Poems Rethabile Likes

Murmuration by Rethabile Masilo | Poems Rethabile Likes Murmuration by Rethabile Masilo A murmuration comes to visit our old days, its black dots huddled as one, flowing spots chasing each other from side to side, a school of fish flying from a predator. We watch it blot the low sky beside our porch, beyond the top of the height of an old birch tree. There are silhouettes on the street, this early in the night, going where shapes go at this hour, even as sound pauses. Sometimes it'll surge off and leave without committing to anything violent. But at other times, swooshing in and out of existence and blacker than ever it is—it seems—bursting to speak something to the dusk, a revelation of some sort; the death of a relative we'd long lost sight of. It moves like a shoal of black mollies trapped...

Silence by Marianne Moore Silence by Marianne Moore My father used to say, "Superior people never make long visits, have to be shown Longfellow's grave or the glass flowers at Harvard. Self-reliant like the cat— that takes its prey to privacy, the mouse's limp tail hanging like a shoelace from its mouth— they sometimes enjoy solitude, and can be robbed of speech by speech which has delighted them. The deepest feeling always shows itself in silence; not in silence, but restraint." Nor was he insincere in saying, "Make my house your inn." Inns are not residences. Poet: @MarianneMoore Source: @PoetsDotOrg Books: @ThriftBooks ...

Winter Walk by Lynette Roberts Winter Walk She left the hut and bright log fire at noon And walked outside on crisp white winter snow To find the iced slopes shadowed like the moon The wild wood desolate and bare below The red trees wet adrift with icy flow The evergreens with glassy needled leaves A bloodstone veined red and white this view weaves But lifted off the path like crystal spheres There lay cut prints of glinting stylised forms Of birds not seen large sparkling twig like spears And squirrel pricks where foxs paw transforms White single roses out of petal storms While keltic scrolls transcribe where birds had been Then stamped in ice another track was seen A slight right turn of foot She sensed him there Tree like with raincoat shouldered f...

Not My Business by Niyi Osundare Not My Business by Niyi Osundare They picked Akanni up one morning Beat him soft like clay And stuffed him down the belly Of a waiting jeep. What business of mine is it So long they don’t take the yam From my savouring mouth? They came one night Booted the whole house awake And dragged Danladi out, Then off to a lengthy absence. What business of mine is it So long they don’t take the yam From my savouring mouth? Chinwe went to work one day Only to find her job was gone: No query, no warnin...

Homosexuality by Frank O'Hara Homosexuality by Frank O'Hara So we are taking off our masks, are we, and keeping our mouths shut? as if we'd been pierced by a glance! The song of an old cow is not more full of judgment than the vapors which escape one's soul when one is sick; so I pull the shadows around me like a puff and crinkle my eyes as if at the most exquisite moment of a very long opera, and then we are off! without reproach and without hope that our delicate feet will touch the earth again, let alone "very soon." It is the law of my own voice I shall investigate. I start like ice, my finger to my ear, my ear to my heart, that proud cur at the garbage can in the rain. It's wonderful to admire oneself with co...

The New Religion by Chris Abani The New Religion by Chris Abani The body is a nation I have never known. The pure joy of air: the moment between leaping from a cliff into the wall of blue below. Like that. Or to feel the rub of tired lungs against skin- covered bone, like a hand against the rough of bark. Like that. "The body is a savage," I said. For years I said that: the body is a savage. As if this safety of the mind were virtue not cowardice. For years I have snubbed the dark rub of it, said, "I am better, Lord, I am better," but sometimes, in an unguarded moment of sun, I remember the cowdung-scent of my childhood skin thick with dirt and sweat and the screaming grass. But this distance I keep is not divine, for what was Christ if no...

The Sign of Saturn by Sharon Olds The Sign of Saturn by Sharon Olds Sometimes my daughter looks at me with an amber black look, like my father about to pass out from disgust, and I remember she was born under the sign of Saturn, the father who ate his children. Sometimes the dark, silent back of her head reminds me of him unconscious on the couch every night, his face turned away. Sometimes I hear her talking to her brother with that coldness that passed for reason in him, that anger hardened by will, and when she rages into her room, and slams the door, I can see his vast blank back when he passed out to get away from us and lay while the bourbon turned, in his brain, to coal. Sometimes I see that coal ignite in her eyes. As I talk to her, trying to persu...