towards by Minha Choi

in ,

Web Team member Minha Choi shares a poem.

 

In her bedroom, the four walls nestle us safely away from the space. We start by laying down the pillows on her bed next to each other, side by side. The slight chills cause goosebumps to tiptoe quietly all over me, bits of little little sensations I can feel

and there is nothing in this room except me, her and the in between

facing each other, I stammer something about her being poetry, but really what I meant to say is that her eyes are much larger than mine, approximately, maybe no more than half a centimeter wider, both horizontally and vertically, and the irises, brown and tinged, intersect the eyelid and waterline exactly at one point and nowhere else, and now that I’m closer I can notice how her eyelids fold into many layers and deepen still when they smile in the corners, like I’ve seen on thousands of others that have faced mine, sockets of her eyes sunken so that her nose stands out more in contrast, everything about her face a contrast, a skin darker than mine, a shade of brown that complements the lightness in her eyes, shade of things that I’ve seen in my life - comb patterned earthenware, earl gray milk tea with two seconds of heavy cream, wood furniture from Brewster’s Café, my tan back in 2016 a day after the beach, her smile lines form a parenthesis around her lips when she notices that I’m staring at her features, so I don’t look away when the parenthesis are joined by bigger ones shadowed into a trail, laughter lines that accentuate her softer cheeks, mirrored by the crease between her smile and her chin, all while my hands make their way to her jawline tracing up to her ear, right below a head of thick, cropped hair that fades at the edges and falls around her brows, shaped into a long arch that decorates her face solemnly and charmingly with strands of hair, that face that looks young and old, wanting and waning, casting me a look that I’ve never seen before and always hoped to see more of, a look that mirrors strangers, lovers, families, those faces that I’ve seen somewhere at the end of a space and the beginning of another, which focuses my attention back to her lips, her lips, her lips, thinking about the time when god I wished she was a boy, god I wish those lips were a boy’s so I could kiss her, wishing that I could see her no more than an inch away, instead of from a distance from across the stadium, so that I could see those eyelashes and count them, so that her features won’t be blurred worlds away, so that I could see the whites of her eyes more clearly, the way they showed in the dark like glow in the dark stickers on my childhood bedroom’s ceiling, like childhood like I’ve never experienced before, until she places her hands on my waist, and suddenly I have the urge to close my eyes but I don’t, and instead watch her half lidded and focused and wanting and searching for the hems of my shirt, her hands sliding under the rough edges of a shirt that I’ve worn for so long that I can feel the threads unraveling and undoing, static like small lightning bolts shooting down on every second of my skin that comes in contact with hers, her jaw tense, small lines marked in between her brows like focused exclamation marks, and suddenly the swelling can be felt between my legs and the questions are answered, me and her separated by a sliver of nothing but space, space in between that holds the what ifs and what abouts and what the fuck is happening right now, enclosed by a gentle push from lets say, the wind, and the rest of the effort is focused towards enclosing the endless spaces that seem to appear between her and me, two mouths tilting, an act that can be described as none other than desperate, tried in despair because everything else has failed us, the blissful embarrassment of wondering where my hands should be placed, how my legs should be parted, and despite everything we’ve been through my eyes are open, even when they’re no more than a single fraction away from her eyelids, and so when I lean towards you and you lean towards me, when we towards and towards each other and finally close into one another, is that collision love?

“AW.” by Jessie Sun

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Web & Event Team member Jessie Sun shares a poem written in Florence last summer.

 

I got tulips from the market on my way back 

Bright orange

Surrounded by the little yellow on the edge 


I washed the beer bottle we left in

the garbage can last night

and put the tulips in 

“AW.” perfectly fit 

-

I should learn how to walk instead of getting in so many accidents every time

i am on the street

“AW.”

I hurt my knee

and my jaw 


I had some wine and went back home 

for some first- aid spray

World spinned

Am I drunk

“AW.” 

Oh, I fell

- 

Walked into a coffee shop

Espresso

Iced americano

Latte with oat


I’m not creative

That’s all I would get


“Have a good one!”

“AW. Thanks, u 2”


I always wonder if people really 

wish me a good day

Or they’re just saying  


It’s not my culture

I don’t fucking know

-

“AW.” I always just take it

Excess by Laila Kayyali

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Poetry editor Laila Kayyali shares a poem in which she responds to the poem "Glimpse" by Ada Limón.

