Poetry Month Spotlight: Amanda Reavey

by | Apr 20, 2023 | NPM 2023, Poetry

Poetry Month Spotlight

Amanda Reavey

The Attrition of Luz

 

Home #1.

……………..In the beginning, there were no orphans, but God created a cloud which burst into a thousand pieces and it rained. The sky littered with diamonds.

Home #2.
…………….Language is a curious thing. How to shape her lips to fit this. It could be a flood or a dam. Her yaya said, “and she cries and cries and cries. Because that’s what Luz is.”

Home #3. Ormoc City, Leyte, Philippines
…………….Luzviminda knew something would happen two days before it did. She went outside where the air smelled like pig roast, sampaguitas and shit, and meditated on a stoop along the Malbasag River. She realized the circumstances of her birth were not unlike the baby Jesus. Her mother: unwed, pregnant. There was no father because she was immaculately conceived. No, there was a father; her father was god.

Home #4. Tacloban, Philippines
…………….She didn’t learn of her divinity until she was eleven years old, but others had already begun to suspect it when she was four. Her foster father, drunk on San Miguel and an unbearable sun, lunged at her with a karambit knife and the next thing she knew she was crouched down on all fours on the highest branch of a jackfruit tree.

…………….“She flew! She flew!” the housemaid shrieked.
…………….“She didn’t fly, she floated!” her foster mother said.
…………….That evening, at exactly 7:00pm, a social worker arrived. After three hours of trying to coaxing Luzviminda out of the tree, they decided to saw it down. Once on the ground, she looked up and shook her little fist: “Ako si Luzviminda. Huwag mo akong kalimutan.” I am Luzviminda. Don’t you forget me.

Home #5. Angono, Rizal, Philippines
…………….She knew then that she could grow wings. Once, she flew to the top of the Bay Leaf Hotel where there was a restaurant overlooking Manila Bay. She watched as the owner’s son snapped his fingers and a servant was immediately there. The Don Papas flowed freely from a carafe. How beautiful it must be.

Home #6. Taytay, Rizal, Philippines
…………….The process of becoming an adult happens very quickly. In a night that turns the blackness to lemon green, the moon ashen. Irises the shape of discs transmute into crescents. A shooting start fixes forever on the retinas. This is the moment he asks you how an Asian leopard cat moves and you immediately drop to the ground on all fours. This is Luzviminda. Before she bends, she whispers, “ako si Luzviminda. Huwag mo akong kalimutan.” I am Luzviminda. Don’t you forget me.

Home #7. Metro Manila, Philippines
…………….Luzviminda can’t think in the way you want her to. If you try to push her into talking she’ll start rocking –– an outrigger canoe several knots from where it started –– staring at the wall until she sees herself reflected back. The caretaker calls the children to the table for dinner. When Luzviminda doesn’t turn, the caretaker taps her shoulder. She flinches. Sensation hurts. What can we do? We stop. Instead, we wait. At the limit or point beyond which the thinking begins. Ako si Luzviminda. Huwag mo akong kalimutan. I am Luzviminda. Don’t you forget me.

Home #8. Metro Manila, Philippines

…………….

…………….

 

Home #9. Muntinlupa City, Philippines
…………….Days later, in a different house, she awoke to discover the white linens had turned red and she bled for six days. After, she climbed an iron fence and found a garden where she picked lemons from the tree and squeezed them, letting the juices run down her face, her neck. To cleanse the body.
…………….That day the Pasig River reversed itself and flowed upwards. Taking her towards the sky. Along an orange-red blue. What does it mean to switch hands? To go. …………….Again. To go. Again. To go. Again. Again. To go.
…………….Ako si Luzviminda. Huwag mo akong kalimutan. I am Luzviminda. Don’t you forget me.
Ako si ––. Ako si ––. Ako si ––.
…………….I am. I am. I am.

 

This poem was previously published at TRUCK.

About Amanda Reavey

Amanda Reavey is an Emeritus Poetry Fellow at Black Earth Institute and the author of Marilyn (The Operating System, 2015), which won the 2017 Best Book Award in Poetry from the Association for Asian American Studies. She is a member of the Wisconsin Fellowship of Poets and holds an MFA in Writing & Poetics from Naropa University. She curates the Tabi Po! Poetry Series & Open Mic every third Sunday of the month at County Clare Irish Pub in Milwaukee. More at www.tabipopoetry.com.

