Diana Marie Delgado
Most nights I'm face to face with the stars.
No one is more afraid of this than me.

So I find places to lie down
and signify. I'm practicing a play

where my brother's doing time in prison
and I'm locked out of the house.

Talking is like falling down or
watching your uncle

pull himself into his wheelchair,
the sun moving over

his arms like a blessing.
At least I had a mother

who could sew her name
into my hair.

I want to lie in her stomach again,
understand the drive

to hurt something young,
wild with sky.

My father and brother enter,
and one of them says,

You should start this story
with the death of a child.
READ ABOUT TODAY'S POEM
Share Share
Tweet Tweet
Forward Forward
Photograph of a smiling Carl Phillips
"A Century of Yale Younger Poets"

Carl Phillips, judge since 2010 of the Yale Series of Younger Poets, the oldest literary prize in the United States, unpacks the unique perspectives this role offers. "I’ve been surprised at how the majority of the manuscripts I see resist giving any kind of offense—they’re well-behaved, polite, in terms of content and style. But I don’t go to poetry for good manners."

via POETS & WRITERS
READ ALL TODAY'S HEADLINES
Cover of Natalie Harkin's Archival-Poetics

"In using the state’s archive against itself, in forcing the state to remember its many forms of violence against indigenous people, in releasing ancestral voices from their archival confines, Harkin counters oppression with 'infinite ways to imagine/ infinite possibilities to/ transform/ beyond this colonial-archive-box.' Her inventive and necessary interventions into Aboriginal Affairs records offer back to the state its own language not as a narcissistic exercise in nation-building but rather as an indictment of its alleged successes."
READ THIS WEEK'S ISSUE
Poetry Daily logo
Poetry Daily Depends on You

We make reading the best contemporary poetry a treasured daily experience. Consider a contribution today.
You have received this email because you submitted your email address at www.poems.com
If you would like to unsubscribe please click here.

© 2019 Poetry Daily, Poetry Daily, MS 3E4, 4400 University Dr., Fairfax, VA 22030

Design by the Binding Agency