Poems Rethabile Likes

Bachata by Geoffrey Philp Bachata After every party in our house when the reggae, reggaeton, R&B have exhausted the younger couples, and they sit separately to cool down, I want to dance with you, the way our friends, Miguel and Ramona, who have made a promise, that despite their struggle with lawyers, bill collectors, and cancer, they will never leave each other, and whenever the bachata begins— we stop to watch how he will catch her— she spins out of his arm’s reach they pass like strangers, but then his hand finds the small of her back, her legs quiver to the old music, and they are partners in time with the rhythm, once more. Poet: Geoffrey Philp Source: @GeoffreyPhilp Blog Books: @AbeBooks

Theme for English B by Langston Hughes Theme for English B The instructor said,     Go home and write     a page tonight.     And let that page come out of you—     Then, it will be true. I wonder if it's that simple? I am twenty-two, colored, born in Winston-Salem. I went to school there, then Durham, then here to this college on the hill above Harlem. I am the only colored student in my class. The steps from the hill lead down into Harlem, through a park, then I cross St. Nicholas, Eighth Avenue, Seventh, and I come to the Y, the Harlem Branch Y, where I take the elevator up to my room, sit down, and write this page: It's not easy to know what is true for you or me at twenty-two, my age. But I guess I'm what I feel and see and hear, ...

Like an Avalanche by Caleb Braun Like an Avalanche the black hole increases in mass, that's what it's known for. It deletes, by definition, planets and stars. Also optic nerves, Handel's Messiah , the twin Voyagers—in theory. I once owned a chinchilla softer than dawn that never wanted to be touched. Having seen the past I can't get back to it. Meanwhile, the steady accumulation of space debris has occluded potential extra-terrestrial communication. I once thought a hilltop grove of scrub oak, elm, and ash choked by the construction of subdivisions to be nature's last hope. As a boy, I imagined chaining myself there. You'll forgive me if I'm wary of listing what little persists. Not even Pluto remains itself. Each body shifting red              ...