Samiya Bashir's Blog, page 4
March 28, 2012
RIP Adrienne Rich
and one of my favorites:"For the Dead"
I dreamed I called you on the telephone
to say: Be kinder to yourself
but you were sick and would not answerThe waste of my love goes on this way
trying to save you from yourselfI have always wondered about the left-over
energy, the way water goes rushing down a hill
long after the rains have stoppedor the fire you want to go to bed from
but cannot leave, burning-down but not burnt-down
the red coals more extreme, more curious
in their flashing and dying
than you wish they were
sitting long after midnight
"Diving into the Wreck"
My mantra.
Diving Into The Wreck
by Adrienne Rich
First having read the book of myths,
and loaded the camera,
and checked the edge of the knife-blade,
I put on
the body-armor of black rubber
the absurd flippers
the grave and awkward mask.
I am having to do this
not like Cousteau with his
assiduous team
aboard the sun-flooded schooner
but here alone.
There is a ladder.
The ladder is always there
hanging innocently
close to the side of the schooner.
We know what it is for,
we who have used it.
Otherwise
it is a piece of maritime floss
some sundry equipment.
I go down.
Rung after rung and still
the oxygen immerses me
the blue light
the clear atoms
of our human air.
I go down.
My flippers cripple me,
I crawl like an insect down the ladder
and there is no one
to tell me when the ocean
will begin.
First the air is blue and then
it is bluer and then green and then
black I am blacking out and yet
my mask is powerful
it pumps my blood with power
the sea is another story
the sea is not a question of power
I have to learn alone
to turn my body without force
in the deep element.
And now: it is easy to forget
what I came for
among so many who have always
lived here
swaying their crenellated fans
between the reefs
and besides
you breathe differently down here.
I came to explore the wreck.
The words are purposes.
The words are maps.
I came to see the damage that was done
and the treasures that prevail.
I stroke the beam of my lamp
slowly along the flank
of something more permanent
than fish or weed
the thing I came for:
the wreck and not the story of the wreck
the thing itself and not the myth
the drowned face always staring
toward the sun
the evidence of damage
worn by salt and away into this threadbare beauty
the ribs of the disaster
curving their assertion
among the tentative haunters.
This is the place.
And I am here, the mermaid whose dark hair
streams black, the merman in his armored body.
We circle silently
about the wreck
we dive into the hold.
I am she: I am he
whose drowned face sleeps with open eyes
whose breasts still bear the stress
whose silver, copper, vermeil cargo lies
obscurely inside barrels
half-wedged and left to rot
we are the half-destroyed instruments
that once held to a course
the water-eaten log
the fouled compass
We are, I am, you are
by cowardice or courage
the one who find our way
back to this scene
carrying a knife, a camera
a book of myths
in which
our names do not appear.
www.samiyabashir.com
February 20, 2012
Don't miss Cave Canem at AWP 2012 in Chicago!
CAVE CANEM AT AWP 2012———————————————————————————————Cave Canem Fellows & Columbia College Chicago Faculty, Past & Present: A Reading To Benefit Cave Canem
Wedesday, Feb. 29, 2012, 7pm
Villains Bar
649 South Clark Street
Chicago, IL 60605
Suggested donation: $10 to benefit Cave Canem
First beer drunk & shot clock ticking
by SAMIYA BASHIR
too easy to say it started on tuesday night.
average. work/school night. family hour to prime
time digesting broadcast news rancid as discount meat.
how did we get here then? on this rent-to-own couch,
greasy-fingered and scowl-faced. cussing out somebody's
children. belt worn ragged to the first and final hole. unbuttoned.
half-conscious. throwing answers at an orange square
head spinning a wheel. spinning the wheel. rooting for a
promised escape. no destination in mind. no idea of route.
