Just a quick reminder that I’m blogging about poetry over at AliyaSKing.com on Sundays. This week, we feature an interview with the lovely, gracious, wonderful poet Tara Betts whose book, Arc & Hue, was released September 1.
Here’s one of my favorite excerpts from our conversation:
There is no easy path to writing. It’s hard work and [...]
Archive for the ‘Poetry’ Category
Poetry Sundays with Stacia: A Conversation with Tara Betts.
Posted in Poetry, Sundays with Stacia (Aliyasking.com), tagged Arc & Hue, Tara Betts on September 6, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
Poetry Sundays with Stacia.
Posted in Poetry, Sundays with Stacia (Aliyasking.com) on August 30, 2009 | 2 Comments »
Great news! Starting today, I’ll be writing a Sunday column for journalist/novelist/co-memoirist-to-the-stars Aliya S. King’s website!
I’ve started to write poetry again this year, after a seven-year hiatus. So Aliya has invited me to write about my return to the genre in an ongoing series of Sunday posts.
Poetry Sundays with Stacia will discuss:
- the ups and [...]
a birthday poem.
Posted in Poetry, Uncategorized on August 25, 2009 | 1 Comment »
My aunt’s birthday was last weekend and a lavish party was held in her honor at the Radisson in northeast Grand Rapids. This is the poem I penned and read for the occasion:
Aunt Melita, you’ve been
our moment in an African homeland,
otherwise only fabled.
You’ve enabled your nieces to feel
beautiful and pixied, your nephews
to believe themselves warriors [...]
diversion.
Posted in Poetry on July 3, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
(for coloreds only)
we are sequestered in the balcony, a nest
of blackbirds, pecking kettle corn. you call
me your candy apple as sweat rolls down
the long, cool necks of our colas. in the dark,
i can hear the wiry whisk of your beard, thin
fingers flitting absently against your chin, the
futile whir of fans. onscreen, a phonograph
churns Billie’s gravelly [...]
combat.
Posted in Poetry on July 1, 2009 | 4 Comments »
i felt your face, disfigured,
kissed the pleats of keloid
puckering your jaws. you
were cold, flushed with
camphor and distance.
my mother warned of this,
not long after you enlisted:
war transmogrifies the men
and suffocates the wives
with silence.
i know now. i am not the
balm we thought i’d be.
you twitch in your sleep:
reflex, regret. your body a
hollowed rind. when sleep
rescinds, i press [...]
