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Ojeda-Sague, Gabriel 2019

Friday, May 17, 2019
Six Points Reading Series with Davon Clark and Gabriel Ojeda-Sague
Pilsen Community Books

these realizations I keep having
as I get older are becoming tiring
as they consistently remind me
of my poor shape
the subtle lilt in your speech
wood and felt slammed against timpani

              – Gabriel Ojeda-Sague, “On Moss”

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Watch Gabriel Ojeda-Sague read from his poetry collection Losing Miami:


You pass a finger between
one tattoo and another,
find that I cannot make amends
with every copper thread between my ears.

              – Gabriel Ojeda-Sague, “Obsessions”

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More info on Gabriel Ojeda-Sague⇒

Clark, Davon 2019

Friday, May 17, 2019
Six Points Reading Series with Davon Clark and Gabriel Ojeda-Sague
Pilsen Community Books

 

 

I heard we got the city doing front flips // where every father/mayor/rapper jump ship // and I
heard they all wanted us to tumble down, anyway // to let our streets fall over into themselves //
inside the city line and through the alleys // in a flood of cement // and that crazy kid’s croons //
I heard he used to sing about us in autotune // how our rowhomes would jazz the boulevard into a
keyboard // how our grandparents and their grandparents knew joy like we know it // that is,
almost // that is, like someone always had their hands covering the sun over it // // that is, like it’s
all there is

              – Davon Clark, “On Chances”

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Watch Davon Clark perform his poem “Bustelo”:

Davon Clark – Bustelo

Become a Member for exclusive perks and videos: https://bit.ly/ButtonMember Davon Clark, performing at Rustbelt 2017 in Minneapolis, MN. Want to choose which videos run on Button: https://bit.ly/ButtonCurator About Button: Button Poetry is committed to developing a coherent and effective system of production, distribution, promotion and fundraising for spoken word and performance poetry.

Praise the glowing yellow sign
in the distance.
Praise how slow it comes.
Praise how fast it goes.
Praise be to going.
Praise be upon the dozens of us
that are all going somewhere
But to nowhere near the same somewhere.

              – Davon Clark, “Praise to the Bus Ride”

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Watch Davon Clark perform his poem “Sunset”:

Davon Clark – “Sunset” @WANPOETRY (CUPSI 2016)

Subscribe for more great poetry videos: http://bit.ly/WANPoetrySubscribe Social Media with us! Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/wanpoetry Instagram: https://instagram.com/wanpoetry/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/WANPoetry Tumblr: https://wanpoetry.tumblr.com Website: https://www.wanpoetry.com Davon Clark performing “Sunset” at the Blanton Museum of Art. Check out Davon on Twitter!

More info on Davon Clark⇒

Phillips, Xan 2019

Wednesday, April 26, 2019
Six Points Reading Series with Jan-Henry Gray, Xan Phillips, and mai c. doan
Women & Children First Bookstore

The places where Edmonia’s bones were fractured still hold violent reverberations. When it rains I massage the static hum out of each point of impact. There is nothing heavier than flesh that wishes to be on another axis, except perhaps stone she shaped. Tonight she tells me, it’s impossible to bring a lover to the small death she deserves. An orgasm is excavated, never given. She takes my face in her hands without permission.

              – Xan Phillips, “Edmonia Lewis and I Weather the Storm”

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Watch Xan Phillips read from his poetry collection Hull:

in the dream where I run without breasts I am motivated by flight, I haven’t yet begun to unweld the framework, invent new trauma, whip the stitch arching each bosom as victuals dangled, withheld. when I hemorrhage against design it ain’t incognito. the neighbors walk their dogs past me. that’s me smoking in the alley, letting roses from my wrists. petal to puddle, a misgendering of matter. these hooves unhinge themselves as tiny meteors to cudgel dusk.

              – Xan Phillips, “Nativity”

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Watch Xan Phillips interview with Brown University as part of the “Art of the Matter” series:

More info on Xan Phillips⇒

doan, mai c. 2019

Wednesday, April 26, 2019
Six Points Reading Series with Jan-Henry Gray, Xan Phillips, and mai c. doan
Women & Children First Bookstore

 

 

after a dream, a scene opens. meaning, a vision arrives. inside my third eye. trees stretch up and fill the scene. cottonwoods. the grandmother trees of the bosque. also (in the) opening: a girl in a red dress, curled up in dirt. budding against roots. home in the ground. the scene opens and she is opening inside of it. or inside of me. this is how she begins. and i am beginning too.

              – mai c. doan, “Late Summer 2020”

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i want
a party of skin
and smoke
and phosphorescent
light. i want to be
out late twirling
under some queer
luminescence and vibrating
with sound.

              – mai c. doan, “tonight”

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More info on mai c. doan⇒

Gray, Jan-Henry 2019

Wednesday, April 26, 2019
Six Points Reading Series with Jan-Henry Gray, Xan Phillips, and mai c. doan
Women & Children First Bookstore

 

 

It’s easy to
fall in love
with the
grocery store boys—
the one with the
tiny coffee cup
sweatshirt, too-tight
pants & cotton shoes or
the impossibly pale
fish boy who smiles
when he says, I’m
from Alaska.

              – Jan-Henry Gray, “Crush, Supermarket, California”

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The young mother born with the wrong name boards a plane. Flanked by her second and third child, she squeezes the last of the honey from the plastic packet and stirs her tea not with the flimsy stick handed to her by the pink stewardess but with her own stubborn finger ignorant of etiquette or the gossip gathering in the rows behind her.

