Category Archives: Women’s poetry

Untitled by Pamela Sneed

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generally I try hard

Not to lose my temper

Even when people piss me off and do mean or shady things I’ll barely respond

But I once taught a class full of guys

All cis hetero that challenged every word I said

Smirked when I tried to give feedback and instructions

They banded together in their disrespect

Then they were all absent going to the protests to stop the genocide in Gaza

One wrote, I encourage you to bring our colleagues during this historic moment

Pamela Sneed

Pamela Sneed is a poet, writer, visual artist, and spoken word & musical performer (Big Mama Thornton). She is the author of Funeral Diva (2020), Imagine Being More Afraid of Freedom than Slavery (1998) and many more. She is a painter, a political artist, and an assemblage and collage artist.
Teaching: She teaches online for the low-residency MFA program at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and is a visiting artist in the summer MFA program. She is an adjunct assistant professor at the Columbia University School of the Arts.

https://publictheater.org/productions/joes-pub/2024/p/pamela-sneed/

https://www.mrqd.org/events-2024/sneed

New Exile Poems by Tuhin Das translated from Bengali

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Splitthisrock.org posted the poem.

By Tuhin Das

Translated from Bengali by Arunava Sinha

1.
I am a writer,
the light burns late
into the night in my room.
My friend cycles past my house on his way to work
at Casey Industrial Park at 4 AM.
When we meet he asks whether I could not
sleep last night because of thoughts of homeland. 

2.
In the album on the bookshelf was a photo of
my father and me together,
beside a yellow taxi.
Behind us, the departure terminal
of Dhaka International Airport.
A friend said,
‘‘Where’s your mother? You don’t exist without her.’’

3.
It is the rainy season in Bangladesh now.
Three out of four parts of my country
are under water.
Outside the City Council Building
I saw the other day a teenager holding,
all by herself,
an environmental placard.
She’s our representative.
She wants a world everyone can live in.
Come, let’s all go stand next to her.

Tribute to Service Workers by Laurie Uttich. November is Women abuse Prevention Month.

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Laurie Uttich

TO MY STUDENT WITH THE DIME-SIZED BRUISES ON THE BACK OF HER ARMS WHO’S STILL ON HER CELLPHONE

Oh honey, you can text him, you can like his meme, you can
follow him on Twitter and to Target, you can ride shotgun, hold
his anger on your lap, pet his pride, be his ride or die. You can
wear those jeans he likes. You can discover Victoria’s
secret, buy a bra with a mind of its own. You can
recite I’m sorry like it’s a Bible verse and Snapchat the shit out


of those purple roses he bought you at Publix. You can try
every one of Cosmo’s 30 Ways to Give an Ultimate Blowjob.
You can remember the name of his mother, his best friend
in 2nd grade, the lunchroom lady who gave him extra
chicken strips on Tuesdays. You can grow out your bangs, toss
your hometown over your shoulder, sleep facing north
with your cheek in his back.
You can strip yourself for parts. But, baby,


it still won’t be enough. You can love him, but you can’t pull
his story out of the dark and slide your arms into it. You can’t
wash it and lay it flat in the sun to soften. You can’t
hold his face in both of your palms and watch tomorrow
bloom from the sheer wanting and waiting of it. It doesn’t
matter if his daddy talked with his hands or his bloodline
is marinated in booze or his mama loved his brother best.
You can’t fix what somebody else broke.


So, girl, put down your phone and pick up
your pen. Take a piece of the dark and put it on a page.
Sylvia Plath waits to wash your feet. And look,
Virginia Woolf has built you another room and painted
it pink. There’s a place for you at the table. Sit next to me;
I got here late. Oh, baby, don’t you feel it? You were knit
for wonder in your mother’s womb.
You were born for the driver’s seat.

—from Rattle #69, Fall 2020
Tribute to Service Workers

#MuslimsReportStuff #haiku #poem @kumailn @aishacs @Amelia_Inc

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#mulimsreportstuff is a brilliant line first used by … (a girl I think, still looking for that tweet) and shows the ridiculousness of seeing muslims in the US (and everywhere else) only as a security issue with two sides: a danger or a reporter of danger. Muslims are poets too and it shows.

