For Days 11 and 12 of National Poetry Month, we have work from Aziza Barnes and Daniel Priest. Aziza Barnes’s innovative poem, “How To Purchase A Flight,” subverts the experience of purchasing an airline ticket to question her biracial cousin’s opportunism. Priest’s “Sestina After a Miscarriage” uses a traditional poetic form to offer a powerful rendering of grief.
Then, in the Saturday Essay, Anna March examines media portrayals of violence against women—from Game of Thrones to Law and Order—and wonders why we enjoy watching women suffer. “In a culture where we are besieged with violence against women,” she writes, “it is imperative for feminists to think critically about what they choose to watch.”
Meanwhile, in a review of Mihaela Moscaliuc’s collection Immigrant Model, Eric Farwell writes that “food is used to navigate relationships, mark history, keep the dead alive, and allow for or block off communication.” Moscaliuc’s “sensual” poems analyze the dynamics of marginalized populations. The lyrical result is that a “desire to comprehend [bubbles] up behind each word.”
Finally, in the Sunday Essay, Wayétu Moore battles with heartbreak on the fire escape of her apartment. A phone call to her mother, who traveled home to Liberia after raising five children in the US, helps to assuage the pain. For Moore, love lingers even when it is not wanted, but despite all the pain, it is something we must choose.
