This is an update to my old showcase thread. Progressively, I'll add poems I've submitted to contests and other such events, then poems from my old showcase, with a few newer poems I have no intention to submit dispersed throughout. I'll post slowly, in order for the thread to survive until the next event.
To open, all the post-pandemic poetry that has been showcased. Text obscured by inline spoilers are comments that might color one's reading.
CONTENT WARNINGS. For this first post: "Nostalgia" quietly evokes homophobia, some of the action in "Hyenas" can be read as pedophilic, and "Edging" engages in light innuendo.
Nostalgia. Submitted December 2022. Based on actual reminiscences by the author.
Baptist school: the elderly teacher
gestures to her childhood with a joke
that glides above the Third Graders' heads.
Believing they were balloons, she blew
condoms to sausages stuffed with air
and crossed swords with her brothers.
Where is she now? Below the earth
or, over its surface, ash dispersed
like her grown-up wards who won't respond
to e-mails with subject Reunion?
Brothers, sisters, and in-betweeners
turned nostalgic, schismatic, demonic:
recall the pyres of Yu-gi-oh cards,
the hymnals barely bound by tape,
Manila paper prayer requests,
and Beyblade shredders of blintzy skin!
recall the Holy Spirit's blaze
over the jokers, the bullies, the gays---
Inevitably her makeshift toys would pop
whether she played with them or not.
Song of the Mytilenian Women. A personal favourite, this was submitted January 2023.
I have become convinced that Sappho in her poetry
does not express her own emotions
but speaks, either in her own voice, or through a chorus,
for the community... --André Lardinois
Dressed in their finest linen, their ears and necks
spangled with gold and silver, the women of Mytilene
gather to form a chorus: hear them intone the words
of their black-haired chief
as they imagine men in the place of the woman
their chief had wished that deathless Aphrodite,
the one they now address, would return
to end her longing.
High voices reach the goddess, while the low
drone that ties the performance together
honors with its pre-verbal "Na" the goddess
who rules the dead.
"Some say that an army of ships is the most beautiful
thing on this black earth", the chorus sings
to welcome those returning from the perils
of vengeance and the sea
while the infernal queen prepares for her return
to her gloomy realm, but now she sits
where once she roused her husband grant the wish
of despondent Orpheus
with tears---but now it is winter---and the women
must rouse the men help bring new life
to the city. "Come to us now", and their ode
transforms into a paean
as the chorus scatters: the maidens start for the fields
where they'll weave crowns out of flowers they dried
over the summer, the wives march to their homes
side-by-side with their husbands,
and black-haired Sappho joins the low-voiced crones
to the temples of their protector Hera,
their preserver Hestia, and their bosom-friend
Persephone.
Hyenas. Another favourite, this sestina was submitted May 2023.
March, summer for suckers, fills the café
with those who dress in vintage, ration
like it's wartime, out of habit scream
into their phones, "What a stove
of a city! Who can raise a child
in this heat?" All while the old hyena
skulks for food. Here in Addis Ababa, hyenas
fill the streets at night, scavenge the cafés
and hospitals for leftover children
like beggars for scraps of himbasha. "Wasted rations",
thinks the beggar tending an old stove,
"all a mother's labor, all her screams
dissolved by stomach acid." Every night, the screams
of hopeless drunks and lovemaking hyenas
fill the air like smoke from earthen stoves
cooking charcoal to sell to the cafés
who serve their coffee authentic. Such fancy rations
for the tourists and their spoiled children:
imported coffee and himbasha loaves and the occasional child
to be brought back home and shown the wonders of screaming
into one's phone, complaining about such meager rations
as foreign bread and coffee! A hyena
grins -- "Isn't she cute?" -- while the café
drives away the beggar from their stove
for the tourists to take their picture. "Back home, our stoves
are powered by electricity. They're safe enough for a child
to touch, so long as she's not metal." The owner of the café
musses his daughter's hair. "Come on, stop your screaming.
Out there in New York, there are no hyenas
and you won't have to save your rations
like it's wartime." "Baba, it's not about the rations
nor the burns on my arms this ancient stove
has all the right to inflict. Are you sure there are no hyenas
where you ask to send me? Where none of the children
seem to suffer, where none of them cry and scream?"
The sun sets. The tourists leave the café
with their new child. The grinning hyena
rubs her back against the dying stove, her rations
lying in a pile behind the café. Another scream.
Edging. Written specifically for the event (and so kinda rushed), this was submitted July 2023. While this is nowhere near specific enough for me to say this is based on my reminiscences, I do think I was writing about myself, as opposed to some constructed persona, when I wrote this.
All my life, I have been edging.
