April 2, 2011 Poetry Challenge

Today’s prompt is “something about a poetry event.”

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Iyeoka Ivie Okoawo, WXW 2011 Feature Poet

HERE IS OUR PARADISE

And suddenly I flash forward to menopause.
Will I have birthed enough children by then?
This gift in my life at this time,
is the process of
Making progress in preparation
to unwind and receive you,
who will be born to resemble my heart
and the spirit of our ancestors combined.
Your arrival will be celebrated!
Everyone I know will BELIEVE in miracles!
We want you here on this earth
not just so we can love you,
but so YOU can fully experience
the wonderment of this beautiful life.

At this time, we are living in a world
that I want you to see.

Most of it is still incredible and GREEN!
Right now we have MOVIE THEATERS
and INTERNET.
Education is at your fingertips.
You’re gonna love it!
To pull you through into my universe
I Know how it is done.
My ancestors have been doing it for centuries.
They were some in my tribe who were born
not from LOVE but from rape and humiliation.
But you, YOU will be different.
With you, I can dream you until you come to be:
The ultimate manifestation of a perfect delivery.
Your soul deserves to be chosen.
I’m sure of it!
What took Iyeokan so long to give birth to Inegbenosun?
What took Osiris so long to conquer the afterlife?
What took Yemaya so long to follow her heart
deeper into the bluest ocean?
This, my love, is our JOURNEY to begin!
Here is our paradise.
I’m sure of it.

ESAN GLOSSARY:
Inegbenosun- (N. male) protected by the god of Osun divinity
Iyeokan- (N) Birth mother of Inegbenosun. I am not a female to be insulted. I am one to be fully honored.

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Shappy Seasholtz, WXW 2011 Feature Poet:

NYC

Poets, don’t move here.
It’s too expensive.

The internet makes every big fish
Swim in a bigger pond these days.

However, I will never deny your right to pay twice as much for stuff.

You will be rewarded for paying to live here in blurbs and wine and cheese.

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Chris Funkhouser:

A reading in St. Louis

Hatched to seduce that eve sumpter gnawed down
Hatched seducing that eve sumpter gnawed down
Cauliflowers, my babies, he’s golf’s leered towing-lines

Feedlots’ tomfool like I feed toboggans
If I’m feedlots’ tomfool like I feed toboggans
Pacification’s my Troy and majoring my gyro

Squirrels. Loud-hailers wolfhound with her dialogues riling
Pulley-blocks that mammals arithmetically by her
If it wasn’t for her and her
That mammal I lour would haunt golf now, now

I gormandize the Squirrel. Loud-hailers Bluebottle
Bluebottle as I can bayonet
That man’s gormandizing hearings like a robot’s cashing in the scuts
Or elementarily he wouldn’t haunt golf snootily fancifully from me

I lour my babies like a scholar boxing loved his picturesqueness
Like a Kennametal colloquium loved his mint’n Ruth
lour my mammals to the dawdlers I did

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Bill Riley:

“The Reading”

They wanted to know
how hard it is to write
and then read
something that matters,
that lasts,
that groans
from belly to bowels.
Really rip ‘em off.
Sledgehammer to the brain,
all that.
So I let them in on a secret.
It isn’t the writing that’s tough
but the between poem witticisms
that really make the
stuff soar.
And here’s the thing, I said.
I get lots of my repartee
from bathroom walls.
You say, what about The Now?
I say, I’m pink therefore I’m Spam.
A girl said, does Ovid matter?
And I said, I saw, I conquered, I came.
Lots of public bathrooms
and a notebook.
That’s it.
This also helps to explain the arrest
the mug shot
and the sign in the yard.

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Seth Brown:

“Perspective”

Last week I wrote
a fantastic poem
to alternately elicit laughter and tears
a poem that everyone would connect with
even you
but when I went to share it with an audience
I realized that someone had replaced it with a terrible poem
and I had not noticed earlier
because all the words were the same

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Taylor Mali:

Fill Me

Nothing speaks from a deeper wound,
a truer more unguarded well
inside the ragged mortal sanctum,
than the secrets I whisper to myself,
the holy pleas I dream of coming
out of lovers’ mouths.

Nights like this, spread wide with want,
near breaking, raw, I beseech myself
with breathless prayers and beggings,
touch my skin and make demands
in another’s voice, with another’s hands.

