Category: News

RWB Workshop Poem of the Week—Dec 18

Zorida Mohammed

Earthworm

I aspire to be like an earthworm.
How else could I survive
the trauma-soaked debris
that my clients place on my plate?
Unbeknownst to them,
they depend on me to digest it,
making it more acceptable for them
like my mother chewing food from her own plate
and feeding it to me in infancy.

With as little affect as possible—
though sometimes a tear will roll out
without my permission–
I welcome the stories
that mar and rule their lives.

An eight-year-old knows
when it is time to hurry to the garage
(for privacy) so her military father
can be serviced.

I must bear witness to a stepfather
raping a daughter as the mother
forces liquor into her five-year-old mouth
with a stick at hand for any resistance.

Fifty years later, a blond little girl
in a 55-year-old body
no longer looks down from the ceiling
on the assault—

When she eventually is able
to allow herself to remember,
she dry-heaves and wretches for days
as she attempts to evict the demon semen
from her body.

I envy the earthworm
because it completes its life
without complaint and never
questions its place or purpose,
and never gives a shit
that its shit is gold.

———————————————————————

Blog – http://redwheelbarrowpoets.org
Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/RWBPoets
Twitter – https://twitter.com/RWBPoets

RWB Workshop Poem of the Week—Dec 4

Mark Fogarty

HOMAGE TO KOLA BOOF

Kola Boof tried to kill herself.
Her boys didn’t want to come for Thanksgiving,
And that was the last straw.

She has been strong enough to survive anything.
Kola Boof was infibulated, as many girls were
In her native Sudan. The butchering knife cutting the labia,
The remaining skin sutured up, I never
Wanted to see it. I had a horror of it.

Kola had her first periods through a straw.
But she said her cut pussy
Was the only way she was like her mother,
Murdered in her earshot when she was a girl.

She spent the night with her mother’s and father’s dead bodies.
She didn’t die then, somehow.

Kola has been nothing if not determined.
She’s had miles of sex jammed in her,
And it hurt every time, she told me.

I was too timid of the blood berry.
But now I want to kiss Kola’s cut pussy,
Not as an act of sex, but of homage.

Mary Ma

I’m Probably Ruining It

(or Why I Never Assert My Pronouns)

Comobordity is another way of saying

salt on the wound.
All I am is a salt wound.
All I taste is the salt
from the blood
from the biting
of my tongue.
I can’t always say the thing.
Can’t we have one night, one dinner, one moment without —
me, throwing up the main course,
running the faucet so no one can hear
or
me, drawing blood from my skin
or
me, making a scene?
All of those nights are a million years old
and by a million years I mean
at least ten. 
A decade is long enough to forget.

———————————————————————

Blog – http://redwheelbarrowpoets.org
Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/RWBPoets
Twitter – https://twitter.com/RWBPoets

RWB Workshop Poem Of The Week—Nov 27

Mary Ma

Human

Myles, I plan on dying first.
Not soon, just in the scheme of things.

Soon is in the time
I’ll spend coming home to you.
I call out “Human!”
and hear you answer, “Yes?”
when I open our door.
We joke that if we ever get a dog
we’ll name them Animal
so that at the end of our day
we can always come home and say,
“Human?”
“Animal?”

Have I ever worn you out?
We talk about how
you grow in the same shape but I
change shapes faster
than I grow.
Okay, I added the judgment there.
You never seem to bring any.

What does it say that my first non-abusive partner
is the partner I married?

I think it says nothing. Maybe it’s just a numbers game—
no shortage of hurt in the world.
But for us, it means nothing.

I wish I could show my child self my now self,
my happy self. Maybe I would’ve had
an easier time surviving, but then again,
fuck it. I’ve already survived.
Maybe we should save these moments for our
future selves– we have so much surviving
left to do.