 

Glimpse

In the bathroom our last

cat comes up to me and purrs

even without touch she purrs

and there are times I can

hold her when no one else

can hold her. She once

belonged to my husband’s

ex-girlfriend who is no longer

of the earth and what I’ve

never told him is that some

nights when I touch her

I wonder of the cat is feeling

my touch or just remembering

her last owner’s touch. She

is an ancient cat and prickly.

When we are alone I sing

full throated in the empty house

and she meows and mewls

like we’ve done this before

but we haven’t done this before.

— Ada Limón

 

Excess

In response to “Glimpse”

There is both a friendly and hostile aspect about the ability of things fitting, lopping off the excess; hence separate, sever, several. His ex-girlfriend, the cat, you. Today is every single yesterday. The cat must know this. She is relieved from the constraint of loving only a single person's touch. In absence, a low protective wall comes before the skin, around a healing wound. Near, nearer, nearest. Hope; hence readiness. Like buds in winter, warming their pinched faces in the sun. She is glad to be with you, and you her. You are glad to be together.

— Laila Kayyali


shape watching by Minha Choi

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Web Team member Minha Choi shares a poem about a time she spent hours watching everything around her and realized that everything has lines in it.

 

I am surrounded by sharp lines all the time.

there are so many of them

they drive me crazy enough to miss the times that I never had when I never knew of them.

when the lines stare back at me

when lines slice the open spaces into twos

when lines slice a stranger passing by in halves

when lines trap the ones I love in its belly

when lines trap the world in its belly for display

and when lines strike wind flying unexpectedly

I frantically trace the figure with my eyes, feeling its edges

and can’t help but hope that the beginning will meet the end,

then back,

then from the end to the beginning,

where a line will end and another will start.

but after that is nothing.

nothing and its unforgiving presence

sometimes, a comfort

On unassuming days nothing stills me and I can’t waver where nothing touched me

I hear the lines shriek and yell “betrayal!” and then crumble apart

where everything kept falling and falling

where the alarm clock never rang

where thoughts were in terms of negatives

where death seemed a cruel question mark

where nothing nothing nothing nothing nothing was a steady beating void

where I kept crying like tears evaporating

where the beginning was a beginning and the ending was an ending

where quietly, quietly

it will not pass quickly enough by Ranina Simon

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Poetry Editor Ranina Simon shares a poem about wishing to belong (to a city; to a person) as easily as two old Chinese fishermen.

your youth betrays you

doe-eyed in someone else’s coat

breaking your thousand-yard sulk 

for the men who have crossed this bridge more times 

than the express trains

so while you play chicken with everyone’s footsteps

daring the runners to shove your back

into the east river

they’ve inhaled enough of the churn to match 

your drowning gasp

on their four-limbed commute

(two wheels, two legs)

over the floor that’s more river than floor

past the railing getting strangled by some brooklyn wind 

the wheeled one pedaling a languid stroll

the legged one walking with spokes for shins


remember that this water’s mostly salt 

as you inspect their passing haul

(four poles, no fish)

you’ll feel one step closer to the spray lapping 

at the bottoms of your boots 

when the high tide swells in your eyes 

because his hat tilts the same angle as 

his hat

over liver spots

and his hands clutch the handlebars the same way 

his hands 

wield the poles 

and he could burn a trail down the grates 

switch a gear and let the skyline blur

the clouds get caught in his crow’s feet

the air roaring with the waves


but you’re crying because he won’t 

and the river infects you like you wish the city would 

each gray hair bleached in a dollar’s worth 

of soy sauce and pizza grease 

holes torn in jacket pocket seams

loose change tumbling

(three quarters, two dimes

the pennies multiplying)

until the floor stops rumbling 

because the men have reached solid ground 

at their snail’s pace 

an arm’s length 

the same time 

to keep their line of conversation slack

their bloodless hooks waving goodbye

to your dry, stoic back.