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Omar Holmon:

my 4 weirdest moments post performing a poem

1

he shakes my hands and says that Jesus toaster poem was hilarious yo,
then he asks.“so you smoke weed right”

I reply no
He then says, “Really? Oh wow. So that’s Natural?”
It is now that i realize that apparently my sense of humor
is so out there that I must be on some type of stimulant
and that I am not makes it all the more of an anomaly…

2

After a feature set an elderly lady tells me
“that was a lot different from the black poetry we usually hear
it’s usually about heroin addiction and drugs but that was good”

at the moment I really didn’t know whether to say thank you,
I’m sorry (with a heavy upward inflection) or …what the fuck?

3

I agree to allow the audio version poem to be used in a college radio broadcast
the student journalist introduces me by saying
“the next poet name is Omar Holmon, he is African-American and wears glasses”

As if being black and wearing glasses was such a rare thing
I then googled it and found it pretty much is so then I didn’t feel as bad
but seriously….African-American and wears glasses?

Couldn’t go with funny or anything like that? No?
Not detailed enough? Black and glasses, thats the best imagery ever.

4

There is this awkward feeling that comes with the first and only poem
you write and memorize for a girl and than performing it in front of that
girl without her knowing it….

I do not know what the name of this awkward feeling is but if I could
possibly make one up for it i would call it “whydidijustdothat”

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matt mcfadden:

a poetry event*

where truth-tellers speak lightning
to a darkened room
and nerd kings summon angels
for the afternoon.

* This short poem is a head-on collision
between two haiku. The first line common to both
becomes the title (with “a” added). The 2nd and 3rd
lines of each stay mostly intact, with a slight alteration
in wording, to become the new joined body. The question
remaining for me is whether the new creation is
“drive-able” as is or ought to be taken to the junk yard,
perhaps salvaged for parts…

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Robert Harrison:

something about a poetry event

Her words are colliding inside my head.
Each thought splitting in two.
My ears must be too close together.
Or maybe her stanzas are too compact.
Could just be it’s too empty in there.
Whatever it is, I am in desperate need of
Mental control rods to prevent this reaction from going nuclear.

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Emily Pulfer-Terino:

Traffic Somewhere

Here is our event:
you wake somewhere
I’m not. The sky is bright
as salt, sifting
through the screen.
The poem is a place
In which I know you,
who I do not know.
I know you; and here I go,
making something of it.
You have to make room
for separateness, listen
for the echoes. I hear you
love this morning air, a little
wind, traffic somewhere,
birds all talking over one another.

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By Mongane Cornu, Grade 9, Miss Hall’s School

You might don’t know it but it is here.
You don’t know what you should feel.
Love is coming so fast.
You think you can handle it.
You think you can control it.
But love is a mystery.
You don’t see it or feel it coming.
Love is developing itself everyday of your life without you knowing it.
And one day, you are surprised.
You don’t understand how feelings like this came into your heart,
Into your brain,
Into your body,
Into your entire person.
It might be a guy, It might be a girl… It might be whoever you want.
But the thing you should know is if this person is good for you.
Even if love doesn’t let you chose,
Just think about what you want and what you deserve

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By Catherine Wessel, Grade 9, Miss Hall’s School

August as a Kid

In sweet august the air is heavy and ripe with summer.
I swing slowly, every moment tumbling into the next,
time slows.
The grass is parched and prickly under my bare feet,
the sun, relentless,
the sky so blue it hurts to look.
It seems as if I have a whole album of these days,
in my backyard,
waiting for something,
anything,
as the swing beats a time like a pendulum.

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By Evie Monroe, Grade 9, Miss Hall’s School

Tears drop like rain on the pavement
A white thin layer covers the ground
As you lye curled up with a feeling of loneliness
Nothing feels good anymore
Your shell of happiness has been broken
Left feeling bare and vulnerable

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By Lianna Brown, Grade 9, Miss Hall’s School

Walk through

I walk through the doors,
And feel the rush and excitement
almost like entering a new world.
The words flow over me. Pouring into
My ears and floating out of my mouth.
The competiton is fierce but the feeling
Is calm. Letters and words are yelled out,
And I feel weighed down by the beauty
Of the poem.

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By Bryte Kiser, Grade 9, Miss Hall’s School

Paradise

Sparkly hats with my shiny dazzling top.
Beach scarves and click clap flip flops
Covered in smiles and bursts of laughter,
While drowning in unforgettable moments.