National Poetry Month
National Poetry Month

BMP Celebrates National Poetry Month

Happy National Poetry Month! For poets and poetry lovers—and perhaps for those who love poets—this is a special time. At Brain Mill Press, we like to celebrate all month long by sharing featured poets, and with our fee-free contest. This year, we’re thinking about poetry cycles, poems that speak to each other, forms that build on each other (like crowns), and the ways a poem can be a scaffold or foundation for other poems. Our words are often in response to other poems, and our own body of work is often an ongoing conversation. We speak to each other, with ourselves, and sometimes into the void—hoping someone will answer back.

Editors’ Pick Week 1: ‘Eulogy’ Cycle by Trinity Richardson

by | Apr 13, 2023 | National Poetry Month, NPM 2023, Poetry

Editors' Pick, Week 1

'Eulogy' Cycle by Trinity Richardson

Eulogy

 

Do you remember
the night that
you got so stoned
I had to drive us home
I’d never driven your car
the seat was too low
and you kept
saying things
that didn’t make sense
or
at least
that I didn’t want
to hear
I drove five miles
with the emergency brake on
and when we got home
you asked if I’d ever
been to a funeral
I said I’ve given
a eulogy but
you didn’t ask who
the eulogy was for
just asked if I would
give yours

Eulogy II

 

You ask: How do you pay your rent?
And the answer is so much more
complicated than I care to disclose because
it’s Wednesdays after school
picking out candy at the supermarket,
and crosswords done in pen.
It’s late nights with Monopoly
and double-scooped butter pecan–
an extra 50 cents for sprinkles.
It’s Summers spent at the pool,
the smell of sunscreen and chlorine,
and the pleasant ache of sunburnt skin.
It’s years spent in hospitals,
sterile white rooms that reeked
of antiseptic and sickness,
and nurses rushing to and fro,
knowing they get to go home to their families.
It’s seeing him get worse instead of better,
skin-and-bones and get well soon balloons
tied up in cheery rainbow ribbon.
It’s an intubation tube because his wife
couldn’t pay the bills on her own,
begged him to stay, demanded he stay,
even though he was already gone.
It’s laughing at his funeral because
the pastor called him by the wrong name
and it’s too much to handle
and there’s no tears left.
It’s watching Star Trek by myself,
his rocking chair empty, knowing
I’ll never get to do anything
with him again.

Jareen Imam author photo

Trinity Richardson is a full-time student studying Communications and Creative Writing at the University of South Florida. They are a part of the Judy Genshaft Honors College, and a writer for Women in Technology International. Outside of art, their interests include writing, journaling, and faerie-hunting.

National Poetry Month

BMP Celebrates National Poetry Month

Happy National Poetry Month! For poets and poetry lovers—and perhaps for those who love poets—this is a special time. At Brain Mill Press, we like to celebrate all month long by sharing featured poets, and with our fee-free contest. This year, we’re thinking about poetry cycles, poems that speak to each other, forms that build on each other (like crowns), and the ways a poem can be a scaffold or foundation for other poems. Our words are often in response to other poems, and our own body of work is often an ongoing conversation. We speak to each other, with ourselves, and sometimes into the void—hoping someone will answer back.

Top photo by Lukas Rychvalsky via Pexels

Poetry Month Spotlight: Mauricio Kilwein Guevara

by | Apr 13, 2023 | NPM 2023, Poetry

Poetry Month Spotlight

Mauricio Kilwein Guevara

The White Top in the Basement

per Vittoria

This is what I remember: furiously pumping the wooden handle a dozen times, spinning the metal top in my grandparents’ basement until I made the universe, whir, release star-sparks. I can still recall the names of the newest constellations. Twist it Tight like a Fat Rat’s Tail. The Johnstown Flood. Watch-I’ll-Be-Hit-by-a-Car. Swallow of Fireflies. And my favorite, O, O, Camarón Tintantón.

My dervish threw sparks into space that were fairy green, match-strike yellow. Jinn were hiding in the threads of the azure sky.

Then always this before the aperture of a new day:

The asterism on the ceiling, close as untouchable, the shape of two arms folded, put me to sleep like music in a box:

تيتة

 

The Bridge

para Beatriz

His first surprise in this new America is unspoken:
Snow. It floats down out of the gray white up,
falling, touching his wings like puffs of chalk:
No more. More now. Falling cold slowly all
around him, like a million stars. He looks up
at his mother, who is changed.