Once, I was an edgy boy,
but now, I'm on the very edge
of man and woman, as I was
and still am of both black and white,
both rich and poor. I never lost
and hope to never lose that skill
or, rather, inborn aptitude
to gleefully and recklessly
embody everything.
Inactive. Submitted July 2023. I believe submitting this was a bit of a stretch, in relation to the prompt. Based on a friendship-turned-one-sided-infatuation over Discord.
The way one frames events informs the way
they are received. The Fathers say
to love one's neighbors as one's self is not
to love them like one's self, to learn to love
either one's self or others better, but
to learn about one's self through loving others,
to learn about one's strengths and faults
of caring far too much or of not sharing
how one cares enough: one must not say
all that occurs beyond this world of words
occurs in the "real" world, that all this
you well know you will one day leave behind
like Prince Hal's final setting out from Eastcheap
is not real. The Fathers did not know
about the world we live in now, where every feeling
hangs so much upon the written word,
and yet how much they cared about the Word
redeeming time, redeeming all the senses,
redeeming Falstaff, Bardolph, even quiet Nym
from the Prince's proud, discordant whims!
You've caught me call you my beloved once.
You've seen me rail at fools. You've watched me fight
and make myself an even greater fool
for caring far too much. You've done me right
in keeping quiet all these years, however
I have lost myself in losing you,
lost and found myself, and all that I
have left to say to you is what I hope
you likewise are: I'm grateful
for your time.
This piece went untitled when I submitted it, and I still can't think of a decent title. What do you think? Submitted September, 2023.
One summer's day, I watched a rat
scramble into the space between
our neighbors' ceiling and their roof,
panels of corrugated metal
suspended by worm-eaten beams
of hardwood over plywood sheets
perhaps came closest to the trees
its forebears here called home.
The fruits they ate, the leaves they picked
to mattress beds for their striplings,
the twigs they wove to canopy
their fillies from the scorching heat:
all these, my ancestors had seized
for little more than kindling
and now we dare to call them pests!
What hand, I wonder, comes to saw
straight through the reinforced concrete
now sprawling past this shaven hill?
What fire, from aggregate and steel,
is waiting to be lit?
A sonnet submitted as a Valentine on February, 2024. Clearly written during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.
It's unbearable how
in the one room we can meet
the only proper etiquette
is neither to speak
nor wave nor even touch
each other's empty hand
to each other's breast
and time each other's heart
but only to sit
an arm's length away
and read behind the masks
how we age, how we sleep:
to end a crush
is to break protocol.
To open, all the post-pandemic poetry that has been showcased. Text obscured by inline spoilers are comments that might color one's reading.
CONTENT WARNINGS. For this first post: "Nostalgia" quietly evokes homophobia, some of the action in "Hyenas" can be read as pedophilic, and "Edging" engages in light innuendo.
Nostalgia. Submitted December 2022. Based on actual reminiscences by the author.
Baptist school: the elderly teacher
gestures to her childhood with a joke
that glides above the Third Graders' heads.
Believing they were balloons, she blew
condoms to sausages stuffed with air
and crossed swords with her brothers.
Where is she now? Below the earth
or, over its surface, ash dispersed
like her grown-up wards who won't respond
to e-mails with subject Reunion?
Brothers, sisters, and in-betweeners
turned nostalgic, schismatic, demonic:
recall the pyres of Yu-gi-oh cards,
the hymnals barely bound by tape,
Manila paper prayer requests,
and Beyblade shredders of blintzy skin!
recall the Holy Spirit's blaze
over the jokers, the bullies, the gays---
Inevitably her makeshift toys would pop
whether she played with them or not.
Song of the Mytilenian Women. A personal favourite, this was submitted January 2023.
I have become convinced that Sappho in her poetry
does not express her own emotions
but speaks, either in her own voice, or through a chorus,
for the community... --André Lardinois
Dressed in their finest linen, their ears and necks
spangled with gold and silver, the women of Mytilene
gather to form a chorus: hear them intone the words
of their black-haired chief
as they imagine men in the place of the woman
their chief had wished that deathless Aphrodite,
the one they now address, would return
to end her longing.
High voices reach the goddess, while the low
drone that ties the performance together
honors with its pre-verbal "Na" the goddess
who rules the dead.
"Some say that an army of ships is the most beautiful
thing on this black earth", the chorus sings
to welcome those returning from the perils
of vengeance and the sea
while the infernal queen prepares for her return
to her gloomy realm, but now she sits
where once she roused her husband grant the wish
of despondent Orpheus
with tears---but now it is winter---and the women
must rouse the men help bring new life
to the city. "Come to us now", and their ode
transforms into a paean
as the chorus scatters: the maidens start for the fields
where they'll weave crowns out of flowers they dried
over the summer, the wives march to their homes
side-by-side with their husbands,
and black-haired Sappho joins the low-voiced crones
to the temples of their protector Hera,
their preserver Hestia, and their bosom-friend
Persephone.
