National Poetry Month Day 3: Safia Jama
Celebrate National Poetry Month with new poems daily, featuring a variety of voices and perspectives in contemporary poetry.
...moreCelebrate National Poetry Month with new poems daily, featuring a variety of voices and perspectives in contemporary poetry.
...moreCelebrate National Poetry Month with new poems daily, featuring a variety of voices and perspectives in contemporary poetry.
...moreCelebrate National Poetry Month with new poems daily, featuring a variety of voices and perspectives in contemporary poetry.
...moreTo speak of the shame is to speak of him / and his bed of lichen and his green / ribbon fastened around my throat.
...moreIn my meanness I hear the mother of my mother and her mother / before her, the cold cellars and flat pillows of their hearts. The single current / of anger that ran through their voices, each daughter forever through time / believing herself a burden.
...moreThe sky in Clearwater is the print / of your dress—all aster & blue starling. / The year ends the way it began. You asking me / for the indescribable. Sky has no notion of sky.
...moreI am in need of privacy and a new wardrobe. / Indulge me. There is nothing that style cannot fix. // Outside, a colony of bees stir with a missing monarch. / Does that make them more or less of a swarm.
...moreI’m tired of sheeping. / how boring, to be good. / a head gets heavy. / I can only feel this ribbon brush against my throat / so long, you know. / one day I’ll untie it, I know, let the whole thing roll off.
...moreonce in the splendor of death, we magnify his name two of each for everyone. one for me & for me too. each one sliced long ways head to tail. the summer turn twenty-five a vow to only wear white this is not […]
...moreyou write that “what we worship / makes us what we are,” and if this is true / then based on the poems of yours I’ve read so far / you are both a daughter and a god, / if this is true, I am a vine, invasive, here / to climb a wall. “As tendrils cling and twine / about the tree,” you write, and I try / to unwind your words into a history.
...moreMoons empty in the whisper / of space between us. / Mother’s ankles roll into / my calf, brimming with silver, / with sleep. The night is made / of photographs. We sleep over / the prayer rug, woven from / all the daughters that have / pressed their lips to it / and swallowed.
...moreThe first boy to call me beautiful / had hair like a waving fist, walked / down the hallway, radius of curl / beckoning white hands that he’d / allow, though, I’d watch a little / light in him dim to tar.
...moreI thought / you had grown angry with me but turns out / you were just lazy.
...moreit’s dark there, and wet, and time is closing in
...moreyou wake up early / & do me no good.
...moreI miss space, when I’m not / reading about it
...moreThe story thrummed its bruise open and never stopped
...moreThe ancient sapien instinct: love is an approximation to danger.
...moreSculpture—a body tearing into a body.
...moreI guess we’ll never know // if God is for or against us.
...moreSo, earthquake as a god, // creatures as determined judges.
...moresuffered the elements / habitable // space / deteriorating in the absence
...morethere came a night I thanked god // for reincarnation.
...moreHe wasn’t my father but someday would be someone’s.
...moreThe steam wallows out of the kettle and your book’s pages / turn themselves.
...moreWe / not a boat people / rather / water // undammed / a waiting hurricane
...moreOne day, I will cheat death & wake up // in the afterlife after dusk, breathing.
...morethe doctors – never warn you about the poem / between your legs.
...moreYou’ve done this before, you know. In so many bodies.
...moreMy mother’s words / explode volcanic vowels.
...more