Poems Rethabile Likes

The Sisters of Sexual Treasure by Sharon Olds The Sisters of Sexual Treasure As soon as my sister and I got out of our mother's house, all we wanted to do was fuck, obliterate her tiny sparrow body and narrow grasshopper legs. The men's bodies were like our father's body! The massive hocks, flanks, thighs, elegant knees, long tapered calves– we could have him there, the steep forbidden buttocks, backs of the knees, the cock in our mouth, ah the cock in our mouth.    Like explorers who discover a lost city, we went nuts with joy, undressed the men slowly and carefully, as if uncovering buried artifacts that proved our theory of the lost culture: that if Mother said it wasn't there, it was there. Poet: Sharon Olds Source: @RonNowPoetry Books: @AbeBooks

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