Tag: Feminist Poetry

SATURDAY POETRY SERIES PRESENTS: TAWNYSHA GREENE

Posted on by asitoughttobemagazine

BREAKING BREAD AT AL QALZAM
by Tawnysha Greene

My first time alone
with the women in Saudi Arabia,
abayas, head covers off and I see

their faces, their hair free. Hands touch
me, lead me down
a line of greetings, kisses, whispers

in Arabic that I try
to return, trilled rs, long ms,
they laugh, because my words are

Egyptian, not Saudi, not
ours, they say. I watch, follow
what they do, sit on the ground, drink gawa

from tiny gold cups, nibble whole fried fish
with my right hand. We break bread, strangers,
now friends, uncovered, naked

in a way, because they speak to me of love.
They motion with their hands, point
to themselves, each other, then

at me, pause to see
if I understand, stop between streams
of Arabic to say daughter, sister, lover.


(Today’s poem originally appeared in Thrush Poetry Journal and appears here today with permission from the poet.)


Tawnysha Greene is currently a Ph.D. candidate in fiction writing at the University of Tennessee. Her work has appeared in various literary journals including Bellingham Review and Raleigh Review and is forthcoming in PANK Magazine.

Editor’s Note: When I first read today’s poem I was reminded of Reading Lolita in Tehran, a fantastic book I read recently about women in Iran and their relationship to their country, their government, their gender, and the veil. I was also reminded of Naomi Shihab Nye, a Palestinian-American poet whose soft-spoken reflections on the Middle East are often humbling, and, in particular, of Shihab Nye’s poem “Red Brocade,” one of my favorite poems of all time. Today’s poem is rich with sisterhood, with women bonding in their own sacred space—a tradition that dates back to a time before the patriarchy and remains a critical aspect of the feminine to this day. While I was drawn to all of these aspects of the poem, it was one stunning moment of emotional lyric that made me fall in love: “naked / in a way, because they speak to me of love.”

Want to read more by and about Tawnysha Greene?
Mandala Journal
Salome Magazine

SATURDAY POETRY SERIES PRESENTS: EMMALEA RUSSO

Posted on by asitoughttobemagazine

from HINTERLAND + HEX
By Emmalea Russo

barefoot
+ hovering above

false dandelion
like a mother

say: women in
your family
are witches





the garden is winter-still at lunchtime          i fill the hours with something like hiding



         make order
from what was
bracken
                  glean
sheaf after sheaf
send them to the
clearing behind
the house which
is filling up fast





a neighbor painted her red barn white          how what’s under will seep through



between
mountain
garden                                                                                                                + wild field



metal fence
deer-proofed
hoof resistant





say:           we are small inside the fenced-in green          even deer think so



a weed isn’t

          “supposed to be there”

but what we dig out space for

          is

i’m not convinced        but you are

begin :                 to paint seeds

(summer’s over)           on canvas

someone says



couldn’t anyone
paint a seed
isn’t it a circle



i say

yep.



Today’s poem previously appeared in ILK journal and appears here today with permission from the poet.


Emmalea Russo is a poet and visual artist. Recent work has appeared in ILK Journal and Wicked Alice and is forthcoming in Ambush Review and Yew Journal. She lives in New York City.

Editor’s Note: I was first drawn to today’s poem by Emmalea Russo’s invocation of women witches. Those women who are cloaked in the magical and the incantatory, who suffered historically at the hands of Christianity, patriarchy, and empire, and who have been avenged and reclaimed by feminism and the Feminine in modernity. But after reading and re-reading today’s piece, after allowing its seeds to sprout in realms both conscious and subconscious, I now know that the poet sums up the experience of this poem best when she writes, “how what’s under will seep through.”

Want to see more by and about Emmalea Russo?
Wicked Alice
Vinyl Poetry
em:me magazine (Editor: Emmalea Russo)

SATURDAY POETRY SERIES PRESENTS: KILIAN MCDONNELL

Posted on by asitoughttobemagazine

ON HEARING THINGS MALE
By Kilian McDonnell

In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth . . . a wind from God swept over the face of the waters . . . Then God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light. Genesis 1:1-3

Did the author of Genesis hear Yahweh’s voice
like the rumble of thunder over Mount Zion?
And did the man say to himself, as though spitting
against the wind, this boom must be male?
Male ears hear things male. Even medieval giants
decreed, Whatever is received, is received
according to the mode of the receiver. And if
Yahweh drops her hairbrush in the desert,
who can hear it? And write it in the book?


(Today’s poem appears in God Drops and Loses Things, and appears here today with permission from Liturgical Press and the poet.)


Kilian McDonnell, osb, born in Great Falls, Montana in 1921, has been a monk/priest of St. John’s Abbey, Collegeville, MN since 1945. He began writing poetry seriously at the age of 75. He will be 91 in September of 2012. His poems have appeared in America, Minnesota Monthly, Theology Today, American Benedictine Review, ISTI Bulletin, Christian Century, and The National Catholic Reporter. In 2000 Park Press—of Waite Park, Minnesota—published some 30 poems in a promotional volume entitled Adam on the Lam. In 2003 St. John’s University Press published his first book of poetry, Swift, Lord, You Are Not, which also contained a personal essay, “Poet: Can You Start at Seventy-Five?” His second book of poetry, Yahweh’s Other Shoe (St.John’s University Press, 2006) was a finalist in the Minnesota Book Award for poetry. In 2009 he published God Drops and Loses Things, and in 2011 Wrestling With God. For the larger portion of his life Kilian McDonnell has been active as a professional theologian and a university professor. He has taught in the graduate school of theology of St. John’s University and has written, edited, and been published in numerous theological publications and works.

Editor’s Note: During the writer’s residency I recently participated in, “Believing in Writing,” at The Collegeville Institute in Collegeville, MN, I submitted a number of poems from my current project to be workshopped. I am writing a book of poetry that explores and contemplates the feminine in biblical literature. During the workshop, one of my fellow writers asked if my poems are an homage to Father Kilian McDonnell. I had never read “Father Kilian,” as the man lovingly referred to him, and so he pulled all four of his poetry books off the shelf and suggested that I take a look.

I began with Yahweh’s Other Shoe, and within twenty-four hours I had read all four of Father Kilian’s books. I could not believe what I had read. Of all of the poets I know of who are contemplating Judaism in their work, who are contemplating the Torah, who are writing or exploring midrashic literature, I found that I have more in common as a poet with a ninety-year-old Catholic Priest than any other poet I’ve read. I returned my borrowed books to the Collegeville Institute and walked over to the Liturgical Press to buy all four for myself.

Father Kilian truly inspires me. To come into poetry so late in life is impressive in and of itself. But to be a male, a Catholic male, a Catholic priest no less, and be asking questions about the role of women in biblical literature takes an admirable amount of courage and humility. Today’s poem asks one of the most essential questions about the inception of the sublimated role of women in Judeo-Christianity, and I thank Father Kilian for his talent, for his bravery, and for sharing his own questions with the world.

Want to see more by and about Kilian McDonnell?
Purchase Kilian McDonnell’s poetry books from Liturgical Press