19 Safaris, by Jake Goldstein

in , ,

today i am sure that
everyone looks like
salvador dali
but when the professor
asks “if anyone feels like
salvador dali”
no one raises their hand.
considering that, I realize:

i have stood on enough corners and
sniffed enough happiness
(my sinuses are always clogged)
and had enough nights of
careless jaywalking to
think long and hard enough
to decide there’s not much
to be done about it.
even then,

i have meditated, three times, i think,
thrown my phone out the window
and grown wings as I jumped out to catch
it (now they’re just two large scars;
they look like rorschach tests).
that brought me understanding.
and so I have now:

bought every item on amazon
shoplifted your birthday present
shared drugs (with my hands
tied behind my back;
bobbing for apples)
smiled at myself in the mirror
for an hour making small
adjustments to my lips
remembering that i
once named my
baby teeth
and then they all fell out.
that’s
what made me realize that

for 19 safaris i have had
a platonic relationship
with the moon;
now I wonder if i
should make it
my goal to change that,
falling asleep to the
sounds of the hardwood
couple yelling sonnet 18
in perfect iambic pentameter.

untitled (in dedication to Nadejda M.), by Simona

in ,

Vacation morning number eight, good morning
Black sea waves in languor kissing

Vacation morning number eight, good mourning
I am alive and prancing at the beach
With hidden exaltation in each guilty gulp of glitter air
Waves are making love, a grace of life in reach
I am sun and salt and sand and lying on my back

Lunch back at the hotel with
Mom sobbing and all those stupid old waitresses around
Tears in the creases of her face as she eats her meal
I put my fork down and weep as well, I have found
That it’s the prosaic that beats me swiftly down

We get back home, have to get
Our nicest black dresses out
Some heathen on the bus to church stared at
Us, the Christian juggernaut
My mom and her cross and me with my pout
I still dislike the yellow phallic candles
They whimper in heat, drip and burn my hand
(swollen incantations swallow us)
As we say goodbye to the gentlest pagan goddess in the land
I touch the dead and sip the wine and stand

In A Summer, by Natalie

in ,

You let the record needle
fall and so the matilija
poppies bloom everywhere they look
like giant fried eggs and
I walk past the Blue
Motel and feel like I
am about to do something
really awful it is true
I am and I remember
you, nose and lip bleeding
from a dog bite and
I remember your father, palm
filled with a Van Morrison cd.
You play one song on
stereo then switch to the
Powerball radio stream and I
get my eyes dilated and
the optometrist shows me what
my retina looks like and
says “the more colorful the
retina the worse the eyesight”
“what colors can the retina
be?” “orange and red and black
and yellow” “and so it
makes you sad to see
a beautiful retina?” “yes” and
we spoon Cholula into tortilla
soup and you say “I
can play Satisfaction on my
dad’s guitar” and then pull
randomly at strings and I
know that I am being
selfish but that is just
how it is and our
clothes are so heavy by
now and my knees go
yellow and blue and the
police shine flashlights into your
black car and I am
very calm because I do
not care what they do
to me or us now.

First Response, by Eva

in ,

the streets are walked empty tonight,
room made for cold noises to roam.

outside, an ambulance tilts its horn
like so much static: a white noise

slighted into yellow. indoors, we spill into electricity
like all the lights flooding in,

a whirlpool of tightened strings. mouth shut like torn rubber. hands seeping into rooms with no more soft

to give way. the boots down the hallway and dirt spell protection,
so I tell them my name in the way tearing

off rose petals sounds like a freeing. the first step after invasion is healing. the password is the year and a weather

of cold. in the stretchers we’ll fall back into becoming,
and remember how in reconstruction,

we stitched needles into empty pieces.



French Tarot, by Jae

in ,

1.

Out of the blue, avalanches pulled trains

into the ocean. Your father got distracted

while coming undone & the people—

they watched his descent, void of guilt.

2.

There’s a reason you hate fortunetellers

& examination. They instruct: Never kiss

a throat so soft. Avoid September favors.

See if you have your father’s red headache.

3.

You burned too much space & the world

got a little smaller. Painting oysters

only goes so far if you keep swallowing them

whole, sitting on tea-colored pews.

