Monday, August 28, 2023
Poetry @ the Green with Sarah A. Rae
320 S. Canal
Women. That’s what he wants. Women of all
shapes and sizes. Mexican and American. Maybe
even Polish, like the blond upstairs.
He wants them at his funeral, crying their eyes
out, so he can look down on them and smile and laugh
and remember and feel proud that he’s kept them
coming back for more. Coming back, for the parts
of his body they say they like the most. His eyes for
Maria la Amarillo. His chest, La Metiche Americana
de la vecindad. His hair, Sherry la Americana
de Michigan con the black Trans Am. Pilar la vieja,
para todo, for all his body.
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—
A poetics of haunting insists on invocation: a deliberate, powerful, and provocative move toward haunted places. How does history – particularly the history of war, colonialism, and marginalization – impact the work of Asian American poets across time and space? How does language act as a haunting space of intervention and activism?
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.