———————————————————————

Blog – http://redwheelbarrowpoets.org
Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/RWBPoets
Twitter – https://twitter.com/RWBPoets

RWB Workshop Poem of the Week—Nov 20

Arthur Russell

We Won’t Come This Way Again

We won’t come again to this grimace,
to this wax-covered place
where we fought ourselves and each other to a cold draw.
We won’t return to the bed we prayed to bring us together
or the workshop where I made shoes and you left food.
We won’t be married.
We’ll be deflated lawn Santas.

We won’t come this way again.
We bit our lips to cover our teeth;
we stared each other down,
yet the sap rose to the same signal
hidden in the February air. I scraped my knuckles
on the side of the well. You drove the scooter
to Newark in search of a ravine.
Our love was tuned
to a gray hair’s curl on a black sweater,
to a fear with a field so magnetic
it made tree rings
on the papers that you handed me.
We won’t come this way again.

Half of half of half of half of half,
the chain saw does its work.
How sad the roots will be when they find the trunk
is gone. Oh, the water that we drank!
And we thought only love could nurture duty.

Shoulder to shoulder, we saw the world
like a television show, but not each other.
One for the pain, another for the waste,
a third for the lockout, a fourth for the forgotten bliss.
Like stammering Egyptians spilling wine
in the rich silt of the Nile,
we won’t come this way again.

RWB Workshop Poem of the Week: Nov 6

Arthur Russell

April Was Fatal For Jesus, But Not For Me

The seasons are not my metaphorical daddy.

The wine-dark leaves of cut leaf maples
spread like a king’s robe on the wet lawn
are not a sign the end is near to me.

I give not the slightest shit
that hardened winter buds
on the slender branches
of a sapling oak
are promises to some sad soul
that spring’s rebirth
is ’round a few months’ corner.

I do not believe
in cherry blossoms clustered
in the climate-varied air of April,
or that any kind of thaw
implies any other kind of thaw.

We are not babies.
We are disappointed people
like to die.

I don’t need summer days
on Vineyard beaches
swimming through my lover’s legs
in sunlit surf
to make me see the truth.

The caveats are ample as a bedspread
without the sweetened lemon suffrage
of an August afternoon.

March is wet and cold,
and so’s your mom.

Go ahead, I dare you to correlate
the weather that eleventh
of September with the outcome.

Seasons are the guy who swears
he didn’t fuck the maid.

And whatever I say about the seasons
goes double for the daffy crap
imputed by the lovelorn mass
to morning, noon, and night.

———————————————————————

Poem of the Week email subscription
https://zc1.maillist-manage.com/ua/optin…

Blog – http://redwheelbarrowpoets.org (263 followers)
Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/RWBPoets (432 likes)
Twitter – https://twitter.com/RWBPoets (108 followers)

GV-Jim Klein book launch—Nov. 9

45316861_10216204551281917_201222499172614144_n

NEW BOOK BY Jim Klein
The Magic Circle returns to GainVille Cafe Friday, Nov. 9 at 7 PM for the launch of Jim Klein’s new book THE PREEMBROIDERED MOMENT (Errant Pigeon Press). Musical guest will be Joe Jacovino.

The Red Wheelbarrow Poets Bring-Your-A-Game open mic with generous reading times follows. $9 includes coffee/tea and dessert.

17 Ames Ave. Rutherford, New Jersey tel. 201-507-1800.

Read excerpts, details, and advance praise at Errant Pigeon Press: https://www.errantpigeon.com/the-preembroidered-moment

RWB Workshop Poem of the Week—October 30

Zorida Mohammed

PARKING SPIT IN SUNLIGHT 

Her father missed no chance to spit in her face.
She glared at him, speechless.

Her mother fed her money,
lots of it, on the side.

She stole from her parent’s store.
By the time she was 18,
her tiny frame had ballooned to 300lbs.

She slipped into denial.

Everything worthwhile was unreachable.
Self-loathing was the only knock she embraced.

Chaos was where she thrived.
She developed a knack for it.

She ate to tamp down something that she could not put her fingers on.
Sleeping was her 2ndfavorite thing.

She lived in her id.

She visited the Louvre several times
because it was the thing to do.
It was a listless chore
because no man was on her arm.