……………………She is older in the snowlight,
smiling. Nieve. But her word comes only as a steam puff.
Language falling away, in the world becoming white.
The little beast is five years old. Everything
begins to shake and roar. Snow and beneath
his feet the world begins again. Ferrocarril,
she shouts out, like a horn or bell he cannot hear.

“The Bridge,” from Postmortem © 1994 by Maurice Kilwein Guevara, originally published by the University of Georgia Press, is reprinted by permission of Mauricio Kilwein Guevara.

 

Looking into My Mother’s Eyes, Waiting

 

with masks. ¿Can you tell,”
say the river emeralds,
“que estoy sonreindo?”

About Mauricio Kilwein Guevara

Mauricio Kilwein Guevara was born in Boyacá, Colombia, and raised in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He has published three collections of poetry and Autobiography of So-and -So, a volume of micro-fictions and prose poems. He has also published a book of literary translations in Madrid, Spain. His magical realist comedy, The Last Bridge/El último puente, received a fully staged reading Off-Broadway. He has taught fiction writing and poetry writing for many years in the graduate writing program at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee. In addition, he has been a visiting professor in Colombia, Cuba, Ecuador, and México. Excerpts from Kilwein Guevara’s soon-to-be completed novel, The Thieves of Guevara, have recently been published or are forthcoming in Washington Square Review, The Georgia Review, and Prairie Schooner. More at www.kilweinguevara.com.

National Poetry Month

Photo by Janet Jennerjohn

National Poetry Month

BMP Celebrates National Poetry Month

Happy National Poetry Month! For poets and poetry lovers—and perhaps for those who love poets—this is a special time. At Brain Mill Press, we like to celebrate all month long by sharing featured poets, and with our fee-free contest. This year, we’re thinking about poetry cycles, poems that speak to each other, forms that build on each other (like crowns), and the ways a poem can be a scaffold or foundation for other poems. Our words are often in response to other poems, and our own body of work is often an ongoing conversation. We speak to each other, with ourselves, and sometimes into the void—hoping someone will answer back.

Poetry Month Spotlight: Wendy Vardaman

by | Apr 5, 2023 | NPM 2023, Poetry, Reading

Poetry Month Spotlight

Wendy Vardaman

all my poems are old poems

 

all my poems are old poems, so during
the night I promise my trying-to-sleep & ruminating
self to write a sonnet this morning,
more or less to make the point that I still can.
even if I don’t choose to solidify experience
that way any more. they were snap shots, the poems I wrote.
a thousand or two. hundreds of sonnets.
notes on the children. marriage. rage. my aging

parents. to process my thoughts/
emotions/sensory overload. framed into hard
edged squares of story. I don’t know where this poem
is going. I never did. any more than we know
what’s next in life—the surprises, beautiful
and terrible. the constraints

 

meditation on impermanence

 

sometimes you’re zooming around scotland or barcelona. sometimes you’re home, looking out the window of your zoomroom while the rain falls, the ball of a clumsy left foot held by an office chair’s fork

sometimes you’re female. sometimes your feet stop working together

sometimes you’ve just had lunch with a friend at the Milwaukee Art Museum after falling for St. Dionysius. they summon you through vine & monstrance. you tell them you worry about the children, staggering toward adulthood. their story is your story

& then it isn’t

 

this is a story

 

one of us was echo
one narcissus

dear echo……..I miss

this is a story

both of us echo
neither narcissus

neither narcissus
nor echo
nor story neither

this a gap

…………this gap

………………….this

About Wendy Vardaman

Wendy Vardaman, wendyvardaman.com, works as a website manager and has published three collections of poems. In addition to poetry, her creative practice has focused on editing, prose writing, illustration, printmaking, book arts, and design. She served as poet laureate of Madison, Wisconsin, from 2012 to 2015 and volunteers as a designer, artist, and editor.

National Poetry Month
National Poetry Month

BMP Celebrates National Poetry Month

Happy National Poetry Month! For poets and poetry lovers—and perhaps for those who love poets—this is a special time. At Brain Mill Press, we like to celebrate all month long by sharing featured poets, and with our fee-free contest. This year, we’re thinking about poetry cycles, poems that speak to each other, forms that build on each other (like crowns), and the ways a poem can be a scaffold or foundation for other poems. Our words are often in response to other poems, and our own body of work is often an ongoing conversation. We speak to each other, with ourselves, and sometimes into the void—hoping someone will answer back.

