Advocacy Poetry – Page 3 – As It Ought To Be

SATURDAY POETRY SERIES PRESENTS: MONOZYGOTIC | CODEPENDENT

Posted on August 1, 2015 by asitoughttobemagazine

From MONOZYGOTIC | CODEPENDENT
By Stephanie Bryant Anderson:

LONELINESS CAME INSIDE MY HOME, UNPACKED ITS
THINGS

I sat on the floor
in a blue room choking

on emotions, confessing
sadness to the cake falling

down my throat, wondering
how I have come to hate winter

when it snows
such beautiful white flowers.

But—

it’s the way I’ve neatly folded the laundry
over and over.

It’s the way fear visits me twice,
and courage once.

It’s the way I move alone at night
from the couch to the door

to the curtains,
back to the couch.

It’s how you catch me dreaming
and step over my body.

LIKE THE BLACK HOLE CARTOGRAPHER WHO WENT
HUNTING FOR WALNUTS

When the door closed this time, she knew it
would be different. She saw his eyes—
emotionless ticks that had grown into the plural

patterns of empty walnut shells. Someone once
star-mapped Aries the Ram, and generously
gave him horns. I am strong as an Ox—

he reminded her as she stood to leave. Reminded
her that she was the Year of the Rabbit with closed
curtains.

Safety over risk, she recalled looking at the door,
but her body lied, it could not carry her there.
You cry too easily— he said, after the first hit

into her eye-bone crunched, sounding the way
the nutcracker sounded when breaking open
walnuts. He stood over her

using the same angle God used to look down from.
But, here, for her,
there was no longer a down—

ANXIETY WHILE CROSSING THE TENNESSEE-ARKANSAS
BRIDGE

Last November my sister got married.
My heart cropped, carried

for months in my handkerchief. At night
it would cry out from extinction.

This amputation being no small ache, I left
Tennessee, my heartbeat slow.

Memphis with her strange spell
filled my piano-ribs

with a slow blues loaded
with heavy bees and suicide ghosts.

The road tasted like salt. I drove until
I couldn’t see the shape of us,

until my heart could again beat
on its own.

In Monozygotic | Codependent, Stephanie Bryant Anderson’s poems are concerned with splitting the self and uncovering the woman beneath the familial myths. Yet the essential paradox for Bryant Anderson: when the self has a twin—a ‘shadow,’ a ‘dark-haired mirror girl’—what then of the split? These poems ache; in the style of Southern gothic, these poems are ‘filled [with] piano ribs, a slow blues loaded with heavy bees and suicide ghosts.’ Bryant Anderson’s are poems of survival, built in fragile and beautiful shell casings, stanzas deceptively elegant and delicate, for what pinions each graceful couplet is a fierceness of spirit, a deep-seated desire for life, always life, even in the midst of pain and memory, ‘shaped as an open field plagued by black irises.’ I am broken and remade by these poems. —Jennifer Givhan, 2015 Winner National Endowment for the Arts fellowship

Stephanie Bryant Anderson is author of Monozygotic | Codependent (The Blue Hour Press 2015). Recent or forthcoming publications include Vinyl, burntdistrict, Rogue Agent and The Blueshift Journal. Besides poetry she enjoys kickboxing and math. Stephanie is founder of Red Paint Hill Publishing.

Editor’s Note: Monozygotic | Codependent opens with a quote from Sylvia Plath: “I do not know who I am, where I am going – and I am the one who has to decide the answers to these hideous questions.” And so Stephanie Bryant Anderson sets the stage for this brave, vulnerable collection. The journey the poet takes us on is deeply confessional, beginning in loneliness and ending in leaving, with panic, regret, abuse, anxiety, divorce, codependence, death, and God doggedly pursuing the I in-between. This is not the story of a light at the end of the tunnel; it is a story of survival. But there is so much beauty in the words, in their brutal honesty, in the intimacy of what is revealed, in the shared experience that arises when one speaks up about that which is too-seldom talked about. In this way, this book is Plathian, reflecting the intersection between lived suffering and staggering art.

