Wednesday, June 22, 2022
Tuesday, June 21, 2022
Monday, June 20, 2022
Sunday, June 19, 2022
Saturday, June 18, 2022
Friday, June 17, 2022
Thursday, June 16, 2022
Wednesday, June 15, 2022
SWEET WILLIAM FRITSCH ~
Sweet William Fritsch & Lenore Kandel
________________________________________
My Few Days Filming the San Francisco Hells Angel
Paul G Ryan
Photograph: 2009 Isaac Hernandez
Tuesday, June 14, 2022
Monday, June 13, 2022
BILL BATHURST ~ The Collected Poetry & Prose
Bill Bathurst, The Collected Poetry & Prose
edited by Bob Arnold
___________
Longhouse, 2022
________________________________
Time On My Hands
for Billie Holiday
As though abed in white satin
her wedding night with Prez
that never threatens dawn,
her voice from the Thirties
untouched by Death
the lone night through.
As though Lady,
filling in my silence
like Prez when her soul
caught its breath,
could ease me through the dark,
“I’m Pullin’ Through.”
As though that voice
would never trail off,
dawn never catch me,
like a shade flying up,
sandwiched between mirrors
taking a piss,
wide-eyed and hollow
cheeks needing a shave,
this image reflected &
diminished to a point
invisible with silence
she must have welcomed,
leather soles of police
on the waxen floor
of her hospital death room
heard inside her eyes
as gardenias of years gone by
crushed underfoot.
As though, then, this coda
could finally be left
unwritten: Sunday, lonely,
guest of a friend
gone to bed with his wife
pregnant again, restless
when I write this,
outside I’m spaced, the sun
at my armpit, encircled by
acres of broken land
flat as my prospects,
weeds & barbed wire running riot
like doubts in my head
make it hard to walk,
uncertain & shy, alone &
a long way from home.
20 August 1967
Sunday, June 12, 2022
Saturday, June 11, 2022
GHASSAN ZAQTAN ~
Just A Song
Thanks because the river flows
and the villages are fruits on the roads
and the roads are sleepwalking doors
and sleep is the shadow of death
its white land's first
and the dead are with me
strolling in front of my house
unarmed and peaceful
they posed for photos then left
singly
without an evening
or a calamity
and thanks to the evening.
A Going
Leave us something
we'd be sad if you leave
Leave us, for example,
if you like,
your last photo by the door
our summer trip together
that scent of pine,
your words or your tobacco?
And don't go
alone
and whole
like a sword.
A Horse
And whenever I fall asleep
I find a horse grazing grass
. . .
always
a horse comes to graze the grass
. . .
when I fall asleep.
____________________
Ghassan Zaqtan
Like A Straw Bird It Follows Me, and Other Poems
trans. Fady Joudan
Yale 2012
Friday, June 10, 2022
Thursday, June 9, 2022
Wednesday, June 8, 2022
Tuesday, June 7, 2022
YEVGENIA BELORUSETS ~
Yevgenia Belorusets is a Ukrainian writer, journalist, artist, and photographer who lives between Kyiv and Berlin. Her photographic work calls attention to the more vulnerable sections of Ukrainian society – queer families, out-of-work coal miners, the Roma, people living in the war zone in the East – and was shown in the Ukrainian pavilion at the 56th Venice Biennale. She is a member of the Hudrada curatorial collective and cofounder of Prostory, a journal for literature, art, and politics. She was awarded the 2020 HKW International Literature Award in Germany for Lucky Breaks, her first work of fiction.
Monday, June 6, 2022
SONIA SANCHEZ ~
14 haiku
for Emmett Louis Till
Your limbs buried
in northern muscle carry
their own heartbeat
Mississippi
alert with
conjugated pain
young Chicago
stutterer whistling
more than flesh
your pores
wild stars embracing
southern eyes
footprints blooming
in the night remember
your blood
in this southern
classroom summer settles
into winter
i hear your
pulse swallowing
neglected light
your limbs
fly off the ground
little birds . ... .
we taste the
blood ritual of
southern hands
blue midnite
breathe sailing on
smiling tongues
say no words
time is collapsing
in the woods
a mother's eyes
remembering a cradle
pray out loud
walking in Mississippi
i hold the stars
between my teeth
your death
a blues, i could not
drink away.
______________________
Sonia Sanchez ~
Collected Poems
Beacon Press, 2021
Sunday, June 5, 2022
Saturday, June 4, 2022
JOHN KEENE ~
Blackness
after Miguel James
When I begin a poem I often do so
because I love black people.
When I choose not to write
a poem I still love black people.
If I write I love black people
it's because I love black people.
If I don't write I love black people
I still love black people. Every metaphor,
every simile is rooted in the fact
I love black people. Even if I forgo
figurative language altogether I still
love black people. Whenever I start
an essay or a short story or novel
I can feel all the way to the very bottom
of my soul that I love black people.
Those times when I stare
at the blank white screen or page
I may despair that I cannot show
or testify how much I love black
people and want other black people
and all people to love black people
and to say and urge others to say
publicly that they love black
people which is to say I have learned
to love myself and to love black people
and to recognize that despite all that
we face in the world from the moment
of our birth to the day we die
that even the black period that will end
this poem is a sign and seal
to me and anyone who cares
that I love black people.
________________________
John Keene
Punks
New & Selected Poems
Song Cave, 2021















