Hi everyone,
Welcome to 365 Days of Poetry & Honesty <3 I hope the beginning of this month has been kind to you ! This week I’m thinking about hunger, about the reality of honesty when your heart aches but the truth & the moments demand patience. but really I’d actually just like to shed my skin & run wild, on four feet through the forest, become a wolf & poof! i’m a memory. i’m a dream. And really I think i’d rather not feel things but I can't not feel, it's what drives my poetic voice, it's what grounds my sensuality, but some days I think, it's enough, i feel incomplete, unresolved. Anyways here are some poems 4 you! First, my songs of the week :)
Monday
I’m borrowing from Anne Sexton in this poem. “What I want to say, Linda, // is that there is nothing in your body that lies. //All that is new is telling the truth.” - From Anne Sexton’s poem, ‘Little Girl, My Stringbean, My Lovely Woman’ ! which I love! & I wish I’d read it in my teens. I think with that centring of one’s body, it would’ve been harder to run away from my desires, to starve myself. Maybe it’d be easier to feel loved, to know love, to not defer to submission. I’m being a little sentimental now sorry, but I’d also like to think I might have been braver! but hey, I’ve read it, I’m carrying it with me now.
Tuesday
a dream where ‘i’m 30 // & still fumbling with buttons // your buttons i hope’
Wednesday
a spare season, time outside of time, i’d become the metaphor, let it take me home
Thursday
love is a sickness. i’m blinding my eyes.
Friday
Carolee Schneemann!! Her exhibition is a beautiful testiment to self-expression, sexuality & human suffering, I’m obsessed. & I think she was a women who was driven by her desires and i think she allowed herself the freedom to express that both in her life & in her art. & i think that's powerful, it resonates with me. the beautiful frenzy of life, allowing your body to be both 'artist & subject' ! like you create the work & then let it create you! you treat your body as a site of knowledge! & that actually speaks to a line in a poem that Anne Sexton wrote for her daughter called 'Little Girl, My Stringbean, My Lovely Woman' ! it's that 'there is nothing in your body lies' & i actually borrowed it for a poem i wrote earlier in the week! & really i'm saying to myself it's okay to trust yourself, to lead with your heart & let your desires resurface! Part of the poem is her iconic quote “I am both image maker and image” !!
Saturday
This one is again inspired by Carolee Schneeman & I wrote in the middle of the exhibition ! I think I’d just taken in Meat Body & i had the first line circling my head. It's an amazing & expansive exhibition & I really really recommend it !!
Sunday
This Sunday we have one poem by Safiya Sinclair & the second by Anne Sexton!
Thank you for reading this week’s newsletter. I hope you have a good week !
With love,
Phoenix