Monday, August 21, 2023
Poetry @ the Green with Atena O. Danner
320 S. Canal
I didn’t come here to tell you I love my kids.
I came here to suck and spit venom.
Have you ever looked down to see an arrow of your own making
sticking out of your chest? That’s the job.
Listen to this podcast episode with Atena O. Danner:
My grandmother was so tired
that my mother was born tired.
My Mama’s so tired
that I’m tired right now. And I see
my children getting tired,
so it’s time to put this to bed.
Wednesday, August 16, 2023
Blue Hour Reading Series with Brittany Rogers and Maggie Queeney
Haymarket House
After Zoe Saldana defends playing Nina Simone in her biopic by saying “For so many years, nobody knew who the [fuck] she was. She is essential to our American history. As a woman first, and only then as everything else.”
I looked at my Aunt Sarah skin;
my stay out the sun-
You already an eclipse- face.
Body an automatic rejection letter
erasure waiting to happen.
– Brittany Rogers, “Black Girl Sips Tea with Nina Simone”
Watch Brittany Rogers’ 2023 reading with Maggie Queeney at the Chicago Poetry Center:
Brittany Rogers begins at 42:40 minutes.
I birth a child, and the wet wound never closes.
My mother diagnoses postpartum casually
as if saying – mail is here, and your name is on it.
Explains the drilling is nothing I asked for, overripe nerves happen sometimes.
Wednesday, September 14, 2016
with Toby Altman
City Lit Books
Wednesday, August 16, 2023
Blue Hour Reading Series with Maggie Queeney and Brittany Rogers
Haymarket House
laurel tree, limbs bent and twined into crown heifer bank of marsh reeds,
handful lashed into pipes, song in another breath a clutch of conifers, weeping
– Maggie Queeney, “Metamorphosis: The Female Into”
Friday, July 14, 2023 Summer Poetry Party featuring Jane Wong
Haymarket House
My grandmother said it was going to be long—as long as you can hold your lineage—depending on how long you can hold your tongue—as long as your tongue can wrap around the pit—of some stolen stone fruit—as long as you can hide your pitter-patter face—glued in sun-split splinters—lengthening shadows as long as your face—longing to be mirrored back—back to your daughter your mother your grandmother—freckle by freckle—furnished forever across—the long loaming haul—
Watch Jane Wong’s 2023 reading at the Chicago Poetry Center:
Jane Wong begins at 49:52 minutes.
Check out Jane Wong’s work in “The Poetics of Haunting in Asian American Poetry,” a digital humanities project:
http://poeticsofhaunting.com/
I was waiting for something
to arrive. I didn’t know what.
Something buoyed, something
sun knocked. I placed my palms
up, little pads of butter, expecting.
All day, nothing. Longer than
that. My hair grew, fell out,
grew. Outside my window, I felt
the flick of a tail in September
wind. A bobcat sauntered across
the grass before me, the black tip
of its tail a pencil I’d like to sharpen.
I would not call myself a Nazi sympathizer—
What does that word even mean, sympathizer?
But ever since that time in the 4th grade
When my arch nemesis Maureen
Invited me to her birthday party,
I realized I needed to give more people a chance.
You’re probably thinking, well she’s not a Nazi.
