I thoroughly enjoyed this second collection of poems from Taije Silverman. From motherhood to misogyny to marriage, so many gems in there and I will be sharing a few of them in my poetry posts. I am starting to understand poetry little by little. Like learning snowboard, I just have to get past that painful period before could begin to enjoy poetry.

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A is for almost, arriving, my father’s death.
B is for bear, which he does and does not do.
C is for care and critics and leaving them to their caskets.
D is for damn, which your father does not give but must.
E, for empire—a thing to impale, kill, break
Breach. F is for farther along we’ll understand why
Fire greets us at every door and we’ve lost our way
In the sky. Now where, where should we turn?
G is for good, the shy speechless sound of fruit
Falling from its tree. Me, you, there in the woods
Watching the pines shatter shadow in the light
Wind. H is for horses in the high cotton,
The crack in their hooves carrying your grandfather
And your grandfather’s grandfather down the hill
Until two stomps on the barn floor orphans them
Again, dust, dust. I is for in, as in in the blood we bear
All sorts of madness but bear, bear we must.
J is for jaundiced, which you never were.
K is for keep. Keep your wilderness wild, your caves neat.
L is lift and lymph, the node they cut
From beneath your grandfather’s arm.
M is for misery, which turns and breaks in
Though I wish it would not. Leaf
Leaning on a pond. Blood on a sock.
N is for nature and nearly and how I’ve come
To love; nearly, nearly I come to you, my falcon
Hood pulled tight; my talons tucked; Lord,
Let me not touch. O is for out and the owl
You say sits on your nose. P is for please
As in “Please, son, don’t visit me”
And yet I visited and did not please, and he would not
Touch your leaf, afraid his rot would
Make the petals fall. A lovely love—
No, not at all. Q is for quince, its yellow-breasted
Bell knocking against my father’s deathbed
Window, the light, the light too on his dying
Bed, what you opened your mouth to and tried
To swallow. R is for road where we lay,
Sometimes, because we wish not to exist
And wish and wish and wish. And must.
S is for…

Roger Reeves

In case you haven’t noticed, I have been posting a poem a day. I am not sure if you have seen the pattern, but I have been reading quite a bit of poetry books. In addition to posting my favorite poems, I post rap lyrics with poetry qualities. My blog has become my database and documentation that may have no interests to anyone else but me.

Without comments and analytics, I don’t know who reads my blog; therefore, I have no target audience in mind. I just write whatever on my mind at the moment. I feel like screaming into the void. Then again, I wouldn’t hear anything until I write something controversial. After blogging for over 20 years, I should have learned to control my own emotions. If I don’t fuck up on my blog, I will fuck up in real life. I am screwed either way.

Nowadays, my focus is primarily on this blog. I haven’t tweeted in a while. I haven’t shared anything on LinkedIn. I am also pulling back from Facebook after posting quite a bit about our ski-snowboard trips. When I left Twitter, I had almost 600 followers. On LinkedIn, I had a bit over 300 connections. Although I had about 250 friends on Facebook, I only interacted with a handful. According to Cloudflare, I have, on the average, 1,000 unique visitors a day. That’s all I know. Still, the traffic here is much more than all my social media combined. Why should I spend my energy elsewhere?

When I left Twitter, I also removed Twitter Cards from all of my sites. I don’t care if my sites have no image on Twitter when someone links to them. I used to promote my works on social media, but I just do it here. When I redesigned this site and the logo, I didn’t share it anywhere else. Everything is back to this personal blog of mine.

Among the killings. Among the permits. Among the dull transparency.
Among the hunger. Among the family beyond my reach. Among the
labor pool. Among that type of bread. Among the registered voters,
among the paperless statements. Among the eye of the beholder. I’m
lost among your ethics. Among New World glossaries. Among the
pages of windows. I’m lost inside your mesosphere on what’s toxic
and what’s not — in America. I am certainly lost at the political match.
Among recurring wars no one dares to injure on the ride home.
Among the ink tracking, MY GOD, new moods helping to reimagine
a world beyond the sunrise. Among the maps they used to leave in our
hair. “Celia got away, bad hip and all.” Among electronic billboards
jammed with the Black faces of runaways, don’t call this toll-free
number if you see her armed and dangerous, healing from the law.
Among marijuana fields owned by the same old same old. Against the
embargo of time.

Nikki Wallschlaeger

I have been listening to this album on and off since December of last year. I couldn’t get through it in one listen. Lamar packs so much information into these tracks. His lyricism is so dense that I couldn’t unpack everything he revealed. After many listens, I just have to read his lyrics. Like poetry, reading his rhymes line-by-line gives me a better understanding of the issues he’s dealing with, including racism, transgender, fatherhood, relationship, violence, and sex addictions. In addition to his exceptional lyrical content, his infectious flow and superb choices of productions make this an influential album.

I had to read this collection three times to understand some of the poems. The first time I completely missed that his parents were divorced. The reason for the divorce was that his dad came out gay. In addition, Lam has many theories including God and smoking, but I can relate to him about drinking in “Anchor.” It’s a good collection from a Vietnamese-American fellow.

The art of losing isn’t hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother’s watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn’t a disaster.

—Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan’t have lied. It’s evident
the art of losing’s not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.

Elizabeth Bishop

Thank you for being my lifelong partner
Thank you for being my strong anchor
Thank you for all your love and support
Thank you for picking me up when I fall short
Thank you for all your sacrifices
Thank you for all your sound advices
Thank you for everything you do for our family
Thank you for your bottomless generosity
Thank you for always keeping it real with me

Donny Trương

Unprepossessing girl in the café recognized me as the author of two books

before this and asked for my advice, I said

each line has been an accident, staring at the texture

of the plaster on the wall behind her, rivulets cords tendons the lines may stand

if I remove myself, my will ruins it I might not have said that and

recalling exactly what I said would help, I wait for it though waiting

can be a mistake that generates willfulness, I struggled to put this into words

as strong as my conviction, so what advice could I give you I said

Jana Prikryl