Rimpsey, Sherae 2018
sub sub
rup
tenu
perf
dis
– Sherae Rimpsey, “Sub Sub”
Watch some of Sherae Rimpsey’s work:
i never got there
i have never been there
and i am not coming back from there from Sherae Rimpsey on Vimeo.
Archive by Author
Olivarez, José 2018
Jesus has a tattoo of La Virgen De Guadalupe
covering his back. turns out he’s your cousin
Jesus from the block. turns out he gets reincarnated
every day & no one on Earth cares all that much.
– José Olivarez, “A Mexican Dreams of Heaven”
Listen to José Olivarez talk to poets Danez Smith and Franny Choi on the VS Podcast:
José Olivarez vs. Grownups – VS | Poetry Foundation
Poet, educator, and Young Chicago Authors Marketing Director José Olivarez explores adulting and gives some podcast-veteran advice to Danez and Franny.
all my people fold into a $2 crunchwrap supreme. the white woman
means lucky to be here and not mexico. my dad sings por tu
maldito amor & i’m sure he sings to america.
– José Olivarez, “I Walk Into Every Room and Yell Where the Mexicans At”
Read this interview with José Olivarez from Chicago Creatives:
José Olivarez’s New Book ‘Citizen Illegal’ Is An Economic Crisis Book Of Poems.
Citizen Illegal is a book of poems that are meant to show and give voice to the ghosts and joys that haunt Mexican life.
my monsters, coyotes in the
chase, look almost human
in the sterile office light.
my monsters say they just
want to be friends.
– José Olivarez, “my therapist says make friends with your monsters”
Watch José Olivarez read some of his work:
Dimitrov, Alex 2018
Make sure you date and sign here then save all the soft things.
Because everyone wants to know when it was,
how it happened — say something about it.
How the night hail made imprints all over.
Our things. Our charming and singular things.
– Alex Dimitrov, “Together and by Ourselves”
Read this interview with Alex Dimitrov from Divedapper:
DIVEDAPPER // Alex Dimitrov
“Resistance is one of the most important acts in life.”
Outside, the city continued to tease us.
Hurricanes came, storms couldn’t please us:
it was all very fast and beautifully made.
– Alex Dimitrov, “In the New Century I Gave You My Name”
Watch Alex Dimitrov read some of his work:
Alex Dimitrov at Radar Reading Series
Alex Dimitrov is the author of American Boys (2012) and Begging for It (2013). In 2014 he launched Night Call, a multimedia poetry project through which he read poems to strangers in bed and online. Dimitrov is also the founder of Wilde Boys, a queer poetry salon in New York City.
Erlichman, Shira 2017
Who unlocks
the door to let you in, like a wet cat How did you lift the heaviest
season from my eyelids, sweeping away a whole cloud How do you
pollinate my blood so exactly with sanity
– Shira Erlichman, “Ode to Lithium #1: The Watchman”
Read this interview with Shira Erlichman from Nomadic Press:
https://www.nomadicpress.org/interviews/shiraerlichman
Someone’s unprofessional opinion
was to “relax” over matter. To sandcastle over
wave. They aimed to clean up a murder scene
from behind a plate of glass. It was my murder.
– Shira Erlichman, “Ode to Lithium #75: Mind over Matter”
Watch Shira Erlichman read “Excuse Me, I Lost My Compass, Can I Borrow Yours” at WordXWord Poetry Festival:
Shira Erlichman – Excuse Me, I Lost My Compass, Can I Borrow Yours
Shira Erlichman performs her poem “Excuse Me, I Lost My Compass, Can I Borrow Yours” February 16, 2013 at Y Bar, Pittsfield, MA as part of the WordXWord 10×10 Poetry Festival.
Nafis, Angel 2017
Angel, 102-degree fever.
Angel, long-gone lavender in a dirty-water vase.
Angel don’t touch me here or there or there.
Can you smell me?
– Angel Nafis, “Angel Nafis”
Read this interview with Angel Nafis from Entropy Magazine:
https://entropymag.org/dinnerview-angel-nafis/
If you miss your stop. Or lose love. If even the medicine hurts too.
Even when your side-eye, your face stank, still, your heart moans bride.
Fuck the fog back off the mirror. Trust the road in your name. Ride
Your moon hide through the pitch black. Gotsta be your own bride.
– Angel Nafis, “Ghazal for Becoming Your Own Country”
Watch Angel Nafis read “Conspiracy: a Suite” at WordXWord Festival:
Tran, Vu 2017
After a minute, he came back and handed me the phone.
The line was silent.
“Yes,” I said.
“You. Robert Ruen.” It was a declaration, not a question—an older man’s voice, loud and somehow childish, the accent unmistakably Vietnamese. “Say something to me.”
– Vu Tran, “Dragonfish”
Continue reading this excerpt⇒
Read this interview with Vu Tran from Bloom:
Q&A with Vu Tran
“With a novel, the end felt so far off, always beyond the horizon, and that was a terrifying feeling. Eventually, I had to teach myself to be okay with that, to turn the uncertainty and fear into a productive state of mind.”