Forever in debt,
she learned to return the things
of fleeting happiness.

She managed to stay at 126 lbs.
for years after surgery,
but the pounds, all of it,
crept back ever so slowly.

For twenty years, she’s been picking the droplets
off her face and parking them in sunlight.

Cake and candy,
nay, sugar,
is still her daddy.

———————————————————————

Poem of the Week email subscription
https://zc1.maillist-manage.com/ua/optin…

Blog – http://redwheelbarrowpoets.org (263 followers)
Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/RWBPoets (432 likes)
Twitter – https://twitter.com/RWBPoets (108 followers)

WCW—Susana H. Case on November 7

Williams Readings-Nov2018-SusannaCase.indd

Susana H. Case’s poems use wit, high-energy cleverness, joie de vivre, and a certain daredevil sensibility to shine a light on some of life’s most harrowing rites of passage and most difficult questions. In equal parts–and often simultaneously–entertaining and devastating, these poems are as archetypal as they are personal, thoroughly riveting no matter what culture or mindset the reader or the listener may be coming from.

Please join us on Wednesday, November 7th, 2018, 7:00 PM at the William Carlos Williams Center, One Williams Plaza in Rutherford NJ.

Please note: There is an open mic with generous reading times.

You can follow everything about the Red Wheelbarrow, its events and poets at these sites:
Blog – https://redwheelbarrowpoets.wordpress.com
Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/RWBPoets Twitter – @RWBPoets.

GV – It’s Here! Red Wheelbarrow 11 Launching

Front cover_2018-RGB

The Red Wheelbarrow 11 is launching at GainVille Café on Friday, September 28, 2018, an event hosted by Mark Fogarty. Mark hosts the GainVille Cafe reading series and is one of The Red Wheelbarrow’ three managing editors.

The feature at both launches is all the poets we are publishing. As your work is in The Red Wheelbarrow # 11, we would be delighted if you join us and read from your poems that we’ve published.

Each year’s Red Wheelbarrow spotlights and presents an in-depth look at the poetry of one of our community’s members. We are very excited and happy to announce that The Red Wheelbarrow # 11’s featured poet is Jim Klein. It is a delight and a true honor to showcase Jim’s work this year. Jim is a true poetry hero, the father of our Red Wheelbarrow community, and a master poet at the top of his game.

An $9 cover includes coffee/tea, dessert.

7 PM, GainVille Café
17 Ames Avenue
Rutherford
201-507-1800

WCW-Roger Sedarat

Williams Readings-Sept2018.indd

September is National Translation Month! Join us at the Williams Center to celebrate. Our feature this month is the Iranian-American poet and translator Roger Sedarat who will present a dramatic performance based on his recent poetry collection Haji as Puppet: an Orientalist Burlesque, which interrogates and challenges the western gaze toward the Middle East.

For over 15 years, Sedarat has been performing poetry and translation as Haji, a Persian punk persona based on the 19th century stereotypical picaresque British novel The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan by J.J. Morier. The translation backstory of this novel has real relevance to Sedarat’s Haji project. The first translator to bring this novel into Persian actually re-appropriated some of the Orientalist depictions. To this end, with Haji, Sedarat attempts to expose American assumptions of Iran and the Middle East. This promises to be a fun and memorable show not to be missed!

Reviews:

“Not since Ali Hakim, the Persian peddler in Oklahoma!has a minor Middle Eastern character lit up the grand stage.
—Roger Ailes, Former Fox News Chief

“Heh heh heh. Heck of a show!”—George W. Bush, Former American President

“O, O, O, that Rumi rag. It’s so erotic. So exotic!”—Azar Nafisi, author of Reading Lolita in Tehran

“With so much trouble in the region, it’s great to let go and laugh at it all.”—Henry Kissinger, former Secretary of State

Join us on Wednesday, September 5, 2018, 7:00 PM at the William Carlos Williams Center, One Williams Plaza in Rutherford NJ.

Admission is free and there is an open mic with generous reading times.