Come Read Poetry with Alixen Pham and Sarah Browning This Sunday
Plus, Hear Ada Limon Read a Poem by Alixen Pham on The Slowdown
Hi poets, writers and friends,
This month (May) I invite you to our free reading and open-mic with Sarah Browning, author of Killing Summer (Sibling Rivalry Press, 2017), and Alixen Pham, Best New Poets Finalist, on 5/19/24 .
Become a paid subscriber, you will also get access to Sarah Browning’s workshop “The Republic of Motherhood” on 5/26/24. Get details and register below.
Introducing Sarah Browning and Alixen Pham
Listen to Our Interview with Sarah Browning
Last week I shared our interview with May’s featured poet in my post Poetry, Politics and Really Hot Priests: Our Interview with Sarah Browning. If you missed it, you can click this link and listen to it now.
Listen to Ada Limon Discuss Alix Pham’s Poem on The Slowdown!
This week I’ll rely on Ada Limon to introduce our co-featured poet, Alixen Pham as she reads Alix’s poem “Some Things are Unforgettable” on The Slowdown, here.
You can also hear Alix herself read this poem, and her poem “Shunned” at the links below.
Shunned, Brooklyn Poets
Some Things are Unforgettable, DVAN
Read Them for Yourself Here
Petworth, Early Evening A man is stabbing women in my neighborhood. Most poor people in my city are Black and because of the warnings of 400 years I assume the man stabbing women is Black. Walking home, I pass a young Black man on the sidewalk. When I first spotted him I did not cross the street, though I thought to. As we pass he reaches into his pocket and I feel fear, how white I am. From his pocket he pulls a phone. Calls his girlfriend or grandma or buddy up the street, his job, his pastor, his boyfriend, his AA sponsor. I don’t want to be afraid of my neighbors, walking home from the Metro in the clear light of evening. I want to tear history from my throat. My son is in his room texting his friends. It is June in the 21st century.
-Sarah Browning
Hot Priests
The calendar hangs on every souvenir stall in Rome, beside Audrey Hepburn and Gregory Peck
circling Piazza Venezia on a Vespa.
January’s a simple seminarian from Akron, but March smolders in his love of the Lord. A sullen Fabio, his long black hair is brilliantined, a two-day growth on his chin.
I check out the live ones, who stride purposefully in their gray-black-brown-white robes across
the cobbled alleyways and frantic boulevards of the city.
Young, buff, from all the wondering Christian world, they come to Rome. They study, pray, live in beloved community. Once I start looking I cannot stop: peke-faced or angelic.
Senegalese. Korean. Filipino. Italian. Their robes swish— they swish—with their devotion. I am so agog I quit reading the guidebook—how the Titus Arch celebrates Rome’s
pacification of the Judaic people—to gaze at their hard backs. I can’t help thinking of all that Catholic flesh in the news. And the calendar pin-ups, are they models or the real thing:
beefcake, true and holy?
