writing

WATERLINE

| Sheree

By Ocean Vuong

If I should wake & the Ark

the Ark already

gone

If there was one shivering thing

at my side

If the snow in his hair

was all that was left

of the fire

If we ran through the orchard

with our mouths

wide open

& still too small

for amen

If I nationed myself

in the shadow

of a colossal wave

If only to hold on

by opening—

by kingdom come

give me this one

eighth day

let me enter

this nearly-gone yes

the way death enters

anything fully

without a trace

Taken from Emergence Magazine

MICRO AGGRESSIONS

| Sheree

This is a series of poems that can be read in full here.

Abdul Ali

#9

On the day of your interview a full itinerary is prepared. Jokingly, you wonder

 if you should have requested potty breaks. Never has your day been this structured. 

About six or seven hours of back-to-back meetings. During lunch you meet the only 

Black faculty member in English, who is leaving. You don’t think anything 

of it except that the coincidence is more than ironic. You try to make small talk. 

You want to gauge if there is any coded language from the “sista”  

that says Get Out. Do not succumb to this Sunken Place. Instead, 

you get an unexpected quiz during lunch from the Black faculty member. 

“How will you as a Black man teach these privileged kids

how to read Black literature as universal?” Before you can respond, she cuts you off

A little surreal prose poem

| Sheree
The Sirens by Franz Kafka

So Day 4 of #GloPoWriMo and I’ve managed to read poetry and write some for the last four days. I’m pleased with that as it’s the most I’ve written all year!

I’m sharing this little surreal prose poem that came my way by Franz Kafka that really inspired me. The illustration is by Aimee Pong and you can find more illustrated poems by Kafka here too.

This is what I wrote jumping off The Sirens-

The sirens of waiting – a surreal prose poem

Waiting. Seductive voices floating through the dark night draw me in with the promise of beauty; laying down my load and being rescued.

Thick velvet air, their song like the Sirens overwhelm my senses leading me to think I’m safe and wanted and loved. Isn’t this how all men ( little boys in grown up clothes) draw their prey in?

The Black Madonna, another mother for all white people. With my eyes sharpened through carrots, I’m no longer waiting for someone to come and save me. There is no one. There is no such person. It was a construct fed on a reel since the day I took my first breath. A falsehood fed like life itself.

I’m the one I’ve been waiting for. Me in all my fucked up glory is the one who will save me. I see it now. I feel it now. I hear it now in my lament sung aloud. Listen. Doesn’t it sound so beautiful?

It’s a blessing

| Sheree

Day 3 of GloPoWriMo and I promise the last one from Lucile Clifton ( for now!).

And this poem, I just love the tone, the softness which for me mirrors the moving of the boats out with the tide into the deep waters.

The smooth cruise of wood on water is a the sight to behold. But there is love here and a turning away from fear and a floating off into the future with hope.

This is not about boats this is a blessing, a wish on how to live our lives. And I totally buy into it with an open heart.

To keep that innocence, to keep that hope within our hearts against the odds, against our day to day struggles is a gift. Is a blessing.