Tuesday poem #603 : Han VanderHart : I Like to Think Emily Dickinson Would Read The Ethical Slut under an Umbrella by the Pool

 

 

that she’d sext so cryptically
& well—sending the words 

“Dispatch from Finitude”
accompanied by a nude

(dusk falling and her
bare hips against a quilt)

that her first video
touching herself she shared

with the bees
and Higginson, in that order

to make him gasp
(the bees already knew)

and the lines: “what it means
for poetry to breathe”

that with Susan she shared
her tongue and all of June

that she pollinated Amherst
face first, ass out, dusted with pollen

while cultivating her privacy
with abandon

that she had more lovers even
than she had poems, which numbered 

just under 1800      

Han VanderHart is a queer writer living in Durham, North Carolina. Their manuscript Larks (Ohio University Press, 2025) received the 2024 Hollis Summers Poetry Prize, judged by Chanda Feldman. Han is the author of the poetry collection What Pecan Light (Bull City Press, 2021) and the chapbook Hands Like Birds (Ethel Zine Press, 2019). They have poetry and essays published in The Boston Globe, Kenyon Review, The American Poetry Review, The Rumpus, AGNI and elsewhere. Han hosts Of Poetry Podcast and co-edits the poetry press River River Books with Amorak Huey.

the Tuesday poem is curated by rob mclennan

 

Tuesday poem #602 : Marilyn Bowering : The Invisible Life of Feeling

 

 

                     for Xan

And there had been the resentment of being strangers in a strange land,
separated from their identities while unable to go back.
                                                                                     Kapka Kassabova

We were drawn towards birth by birds, they say,
the link between us weightless and invisible,
and learned the world of water from above,
its touch on our skulls as rainfall, and
which hunter-haunted marshes to avoid
and where to land and rest.

We learned the meaning of shadows.

Epictetus says do not ask the athlete how much weight they lift,
but look at the shoulders - the hidden strength
in half-light in the morning when they rise to stretch,
pinion muscle supporting arms, body-hair like feathers.

Light fills my daughter’s window - it is summer,
much hallooing from birds when she runs by,
alive together with the earth for this brief time.

I read Seneca at my desk: As things are, isn’t it the height of folly
to learn inessential things when times are so desperately short!
I glance up as she re-enters the house, and hear Seneca
in his printed land, crying: Is this the way to heaven?

A jug on a table is placed to keep our souls, they say:
but one sweep with a hairbrush I found in a dream this morning
returned my hair to dark, and she and I watched storks
fly to their nests on the rooftops of Calle Ciudad de Ronda
at sunset when everyone was young.

 

 

 

Marilyn Bowering [photo credit: Xan Shian] is a novelist, poet and non-fiction writer. Her latest book is More Richly in Earth: A Poet’s Search for Mary MacLeod (MQUP 2024), a literary investigation, memoir and mediation on poetry. She lives on Vancouver Island with her extended family. marilynbowering.com

The Tuesday poem is curated by rob mclennan

Tuesday poem #601 : Dawn Macdonald : On Reading, in 2023, a Confusing Entry for “Old Crow, Y.T.” in The Junior Encyclopedia of Canada (1990)

 

 

… the settlement un-
settled. got up and jumped
twice, twice in a life
time, in 1911 for the smallpox
but before that 18-
70 the people (more
of them then) moved
for the slamming down of nation-
skin, being then informed
of the border an unseeable
god in a plane, known arcane
membrane, daemon keeping molecules
of air on this side American,
on this side property
of John A.

                   so, they got up
and moved
around, shook a leg
as you do.

some say the place (the third
place) is named for a man who is named
for a Walking Crow, but isn’t that
a joke? the bird that walks
from place to place, poink poink
poink, three toes in the snow
the whole long way. some say
it’s Crow May I Walk and some
say a joke is an honor. some
can see what crows are like.
some read the Canadian Encyclopedia
and some the Vuntut Gwitchin website
and have trouble knowing which
of these authoritative sources is the authority
to trust this side of the border,
being very sure what borders are,
and orthographies, and acceptable
sources for citation.
                                The Junior
Encyclopedia comes in five
volumes (I found it
on the street; I carried it
home in my arms, walking;
I walked with it
from place to place), the Encyclopedia
is illustrated
and strives
for a friendly tone

the street where I found it
is residential and out
of our price range

we can only walk
in the line of the sidewalk
and even then we’ll worry
about cracks

 

 

 

 

Dawn Macdonald lives in Whitehorse, Yukon, where she was raised off the grid. Her poetry appears in literary journals like Grain and Nat. Brut, and also in speculative publications like Asimov’s Science Fiction and Wizards in Space. She is the author of Northerny (2024, University of Alberta Press).

the Tuesday poem is curated by rob mclennan