Workshops, Readings and Open-Mics with Award-Winning Poets for Only $8
See Our Summer Line-Up Here
Hi poets, writers and friends,
When you subscribe to this Substack, you get access to two free events, the “Publishing Your Poetry Support Group” and a Reading and Open-Mic with two guest poets each month.
Become a paid subscriber, and you will also get access to a monthly workshop facilitated by a special guest facilitator each month. See our summer line-up here.
Our Featured Poet for May is Sarah Browning!
Register for Her Workshop at the Bottom of This Post!
Introducing The Poetry Salon’s Summer Line-Up of Readers and Workshop Facilitators
Rita Mookerjie
Reading June 16, Workshop June 23
Common Era
In the 7th century, the astronomer Brahmagupta pauses
his sky cartography and considers some numbers. After,
he writes theories of debt, of wealth, and of something new.
He calls it zero and is the first to arrive at this idea since zero
is not often a feature of this world with its excess and bounty
and surplus. Zero was not apparent to the Greeks or the Romans
with their little nude boys, bronze bulls, and virgin brides. All
these amounts of things and time. But because of Brahmagupta,
I can imagine a system of time that starts with the year zero,
a system that isn’t punctuated with hot war or conquest, I can imagine
a way to name this planet and its people in several places, with
several beginnings, but mostly without that baby god god baby
that zealots love to misquote. Everyone knows the baby god’s
name as well as the white man they keep him inside, you know the one,
that hunky Anglo wet dream: blue eyes, bloody body, muscled and raw.
Even today, centuries later, it is still the year of their lord. They have
kept their monopoly on time and peddled that white homunculus
to every corner of the globe. Let him stand aside as I look for my
people, my ancestors, and our contributions to the world. I am no
child of Brahmagupta, but I see past painted idols and glass kings.
Joan Kwon Glass, Reading June 16
The Way We Were
That last summer, not ready to admit defeat,
we set out too often to the beach like soldiers
on a mission, trying to prove something (what?).
Your father pulled you and your brother behind him
in a little red wagon, quietly disapproving of me,
a now familiar look of discontent on his solemn face.
Afterwards, I hosed you down in the driveway,
a ritual I repeated from my own childhood.
The smell of cold water and metal remind me
of returning home, hot and tired from a day at the lake.
My father holding the garden hose to my lips,
popsicle in my hand gleaming like the purple sapphire
in a fairy tale, the sun blocking
the expressions on my parents’ faces.
On those wide open summer evenings,
you puttered around the house in pajamas,
your bony, sun-kissed shoulders not yet burdened.
Smiling and oblivious, you clutched my old copy
of “Our Town” too tightly in your dimpled hands,
pretending you could read it, writing
your name over and over on the inside cover.
One night I found you in bed, “Our Town”
tucked in next to you, both of you covered up like dolls.
Lying side by side on your backs as though gazing at stars,
whispering into the dark: this is how we were once.
MT Vallarta, Reading July 21, Workshop July 28
Corpse flower (amorphophallus titanum): it is made of several different compounds
stinky cheese boiled
cabbage garlic
rotting fish sweaty
socks alcohol dex-
tromethorphan sodium
nitrate
If you think about death as much as I do
how long until the stench
becomes solid
I want to call your father
I am so sorry I loved [ ] I loved [ ] so much
I want to say I named you sunflower
Like him your
flesh gushes
into petals
Jen Gupta, Reading July 21
A Body That Is Shared
It is not my body, ketamine and acid infused,
mushroom bathed, dopamine depleted. I am on
the other side of the country, laying in bed while
my sister sobs into the light, watches the cacti bleed
by her car window as a man who refuses to love her
all the way drives them to a home I have never seen.
The phone chimes black and white shapes that mean
I’m okay but I am already there, each bump under
their tire vibrates through my skull. She is crying
one thousand seven hundred miles away and her tears
sweat out of my palms. After she brushes her teeth,
she blows her nose and a sneeze wakes me.
In the morning we are drained, our chests house
depleted balloons. She puts on a pair of scrubs, packs
her things and lifts a mask to her face while I raise
my computer screen. Our hands reach our coffee mugs
and her cuticles bleed, my finger wrapped
for a moment in her silver ivy ring.
Yesterday, I had a good day until she didn’t,
migraine blooming long before she called.
This never being alone is nice until it’s sad and then
it’s just sad for two. We feel like breaking a table,
like opening the earth, like chewing our own skin.
I tell her she should lay off the drugs,
that they don’t help, but I leave out the way they depress
me. It’s annoying to tell someone what to do
with their body even if it’s a body that is shared.
The moment my sister was born, my throat opened
like I finally figured out how to breathe. Today we wait
for the stomachs to settle, the invincible hum to pass.
I lay my head on a pillow and feel the curves of her lap.
Douglas Manuel, Reading August 18, Workshop August 25
ONE OF A KIND (LOVE AFFAIR), 1985
The crucifix in the center of her chest,
Christ in the center of her life, she liked
what that felt like, something stable
to hang on to, somebody who’d listen,
who wouldn’t judge. Power centered
by her heart. She leaned back into
the chair, let out a laugh, a laugh freer
than the mouth of the Mississippi
finding the gulf, freer than dandelion
seeds caught in the breeze’s breath,
freer than a whisper turning to a yell, than
hair brushed out from rollers. Putting
her feet up on the ottoman, she crosses
them and then herself. Rosary beads
move before her fingers do. Prayers
lift and flit, lift and flit, just as the smoke
will later than evening, when the music
plays drums with God’s head.
Camari Carter, Reading August 18
PREGNANCY TEST
I keep it.
The positive pregnancy test.
It’s the last sign I have that confirms
I was a mother
Am a mother.
Settled like a coffin at my bedside
I can’t get rid of.
I can bottle up the blood river on the floor
Bury it in a mason jar;
It’ll grow
Green, fuzzy
I still name it,
My baby
And when the growth takes over
Becomes black
It is my child’s skin
And hope
For a heartbeat
And when baby seeps through the lid
I’ll plant it in the backyard
To grow a willow tree
Where I will sit under my baby
Join Sarah’s Workshop, “The Republic of Motherhood”
by becoming a paid subscriber for $8/Month.
If you don’t want to become a paid subscriber, you can still access this event a la carte for $25. Register by sending payment to Tresha@thepoetrysalon.com via PayPal.
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