Photos

Vive O Agora: Street Art in Portugal and Spain

Poets whom I heard reading their poems at the Dodge Poetry Festival, October 20, 2018

Taken at the Dodge Poetry Festival, 2018

Horns

BY KWAME DAWES

In every crowd, there is the one

with horns, casually moving through

the bodies as if this is the living

room of a creature with horns,

a long cloak and the song of tongues

on the lips of the body. To see

the horns, one’s heart rate must

reach one hundred and seventy

five beats per minute, at a rate

faster than the blink of an eye,

for the body with horns lives

in the space between the blink

and light — slow down the blink

and somewhere in the white space

between sight and sightlessness

is twilight, and in that place,

that gap, the stop-time, the horn-

headed creatures appear,

spinning, dancing, strolling

through the crowd; and in the

fever of revelation, you will

understand why the shaman

is filled with the hubris

of creation, why the healer

forgets herself and feels like

angels about to take flight.

My head throbs under

the mosquito mesh, the drums

do not stop through the night,

the one with horns feeds

me sour porridge and nuts

and sways, Welcome, welcome.

 

photo by James C. Horner

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R. A. Villanueva and Burhra Rehman
Taken at the Dodge Poetry Festival, 2018

Muse

by R. A. Vaillanueva

 

Nightfall: pirate boy steps off the pier &
into the thick flashes of the newsmen

not at all like the others who hang their
coats from their foreheads or hood their faces

before hearings. He is smiling broadly
upon first meeting a mustered crowd lit

scattershot by the gaffers & grip crews.
Better to be here on this continent

of oaths & anthems & spit than a body
washed ashore, pockets stuffed with ransom?

is what they want to ask him as one, fit
voice—better alive, mocked by frogmen & our

sharpshooters than tagged & shelved in the holds
of a frigate moored off the coast of home?

 


The Difference 

by Bushra Rehman

It’s the difference between
whether you talk to the girl or not
whether you carry the moon home
in the seat of your pants
burning and cool
ready to lay it on your tongue
in the privacy of your room
and let its holy light burn through
your blood
Or whether you walk home
with the moon in your stomach
heavy as a rock
with all the sidewalks pulling you down
and all the well-lit buildings
of a midtown night winking on and off
Saying we know you, you’re the one who
goes home alone and types in the dark
with the small cut of your window
always blocking the light of the moon off


Eileen Huang

Taken at the Dodge Poetry Festival, 2018