likes and endorsements she deserves. But Chelsea Dingman is an influencer, nevertheless, of the kind who really matter. As an educator, her work adds true value to the lives of many young people she teaches and mentors day in and day out. As a writer, as a poet, she inspires, encourages, and connects with the world. Read Chelsea Dingman’s take on #ForTheLoveofPoetry and two of her poems. Buy her book, Thaw. Because, for the love of poetry, there are gentle souls in the world.

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                 Winter Soltice

​​The sun poses like a question
across the ice-covered lake.
 
Because the wind won’t quit, I don’t
            want to be held,
 
the panicked water quiet, the quiet
like a missing father,
 
when I turn to look
& winter is the gasp
 
from a poppy’s mouth, the sky that won’t return
to blue. I vowed to inhale
 
this cold anywhere your body sinks
below the horizon, below
 
lakewater, below the silent
future we are so uncertain of
 
as the sun holds the end
of this lonely year, where loneliness was
 
the least of our problems. The question
of snow in our mouths, here
 
we’ve been sorry, or lucky,
or loved as these last few hours
 
of light, where we’ve looked for ourselves
in the longest night, asking the dark
 
to come break our hearts,
to come break our hearts back.

credits: agostiniphotography

Love, Laughter & Poetry

Maria Nazos

Throughout this world, where there is so much inevitable pain, laughter is a necessity. At the end of the day, we are all such human, flawed, strange creatures, yet we deserve as much love and laughter as we can find… These are the words of Maria Nazos, the poet, the healer, the explorer whose love of life and passionate way of living are simply awesome. 
​
Genuine people do not shy away from real experiences, never stop their search of ways to quench their thirst for knowledge and give 

Photo: courtesy of the artist
​great contributions through what they create and share with their fellow humans what they believe in, and how they inspire. Maria Nazos is the poet with the rockstar attitude and heart of gold you need to get to know today. Read her poetry. Read her interview and go about your day feeling extra enlightened and inspired. 

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I read it. I write it. I teach it. I breathe it.

poetry by Kai Coggin

​⌘ landslide

​​sometimes
a mountaintop
misses the sea so much
she dives into the blue kiss dark abyss
without even holding her 
breath
 
landslides are this wanting 
this gravity 
and reforming
and falling in
love
 
reshaping the land
to join mountaintop with sea
 
oh my darling… landslide into me 

Photo: courtesy of the artist
​Kai Coggin is a former Houston Teacher of the Year turned poet, author, and teaching artist living in the valley of a small mountain in Hot Springs National Park, AR. She holds a B.A. in English, Poetry, and Creative Writing from Texas A&M University. Her work has been published or is forthcoming in Sinister Wisdom, Assaracus, Elephant Journal, Yes Poetry, Calamus Journal, Lavender Review, Split This Rock, Luna Luna, Blue Heron Review, and elsewhere. ​

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If They Come For Us

Fatimah Asghar

Fatimah Asghar enters the scene with a solid voice and clear ideas. She is a nationally touring poet, a screenwriter, educator and performer. In 2011, she created a spoken word poetry group in Bosnia and Herzegovina called Refleks while on a Fulbright studying theater in post-genodical countries. She is a member of the Dark Noise Collective and a Kundiman Fellow. Her chapbook Aftercame out on Yes Yes Books in the fall of 2015. She is the writer and co-creator of Brown Girls, an Emmy-Nominated web series that highlights friendships between women of color. In 2017, she was awarded the Ruth Lily and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Fellowship from the Poetry Foundation and was featured on the Forbes 30 Under 30 List. 
Fatimah Asghar writes poetry presenting maps of the complexity of our world. She shows us what it means to be seen as “the other” or “not from here.” Fatimah knows who she is. Where she is. Where she comes from. Where she is headed. She is not interested in rigid definitions that are reductive in nature. Sheer ignorance or malicious intent is what she takes a stand against by writing her views, memories, understanding of life in all its pure beauty and rich diversity.

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               No Idle Worship

              by Matthew Cook
​Your features do not alter
as your allies do, Father. Your artistic master,   
in happenstance, I glimpsed
him minutes ago. His expression
wheat-flour: his consort and son,   
noble, sentient nation-states,
scowl as if they might unrest swiftly,
more aggrieved than Shadrach,
Meshach, and Abednego.
But your appearance does not
decay as your colleagues’ do--
it ripens nimbly, as a matinee idol,
while some attic portrait
maps discrepancies.
If I can wheedle you to reconsider
for a nightfall, from your apprentice lessons,
as some disenchanted academic studies 
special collections―but I will not hand
you over to an expert; and you won’t
chance your second or first wife
discovering your obsession.
You can continue
your wild reconnoitering.
I will no longer gauge knowing
what it requires to be you.
Only I know this: I see you,
as I have seen you at least once
each calendar day of my allotted time―
vulpine as the minute hand
of a Babylonian deity, I grasp―
gone, as if I remain the imposter of a guest’s
hindering stay, the only idol
who doesn’t want following.
My skull angles near the ground―
like an abandoned bas-relief, while you
apply your chisel to some other marble,
discarding imperfect limbs as you go.
Even upside-down, I fail to see
how equity positions you
in that world, and me in this,
or that pennilessness arrays
a demigod’s being in you
and an early draft in me.

​Matthew Cook holds an MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, where he was both a Maytag Fellow and an Alberta Kelly Fellow in poetry.
He was awarded the Stewart Prize for his creative writing while earning his BA in Literature and Writing at the University of California, San Diego.
Actually he lives in Eugene, Oregon where he is currently working on a chapbook.
​www.matthew-cook.org

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