-Sarah Browning
Shunned
He / never / said a word as I applied the ointment
patches of dark / raised sores / on his body
back & arms & torso & legs I was / a child / playing
nurse Not knowing / why / Father was sick
Only that it was / a secret / no one talked about
Throw / it / away in the garbage outside Mother said
I exited Father’s bedroom with a / hazard bag /
Her eyes / tiny pits of black fear / face marble white /
She clutched a rosary bead / a talisman /
warding away / the diseased man / behind the door
Then the priest shall examine him and pronounce him unclean. (Leviticus 13)
/ Unclean / That was the / thing / Father had become
/ Something / came out of him beyond pus
& vomit / Something / to be hidden
/ Shunned /
Mother / left / Father in the only way allowed
moving from their / shared bedroom / & didn’t
/ touch / him again or / administer / to him
He / never / said a word as I / boiled / his dishes
glasses & utensils / hot-washed / his clothes
towels & bedding / separately / from ours
/ bleach / scented everything / leeching / my childhood
1873, G. H. Armauer Hansen discovered the disease-causing bacteria, M. leprae. (Wikipedia)
Working volunteering Father / soldiered / on
in silence / in secret / shaking colleagues’ hands
/ Accepted / by others but not at / home /
In between his body / broke / down
eaten & eroded / within / by the / unknown / disease
/ He / changed / / It / changed / him /
Not just physically / Peroxided / patches of skin
on an / unnaturally / dark skin-scape
/ Numbness / in hands & parts of his body
Mind & Spirit / traumatized / M. leprae / Fear /
Leprosy, Hansen’s disease, is curable. (Centers for Disease Control & Prevention)
Five years of treatment / longer / than normal
/ Mother / changed / We / changed / All /
Then / the cure / But / the secret / remained
He / never / said a word / the stigma / to / protect / us
Leprosy / haunted / him It / haunted / me
The disease / a ghost / unacknowledged / lingered
Years later as he lay / dying / organs consumed
/ I / took care of him / playing nurse / hoping
He / never / said / I said / the words he heard last
-Alixen Pham
Some Things Are Unforgettable
Twilight
________________I rise_________like a wave
_________________________________________Rain
_______The road_______a snake________loosening skin
______________________________________________________Rain
_________________________________________________________________A tomb for cars
_____________Two metal doors_____open
______________________________ My______eyes_______search silver mirrors
The Horseman________________gallops_____________________________through my heart
_____________Fingers____without_________fingers____harp my__________lungs
My two legs_________trudge__________________A green mile_______without______flowers
_____________________________The bed
Consumes the room_____________________________________________Consumes my father
___________________Like a half-eaten____merman
_________Bound to a cross_______treading________________wafer-flavor wine
____________________________________________________________Years of living
winter
__________________________________winter
______________________________________________________________winter
_____Grey________black_____white___________________________winter’s heralds
______________________________________________Shivers
Thousands____________of tiny spears______rain_________________________the windows
__________________________________Organs abandon
____________________________________tomorrow
_____A rainstorm
________________The monsoon
_____________________________A river_______________falls over
_____________________________________edges
_________________________________________of my eyes______________Color of salt
The taste of________bitter melon
__________________________A ventilator______________________breathes
____________metallic rasps_____________Prayers
___________________________________________in the cathedral
of my____skull
______________A white lab coat calls my father’s_____________________brain
______________________________________Her fishing expedition_______empty
___________His attic_______remains________________cold
IV lines__________choke me_____________cold
____________The_________weight____of ten suitcases__________on my shoulders
_______________________________________________________________________Vertigo
An__________elliptic moon_______________________spins future
__________________________Oracle eyes__________________________________see
__________________________________________my father
_________at the pier_______waiting_____________for me______________mouth like waves
___________Black soil_________________________The perfume of earthworms
A concrete__________mausoleum__________________________________Mouths mouthing
_______________pleading______________crying
Silence
____________________The Mekong River____tears___________into the Pacific Ocean
_______The Puget Sound_____________The Columbia River_____________My father’s body
____________________is ocean
__________________________Loneliness_________________Freedom
________The songs__________of humpback whales_________________Salmons
________________returning home_______________Night fog__________________The cries
_________________________of an albatross_____________Where is its mate
________A heart monitor______________moans________________The ventilator gasps
like___________an eel on land_________________Blue_________and purple
______trees____________forest_______________on my father’s hands_____and arms
___________The smell of________moldy_____________grief
______________________of ozone______________________of disinfectant
_______________________________O sweet morphine!
______The__________clock_______________is_________________________________jello
Black hands_________________________drag___________time______like an anchor
_____________________________________I am
____________glue___________________________________________Skin
______________________________like glass breaking
______________________________________________________________Canyon eyes
______A black________________ hole_________________my chest
My__________teeth___________________inhale__sharply
My father’s_________________________________________________________________last
______________________________________________________ __________________exhale
________________A mist_________of white____________fireflies
-Alixen Pham
Register to Read with Both Poets This Sunday!
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.