Tuesday poem #597 : Neil Surkan : Endurance

 

 

 

Were grief a state of healing
  and not the act of paying
attention to what will have been, what’s now
  disappearing from the Earth,
I would teach you to believe
  in reflourishment. Instead,
you must learn endurance
  in the face of all that won’t
be saved, my chick
  who hatched among
the egg-lumped coils of a dozing snake
  while I clung
to the nest and sang.

 

 

 

Neil Surkan's most recent collection of poems is a chapbook, Ruin, from knife|fork|book. He is also the author of Unbecoming, Their Queer Tenderness, On High, and Super, Natural. neilsurkan.com

the Tuesday poem is curated by rob mclennan

Tuesday poem #596 : Tracy Quan : Tusk

 

Why the movieola
exists depends
which side
the formica
you occupied,
spine facing
town air behind
glass, deceptive first
printing, fine or near
fine—or did you repurpose
the machine, initiate the initiated.
One fortnight after
election a video
installation, White
Street. In the inaugural
shadow of Bloomingdale’s—
flagship waiting, Poland, exhale.

 

 

 

 

 

Tracy Quan is the author of three novels, including Diary of a Manhattan Call Girl, published by HarperCollins. Her poems have appeared in periodicities: a journal of poetry and poetics, Love’s Executive Order, Los Angeles Review of Books, Newest York, Poets Reading the News, Addanomadd and Topical Poetry. She’s a contributor to Hustling Verse: An Anthology of Sex Workers’ Poetry (Arsenal Pulp Press). A regular guest on Hong Kong’s RTHK Radio 3, she currently serves as a juror for the New York City Book Awards. A new essay was recently published in Radical History Review. Portrait of the author by Stanley Moss.

the Tuesday poem is curated by rob mclennan

Tuesday poem #595 : Joel Chace : Martha

 

 

   

 

Joel Chace has published work in print and electronic magazines such as Lana Turner, Survision,  Eratio, Otoliths, Word For/Word, Golden Handcuffs Review, New American Writing, and The Brooklyn Rail.  His full-length collections include matter no matter, from Paper Kite Press, Humors, from Paloma Press, Threnodies, from Moria Books, fata morgana, from Unlikely Books, and Maths, from Chax Press.  Underrated Provinces is due out from Mad Hat Press in 2024.  For more than forty years, Chace was a working jazz pianist.  He is an NEH Fellow.

the Tuesday poem is curated by rob mclennan

Tuesday poem #594 : Naomi Foyle : How to Write a Prose Poem

for David Swann

Play a game of disco chess in an overgrown allotment. Send a postcard to a fremeny from a moonstruck nest. Dive into a drowned library wearing nothing but lyrical flippers. Gently wash a hand-unknitted sweater. Mix an orchestral cocktail after a bust up in a holy karaoke parlour. Foster the love child of Ulysses and a silk jacket pocket. Don’t forget to break an open window before you go.

Naomi Foyle was born in London, England, and grew up in Hong Kong, Liverpool and Saskatchewan. She spent the late nineties working in South Korea and travelling in Central America, Asia and Australia, and now lives in Brighton UK, a pebble’s throw from the sea.

Naomi is the author of five novels, ten poetry pamphlets and three full collections: The Night Pavilion, a 2008 Poetry Society Recommendation and The World Cup (2010) both from Waterloo Press; and the transatlantic publication Adamantine (Red Hen/Pighog Press, 2019).  Her tenth pamphlet, Importents, was published by Waterloo Press in 2021. Her poetry readings include appearances at The Cuisle Festival in Limerick, Tacheles Art House in Berlin and the Babylon Festival for International Cultures and Arts in Babil, Iraq. Originally trained in theatre, she has collaborated with artists, musicians and filmmakers on projects including the prize-winning videopoem Good Definition (2004) and several spoken word CDs.  Librettist of the award-winning bouffon opera Hush (Theatre Passe Muraille, Toronto 1990), she has also written a short verse drama, ‘The Strange Wife’, produced by the Bush Theatre in 2011 as part of 66 Books: 21st C Writers Speak to the King James Bible, and ASTRA, a Brighton Fringe Award-winning adaptation of her eco-science fiction quartet The Gaia Chronicles.

the Tuesday poem is curated by rob mclennan