Piecemeal Departure, by Chelsea Cheng

in ,
01.
lethargy / don't tell me what / wine-drenched smile / i can (will? must?) save you / half-emptied heart / "god is dead" / 8am cassette tapes / time travel in summer rain / i can't and i can't / sky high exhibitions / apology not accepted / the clock pulls me out / keep me in that goddamn swamp / or else
02.
 in the palm of your motherfucking hand / sorry for the inconvenience / lie down and sink / blue sunset / bourbon / what's in a name? / don't listen to the midnight podcast / you your yours / crawl back (in)to her / this train will not stop here / and so
03.
a ghost is dancing on your shriveled tongue

An etymology of hunger, by Carliann

in ,

There is a corner of the internet in which people post videos of themselves eating as many calories as they possibly can. They call it the 10,000 calorie challenge in which: one person stares through the camera to prove they eat 5 times the daily caloric amount recommended by some organization and I don't know why this exists or why I know this exists, that one video alone has 11 million views but it looks like he’s watching me watch him and When I was twelve I went to the grocery store with my mom and in the fluorescent lighting of the frozen food aisle emerged an old woman who came up to us and told us that we looked so much alike, I must’ve been an immaculate conception. The look in her eyes told me she believed it so much I was confused to have had my most religious experience next to the dairy section. Head of lettuce ear of corn blood pudding hearts of palm elbow pasta kidney bean angel hair, something about religion and bread as body, I learned once that somewhere in Freud you can come to the conclusion that hunger is the prototype of all satisfaction because feeling satiated is only ever temporary. I’m not really interested in psychoanalysis but when I was asked where we turn to for instinctual gratification a computer seems like a weird answer. There are 166 definitions for the word hunger in the oxford english dictionary. There are 166 calories in one tablespoon peanut butter and one medium apple. I wonder how many of them have to do with desire; I found a list of “hunger related diseases” and it features Malnutrition. I didn’t know that it can also mean when the body has too many nutrients. Official diagnosis: early satiety. What it is: a condition marked by feeling full after having eaten just a small amount of food. Really they should call it hunger that doesn't come or maybe hunger that lasts- some things sound like a blessing but feel like a curse, I took a class once about nature and every single book in the first section of the class taught us that bread was a poison, that the clearest way for men connected to nature to lose that connection was by turning wheat into bread. This wasn't the first time food marked a transition from something sacred to something less. Some definitions for the word feed: to furnish for consumption; to supply for maintenance or operation, as to a machine; to be nourished or gratified, subsist; a format that provides users with frequently updated content. WFP says hunger kills more than AIDS, malaria, tuberculosis combined. I don’t know what WFP is but I do know that There is a website titled “I am a Ghrelin Addict”. Ghrelin is a hunger hormone. Our body secretes it when we haven’t eaten. It makes you hungry but also, apparently, enhances learning and memory and increases our concentration of dopamine.Empty productivity.Hunger Anonymous.

Today, by Natalie Breuer

in ,

Today I saw a bonsai tree for sale in the window of a liquor store

 

 

& today I found a tiny clump of concrete that looked

like a pair of lungs

& today I threw darts at a board, barefoot

& today I poured cajeta on toast &

looked down

& today I saw a dozen wasps swarm through a

mass of evening light

& today a streetlamp burned itself cold.

I almost told you about it.

 

Once, you said that intimacy was an impossibility

for us, but at my apartment you left

a watercolor of an ovenbird in a pepper tree

& a handful of white hammer oysters

& a string of Tibetan prayer flags

& a Louis Wain print of cats playing hockey.

 

I remember you

& you, paying for film slides at luster photo on avenue a

& you, drinking pesole on the kitchen floor & coughing

& you, throwing up in a dogwood bush

& you, hanging an opaque sheet from the ceiling,

standing on a wooden chair

& your skin soft like lime oil

& your skin.

Les amours imaginaires, by Simona

in

bag and bra and belt have been abandonedon the floor, the scattered remnants of a frenzied nightthe silky dress still clingingto the edge of the bed, almosttouching her she sleeps nowat lastand her soft breaths make the room hold its ownwhile I wake and look upon hereyes closed, mouth blow-a-kiss openand thinkI may very well say this here and now I love her  and I love how she turns her back to mestill deep in slumberwhile I rise from my own bedand wash and dress and eatand go outside to celebrate the tendernesswithin me the dance of the imagined lovers is onlyfor one

this one, by Ondine

in ,

this one’s for new york city and the rolling bitumenbeneath my feet on meserole streetthe soggy subway cars that inject youinto the city and hide you momentarily beneaththe earth’s crustthis one’s for the guy on the corner deliwho once put chicken in my blt but its okay because he asks me how youdoing sweety where you been that’s three dollarsthis one’s for the exaggeration, hyperbole,overreaction that is inherent everywhere-on prince and broadway, bedford and 6th,houston and lafayette,this one’s for the friends that call me,for the friends that don’t, the friends that willand the ones that won’tfor the three-legged dog that doesn’t quit:this one’s for you