Our first night at sea, you cried for your father. You buried your face in my lap and clenched a fist to your ear as if to shut out my voice. I reminded you that we had to leave home and he could not make the trip with us. He would catch up with us soon. But you kept shaking your head. I couldn’t tell if I was failing to comfort you or if you were already, at four years old, refusing to believe in lies. You turned away from me, so alone in your distress that I no longer wanted to console you. I had never been able to anyway. Only he could soothe you. But why was I, even now, not enough? Did you imagine that I too would die without him?
– Vu Tran, “Dragonfish”
Continue reading this excerpt⇒
Read this essay by Vu Tran from LitHub:
Vu Tran: The Uncertain Memories of a Four-Year-Old Refugee
When I tell someone about my refugee experience, a story I’ve told countless times, I’m always aware that I have no real memory of it. At some point it’ll feel as though I’m describing the plot poi…
Watch Vu Trans’s Lecture “Noir and Refugee Experience” at University of Chicago:
Stringfellow, Tara 2017
this is what we made
when they chained us
together like dogs
in a savage new world
and bid us toil
no, we said
we will sing
– Tara Stringfellow, “a poem for black girls in their twenties”
loved me but in white
i spoke only negro
meaning i did not know fairy tale
saw it in movies, yes, but saw my daddy
spit on in a park in chicago
grimms negated
– Tara Stringfellow, “my ex-husband”
Watch Tara Stringfellow’s feature on CBS:
my sister collected hair thick as a nest
from all the old combs in the house
buried it deep in red clay
daddy will come back she chanted
– Tara Stringfellow, “hot combs catfish crumbs and bad men”
Foreman, Aricka 2016
Crying love, in tongues
of false thunder. If my body is a nation—and by body I mean
my black queer pussy, it’s phantom and light—is a paperweight
pressing a constitution like a new shirt.
– Aricka Foreman, “Republic Americana”
I take my father’s nose and shove it in a box.
My mother’s mouth lays claim to the vowels
Of my making. I learned to tend and till and dig
and there is something like a hole where a good
family should be but instead I have the good people
who do the best they can with what they have.
– Aricka Foreman, “FIELD STUDY #1”
Read this interview with Aricka Foreman from Luther Hughes:
https://lutherxhughes.com/2016/06/26/im-a-human-with-a-petulant-and-sensual-need-for-pleasure-an-interview-with-aricka-foreman/
There is no homonym for disappearing, only
synonyms. Vanish into the ivory tower language.
Perish beneath split selves. End her. Die her. Fade.
Dissolve one blue bupropion until numb. Melt away
thick kink with bleach, die one patch pink.
– Aricka Foreman, “Dream Coated with Fluoxetine”
Watch Aricka Foreman read for the Chicago Poetry Center, with Tyehimba Jess:
Six Points Reading Series
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Boening, Justin 2016
You start to sing.
Your voice carrying from the house.
The words familiar, though I cannot make out the words.
Your voice a field, though there are animals in the field.
A rain begins in the leaves and ends in the leaves.
– Justin Boening, “Learning to Pray Again”
Read this interview with Justin Boening from The Adroit Journal:
Issue Twenty: A Conversation with Justin Boening | The Adroit Journal – The Adroit Journal
Eloisa Amezcua is an Arizona native. Her debut chapbook On Not Screaming was published by Horse Less Press (2016). Eloisa is the winner of the 2016 Vella Chapbook Award from Paper Nautilus Press for her manuscript Symptoms of Teething, forthcoming in 2017.
It’s late. The hero has returend––
unhelpful as ever. He’s hiding out
in the neighbor’s orchard,
steering clear of the constable.
The citizens have left empty
all the houses, all the shops––
the screen doors hollow on hinges,
a porch swing hinging by a chain.
– Justin Boening, “The Game”
Watch Justin Boening read Care Package at SPECTRA Reading Series:
Justin Boening: Care Package
Midwest Writing Center sponsored SPECTRA poetry event, at Rozz-Tox, Rock Island, IL. 10 March 2016. Biography from Ryan Collins: “Justin Boening is the author of two books of poems-Not on the Last Day, But on the Very Last (Milkweed, 2016), which was selected for the National Poetry Series, and a chapbook, Self-Portrait as Missing Person (Poetry Society of America, 2013).
Cruz, J. Jerome 2016
In the almond fields
rabbits make a matinee
of their coupling. Love,
my brother says, is in the hare.
We pick apples & pears until
the day is capped with the slow
hum of dusk.
– J. Jerome Cruz, “Pastoral”
At church Maria only sang along
with hymns that sent ascension
or grace. Once, in fifth grade,
she mucked up the sign her mother
hung in the kitchen. Too Much of a God
Thing Loses Its Novelty.
– J. Jerome Cruz, “Suadades”