Hyenas. Another favourite, this sestina was submitted May 2023.
March, summer for suckers, fills the café
with those who dress in vintage, ration
like it's wartime, out of habit scream
into their phones, "What a stove
of a city! Who can raise a child
in this heat?" All while the old hyena
skulks for food. Here in Addis Ababa, hyenas
fill the streets at night, scavenge the cafés
and hospitals for leftover children
like beggars for scraps of himbasha. "Wasted rations",
thinks the beggar tending an old stove,
"all a mother's labor, all her screams
dissolved by stomach acid." Every night, the screams
of hopeless drunks and lovemaking hyenas
fill the air like smoke from earthen stoves
cooking charcoal to sell to the cafés
who serve their coffee authentic. Such fancy rations
for the tourists and their spoiled children:
imported coffee and himbasha loaves and the occasional child
to be brought back home and shown the wonders of screaming
into one's phone, complaining about such meager rations
as foreign bread and coffee! A hyena
grins -- "Isn't she cute?" -- while the café
drives away the beggar from their stove
for the tourists to take their picture. "Back home, our stoves
are powered by electricity. They're safe enough for a child
to touch, so long as she's not metal." The owner of the café
musses his daughter's hair. "Come on, stop your screaming.
Out there in New York, there are no hyenas
and you won't have to save your rations
like it's wartime." "Baba, it's not about the rations
nor the burns on my arms this ancient stove
has all the right to inflict. Are you sure there are no hyenas
where you ask to send me? Where none of the children
seem to suffer, where none of them cry and scream?"
The sun sets. The tourists leave the café
with their new child. The grinning hyena
rubs her back against the dying stove, her rations
lying in a pile behind the café. Another scream.
Edging. Written specifically for the event (and so kinda rushed), this was submitted July 2023. While this is nowhere near specific enough for me to say this is based on my reminiscences, I do think I was writing about myself, as opposed to some constructed persona, when I wrote this.
All my life, I have been edging.
Once, I was an edgy boy,
but now, I'm on the very edge
of man and woman, as I was
and still am of both black and white,
both rich and poor. I never lost
and hope to never lose that skill
or, rather, inborn aptitude
to gleefully and recklessly
embody everything.
Inactive. Submitted July 2023. I believe submitting this was a bit of a stretch, in relation to the prompt. Based on a friendship-turned-one-sided-infatuation over Discord.
The way one frames events informs the way
they are received. The Fathers say
to love one's neighbors as one's self is not
to love them like one's self, to learn to love
either one's self or others better, but
to learn about one's self through loving others,
to learn about one's strengths and faults
of caring far too much or of not sharing
how one cares enough: one must not say
all that occurs beyond this world of words
occurs in the "real" world, that all this
you well know you will one day leave behind
like Prince Hal's final setting out from Eastcheap
is not real. The Fathers did not know
about the world we live in now, where every feeling
hangs so much upon the written word,
and yet how much they cared about the Word
redeeming time, redeeming all the senses,
redeeming Falstaff, Bardolph, even quiet Nym
from the Prince's proud, discordant whims!
You've caught me call you my beloved once.
You've seen me rail at fools. You've watched me fight
and make myself an even greater fool
for caring far too much. You've done me right
in keeping quiet all these years, however
I have lost myself in losing you,
lost and found myself, and all that I
have left to say to you is what I hope
you likewise are: I'm grateful
for your time.
This piece went untitled when I submitted it, and I still can't think of a decent title. What do you think? Submitted September, 2023.
One summer's day, I watched a rat
scramble into the space between
our neighbors' ceiling and their roof,
panels of corrugated metal
suspended by worm-eaten beams
of hardwood over plywood sheets
perhaps came closest to the trees
its forebears here called home.
The fruits they ate, the leaves they picked
to mattress beds for their striplings,
the twigs they wove to canopy
their fillies from the scorching heat:
all these, my ancestors had seized
for little more than kindling
and now we dare to call them pests!
What hand, I wonder, comes to saw
straight through the reinforced concrete
now sprawling past this shaven hill?
What fire, from aggregate and steel,
is waiting to be lit?
A sonnet submitted as a Valentine on February, 2024. Clearly written during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.
It's unbearable how
in the one room we can meet
the only proper etiquette
is neither to speak
nor wave nor even touch
each other's empty hand
to each other's breast
and time each other's heart
but only to sit
an arm's length away
and read behind the masks
how we age, how we sleep:
to end a crush
is to break protocol.
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