Kalenderns femte lucka tilldelas en mycket spännande poet, Daisy Fried.
[Daisy Fried is the author of three books of poetry: Women's Poetry: Poems and Advice (University of Pittsburgh, 2013), named by Library Journal one of the five best poetry books of 2013, My Brother is Getting Arrested Again (University of Pittsburgh, 2006), a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, and She Didn't Mean to Do It
(University of Pittsburgh, 2000), which won the Agnes Lynch Starrett Award.]
***
Teri Ellen Cross Davis is a Cave Canem fellow and has attended the Soul Mountain Writer’s Retreat, the Virginia Center for Creative Arts, and the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown. Her work has been published in many anthologies including, Bum Rush The Page: A Def Poetry Jam, Gathering Ground: A Reader Celebrating Cave Canem’s First Decade, Growing Up Girl, Full Moon on K Street: Poems About Washington, DC, and Check the Rhyme: An Anthology of Female Poets & Emcees. Source: Gival Press
East 149th Street (Symphony for a Black Girl), by Teri Ellen Cross Davis
(From Haint : poems. Arlington, Virginia : Gival Press, 2016.)
sitting too long
skinny cinnamon burnt legs
cramped. Momma's thigh
suctioned your ear
relief was turning your head
a new view of the television
but nothing was better than
matching candy-colored beads
symmetrical cornrows
braids swinging rhythmically
aluminum sneaking its shine
through the hair's woven layers
and the freedom of skipping
on sidewalks, blacktopped driveways,
running round backyards, listening
to the beads clanging kiss
the crescendo then whispering - this
music celebrating the movement of you
***
Ode to Now 'n' Laters, by Teri Ellen Cross Davis
(From Haint : poems. Arlington, Virginia : Gival Press, 2016.)
Tucked under her pillowcase
heaven is a roller-filled roll away.
The night cut by the sound
of unwrapping candy - silence
before each saturated fold
is peeled away, revealing
apple, banana, pineapple, or sweet, tart cherry.
Always now, now, now, never later
as the moon winks in slick approval
from an otherwise cold adult sky. But here
yields glory exploding on her tongue,
juice filling her mouth
so much so, she smacks her lips,
breaking the night’s polite rules.
In this dank cave she calls a mouth,
every taste bud is hollering hallelujah,
called to witness how the essence of a thing
only softens when stretched and sucked so hard
the mouth’s roof pays in tender.
And in the mouth’s wet joy, all parties
become malleable, teased apart with teeth,
cajoled to reunion by a happy tongue.
Candy shares its secrets now, how
much sugar, corn syrup, artificial flavors
and dyes, until she arrives at its heart,
its ephemeral moment, when a thing is
the most it will ever be and no more.
This is the pulse of the god of pleasure -
seduction and destruction in one last
brutally beautiful swallow. And all the mouth is
wondering is when will it happen again?
So who can blame her? Once awakened
all she does is eat another (now)
and another (now) until she falls back asleep
and satisfaction is the enamel’s slow erosion.
***
Avslutningsvis en liten förstudie till en av rubrikerna som kommer att inleda 2017, "Motherhood".
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| "Maternity" (1902) painting by Stanisław Wyspiański |
Letdown, by Teri Ellen Cross Davis
(From Haint : poems. Arlington, Virginia : Gival Press, 2016.)
The books say that milk letdown
feels like pins and needles
but when you're pumping at work
it's more like lungs constricting
under the crush of chlorinated water.
You know, god willing, when she's 16 or 25
you'll never be this essential again.
So remember this smothering need now,
the engorged breasts, the suction, the release.
Know the ache swelling and flowing from you,
is caused by your hands cradling plastic bottles,
that your warm, twisting baby is elsewhere,
away from you. Know the sadness will threaten
to sweep you under, each time you take out the pump
and you can't swim away from it. You must do this for her.
You must stay, you must drown.
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