Poetry and haiku are already inside what we say. So read more! I have taken a bit of Liberty with the tweets:)

Haikus #MuslimsReportStuff

My brother leaves his wet
towel on the floor every day
FBI pls deal!

@River_Niles

Gremlins 2 is the
rare sequel that completely
deconstructs franchise

@kumailn, Kumali Nanjiani

My sister drank orange
juice straight from the carton, will
Investigate more.

@MrCommonCents, basith

The lines at Costco
are too damn long but samples
are so delicious

@aishacs, Aisha Saeed

My mother uses
store-bought filo pastry
for her samoosas

@ysnkdr, Yaseen Kader

‘though I told everyone
I cleared my car, I actually
put it all in the trunk.

@Chezmoihoney, Jenna

I did laundry this
morning but still have not put
it away, still not

@sananasuds, Sanna M

I want to report
that these Clarks shoes are on sale
Amazing this!

@I_Solemnly5wear

Taping interview
with NPR I REPORT stuff.
All day. Every day.

@asmamk, Asma Khalid

Accidentally ate
pancetta didn’t know it was
bacon, delicious!

@kradiologist, Nuha Krad

“Falafel” means kill
the infidels, kept that a
secret all this time!

@LibyaLiberty, Hend Amry

Shawarma’s delish!
Official Post-victory meal
of the Avengers

@kaleemux, Kaleem

PJ is better
than P-honey, Both pale by
Nutella full stop.

@DrEpid, Atif Kukaswadia

I have my voter
registration card here, I’m
not afraid to use it!

@gildedspine, Sailor Mer(Kaye)ry

How about all the
Muslims who report for service in
our armed forces?

@Amelia_Inc, Amelia Noor-Oshiro

Half-Moon Bay is lovely
Some fogs but the temperatures
are moderate.

@MuslimahMontage, Sabina Khan-Ibarra

#Indigenous #poem #Native #Thanksgiving We thank the Great Spirit

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Canadian Thanksgiving is today. Monday October 10, 2016.

I chose the sentences of this prayer that remind me of why we protest, protect and why we give thanks.
So many lovely turns of phrases: “trees that grow shadows”; “the light which we call our oldest brother” and “the kind being of the darkness that gives us light.” They all turn around how we think of things in our world. In western art and science shadows exist when something stands in the light and another part of it does not, we centre the light and the relation instead of the tree. The moon here is someone who belongs with us instead of an object that serves us, that revolves around us, that creates ebb and flow. The moon a kind being of the darkness, where darkness is not immediately frightening, does not first and foremost hold danger; blackness as kindness.

Giving thanks for the workers who took care of and brought in the harvest. Thanking the singers. Thanking those who hold ceremonies. Thanking all the women who do all this cooking -still.  
Enjoy your family and if you don’t have any, go out and walk in the sun, be outside, roll yourself to a park.

The Thanksgivings
Harriet Maxwell Converse

Translated from a traditional Iroquois prayer

[…] We thank the Great Spirit for the water that comes out of the earth and runs
for our lands.
[…]
We thank the Great Spirit for the branches of the trees that grow shadows
for our shelter.
We thank the Great Spirit for … the thunder
and lightning that water the earth.

We thank the Great Spirit for the light which we call our oldest brother, the sun
that works for our good.
We thank the Great Spirit for all the fruits that grow on the trees and vines.
We thank the Great Spirit for the goodness in making the forests,

and thank
all its trees.
We thank the Great Spirit for the darkness that gives us rest, and for the kind Being
of the darkness that gives us light, the moon.
We thank the Great Spirit for the bright spots in the skies that give us signs,
the stars.
We give the Great Spirit thanks for our workers, who had charge of our harvests.
We give thanks that the voice of the Great Spirit can still be heard
through the words of Ga-ne-o-di-o.
[…]
We thank the Great Spirit for all the persons who perform the ceremonies
on this occasion.

Cuppa, Selina Nwulu #poem #poetryday #blacklivesmatter

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Thinking about a poem with a migraine on the right side of your head. The one thing I noticed reading the poem the first time: I had trouble understanding what was going on, too much buzz. The second read and I skipped the sentences in italics. Didn’t do that on purpose. Both the buzz and the skipping are what this poem is about: people chatting with friends about their life, a crush, ignoring news in the background about lives drowned and lost.

