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