Austin Transplanted Poet, Anis Mojgani, For Those Who Can Still Ride An Airplane For The First Time. Ask any slam/spoken word poet who their favorite poet is and odds are that this miracle of a man is in their top 5. He astounds. He lifts. He soothes. He is one of the best we’ve got. Also a Write Bloody Author, you can find him touring all over the country and more of his work at The Piano Farm.

Austin Poet, Danny Strack, A Wish That The Universe Wasn’t Made Out of Clocks, Danny is a one of those brilliant people who understands science and poetry and can makes sense if it in a stunning way. He also juggles. Literally. Find more of his work on his website. And look for him traveling around the country and being the slammaster for the Austin Poetry Slam, Tuesday nights at SpiderHouse Ballroom. 

Austin Slam Poet, Lacey Roop, Gender is a Universe. This is the first poem I ever saw Lacey do. So much heart and expansive language. This poem says and does so much. You can check out more of Lacey’s work on her website. Also, look for her touring across the country and at her home venue tonight, SpiderHouse Ballroom in Austin, TX. 

Winter Issue of Muzzle

stevietheclumsy:

I’m super duper excited about the latest issue of Muzzle!

With poems by Malachi Black, Reginald Dwayne Betts, Gregory Pardlo, Cristin O’Keefe Aptowicz, Sierra DeMulder, Megan Falley, Michael Mlekoday, and many other talented folks, this might just be my favorite issue yet. The poetry happening in this issue is just flat out stunning. 

Oh damn. So many glorious writers in this issue! Can’t wait to snuggle with it.

(via meganfalley)

Unconventional Love Poem #4, Shira Erlichman, God Showed Up Wanting to Make Love

Well, I said, I

just want you

to know I’ve got

hair

around my nipples,

a rash of red pinpricks

on both thighs plus

my bottom, I’m

pretty

sure it smells like

trashed cod down

there, my

plaque has

plaque, I’m hungry,

too fast and

tired, quiet to

a fault, but

when the waves

break 

with their

tongues

I break

things, every

thing, plus

I’ll leave you

then tell my 

girlfriends you

left me.

I snore.

I spittle 

and dream loudly.

I cry while 

laughing I break

vases of silence

till what’s left

is

love, and I can’t

be having that

around too long

like a nobody’s dog

looking to stay.

I’m a nobody’s dog

looking to stay.

Helpless.

Help.

 

Well, said God,

I’m glad you spoke

first. You’re

so beautiful

it makes me

nervous.

{Shira Erlichman is an award winning musician and poet. She is 1/4 of the spoons of Dirt Choir, A Poetry Bazaar for the Honest Strange and Mighty. She is one of the most magical talents I know. Find more of her work here.

Unconventional Love Poem #3 Erica Miriam Fabri, Grandmother Love Poem

poem in the voice of Madelyn Dunham, Barack Obama’s grandmother

I got married on prom night, to a man my mother hated. 
He was from the wrong side of the tracks. And I liked it.
He loved me, despite my beaked nose, and I love the way
he kissed my painted eyelids when we slow-danced.
We had to keep the wedding secret until after the graduation. 
I held the small gold ring under my tongue all day long in school.
Then, right before bed, after I said goodnight to my parents
and whispered my prayers into my cupped hands, I’d pull it
from my lips an slide it onto my finger until morning.

When our daughter was born, we gave her a boy’s name.
When she was still swimming inside me, I made a wish
that she’d be a different kind of girl, that she would dream
of rare trees and winds that were unlike our own.
Be careful what you wish for.

When she brought the African man home for dinner,
I caught her reaching for his hands under the table. I was certain
they were wolves’ hands he wore, wolves’ hands that went inside
my girl to shape and mold a child that would be half-wolf
when he was born. She married the African man in secret,
on an island without me. There was nothing I could do.
After all, she had inherited this wolf-heart from me,
tied it to a rope and hung it from her neck. It looked like
a divine ornament. It made a noise like thunder.