Actually it probably is not the news, because the sentences read more as scattered thoughts. Maybe there is a third person listening. They go from sinking boats, long borders, back to ships, drowned people, memories, sinking people and sinking memories and then to the horrible image of bubbles, last breaths. A friend of mine drowned herself in the February ice. And how do help those people fleeing from religious armies?

I drank through a grande Earl Gray cup, going over this poem at home. I love the female gaze (if Selina identifies as a woman- not sure). A man’s face as a work of art and then he is quickly dismissed for a Friday Night outing. That was funny. We don’t know how to talk about art. And films spend so much time on men.

Do you know anyone with a face you could keep looking at, not someone necessarily that you have a crush on? In painting class the longest pose we did was 6 hours I think. Sculptures for sure. My nephew. People in youtube videos. Friends drinking coffee? The little boy face down on the beach.

And we spend such a short time thinking about drowning desperate people, refugees, that the kettle has boiled. I don’t have to finish the sentence. She didn’t finish her thoughts and we’re off to planning the weekend. And so am I, migraine still there.
Cuppa
by British poet Selina #Nwulu, April 30, 2016
.
.
Put the kettle on.

I’m not being funny but he’s well fit

no, you don’t understand

they’re all sinking in the Mediterranean sea

I’m actually speaking objectively here

our borders have become dense and long

it’s more an observation really

his face is near symmetrical

and their ships have burst into splints

it’s hypnotising

the sea is bloated with people’s limbs

it’s post attraction really

I’m appreciating him as a work of art

their memories did not make it either

well, of course I wouldn’t say no!

they’re all sinking in the Mediterranean sea

but that’s not the point

anyway, we still going out Friday?

watch how the bubbles float and pop.

Kettle’s boiled.

.
.
http://www.selinanwulu.com/poetry/

I want a dyke for president, Zoe Leonard #ImWithHer #HillaryClinton #VPDebate

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I want a dyke for president.

I want a person with AIDS for president and I want a fag for vice president and I want someone with no health insurance and I want someone who grew up in a place where the earth is so saturated with toxic waste that they didn’t have a choice about getting leukemia.

I want a president that had an abortion at sixteen and I want a candidate who isn’t the lesser of two evils and I want a president who lost their last lover to aids, who still sees that in their eyes every time they lay down to rest, who held their lover in their arms and knew they were dying.

I want a president who has stood on line at the clinic, at the dmv, at the welfare office and has been unemployed and layed off and sexually harrassed and gay-bashed and deported.

I want someone who has spent the night in the tombs and had a cross burned on their lawn and survived rape.

I want someone who has been in love and been hurt, who respects sex, who has made mistakes and learned from them.

I want a black woman for president.

I want someone with bad teeth and an attitude, someone who has eaten that nasty hospital food, someone who crossdresses and has done drugs and been in therapy.

I want someone who has committed civil disobedience.

And I want to know why this isn’t possible.

I want to know why we started learning somewhere down the line that a president is always a clown: always a john and never a hooker.

Always a boss and never a worker, always a liar, always a thief and never caught.

— Zoe Leonard, 1992

Watch Mykki Blanco perform Zoe Leonard’s 1992 poem ‘I Want A Dyke For President’: http://dazd.co/2dptAgW

E.J. Scovell, Evening Garden #poem #fear #nature #mondaymotivation

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“Our salient into wild creation” the room a small fortification that presses into the garden. I have enjoyed evening walks in the dusk in large gardens and woods and felt scared when you all of a sudden can’t see leaves anymore, hardly the path, only dark grey tops of trees against nothing. The loveliness of dusk. And then a different space. Where you can feel how wild the trees are. And the soft padded coyotes. And somewhere hangry bears. A life most of us know little of.

The Evening Garden

Not dark nor light but clear,
But lucid with no source of light,
But breathing with no flow of air
The garden journeys into night.

Late gangling flowers lean—
Anemones, tobacco flowers—
Over the gravel, over the brown
And silken leaves that mulch the grass.