Following the Plath quote, Monozygotic | Codependent welcomes us into its world with “Loneliness Came Inside My Home, Unpacked Its Things.” Here we sit on the floor. Here we are choking. Here we are eating our feelings. Here we are “wondering / how I have come to hate winter // when it snows / such beautiful white flowers.” A line so beautiful, it hurts to confront it. Like the idea of stepping over a woman dreaming.

From stepped over to stepped on, “Like the Black Hole Cartographer Who Went Hunting for Walnuts” takes us deep into the reality of a woman abused. She is not safe. She cannot leave. She is looked down on by man and God alike, only “here, for her, / there [is] no longer a down.”

In “Anxiety While Crossing the Tennessee-Arkansas Bridge” we encounter one of the major themes of the book: twin-ness. What it means to be a twin, to have been born into that level of codependence and to have to survive that conjunction into the individuality of adulthood. The result is a heart that must be “cropped, carried,” that has to learn to beat again on its own.

Want to see more from Stephanie Bryant Anderson?
Stephanie Bryant Anderson’s Website
Buy Monozygotic | Codependent from The Blue Hill Press
Follow Stephanie Bryant Anderson on Twitter

SATURDAY POETRY SERIES PRESENTS: MARIANNE KUNKEL

Posted on July 4, 2015 by asitoughttobemagazine

By Marianne Kunkel:

A SLOTH FIRST HEARS ITS NAME

But why should it care? It munches
a cecropia leaf. It probes the air
with its blunt snout, detecting
a waft of sour coconut. It lumbers to a branch,
grabs hold with its claws, drops,
dangling upside down like a knapsack.
It doesn’t know to feel ashamed
that its name means lazy and sinful.
Like my little sister
after her abortion, when our father
changed her name from Molly to Molly.

Today’s poem originally appeared in Rattle and appears here today with permission from the poet.

Marianne Kunkel is the author of the chapbook The Laughing Game (Finishing Line Press), as well as many poems that have appeared in Hayden’s Ferry Review, Notre Dame Review, Columbia Poetry Review, Poet Lore, and elsewhere. A former managing editor of Prairie Schooner, she is an assistant professor of creative writing and publishing at Missouri Western State University, where she edits the undergraduate literary journal The Mochila Review. Follow her on Twitter @mariannekunkel.

Editor’s Note: Today’s poem is awesome for a myriad of reasons. Because it is about sloths (sort of). Because it is about words, about labels, about judgment and ignorant bliss. Because it vibrant both with images and with sound. Because it houses epic proportions in eleven short lines. Because its advocacy relies on neither a soap box nor a sense of superiority. But what is most striking about today’s poem, perhaps, is its volta. The way it turns the world of the poem on its head. The way it leaves the reader staggering, contemplative, changed.

SATURDAY POETRY SERIES PRESENTS: DEVIN KELLY

Posted on June 27, 2015 by asitoughttobemagazine

FEAR OF
By Devin Kelly

We are discussing the roots of things. How phobia
means fear of, and we make them up. Bookaphobia.
Classroomaphobia. Girlaphobia. I say there will be
a quiz. They laugh. It is evening in a small room
in Queens where the desks are miniatures
of the things they should be and the children
sitting in them too close to me and my coffee
so soon done. Then I ask them if they are afraid.
Then I ask them of what. The word penis. Spiders.
The people who hate me for my name. How a moment
turning stills to a moment stilled. How silence,
even in silence, breathes. Their pages of homework
loiter upon their desks. Fifteen words they had
never seen before, and fifteen meanings, written out
beside. Benevolent. Ailurophile. I spoke, upon the hearing,
of opposites, to think of words as people, rooted,
experimenting with different prefixes. To think of words
as lovers, hungry for what it might be they want.
What is her name? It lingers a moment before
it hassles its way out of my mouth. The shape it takes,
unfamiliar, awkward. A word I have never spoken before.
And her skin brown. How she taught me the way
to count to ten in Arabic. The people who hate me
for my name. The people who hate me. The people.
Across an ocean, a man kneeling does not see the hand
that holds the gun that fires the bullet that splits
his head in two. Across an ocean, someone laughs
at a fence of severed heads. I do not know
what to teach anymore. Graphophobia. Philophobia.
Fear of writing, fear of love. And all these children
who do not have a name for their sorrow. At night,
in bed, I turn her name for the hundredth time
and find its beauty. The soft grace of wanting
to be held. A child, scared, moving in dark
from room to room to find the mother who named her,
the father, too, and their reasons why.

