Poems Rethabile Likes

The Unchosen by Judson Jerome | Poems Rethabile Likes The Unchosen by Judson Jerome I guess I have a deficiency. God never said boo to me when as a boy I stood straining in church with muscular endeavor for the sweet squirt of salvation. I never could see why He spoke to this or that old lady, sending her, hallelujah, down the aisle. Was I alone in the congregation vile? Or was their claim of spirit something shady? And now when I read poets who simply Know, drinking their imagery from God's own cup, whose poems "just come," and then, like Topsy, grow, whereas I always have to make them up, ...

Yet Do I Marvel by Countee Cullen | Poems Rethabile Likes Yet Do I Marvel by Countee Cullen I doubt not God is good, well-meaning, kind, And did He stoop to quibble could tell why The little buried mole continues blind, Why flesh that mirrors Him must some day die, Make plain the reason tortured Tantalus Is baited by the fickle fruit, declare If merely brute caprice dooms Sisyphus To struggle up a never-ending stair. Inscrutable His ways are, and immune To catechism by a mind too strewn With petty cares to slightly understand What awful brain compels His awful hand. Yet do I marvel at this curious thing: To ma...

Eating Poetry by Mark Strand | Poems Rethabile Likes Eating Poetry by Mark Strand Ink runs from the corners of my mouth. There is no happiness like mine. I have been eating poetry. The librarian does not believe what she sees. Her eyes are sad and she walks with her hands in her dress. The poems are gone. The light is dim. The dogs are on the basement stairs and coming up. Their eyeballs roll, their blond legs burn like brush. The poor librarian begins to stamp her feet and weep. She does not understand. When I get on my knees and lick her hand, she screams. ...

The Sisters of Sexual Treasure by Sharon Olds | Poems Rethabile Likes The Sisters of Sexual Treasure by Sharon Olds 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. As soon as my sister and I got out of our mother's house, all we wanted to ...

Ars Poetica by Rethabile Masilo | Poems Rethabile Likes Ars Poetica by Rethabile Masilo During an empty period one still expects words, accepts them like a betrayal and lives them. There will be questions with no answers for the day will be funereal. But when they kill a kid and you receive babble from a three-year old, name that time Babel. Let his mother's wails frown on you, then add her cries to the child's. Get turned into a fist at first, in apartheid jails. Pielkop! Then become a dog. Kaffir! Gaan fok jouself! In exile, beg yourself for release from the dungeon where you put yourself, hoping to starve and die. ...