*From: Gospel: poems (RedBone Press 2009)
———————————————————————————————Samiya Bashir is the author of Gospel and Where the Apple Falls, and co-editor of Role Call: A Generational Anthology of Social & Political Black Literature & Art and Best Black Women's Erotica 2 
and her poetry, stories, articles and editorial work have been featured in numerous publications. She is the recipient of Aquarius Press Legacy Award, as well as awards, grants, and fellowships including from the Virginia Center for Creative Arts, the Community of Writers at Squaw Valley, Soul Mountain Writers Colony, The Austin Project, the Astraea Foundation, the National Association of Pen Women, and Cave Canem among others. A founding organizer of Fire & Ink, recognized as the most influential supporter and advocate for LGBT writers of African descent, her work has recently appeared in Callaloo, Cura, Encyclopedia Vol 2 F-K, Reverie: Midwest African American Literature, and online @The Poetry Foundation, The Rumpus, and Torch: Creative Writing by African American Women. She currently teaches writing at the University of Michigan.
http://scryptkeeper.blogspot.com
www.samiyabashir.com
February 19, 2012
Some things have both Nothing & Everything to do with Poetry
In pictures: Iran's female ninjas | World news | The Guardian: Iran's female ninjas: fighting for sexual equality
In a country where women's rights – including what they wear – are severely curtailed many have come up with a new way of channelling their rage
http://scryptkeeper.blogspot.comwww.samiyabashir.com
February 18, 2012
Ooo! Ooo! Do I wanna be "Cocktails" or "Chronic"?
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"Stop! No... In the name of love please continue!"
Oh, what a night. There were samosas and papadum. There was curry and daal. There was wine and whiskey and song. Line dancing and Britney Spears. There were neckties. There were accidental poems, delectable who-slept-with-whoms, and quite right movie recommendations. It was an unseasonably warm night in Tree Town and the best of it we did make.
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"Gabbing in the Streets! Three great tastes that taste great together!"
So do I wanna be Tea? Lunch? Cocktails? Chronic? Eh... I'll take one of each please. I'll just stay me, loving them all separately and together: good times and great people.
http://scryptkeeper.blogspot.com
www.samiyabashir.com
February 17, 2012
Congratulations to the Sweet & Brilliant Rita Dove!
On Monday, February 13, 2012 former U.S. Poet Laureate Rita Dove became the first person in history to both serve as US poet-in-chief and receive the National Medal of Arts.
President Obama award U.Va. English professor Rita Dove the National Medal of Arts on Monday afternoon.
From UVA Today:
Dove — the former U.S. Poet Laureate — is to be among eight recipients of the award. Others include actor Al Pacino and classical pianist Andre' Watts. Obama will also hand out nine National Humanities Medals. The event begins at 1:45 p.m. and will be streamed live online here.
The White House press release says Dove is being honored "for her contributions as an American poet and author. Ms. Dove creates works that are equal parts beauty, lyricism, critique, and politics. Ms. Dove has worked to create popular interest in the literary arts, serving as the United States' youngest Poet Laureate and advocating on behalf of the diversity and vitality of American poetry and literature."
Dove, Commonwealth Professor of English, is only the ninth poet to receive the award, and is the youngest. In 1996, she received the other major presidential lifetime achievement award, the National Humanities Medal. The only others to have won both are novelists Eudora Welty and Philip Roth.
Dove is the only person to have won both medals and held the Poet Laureateship.
Did I mention the illustrious Ms. Dove also ranks as one of my personal favorite, sweetest, most brilliant, and most damned-fun poets in America?
Rank this news as one of my favorite good-news tips of the year.
Go on 'head Rita Dove!
.http://scryptkeeper.blogspot.com
www.samiyabashir.com
February 15, 2012
Glitter Who?
Just in time for Valentine's Day, GlitterTongue "is an online collection of love poems by thirty queer and trans poets," started by Margaret Rhee, Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha, Tamiko Beyer, Oliver Bendorf, Meg Day, and Ching-In Chen.
"your hands stay shadows at my temples."
says the divine Ms. R. Erica Doyle at the close of her devastatingly sexy poem, "the day after tomorrow is goodbye and yo don't know when"
"I'm marking time / " [go on...]
"by how your clavicle eclipses the North Star."
Click here to read the full poem.http://scryptkeeper.blogspot.com
www.samiyabashir.com
February 13, 2012
February 12, 2012
Samiya Bashir shared an Instagram photo with you
Samiya Bashir just shared an Instagram photo with you:
view full image Thanks,
The Instagram Team http://scryptkeeper.blogspot.com
www.samiyabashir.com