Today’s poem originally appeared in Rattle and appears here today with permission from the poet.

Devin Kelly earned his MFA from Sarah Lawrence College. His collaborative chapbook with Melissa Smyth, This Cup of Absence, is forthcoming from Anchor & Plume Press. His poetry, fiction, and essays have appeared or are forthcoming in Gigantic Sequins, Armchair/Shotgun, Post Road, RATTLE, The Millions, Appalachian Heritage, Midwestern Gothic, The Adirondack Review, and more, and his essay “Love Innings” was recently nominated for a Pushcart Prize. He co-hosts the Dead Rabbits Reading Series in Manhattan, teaches Creative Writing and English classes to high schoolers in Queens, and lives in Harlem. You can find him on twitter @themoneyiowe.

Editor’s Note: June 26, 2015 was a day of imperative progress in American history. A day of change. A day when love triumphed. I celebrated this historic event in the most wonderful way I could have imagined, at the wedding of two women whose love is beshert. But when one of the brides gave her speech, she reminded us that there is still more to be done. “Today we celebrate,” she said, “but tomorrow, we keep fighting.” Even amidst a joy so great she shared it with the entire country, the blushing bride reminded us that we can—and should—always be working to make the world a better place.

Today’s poem was written in response to Islamophobia. A Muslim girl in a classroom. What is she afraid of? “The people who hate me for my name.” The families of the victims of a racist hate crime—a terrorist act—in Charleston, SC have what to teach us about love and forgiveness. But what are they truly the victims of? “The people who hate me. The people.” We speak words today that carry with them the chalk outlines of the hatred that flows from fear: Black Lives Matter; I can’t breathe. “I do not know / what to teach anymore,” writes the poet, but he knows “all these children / who do not have a name for their sorrow.”

Let us shout our joy from the rooftops and dance in the streets because yesterday love won. And today, tomorrow, and in the days to come, let us fight until love triumphs over fear and hatred, until there is justice and equality for all.

SATURDAY POETRY SERIES PRESENTS: ELIZABETH LANGEMAK

Posted on March 28, 2015March 28, 2019 by asitoughttobemagazine

By Elizabeth Langemak:

A PHOTOGRAPH OF HER SHOWERING

As passionless, burned-out, dusty shells, we dislike love poems . . . As [one of our editors] says, why not “text me a photograph of her showering”?

I am enclosing, as text, the photo
you ask for. Though my husband

refuses, I make this in secret
and print it black over white. Though

the angles and lighting are tough
to nail down, and the process

makes my whole body a long face
for tears as the spray breaks over

my scalp and rolls down.
Though my right hand withers,

as I rake damp hair into rows.
Though the cheap curtain cleaves

to my thigh, I peel it off like a rind
teased from its fruit in one strip.

You thought I was dusty, a shell.
You said I was burned out,

but now my skin is slapping and slick,
the camera demanding more arch

and frontal. When I read your note
I was spitting with anger. I could

not get your eyes off my nipples,
my breasts, but now I make you

this square handful of edges,
a black-and-white chip where my ass

hangs over tan lines like a sun
without set, where stretch marks

like fault lines ride over each thigh
and a pocked scar stabs into my shoulder.

Once I knew men like you and tried
to be sexy but in the shower

I only got soaked. On the bed
where I practiced I only looked

posed. In cabins on nights with your jars
full of scotch I hoped you might

see past what you saw and fuck me,
but now it seems we have both changed

our minds. Here I am. In a poem,
just breath-long, I am perfect.

I send you this picture because
a photo of showering is just wet

and sex, but the poem lays down
its camera and hands me a towel,

knows the route I send it
over my calves, over my nape

and around. How many
flashes and clicks turn a love poem

around into only a woman to
fuck you? Fuck you.

