Omotara

Consider the relationship of the speaker to the subject who is being addressed. What do their stories have in common; how do they differ. Allow this argument be the overheard conversation of the poem.

Prompt: The Ekphrastic Epistolary (after Dr. Dior J. Stephens)
 
Write a poem that is directly addressed to a known person, dead or alive. Think Elton John and Princess Diana. Whether the subtext of your poem is love lost, or the mortal coil, allow the lyrical intimacy to bloom.

The poems and the prompts are given freely, but if you are so moved, please reach out in gratitude to the poets and to the wonderful team @poetsorg who make this program possible. The work deserves to be celebrated, IMHO🙏🏾

It’s an honour to merely sit with these poems, nevertheless to help steward the work of these poets into the world. Please be on the lookout for more prompts throughout my curation.

Thrilled share Ama Codjoe’s sensational poem from my Poem-a-Day curation. If you have not had a chance to read the full poem, please make your way to the homepage of poets.org now! Ama’s poetry astounds. I am moved to offer a prompt, inspired by Ama’s poem, out of sheer gratitude.

The FDA approves first U.S. at-home tool as a Pap-smear alternative Women can use a wand to collect a vaginal sample, then mail it to a lab that will screen for cervical cancer. The device will be available by prescription through a telehealth service.

Women can use a wand to collect a vaginal sample, then mail it to a lab that will screen for cervical cancer. The device will be available by prescription through a telehealth service.
By @jenniferludden.bsky.social

The Naomi Shihab Nye Prize was established in 2024 for writers in the Arab community to create book length stories for and about young Arab readers.

First prize: $1,000; second: $500.

Learn more about the prize here: www.albustanseeds.org/naomi-shihab...

Seeing those men being paraded in shackles, heads shaved, heads down sent to a random country and we have no list of names, proof of criminality, or even proof of nationality is terrifying. El Salvador agreeing to keep them as long as the US keeps paying is terrifying. It could be any one of us next

Israel just killed hundreds of Palestinians, including kids.

The US just killed dozens of Yemenis, including kids.

"Why do they hate us?" asks the American public, blissfully ignorant of what's being done in its name in the Middle East by the US and its ally Israel.

Sigh.

If Black History Month is not viable then wind does not carry the seeds and drop them on fertile ground rain does not dampen the land and encourage the seeds to root sun does not warm the earth and kiss the seedlings and tell them plain: You’re As Good As Anybody Else You’ve Got A Place Here, Too

Celebrate Black history. “BLK History Month” BY Nikki Giovanni

That time we all heard it, cool and clear, cutting across the hot grit of the day. The major Voice. The adult Voice forgoing Rolling River, forgoing tearful tale of bale and barge and other symptoms of an old despond. Warning, in music-words devout and large, that we are each other’s harvest: we are each other’s business: we are each other’s magnitude and bond. From The Essential Gwendolyn Brooks (Library of America, 2005).

Celebrate Black poetry. “Paul Robeson” by Gwendolyn Brooks

Celebrate Black poetry. Excerpt from “34” (from “Blood Dazzler”).

17.
Wait with me.
Watch me sleep in this room
that looks so much like night.
I’m gon’ wake up, I swear it
to some kind of sun.

Thanks for sharing the work!

Cover of Song of my Softening by Omotara James. Shows the back of a black woman with short hair and some simple gold jewelry, wearing a skirt but no top. She stands in front of a green background that shows the shades of her dark brown skin and how her back ripples as she raises her arms as if posing or dancing.

2. Continuing #blackhistorymonth #poetry, hopefully you don't need me to tell you to read Omotara James's SONG OF MY SOFTENING. I'm gonna say more but need to go teach some students 😅 @omotarajames.bsky.social

Love everything Love the sky and sea, trees and rivers, mountains and abysses. Love animals, and not just because you are one. Love your parents and your children, even if you have none. Love your spouse or partner, no matter what either word means to you. Love until you create a cavern in your loving, until it seethes like a volcano. Love everytime. Love your enemies. Love the enemies of your enemies. Love those whose very idea of love is hate. Love the liars and the fakes. Love the tattletales and the hypercrits, the hucksters and the traitors. Love the thieves because everyone has thought of stealing something at least once. Love the rich who live only to empty your purse or wallet. Love the poverty of your empty coin purse or wallet. Love your piss and sweat and shit. Love your and others’ chatter and its proof of the expansiveness of nothingness. Love your shadows and their silent censure. Love your fears, yesterday’s and tomorrow’s. Love your yesterdays and tomorrows. Love your beginning and your end. Love the fact that your end is another beginning, or could be, for someone else. Love yourself, but not too much that you cannot love everything and everyone else. Love everywhere. Love in the absence of love. Love the monsters breeding in every corner of the city and suburb, all throughout the soil of the countryside. Love the monster breeding inside you and slaughter him with love. Love the shipwreck of your body, your mind’s salted garden. Love love.

