Anthony Anaxagorou

for Wayne Holloway-Smith
so gently
have the children
been washed
& scented
with lavender.
against their will.
so thick
the salt of dogs.
breathing is the
hardest thing of all.
I want us to share
orange socks.
heavy coats. washing
lines. & windpipes.
a whole bandwagon.
to stay still
during the ad
breaks.
let phones
nibble away our
pen tops. time
is inhaling us both.
holding us to
the bruise her father
left. I know.
you know.
this sky you’re
talking into.
the hunger you want
to tie. man.
look how fucking
vegan we are. softer
& more dangerous.
than an uncooked
egg. how nearly
dead we were.
an adult lying
to a child is called
bedtime. the other
way round. is war.
who drilled
these fractions
into us. who stood
by & watched.
I want to tell you
it’ll all be fine. as
though any of us
last. make it past
the next if.
from the journal THE ADROIT JOURNAL
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Close-up head shot of M. NourbeSe Philip
Poet M. NourbeSe Philip Honored 

The Toronto writer has received the $50,000 PEN/Nabokov Award for International Literature. PEN America said of her work, "M. NourbeSe Philip's writing has, for four decades, merged vital formal experimentation and considerations of race, gender, colonialism and African diasporic identity."

via CBC
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Cover to Tristan Tzara's Approximate Man & Other Writings
What Sparks Poetry:
Jay Besemer on Tristan Tzara's “Anecdote"


"Already focusing on short, intense poems in my own writing, the eleven-line near-sonnet of 'Anecdote' made me feel that I had a path ahead of me ('from one halt to the next') and reassured me that I was not alone in my experiences of violent alienation and the sense of being wrong, badly-suited for what the whole world seemed to expect of me. In both form and content, 'Anecdote' resonated with my own needs, perspective and experiences, both interior and as a human animal in the world.
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