From our Editors: tiny tomorrow manifesto from Justin Hong

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Hello! I'm Justin Hong, West 10th's poetry editor! I'm a junior studying Asian/Pacific/American Studies and Creative Writing. I am also all about dat anticolonialism, antiimperialism, antiracism, etc. tiny tomorrow manifesto/ Justin Hongafter Arundhati Roy  [tomorrow’s instruction manual is nestled inside this very if.]justplaintired, bonefizzy, and looking past yourself, you’re  learning how to make happy, freight happywith things that haven’t  happened yet. in  this sort of invention, the see-do poetics has amagazine you stuff with a dustcoated heirloom dream.  you tug on the trigger and the expired ammu-nition shatters, linguafranca barrel shatters. does  the handheld poetics shatter? it must. joy! but thatis all prepwork. for real step1 is: how to make rubble [hope] count?  

Poetry Review: Dobby Gibson's It Becomes You

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Dobby Gibson’s newest full-length book of poetry, It Becomes You (Graywolf Press, 2013) is a mismatched collection. Gibson writes of the details of his daily lives. He has many. He is a father, a Minneapolitan, a bearer of malignancies, and, of course, a poet. He really is a poet.At worst, he is clever. Just clever. At best, his lyrical poetry is spot-on. He is able to make something neat and crushing out of the chaos in which he lives. Not at his best or his worst, however, his poetry reads like a long list of interesting things and ideas. And that isn’t bad.The book is divided into five sections. The first, second, and forth comprise the bulk of the book. They are one- to two-page poems. They do most of the work. His third section, a list, is called “40 Fortunes.” It’s hit-or-miss, but mostly just clever.“1. There isn’t an ocean for a thousand miles, but that doesn’t mean this isn’t beach.2. At the necessary moment, going naked will be your most convincing disguise.3. If you can fix a lawn mower with a pen knife, you are a funny old man.”The last section, his magnum opus and the book’s title poem, is thirteen pages long. It bears his signature wit, but it is also highly political (at least satirically so) and highly personal at the same time. It touches on so many of the book’s so many themes.This is a book worth reading. Gibson leads an interesting life. He has interesting ideas, and he sure is clever.-Beau Peregoy, Poetry Editor