              – Jan-Henry Gray, “April 1984”

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Mohyuddin, Faisal 2019

Wednesday, February 6, 2019
Six Points Reading Series with Suman Chhabra and Faisal Mohyuddin
Bookends & Beginnings

Zinnias, dahlias, peonies all pluck from the sweet
air of those faraway spring days another breathless
yearning for warmer things. We dream of golden
angles of sun, silver scribbles of rain, the thronging
noise of the earth waking again in soggy greenness.

              – Faisal Mohyuddin, “Zinnias. How. Foreverness.”

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THE FATHER: All night, I nursed
a candle’s flame, leaning in and out
of its sphere of light, mumbling verses
of the Qur’an, mispronouncing
the Arabic, not understanding a word
beyond “Al-Fatiha,” but knowing,
nonetheless, I had fulfilled
this first obligation of fatherhood.

              – Faisal Mohyuddin, “The Opening”

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Watch Faisal Mohyuddin read “The Faces of the Holy”:

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Chhabra, Suman 2019

Wednesday, February 6, 2019
Six Points Reading Series with Suman Chhabra and Faisal Mohyuddin
Bookends & Beginnings

 

 

Why don’t I just say how much I own and how much I do not? It’s a tilling of the soil over my head to make beautiful what others see. So my box of marigolds sits nicely next to theirs. Meanwhile I’m wondering where the marigolds’ roots are. Tapping and pulling tight together from each of body’s corners until body is thin as a rubber band rolled around itself, double strand of DNA.

              – Suman Chhabra, “one apple can feed a hundred”

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the moon begins her waiting for us at 4 pm
I acknowledge, say hello moon!
I sacralize, hello Chandrama! Purnima!
her names the same as the aunties who grasp my face with both of their hands
no ma, don’t cry

              – Suman Chhabra, “Orbit”

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More info on Suman Chhabra⇒

Jackson-Opoku, Sandra 2017

Wednesday, March 8, 2017
Reading the Black Library: Celebrating Brooks with Quraysh Ali Lansana
Bing Reading Room

 

 

What you mean, you trying to catch a train? I don’t care a bit more than nothing about no train. You know what they say about trains. If you miss one now, there’ll soon come another. You don’t want to be riding on an empty stomach no how. 

              – Sandra Jackson-Opoku, “Dirty Rice”

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Read this interview with Sandra Jackson-Opoku from the Journal Standard:

Letters to the Editor: Friday, April 30, 2010

Don’t consolidate school for cognitively impaired … Invest in future with vote for Addison bond … Accept ‘Redskins’ name or move somewhere else.

You are just like your father. I would only say those words in tenderness. When he was born with that booty chin,
a cleft just like his father’s. When the baby fat began to melt from his bones and long, lean warrior limbs emerged. When I noticed that his laugh was developing a husky vibrato. 

              – Sandra Jackson-Opoku, “Muskmelon”

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Watch Sandra Jackson-Opoku speak here:

Sandra Jackson Opoku: The Tie Between Past, Present & Future

Sandra Jackson-Opoku is an award-winning poet, fiction writer, screenwriter, and journalist who writes frequently on culture and travel in the African diaspora. Related link: http://voices.cla.umn.edu/artistpages/jacksonopokuSandra.php

More info on Sandra Jackson-Opoku⇒

Lansana, Quraysh Ali 2017

Wednesday, March 8, 2017
Reading the Black Library: Celebrating Brooks with Sandra Jackson-Opoku
Bing Reading Room

 

 

aint got no mind ta leev dis place
go on moses   find yo promise lan
mines is here beside dis fire
wid folks we knows from when we’s born

              – Quraysh Ali Lansana, “faithless”

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Read this interview with Quraysh Ali Lansana from the Gawker:

http://review.gawker.com/the-breakbeat-poets-on-how-hip-hop-revolutionized-ameri-1720356934

yo baby   i aint too old jus yet
jus round thirty-one   i think   make us a home john    one
where we’s both free   free from de lash’s shadow free like de lord
mean   got dis suit fo ya john   aint nobody worn dese clothes befo
walk proud in dese clothese   dese is free mans cloths

              – Quraysh Ali Lansana, “long way home”

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Watch Quraysh Ali Lansana read here:

Quraysh Ali Lansana: The Walmart Republic

Quraysh Ali Lansana stops by the Academy of American Poets to discuss his latest book of poems, The Walmart Republic, cowritten by Christopher Stewart. *For highest quality playback, change your view settings using the gear icon to 720p HD.

More info on Quraysh Ali Lansana⇒

Crowley, Maggie 2017

Thursday, March 30, 2017
with Danielle Rosen and Carris Adams (performed as Patricia Rose)
Museum of Contemporary Photography

 

 

View some of Maggie Crowley’s work here:

http://www.maggiecrowley.info/analog-1/

Read this interview with Maggie Crowley from VoyageChicago:

http://voyagechicago.com/interview/meet-maggie-crowley-produce-model-gallery-pilsen/

Watch Maggie Crowley perform for the Chicago Poetry Center as a member of Patricia Rose:

Poetry Reading: Maria Barnas and Danielle Rosen

The poets will be reading in response to the current exhibition on view, Viviane Sassen: UMBRA. Maria Barnas is a Dutch writer, poet and artist whose work centers on the myriad ways description can shape reality. Barnas wrote a series of poems to accompany UMBRA, which she will recite during this event.

More info on Maggie Crowley⇒

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