#TPQ5: MANAHIL BANDUKWALA
What will Manahil Bandukwala, a Pakistani writer and artist, and the author of Paper Doll (Anstruther Press, 2019), include in today’s #TPQ5? Find out inside!
Tag: loss
POWER OF POETRY #70: KASHIANA SINGH
Poetry was the heirloom; I took along with me as I walked into a marriage arranged by my parents.
#TPQ5: JANE FLEMING
What will Jane Fleming, author of Ocotillo Worship (APEP Publications, 2019), include in today’s #TPQ5? Find out inside!
Omg. In my lifetime, moms were actually accused and hated, disabused themselves, for “making their sons homos.”
We are the children of those who falter and call us by the wrong name. But we still believe. We still think there is hope. We still practice prayer because, by God, “I’m not dead yet.”
If you want a quick dive into our collective punk-rock past, these poems will transport you back to being 15 again; old enough to sneak into the bar from backstage but young enough to still covet the drummer
“It’s knowing that it was okay to not want to be royalty. To, instead, want it to be Halloween – to want the ability to wear Vulnerable as a mask without any consequence of laughter.”
If you could reshape history, would you stay woodworm, or would you scrape, claw, stab, and squeeze your way to the top?
From those we love, to those we’ve loved in mirrors, we are left to sift through and decide between thoughts, facades, and realities. This is our path to survival, to strength, to moving on regardless of those who’ve hurt us.
It’s an acknowledgement of those we’ve lost in the fire, and those we’ve gained because of it. That, it’s never the drug, but rather the longing to quell the quiet.
We all have our ideals of life, love, and the pursuit of happiness. If eventually we all die, then what is life if we can’t burn through a paycheck in a day – especially with the ones we love.
We are caretakers to those who don’t even know they need it. We don’t matter. We are a secondary character in a long history of other people’s lives. We are found in the footnotes.
“…he has taken all the pieces, the histories of hands, waterfalls, sanity hammers, shepherds, and suitors, and built the puzzle only to watch it fall to the floor, and have to put the pieces back in the box.”
If Death brings a flash of life before our eyes, and we see each detail of what and how we’ve lived, and everything that was once background became foreground, then Where the Road Runs Out, the new collection from Gaia Holmes is that flash.
My body wants to meet your body in a dark alley and say things in Braille. When I leave notes on your pillow it’s supposed to be a gimmick. Still, here we are in love, careening toward death like a flower. Have you ever written a letter, an email, or a text message, and then…
DISASTER Men kept smiling at you today, but you felt like a disaster. You were an influenza epidemic, you were Hurricane Katrina, you were a four-car pileup, and there they were, these men, smiling. Dear Insecurities, We have company. We have found a friend. It’s okay to step out of the shadows, talk to…
It’s Just So Strange He used to love me, and now he’s just a stranger who happens to know all my secrets Clementine von Radics knows her way around a heart – yours, those she keeps close, and sometimes her own. In her newest collection, Home (Where Are You Press), she is not afraid to leave everything…