Most Anticipated 2023 Reads

by | Jan 24, 2023 | Book Review, Identity, LGBTQIA+, Music, Poetry, Popular Culture, Reading, Representation, The Afro YA

Most Anticipated 2023 Reads

2023 promises some fantastic YA reads by Black authors.

One of my most anticipated favorites comes from promising author Amber McBride, while another book has been on my TBR for ages.

With life being what it is, I can’t promise that I will get to all of these books. Nonetheless, I will do my best to write about 2023 Black YA reads, as well as some older books that I have been meaning to get to. Without further ado, here are my most anticipated Black YA reads for 2023. 

We Are All So Good at Smiling by Amber McBride

This is a book I heard about through the Twitter grapevine last year. The premise alone had me sold—a novel in verse telling the story of a Black hoodoo-practicing, fairy-tale-loving girl named Whimsy as she navigates clinical depression and a mysterious garden from her past. However, my anticipation for this book increased once I read the author’s previous book, Me, Moth (briefly reviewed here), which featured clinical depression from a different perspective.

 

 

 

Cool. Awkward. Black., edited by Karen Strong

This YA short story anthology is dedicated to Black nerds and features all sorts of subgenres, such as fantasy, sci-fi, and slice-of-life. I found out about this anthology on Twitter the same day We Are All So Good at Smiling was released. Having been a Black teen nerd turned Black nerdy adult, this anthology is totally up my alley.

 

 

 

 

As You Walk on By by Julian Winters 

Y’all know that I have been a Julian Winters fan from the moment he debuted with the book How To Be Remy Cameron (reviewed here). Imagine my surprise when I found out on Twitter that he has a new book coming out this year. Described as “The Breakfast Club meets Can’t Hardly Wait,” the book tells the story of seventeen-year-old Theo Wright as he seeks refuge in an empty bedroom during a house party following a promposal gone wrong. While there, he meets other teens who are also avoiding the party and learns he is not as alone in his troubles as he thinks.

 

 

Nothing Burns as Bright as You by Ashley Woodfolk

I will read almost any author if they do a novel-in-verse, and Ashley Woodfolk is no exception. Of course, it helps that I enjoyed one of her previous books, The Beauty That Remains (review here). This particular book came out last year, but I still want to try and get it if the publisher ever decides to support the worker’s union. Described as “an impassioned standalone tale of queer love, grief, and the complexity of female friendship,” the book tells the story of two girls troubled by a tumultuous history. 

 

 

 

Fate of Flames by Sarah Raughley

This book has been on my TBR for so long. I bought it after I saw a Twitter post describing it as “Pacific Rim meets Sailor Moon.” Part of the official synopsis is as follows:

Phantoms, massive beasts of nightmare, began terrorizing the world. At the same time, four girls—the Effigies—appeared, each with a unique power to control a classical element. Since then, they have protected the world from the Phantoms. At the death of one Effigy, another is chosen, pulled from her normal life into the never-ending battle.

When Maia unexpectedly becomes the next Fire Effigy, she resists her new calling. A quiet girl with few friends and almost no family, she was much happier to admire the Effigies from afar. Never did she imagine having to master her ability to control fire, to protect innocent citizens from the Phantoms, or to try bringing together the other three Effigies.

The Afro YA promotes black young adult authors and YA books with black characters, especially those that influence Pennington, an aspiring YA author who believes that black YA readers need diverse books, creators, and stories so that they don’t have to search for their experiences like she did.

Latonya Pennington is a poet and freelance pop culture critic. Their freelance work can also be found at PRIDE, Wear Your Voice magazine, and Black Sci-fi. As a poet, they have been published in Fiyah Lit magazine, Scribes of Nyota, and Argot magazine among others.

Best Books to Give Black Readers This Holiday Season, 2022

by | Dec 6, 2022 | Book Review, Identity, LGBTQIA+, Music, Poetry, Popular Culture, Reading, Representation, The Afro YA

Best Books to Give Black Readers This Holiday Season, 2022

The year has been long and frightful, but the books I’ve read have been delightful.

