Dujie Tahat

Forgiveness is laborious that way. A never- ending line of empty boxes so long, we forget—I pin my awards to the fat bellies of stars. She pulls stitches from the spaces between. The thread is black, the point sharp. The odds are astronomical we'd end up, here, on the other side of our pale blue dot like this, at opposing ends of the cheap azure rug bought on clearance at Ross last week to cover up the fireplace burns of escaped embers. It's been at least a year. Finally dry enough to start, we throw in the kindling. Where there is smoke, I finally say I love you.

from the book BALIKBAYAN / New Michigan Press
READ ABOUT TODAY'S POEM
Share Share
Tweet Tweet
Forward Forward
Headshot of Linda Gregerson
"A Conversation with Linda Gregerson"

"Once I learned how to write at all, rather than merely floundering, I found that a poem can start virtually anywhere: with a fragment of overheard speech, a headline in the local newspaper, the sight of a child being carried on her father's shoulders, a fragment of guilt I've tried for years to bury. Sometimes I long to capture something I've encountered in that gorgeous, ephemeral present-tense of the theater—the turn of an actor's head, an ingenious use of stage prop, etc."

via
MCSWEENEY'S
READ ALL TODAY'S HEADLINES
Cover of Dolores Dorantes' Book, Copy
What Sparks Poetry:
Elisa Díaz Castelo on Dolores Dorantes' Copy


"These fragmented definitions, along with other phrases, iterate over and over in her poems. Are, indeed, copied. In its use of permutation, these poems seem to be written in the tradition of the pantoum or the villanelle. The obsessive repetition distinctive to those forms haunts Dorantes' work, but also the same mysterious and almost imperceptible progress, the piecemeal transformation of meaning."
READ THIS WEEK'S ISSUE
View in browser

You have received this email because you submitted your email address at www.poems.com
If you would like to unsubscribe please click here.

© 2022 Poetry Daily, Poetry Daily, MS 3E4, 4400 University Dr., Fairfax, VA 22030

Design by the Binding Agency