More than I did, I now
Leave in the lighted room undrawn
The curtains. More than it used to do
The garden presses on the pane,

Or seems it does, in this
One hour when all is seeming, when
It wars with shadowy lights in the glass,
And losing, is most potent then—

Only in this one hour,
Tidal, returns—day’s utmost edge—
Pressing with eyes of question or power
Gold wild-cat eyes on the window-ledge.

Walled plot of fruit trees, flowers,
What strength it wields, how hard it bears!
Why should it not bear hard? It has
Behind it all the universe.

The lighted room is small.
Now we exist: and now we fashion
A garden and a girdling wall,
Our salient into wild creation.

 

For more reading on this fab poet go here at Mezzo Cammin, Women Poet’s Time line!

 

Childhood…if you’re Black, Nikki Giovanni #poem #BlackLivesMatter

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Nikki-Rosa by Nikki Giovanni

childhood remembrances are always a drag
if you’re Black
you always remember things like living in Woodlawn  
with no inside toilet
and if you become famous or something
they never talk about how happy you were to have
your mother
all to yourself and
how good the water felt when you got your bath
from one of those
big tubs that folk in chicago barbecue in
and somehow when you talk about home
it never gets across how much you
understood their feelings
as the whole family attended meetings about Hollydale
and even though you remember
your biographers never understand
your father’s pain as he sells his stock
and another dream goes
And though you’re poor it isn’t poverty that
concerns you
and though they fought a lot
it isn’t your father’s drinking that makes any difference
but only that everybody is together and you
and your sister have happy birthdays and very good
Christmases
and I really hope no white person ever has cause
to write about me
because they never understand
Black love is Black wealth and they’ll
probably talk about my hard childhood
and never understand that
all the while I was quite happy

Black History Month. From Arnold Rampersad, the Oxford Anthology of African-American Poetry.

A Beautiful Town by Haya Pomrenze #poem #Jewish #death #mourning

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A Beautiful Town by Haya Pomrenze

When my father died I was twelve hundred miles away
because a giggly-bosomed hospice nurse
in loud pink scrubs chirped
that it could be weeks, even a month.
That evening he had mushroom barley soup
then gave each child an I love you.
Over the phone it sounded like a regular I love you
not a final phrase, which is why
you have to see people when they speak to you.
I wish I could say that looking back
I heard my father’s wet cough, his rattled breath
a long pause, which forced me to board a plane.
Instead that night my father went to the bathroom
with his walker and his Jamaican aide he loved like a daughter,
which makes me feel happy and sad. His kidneys shut down
the way his face did when he was hurt or angry.
Back in the railed hospital bed he counted down in real time
the same way he did when we were late for carpool or synagogue.
Five minutes, four minutes, faltered at three.
He made it to one minute, eyes at half-mast.
It’s a beautiful town, he said.

—from Rattle #45, Fall 2014
Tribute to Poets of Faith

__________

Haya Pomrenze: “With the exception of eating rice pudding and chocolate babka, writing poetry is the closest I’ve come to a true spiritual experience. I’m a believer in God on my own terms. I write poems in synagogue, on carpool line, while having sex, working with my psych patients. I have absolute faith in a higher power when I write. There’s a bit of the divine in my mortal words.”

Sunday Afternoon, Denise Levertov #poem #girls #church #wild

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One of these poems that are so lovely your heart aches and you want to spend the rest of the day finding every single poem this poet wrote. A sort of poetry feeding frenzy.

Levertov, Denise Levertov: “[I knew] before I was ten that I was an artist-person and I had a destiny.”

I started reading about her life and I have to close the window, because I must read property law first. Who are the Black Mountain Poets?!

Oh! Look at this title: “The Life Around Us: Selected Poems on Nature (1997)” And “White Owl and Blue Mouse.”

I wonder if the afternoon sun lay red on the white dresses or if they actually changed clothes. Maybe it is a Catholic thing.

Sunday Afternoon

After the First Communion
and the banquet of mangoes and
bridal cake, the young daughters
of the coffee merchant lay down
for 1 long siesta, and their white dresses
lay beside them in quietness
and the white veils floated
in their dreams as the flies buzzed.

But as the afternoon
burned to a close they rose
and ran about the neighborhood
among the halfbuilt villas
alive, alive, kicking a basketball, wearing
other new’ dresses, of bloodred velvet.

