I used to do avant-garde dance
With a blowtorch, blue paint, and no pants,
Which many folks guessed
Was genius, and the rest
Left gladly when given the chance.
There is no sound but the melody of the dial-up, the purity of the following Gregorian tones, and the sweet nihilistic measure of static. The brief elemental vibration that means contact. And then nothing. No smudge of ink, no greasy thumbprint left behind.
Poetry@Tech Presents: Allison Joseph September 25, 2009 http://www.poetry.gatech.edu/index.php Produced by the Georgia Tech Cable Network
Don’t show your face in a sundown town,
or forget your race in a sundown town.
What ancient shame flushes my cheeks?
Reminded of my place in a sundown town.
Allison Joseph is the author of six poetry books: What Keeps Us Here (Ampersand, 1992), Soul Train (Carnegie Mellon University Press, 1997), In Every Seam (University of Pittsburgh Press, 1997), Imitation of Life (Carnegie Mellon, 2003), Worldly Pleasures (WordTech Communications, 2004), Voice: Poems (Mayapple Press, 2009), and My Father’s Kites: Poems (Steel Toe Books, 2010).
Wednesday, December 14, 2016
with Aricka Foreman
City Lit Books
you got to have the wildweed and treebark boiled
and calmed, wating for his skin like a shining baptism
back into what he was before gun barrels and bars
chewed their claim in his hide and spit him
stumbling backwards into screaming sunlight.
Listen to Tyehimba Jess’ 2007 reading with A. Van Jordan at the Poetry Center of Chicago:
Audio recording of the Poetry Center Reading Series featuring Tom Raworth, Diane di Prima, Kimiko Hahn, Eugene Gloria, Patricia Smith, Luis Rodriguez, Robert Bly, Brian Turner, Bruce Weigl, Tyehimba Jess, A. Van Jordan, Arielle Greenberg, Billy Corgan, Franz Wright, Czeslaw Milosz, Louise Glück, and Alicia Ostriker.
I sing this body ad libitum, Europe scraped raw between my teeth until, presto, “Ave Maria” floats to the surface from a Tituba tributary of “Swanee.” Until I’m a legatodarkling whole note, my voice shimmering up from the Atlantic’s hold; until I’m a coda of sail song whipped in salted wind…
Jess, a Detroit first book of poetry, leadbelly, was a winner of the 2004 National Poetry Series. The Library Journal and Black Issues Book Review both named it one of the “Best Poetry Books of 2005.”
Watch Tyehimba Jess read for the Chicago Poetry Center, with Aricka Foreman:
Poets Tyehimba Jess and Aricka Foreman are featured in an event hosted by the Poetry Center of Chicago and curated by Natasha Mijares. This program was recorded by Chicago Access Network (CAN TV).
Close my eyes and I’m a vessel. Make it
some lucent amphora, Venetian blue, lip circled
in faded gold. Can you see the whorls of breath,
imperfections, the navel where it was blown
from the maker’s pipe, can you see it drawn…
Cerise Press, Fall/Winter 2011-12, Vol. 3 Issue 8 essay by Sean Singer. Lynda Hull’s love of beauty was so intense that she could risk her life to achieve it…
Listen to Paul Hoover’s 2000 Poetry Center reading:
Audio recording of the Poetry Center Reading Series featuring Billy Collins, Andrei Codrescu, Ron Padgett, Lucille Clifton, Mark Perlberg, Li-Young Lee, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Anne Waldman, Yusuf Komunyakaa, Lisel Mueller, Ted Kooser, Paul Carroll, Jorie Graham, and Paul Hoover.
They are crying out in restaurants,
so delighted to be speaking,
they appear to be insane.
But we are the silent types,
who hold speech within
like the rustle of gold foil.