{Erica Miriam Fabri is the author of Dialect of a Skirt, a collection of poetry published by Hanging Loose Press. It was hard to choose just one from this book. Find more of her stunning poems here.}

Unconventional Love Poem #2, Derrick C. Brown, Woman Sleeping In a Room Full of Hummingbirds

Teased by success.
we are like vampires in tampon factory.
It doesn’t have to be this way.

The only good monologue has mistakes.

I will read out of this book of drawings.
This is a book of lovers/freaks I tried to change.
I had new visions of them and tried to draw them all in a book.
The strange thing is… my drawings kind of look like you.

In some ways you look like the star of the wheelchair parade.
This one lover and I went everywhere in our wheelchairs.
I couldn’t convince this lover that some day, I needed to stand on my own.
So it ended ugly and they rolled out of my life forever.

This is a self portrait.
I drew myself as a Bengal Tiger smacked up out of its orange. 
Pacing, just pacing until my next meal. Grrrr.
Shading’s a little off.
I call it “Hushing my legs out to the twilight poison
of h-h-hot bitch knife flavored lip gloss- in still life.”
This was the point in my life where I blabbed too much
and that shooed away inspiration.

I didn’t have a grasp of what was happening to my heart
until after that first break up. I won’t bore you with anything
but the necessary details but let’s just say I was plowing anything
that smelled disinfected and didn’t wear pookah shells.

I was fake.
I tried all kinds of leadership seminars 
to shirl these feelings of being fake.

I started making lists to get the stripes back on the tiger.
I was watching my stripes slip from my spine,
laying there on the ground like a bunch of parenthesis.
Not to sound self-righteous, but the lists became my glue to become myself again. 

It was text I had crafted from a place I didn’t ever know existed.
No bald headed philosophies. Just boot strap shit.

Go away therapy. Flush home pills. Make lists.
My lists started out strange.
When I got to the end of them,
I felt beautiful, but yes, they did start out strange.

#1. Do something rebellious to get out of your comfort zone.

My first graffiti art said, “Don’t pierce your babies ears.
They don’t like it and no one thinks it’s cute except for you
and your friends with jet skis.”
That felt pretty bitchin’ and looked kinda gangsta in a Mormon sorta way. 

#2. Write something down that is impossible and write it as possible.

It took me a while but I came up with this little gem. 

“Be on time.”

There are a whole bunch I made, which are a bit embarrassing, 
but the last one became my favorite.

#46. One day, when you are tired of being broken,
carefully strap little LED lights to hummingbirds,
at least 52 of them
and release the birds into your lover’s bedroom at night.

When he or she asks you what is going on,
tell him or her to be still,
lay there like idiots,
make some dumb wishes and enjoy your shooting stars.
The ones you made on your own.
Make endless wishes.

The birds can take it. 

{Derrick Brown is the author of I Love You Is Back, Scandalabra, Strange Light and others, as well as the Grand Puba of Write Bloody Publishing. He is a failed mime and the captain of everything else. Visit his shenanigans here.

Unconventional Love Poem #1 Rob Sturma, Hard

She is all neck and bones flanking her velvet.

I take the gargoyle pill and hang over the church of her.

What a joke, 

these useless marble wings, this casket shell.

I am a thousand pounds, threatening

to fashion her into rose petal pulp

if I spiral down. Stone trumps bone. My gravity

is poison to us both.

This is a sentence that can never end. 

Every night while I repose and collapse

into a simian droll stupor, she picks out my liver,

blood and bile glossing her beak like lipstick instinct.

It is pain that fills me with honey and aria orgasm.

Now when I am awake, I comprehend the thrill of needles. 

How the right level of sting and swell

can make you grab the bedsheets with both claws.

It is blameless.

It is a language that I have shattered the Rosetta Stone to.

I am learning it by context and error. 

I speak it like an infant.

I could just end her, I think; I could just land on her stupid thorns.

It is easier to swallow that capsule,

to be still, mute, and hard. 

{Rob Sturma is the author of Miles of Hallelujah and the editor of Aim for the Head, A Zombie Poetry Anthology, both available from Write Bloody. You can follow his tumblr too.}