I was especially surprised to enjoy books that I didn’t review for this column but enjoyed on my own time. I also can’t ignore the enchanting books that I have reviewed or written about, because they made my sporadic posts this year. At the same time, there are also promising books that I haven’t read but still want to promote.

Without further delay, here are the books I recommend to give as gifts to yourself or to your loved ones this holiday season.

 

All Signs Point To Yes: A Love Story For Every Star Sign by Cam Montgomery, g. haron davis, and Adrianne White

Released during summer 2022, this is a multicultural YA anthology inspired by love and astrology. A haunted Aquarius finds love behind the veil. An ambitious Aries will do anything to stay in the spotlight. A foodie Taurus discovers the best eats in town (with a side of romance). A witchy Cancer stumbles into a curious meet-cute.

Whether it’s romantic, platonic, familial, or something else you can’t quite define, love is the thing that connects us. All Signs Point to Yes will take you on a journey from your own backyard to the world beyond the living as it settles us among the stars for thirteen stories of love and life. These stories will touch your heart, speak to your soul, and have you reaching for your horoscope forevermore.

 

The Sound of Stars by Alechia Dow

Speaking of stars, this YA dystopian sci-fi book was one of my favorite reads this year. Two years after aliens known as the IIori invaded Earth and decimated a third of the population, a seventeen-year-old girl named Ellie Baker lives in an IIori-controlled center in New York City.

Although she is reduced to a state of surviving rather than living, she also quietly rebels against the IIori by hosting an illegal library of books. When her library is discovered by Morris, an IIori commander who loves banned pop music, the two gradually learn to trust each other and turn their mutual quiet rebellions into a louder one.

(full review)

 

 

Star Lion: Thieves of Red Night by Leon Langford 

When you combine anime-inspired artwork with superhero schools, you get this fun book. Ten years ago, several of these superheroes gave their lives to stop the disastrous events of the Green Night. In the aftermath, a new generation of heroes are trying to do their part to fill the space left behind. One of them is Jordan Harris, a young Black boy with the power to manipulate gravitons. 

When he is arrested one night while doing vigilante work, he must go undercover at the superhero training academy Fort Olympus. While there, he discovers a world-threatening conspiracy that forces Jordan to work together in a team to save the day.

(full review)

 

All Boys Aren’t Blue by George M. Johnson

This powerful memoir-manifesto chronicles the author’s Black gay coming-of-age from his childhood to his teen and college years. It is a book about not only identity, but also family and community. This book had an unexpected personal impact on me as a thirty-one-year-old Black non-binary queer person, but I definitely could’ve used this book when I was a teen.

 

 

 

 

Right Where I Left You by Julian Winters

This queer and geeky YA read replaced Winters’s previous book as one of my favorite comfort reads. In fact, I called this book “the perfect summer vacation” in my review. It tells the story of Isaac Martin, an Afro-Mexican gay comic book geek who has been looking forward to spending one last summer with his best friend, Diego Santoyo.

The two of them were supposed to be attending Legends Con, the biggest pop culture convention in Georgia. When Isaac misses his chance to buy passes, he ends up gradually getting closer to his crush, Davi, and getting to know Diego’s gamer friends instead. However, as the day of the biggest teen Pride event approaches, Isaac finds himself drifting farther apart from his best friend.

(full review)

 

 

Me, Moth by Amber McBride 

Full disclosure: I’m still in the middle of reading this book. However, I am enjoying it too much not to recommend it.

This is a 2021 novel-in-verse about a young hoodoo-practicing, dance-loving Black girl named Moth and a Navajo boy named Sani. It is so lyrical, gorgeous, emotional, and nothing like any novel-in-verse I’ve read before. 

After losing her family in an accident, Moth goes to live with her aunt, but she still feels alone. Soon she meets Sani, a boy with depression who is trying to figure out where he comes from. Together, the two of them take a road trip in order to find themselves and understand how each of their families’ histories shapes who they are now.

The Afro YA promotes black young adult authors and YA books with black characters, especially those that influence Pennington, an aspiring YA author who believes that black YA readers need diverse books, creators, and stories so that they don’t have to search for their experiences like she did.

Latonya Pennington is a poet and freelance pop culture critic. Their freelance work can also be found at PRIDE, Wear Your Voice magazine, and Black Sci-fi. As a poet, they have been published in Fiyah Lit magazine, Scribes of Nyota, and Argot magazine among others.