If you are forever watching dogs or just your own dog, this rhythm in the next poem feels so very familiar… Except in spring when a dog needs to sniff every scent in 30 minutes of pausing for half a block. And except in Winter when it is too cold on the bottom of the paws and the only scents are the neighbours dogs’ yellow snow.

Overland to the Islands

Let’s go—much as that dog goes,
intently haphazard. The
Mexican light on a day that
‘smells like autumn in Connecticut’
makes iris ripples on his
black gleaming fur—and that too
is as one would desire—a radiance
consorting with the dance.
.                                                    Under his feet
rocks and mud, his imagination, sniffing,
engaged in its perceptions—dancing
edgeways, there’s nothing
the dog disdains on his way,
nevertheless he
keeps moving, changing
pace and approach but
not direction—’every step an arrival.’

Denise Levertov (b. 1923)

Intercity by Margarida Vale de Gato #sex #poem #love

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Intercity

we ride down the backs of hills inside
the earth eating eucalyptus eating haystacks
spitting out the wind spitting out time spitting out
time
time the trains gulp the opposite way going
the opposite way stealing our time my love

I need you who are flying
to me
but you fly unfurling sails over the sea
you have wing-space you hover you drift while I
keep crawling towards you along the rails
with occasional sparks I write to you my love
cheating your absence the claustrophobia of the mustard
coloured curtains you walk on water and now
I know
words are less worthy than boats

I need you my love in this loneliness this forsakenness
of thick curtains preventing the sun preventing my
flight and nevertheless on the opposite side
the sky boasts little lamb clouds hopping
hopping on oats and wheat fields there are none here
we eat eucalyptus eucalyptus and whitewashed churches
leaning over level-crossing whitewashed churches
my love
I smoke a cigarette in between two stops I read
Lobo Antunes I think people are sad people
are so sad people are pathetic my
love just as well you hide me from the world you hide
me from the world’s patronising smiles the world’s
self-righteous consent
by night on your loins my love I
am also a boat sitting on top of your body
I am a mast

I need you my love I am tired I ache
close to where my eyes are set I feel like crying still I
desire you but before before you touch me before you say
I want you my love you shall let me sleep a hundred years
a hundred years from today we’ll be boats again
I am lonely
Portugal is everlasting we eat eucalyptus
everlasting eucalyptus lean and green
we eat eucalyptus interspersed with shrubs
we eat eucalyptus the ache of your absence my love
we eat this heat and the railtracks and anguish
set ablaze inside Lobo Antunes’ novel
we eat eucalyptus and Portugal is everlasting Portugal
is huge and I need you and in the opposite way they are stealing
time it’s our time they are stealing my love it’s time
time for us to be boats and sail through walls inside rooms
my love to be boats at night
at night to blow oh sweetly blow into full sail

boats.

 

Intercidades

galopamos pelas costas dos montes no interior
da terra a comer eucaliptos a comer os entulhos de feno
a cuspir o vento a cuspir o tempo a cuspir
o tempo
o tempo que os comboios do sentido contrário engolem
do sentido contrário roubam-nos o tempo meu amor

preciso de ti que vens voando
até mim
mas voas à vela sobre o mar
e tens espaço asas por isso vogas à deriva enquanto eu
vou rastejando ao teu encontro sobre os carris faiscando
ocasionalmente e escrevo para ti meu amor
a enganar a tua ausência a claustrofobia de cortinas
cor de mostarda tu caminhas sobre a água e agora
eu sei
as palavras valem menos do que os barcos

preciso de ti meu amor nesta solidão neste desamparo
de cortinas espessas que impedem o sol que me impedem
de voar e ainda assim do outro lado
o céu exibe nuvens pequeninas carneirinhos a trotar
a trotar sobre searas de aveia e trigais aqui não há
comemos eucaliptos eucaliptos e igrejas caiadas
debruçadas sobre os apeadeiros igrejas caiadas
meu amor
eu fumo um cigarro entre duas paragens leio
o Lobo Antunes e penso as pessoas são tristes as
as pessoas são tão tristes as pessoas são patéticas meu
amor ainda bem que tu me escondes do mundo me escondes
dos sorrisos condescendentes do mundo da comiseração
do mundo
à noite no teu corpo meu amor eu
também sou um barco sentada sobre o teu ventre
sou um mastro

