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Poems Submitted for April 13, 2021

  1. Humanities Career Connections Workshops
  2. High Stakes Culture Series
  3. High Stakes Art
  4. Jill S. Harris Memorial Lecture
  5. Marc and Constance Jacobson Lecture
  6. Norman Freehling Visiting Professorship
  7. Past Programs & Projects
    1. (Re)Emergence: Asian American Histories and Futures
    2. Humanities Without Walls Predoctoral Career Diversity Summer Workshop
    3. Humanities Without Walls
    4. 2023 Humanities Afrofutures
    5. 2022 HWW Career Diversity Workshop
    6. 2022 Poetry Blast!
    7. Octavia Butler Week
    8. 2021 Poetry Blast!
      1. Prompt a Poem!—A Daily April Poetry Challenge
      2. English Translations
      3. 2021 Poetry Blast Prompt a Poem Submissions
      4. Poems Submitted for April 1, 2021
      5. Poems Submitted for April 2, 2021
      6. Poems Submitted for April 5, 2021
      7. Poems Submitted for April 6, 2021
      8. Poems Submitted for April 7, 2021
      9. Poems Submitted for April 8, 2021
      10. Poems Submitted for April 12, 2021
      11. Poems Submitted for April 9, 2021
      12. Poems Submitted for April 13, 2021
      13. Poems Submitted for April 14, 2021
      14. Poems Submitted for April 15, 2021
      15. Poems Submitted for April 16, 2021
      16. Poems Submitted for April 19, 2021
      17. Poems Submitted for April 20, 2021
      18. Poems Submitted for April 21, 2021
      19. Poems Submitted for April 22, 2021
      20. Poems Submitted for April 23, 2021
      21. Poems Submitted for April 26, 2021
      22. Poems Submitted for April 27, 2021
      23. Poems Submitted for April 28, 2021
      24. Poems Submitted for April 29, 2021
      25. Poems Submitted for April 30, 2021
    9. The Humanities at Work
    10. 2018-19 Year of Humanities and Environments
    11. 2017-18 Year of Archives & Futures
    12. 2016-17 Year of Humanities & Public Policy
    13. 2015-16 Year of Conversions
    14. Early Modern Conversions Project
    15. MCubed Humanities Projects
    16. Author's Forum

It’s your lucky day. So, what’s one of your fears? (Not your greatest fear—but something bearable, like spiders or flunking a class or waking up beside a crow or a possum.) It’s happening. Your fear is here. Write in as much sensory detail about the experience, for ten minutes, with the goal of having overcome that fear by the end of your freewrite.

Masks
By Meghan Prindle

A mask appears on our sidewalk,
And another
And another.

The heavy hollow weight drops,
The noose tightens,
The walls squeeze ever closer in.

And so, I play and wait and cook
and wait and walk and wait and
work and wait and write and wait
and sew and wait,

And live and wait,
Lest my courage gives out.

Indifference
By Aiden Ramirez-Tatum

it's like my dad told me.
like he saw, as a kid, with his mom
an old car, impact, without safety glass and then
like sleet, falling, a guillotine and,
a person, the piece of them that used to
be the part that talked, maybe, but definitely
the part that thought, and there it goes

clunk-a clunk,
onto the street in front of me.

and what's worse? I feel nothing! My God,
for an entire person, right here—
and I can't bring myself to feel,
before scanning, and moving
and saving my damn self, of course,

and I go into work and see worse.
and I go home and see worse.
and I go to sleep, worse.

I wake up, worse.

Don’ it suck
By S. Atticus Olivet

Don’ it suck  politicians suck
When was the last time
YouMe didn’ get stuck by the man
When YouMe realize everything’s fine?
Right, we neither.

So climate crisis, right?
Big ole razzle-dazzle
Slow burn fight shouldn’
Be a fight; can’ shouldn’ win.
Need a breather,

But can’ do that no
ma’am sir all YouMe can’t
If stopt that’s mama’s righteous
kaput no mr(s) all people
Never another day.

So politicians dance
Play pay-me-in-the-lobby games,
YouMe sit, societal dick in hand
Waiting for some change
Never anyone’ll say

“It’s solved” honestly
‘Cause it can’ at we rate
Like at all of us’ pace now
Now it need change - YouMe’s hands.

Now it starts today.

Moldy

orange, jam jar, yogurt
tub

peach skin, plum, pesto
left untended

slice of bread, tomato paste,
avocado rind

pages in an old book,
unbrushed teeth

the basement of Michael Jordan’s
house

the big toe of my
right foot

but

left to grow in a petri
dish, what hues:

carotine, hyacinth, casino
pink, aquamarine

colors you’d pay thousands
to put on your walls.

High S’cool Reunion
By Logan Corey

And then he apologized for
forgetting the name tag,
“But it’s OK,
right? We’re all
friends here. Go on
in and say
hi.”