Today’s poem was originally published in AGNI and appears here today with permission from the poet.

Elizabeth Langemak lives in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Editor’s Note: Today’s poem is one of resistance. In response to the editors who called love poems “burned-out, dusty shells” and said, why not “text me a photograph of her showering,” Elizabeth Langemak speaks out against the objectification of women’s bodies and the misogyny rearing its ugly head in a still-patriarchal society. Frankly feminist, exquisitely lyric, and commendably unabashed, today’s poet answers the question “Why not text me a photograph of her showering?” with the only response needed: “Fuck you.”

Want more from Elizabeth Langemak?
Elizabeth Langemak’s Official Website

SATURDAY POETRY SERIES PRESENTS: NORMA LILIANA VALDEZ

Posted on January 10, 2015 by asitoughttobemagazine

By Norma Liliana Valdez:

UNACCOMPANIED

Everything is happening now. Everything is present tense. The horses. The running.

The losing. This operation is a well-oiled machine. All is slow motion until dusk. After

dusk come the icy furrows. Overnight temperatures the kind of cold that enters marrow.

There is so much winter in the eyes. From here the only lights: the moon and Chula

Vista. After the ice, the running. Ravine. Huizache. Thorns. The hiding. A Cadillac.

There is a gun in the glove compartment. There are two boys in the trunk. Two other

boys contort their bodies on the back seat floor, legs entwined. Face down. Face down.

He is the one balled on the front passenger floor because he is the smallest. He is bones

and destiny.

HUMMINGBIRD

every breath you exhaled

a blanket of hosannas

each hand like prayer, like

unfettered music

you were night, naked

shoulders in moonlight

I lost my breath

beneath your gravity

your touch slid along the arc

of every whisper

I inhaled greedily

filled every room

filled every empty space

inside of me

you must have known my anthem

when you left

urgent as an animal

“Unaccompanied” was the poetry winner of the 2015 San Miguel Writers’ Conference Writing Contest, and “Hummingbird” is an original feature on the Saturday Poetry Series on As It Ought To Be. Both poems appear here today with permission from the poet.

Norma Liliana Valdez is an alumna of the VONA/Voices Writing Workshop, the Writing Program at UC Berkeley Extension, and a 2014 Hedgebrook writer-in-residence. Her poems have appeared in Calyx Journal, The Acentos Review, As It Ought To Be, La Bloga, and Dismantle: An Anthology of Writing from the VONA/Voices Writing Workshop. She is the poetry winner of the 2015 San Miguel Writers’ Conference Writing Contest. Additional work is forthcoming in Poetry of Resistance: A Multicultural Anthology by University of Arizona Press. She lives and works in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Editor’s Note: Over the years Norma Liliana Valdez’s writing has grown much in the way bougainvillea grows. Along earth-toned buildings in warm places. A steady, fertile spread erupting in vibrant blossoms. Like the sight of bright and blooming bougainvillea, today’s poems take my breath away.

“Unaccompanied,” winner of the 2015 San Miguel Writers’ Conference Writing Contest in poetry, is a work of art. The title is evocative, deftly making its mark. The narrative envelopes us in a gripping and heart-wrenching tale that speaks as much to the experience of the few as to the dreams and suffering of the masses. This work is vocal, political, and brave. Brimming with stunning lyric, we feel “the kind of cold that enters marrow,” see how “there is so much winter in the eyes,” and are left with what reads like a told fortune: “He is bones / and destiny.”

While “Unaccompanied” is yin-like—covert and treacherous—”Hummingbird” is like the yang—in relief, open, belonging to this world. The energy is sensual and intense, with “each hand like prayer.” And while both poems end spectacularly, “Hummingbird” is volta-like in its finale, confessing that “you must have known my anthem / when you left / urgent as an animal.”

This is the poet’s third Saturday Poetry Series feature. Three is a sacred number. The Holy Trinity. Maiden, Mother, Crone. The Triple Bodhi. The Trimurti. Which is fitting, as the poet divines poems that are alchemical. Spiritual. Faithfully wrought and nearly religious in their lyricism. Evocative of a humanity made palpable through poetry.

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