For women, then, poetry is not a luxury. It is a vital necessity of our existence. It forms the quality of the light within which we predicate our hopes and dreams toward survival and change, first made into language, then into idea, then into more tangible action.
once it blooms, maguey dies like your hand in my back pocket hand in my hand tongue in my ear green to tan to gray to black and blue bruise crescenting your eyebrow beloved why won’t you look at me today? why will you only touch me in darkness? I am not jasmine, I do…
by Marina Tinone Jook Songs, Yale’s Asian and Asian-American spoken word group, performed their last show of the academic year in Hopper Cabaret last weekend. The show’s theme, “Sunrise”, was chosen based on the personal difficulties from their previous semester. This idea of sunrise– of light after times of darkness– developed through each of the…
A mí mamita le decían la reina My great-grandmother would smile with all her teeth Let out a laugh that everyone still remembers Dicen que cocinaba como no te imaginás And she’d wear dresses with flowers and sunbeams on them Wearing them with a flare like only a dark-skinned woman could Yes A mí mamita…
Speakers off tonight Turn off your headlights tonight Don’t drive the road to slow Don’t look too close tonight My body is a vessel for stories When I was little Every night before bed my mother would read me Myths and legends hailing from West Africa The adventures of Anansi Stories of little girls and…