Celebrate Black poetry. “Beatitude” by John Keene

let ruin end here let him find honey where there was once a slaughter let him enter the lion’s cage & find a field of lilacs let this be the healing & if not let it be From Don’t Call Us Dead (Graywolf Press, 2017). Copyright © 2017 by Danez Smith. Used by permission of The Permissions Company, Inc., on behalf of Graywolf Press, www.graywolfpress.org.

Celebrate Black poetry. “little prayer” by Danez Smith

For De Lissa In these days of less and less sun your love points and I follow like the blind moths you beg me not to kill half-asleep and the sun lesser than a minute before I’ll let you go into the night and you say and I follow your love of winged things to the back door watch you empty your hands into the sky In the morning you will wake before me and walk out into the yard the sun acts like a father as if it never left moths sing of you from wherever moths go to sing

Celebrate Black poetry. “Ode to the Common Clothes Moth” by Tyree Daye

Emergency Food, TB Tests and H.I.V. Drugs: Vital Health Aid Remains Frozen Despite Court Ruling (Gift Article) The Trump administration appears to be flouting a judge’s order pausing the dismantling of U.S.A.I.D.

“parents in Kenya whose children are believed to have tuberculosis cannot get them tested. There is no clean drinking water in camps in Nigeria or Bangladesh for people who fled civil conflict. A therapeutic food program cannot treat acutely malnourished children in South Sudan.”

Calling all poets! Enter the Marsh Hawk Press Poetry Prize for a chance to win $2,000 and publication. Submissions open until April 30th! ✍️✨ #PoetryContest #WritingCommunity

Come write poems with me!

Thank you!

Amanda, thank you kindly for supporting the work! If you have the threshold and capacity to rate the book, I’d be grateful. 🙏🏾

Shiny new copy of Omotara James’ debut poetry collection, Song of My Softening, laying on my kitchen island.

I’m infinitely grateful to Jennica Harper for introducing me to the poetry of Omotara James. Reading ‘Song of My Softening’ as a fat woman is a fucking gift, and the collection offers so much more beyond that.

@omotarajames.bsky.social

♥️

When A Nigga Call You a Faggot You gotta laugh at least once. Like the pot calling the kettle A more dangerous thing. When he spits it your mouth, you must swallow the sour, hurt of anxiety. How your lips make him salivate. When he swings his fist, duck down and tackle him to the ground with soft kisses. When a nigga call you a faggot, He’s calling you by his first name. He’s telling you about his-self. His own fault lines splitting his tongue, toxic and tender. He’s crying for help from the bottom of the ocean. When it discharges from his throat, imagine it lands on the shores of which both your bodies washed up. When a nigga calls you a faggot, you still gotta call him brother. You still gotta pray he makes it home at night.

Celebrate Black poetry. “When A Nigga Call You a Faggot” by Jzl Jmz (FKA jayy dodd) aka [Lady Tournament]

Ugh

Horrid. How did you find out?

Today, I found out that the Department of Defense banned the Well-Read Black Girl anthology by Glory Edim. I was one of its contributors.

I'm really hurt right now. So if you have it in you, please buy books by Black women from independent bookstores.

Summer Last summer, two discrete young snakes left their skin on my small porch, two mornings in a row. Being postmodern now, I pretended as if I did not see them, nor understand what I knew to be circling inside me. Instead, every hour I told my son to stop with his incessant back-chat. I peeled a banana. And cursed God—His arrogance, His gall—to still expect our devotion after creating love. And mosquitoes. I showed my son the papery dead skins so he could know, too, what it feels like when something shows up at your door—twice—telling you what you already know.

Celebrate Black poetry. “Summer” by Robin Coste Lewis.