Read This Book: A Brief Look at Sam Pink's Rontel

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The narrator of Sam Pink's latest book, Rontel, makes it clear from the beginning what it's like inside his head: "If people had access to my thoughts and feelings, I’d be asked to live on a rock in outer space—one with a long tether to a building in Chicago if any of my friends (just kidding) wanted to come visit.” But he's so wrong. So wonderfully, wonderfully wrong.In a style reminiscent of Knut Hamsun's Hunger, Rontel takes a look inside the mind of a twenty-something year old as he wanders aimlessly about Chicago. Sometimes he eats a sandwich. Sometimes he stares at homeless people. Sometimes he thinks about getting a job. Sometimes he adds "Let me show you how a real man (does something)" to his conversations because he doesn't know why but it sure makes him sound a whole lot more like a real man. And sometimes he rides the train and reads the paper:"I looked up from the paper and out the window.Felt like my face was the ugliest melt ever at that point.Like, the worst.I felt so stupid looking.Always felt ugly and stupid on the train.Like almost, sagged.Sagged out.Sagged out and sorry.Horrific.Sorry I’m so saggy, but I’m sagged out and sorry.Suck my dick—I thought, addressing myself.The train was underground.I stared at the tunnel wall, and its lighting.Thought about stabbing someone in the throat repeatedly.Is there any way to do it except repeatedly.Could it really stop after one stab.I thought about stabbing someone once then just standing there.Seemed like that would be worse.What would I do just standing there after the first stab.Would I talk to the victim.If they said something to me, I feel like I’d definitely respond.So I’d either have to stand there to make sure the person died or stab them repeatedly to ensure it.Also, seemed like if I stabbed once then paused, it would be hard to get back into it.It’d be like sweating in a shirt then taking the shirt off and putting it back on, like, fifteen minutes later.So, yeah.Repeatedly.Once seemed cruel.That would be the worst thing to read: “Man stabbed in throat once, dies in alley over an extended period of time.”Just get it done—I thought, looking back inside the train car.Finish everything you start.Finish yourself.I’ma finish you, Chicago—I thought, feeling pleasure in my testicles from the shaking of the train."No man that thinks such thoughts should be exiled to a rock. We should be parading him around all of the town squares we possess and singing his praises.Or we should at least call him up and say something positive like, "That'll do, pig." Something to that effect.I say this because, on the surface level, this is perhaps one of the most mundane books I've ever come across. I mean it. He doesn't do anything. He just sort of exists for 96 pages. However, we are given complete access to any and all of the narrator's thoughts, no matter how pathetic, uninteresting, disgusting, or depressing they may be. And it's hysterical. The book is absolutely brilliant, and you should really go and buy it right now. But make no mistake, these aren't just the narrator's thoughts. No, no, no, my friends. These are our thoughts.At first, you almost hate the author for it. You hate him for even intimating that people could think thoughts like the ones above. But the book is so funny, you choose to continue and hope the narrator will redeem himself along the way. Needless to say, he doesn't. In fact, he gets worse. It's around this time that you find it harder and harder to distance yourself from the narrator's hypnotizing honesty. Slowly, the disgust leaves your mind, and you begin to realize that these unapologetic thoughts are the redemption. You realize the character never required any salvation because there's nothing wrong with him. He's you and he's me, and there is something so liberating about that.This is the glory of Sam Pink's writing. He drags us through the ugliest, filthiest parts of our minds and still manages, whether intentionally or not, to make us feel beautiful, still make us genuinely wonder at the dull, brief mysteries of our lives.-Joe Masco, Assistant Poetry Editor

Poetry Review: Zbigniew Herbert's "Elegy for the Departure"

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Polish poet Zbigniew Herbert (1924-1998) is perhaps best known in America for his poem “Report from the Besieged City,” and for his ability to demythologize time-worn tales as in “Why the Classics” or “Daedalus and Icarus.”In 1999 Ecco Press published Elegy for the Departure, a collection of poems translated into English for the first time. The collection includes poems from Herbert’s 1990 book of the same title as well as poems from earlier volumes. The book is arranged in roughly chronological order from 1950 to 1990. Some of the poems, especially in the first section, display Herbert’s attention to myth, his political voice: “—how to lead / people away from the ruins / how to lead / the chorus from poems—”. Much of the collection, though, turns to a more personal voice. He speaks often of his childhood: “home was the telescope of childhood / the skin of emotion / a sister’s cheek / branch of a tree.” In the later poems of the book he is ruminative, looking back upon his life: “I thought then / that before the deluge it was necessary / to save / one / thing / small / warm / faithful.” The language throughout the collection is lively, whimsical when you least expect it. Section three is made of clever prose poems that read like abbreviated fables: funny and sad all at once. Each is titled with a single noun, which the poem goes on to offer a definition of. “Drunkards” are people who “drink at one gulp, bottoms up,” who spend their time looking up through the necks of their bottles, but maybe “if they had stronger heads and more taste, they would be astronomers.” We also hear from a Wolf caught in one of Aesop’s fables. The wolf is terrorizing the sheep, but he admits that, “Were it not for Aesop, we would sit on our hind legs and gaze at the sunset. I like to do this very much.”I am continually amazed in reading Herbert’s poems—both long and short—at his ability to move the reader forward in the poem without any use of punctuation. This is a style that is certainly abused by many of us amateur writers so it is refreshing to see it done so well. I’ll leave you with my favorite lines from the book, which demonstrate the energy and rhythm of Herbert’s writing. From “The Troubles of a Little Creator”:A small puppy in vast empty spacein a world not yet readyI worked from the beginningwearing my arm to the quickthe earth uncertain as a dandelion puff ballI pressed it with my pilgrim’s footwith a double blow of my eyesI fixed the skyand with a mad fantasyimagined the color blue--Laura Stephenson, Editor-in-Chief