Poems Rethabile Likes

Ars Poetica by Blaga Dimitrova Ars Poetica Write each of your poems as if it were your last. In this century, saturated with strontium, charged with terrorism, flying with supersonic speed, death comes with terrifying suddenness. Send each of your words like a last letter before execution, a call carved on a prison wall. You have no right to lie, no right to play pretty little games. You simply don’t have the time to correct your mistakes. Write each of your poems, tersely, mercilessly, with blood — as if it were your last. ——— (Translated from the Bulgarian by Ludmilla G. Popava-Wightman) Poet: Blaga Dimitrova Source: @TrueAllusion Books: @AbeBooks

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, ...