preciso de ti meu amor estou cansada dói-me
em volta dos olhos tenho vontade de chorar mesmo assim
desejo-te mas antes antes de me tocares de dizeres quero-te
meu amor hás-de deixar-me dormir cem anos
depois de cem anos voltaremos a ser barcos
eu estou só
Portugal nunca mais acaba comemos eucaliptos
eucaliptos intermináveis longos e verdes
comemos eucaliptos entremeados de arbustos
comemos eucaliptos a dor da tua ausência meu amor
comemos este calor e os caminhos de ferro e a angústia
a deflagrar combustão no livro do Lobo Antunes
comemos eucaliptos e Portugal nunca mais acaba Portugal
é enorme eu preciso de ti e em sentido contrário roubam-nos
o tempo roubam-nos o tempo meu amor tempo
o tempo para sermos barcos e atravessar paredes dentro dos quartos
meu amor para sermos barcos à noite
à noite a soprar docemente sobre as velas acesas

barcos.

© Translation by Margarida Vale de Gato and Ana Hudson, 2010

in Mulher ao Mar, 2010http://www.poemsfromtheportuguese.org/Margarida__Vale_de_Gato

The sea is for us all, O mar é para todos nós, Isabel Aguiar, One never returns to the same place.

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The sea is for us all

The sea is for us all
The sea has mystical fish
The sea is the Firmament
The sea is the Firmament
The sea is the Firmament
Only the mystical fish can jump into the nets
Only the mystical fish can jump into the nets
Only the mystical fish can jump into the nets
Only the mystical fish can jump into the nets
The nets Are the Entire Firmament Sparkling.

O mar é para todos nós

O mar é para todos nós
O mar tem peixes místicos
O mar é o Firmamento
O mar é o Firmamento
O mar é o Firmamento
Só os peixes místicos sabem saltar para as redes
Só os peixes místicos sabem saltar para as redes
Só os peixe místicos sabem saltar para as redes
Só os peixes místicos sabem saltar para as redes
As redes São Todo o Firmamento a Luzir.

ONE NEVER RETURNS TO THE SAME PLACE

therefore, when the child left the marigold field behind
he looked back several times

NUNCA SE REGRESSA AO MESMO LUGAR
por isso, quando a criança partiu do campo dos malmequeres
olhou muitas vezes para trás

in Nunca se Regressa ao Mesmo Lugar, 2003

the child counted twenty three lambs

the child counted twenty three lambs, covered in soft wool, in order
to be less cold as she remembered her mother knitting
baby-pink booties.

a criança contou vinte e três carneirinhos

a criança contou vinte e três carneirinhos, cobertos de lã macia, para
sentir menos frio a lembrar-se da mãe a tricotar umas botas de dormir
cor de rosa bebé.
in Nunca se Regressa ao Mesmo Lugar, 2003

© Translated by Ana Hudson, 2012

Sometimes by Helga Moreira

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Sometimes when you read a translation, you know it is not right, because it doesn’t make sense and it doesn’t seem to be in the tradition of non-sensical poems.  I remember a little Latin and some Papiamentu:) This is what I think the poem says. If you are fluent in Portuguese and you think I am wrong, I would be glad if you let me know!

Sometimes

I.
Sometimes it’s almost a state.
Almost a tree, almost a lake.

2.
Somewhere in the right place.
Something in the wrong place.
Neither a tree nor a lake.
A complete negation.

3.
Let everything go on and on.
And then you guess right – London Bridge.
Bridges built over a state of panic.
Late evening on a clear night.
Shall we find the horizon
by looking at where it is absent?

1.
Por vezes é quase um estado.
Quase uma árvore, quase um lago.

2.
Um lugar no sítio certo.
Qualquer coisa no sítio errado.
Nem árvore, nem lago.
A negação por completo.

3.
Deixa que tudo siga.
Adivinha-se então – London Bridge.
Pontes por sobre o pânico.
Serão em noite clara.
Vamos adivinhar o horizonte
em negação interrogada?

© Translated by Ana Hudson, 2011. I changed Hudson’s translation.
in Agora que falamos de morrer, 2006