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That Woman

@angryfemalepoet.bsky.social

150 followers 350 following 84 posts

🏳️‍🌈 A fractious midult of unpredictable temperament with strong feminist leanings and an uncontrollable poetry habit. I share what I’m reading.
Day job is science and medicine. Cis-bi, she/her

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That Woman

@angryfemalepoet.bsky.social

And No. 6 by Michael O’Siadhail, ‘Between’…

Between
As we fall into step I ask a penny for your thoughts.
"Oh, nothing,' you say, 'well, nothing so easily bought?
Sliding into the rhythm of your silence, I almost forget how lonely I'd been until that autumn morning we met.
At bedtime up along my childhood's stairway, tongues of fire cast shadows. Too earnest, too highstrung.
My desire is endless: others ended when I'd only started.
Then, there was you: so whole-hog, so wholehearted.
Think of the thousands of nights and the shadows fought.
And the mornings of light. I try to read your thought.
In the strange openness of your face, I'm powerless.
Always this love. Always this infinity between us.
MICHEAL O'SIADHAIL

February 14, 2025 at 6:06 PM

That Woman

@angryfemalepoet.bsky.social

No. 5 is We Two Boys by Walt Whitman. Is it a love poem? It’s certainly been used as a wedding poem so I’m saying yes

TWO BOYS TOGETHER CLINGING.
We two boys together clinging,
One the other never leaving,
Up and down the roads going, North and
South excursions
making,
Power enjoying, elbows stretching, fingers
clutching,
Arm'd and fearless, eating, drinking,
sleeping, loving,
No law less than ourselves owning, sailing,
soldiering, thieving, threatening,
Misers, menials, priests alarming, air breathing, water drinking, on the turf or the sea-beach dancing, Cities wrenching, ease scorning, statutes
mocking, feebleness chas-ing,
Fulfilling our foray.

February 14, 2025 at 6:01 PM

That Woman

@angryfemalepoet.bsky.social

No. 4 is by A. V. Christie
Evermay-on-the-Delaware

A. V. Christie
Evermay-on-the-Delaware
You sleep in the sharp Adirondack chair, surrounded by a still cloud of larkspur and I am in the long shadows of lupine which almost reach you in late afternoon.
I'm remembering the night of our wedding, how rain throbbed on the windshield, each drop a shadow blooming somewhere on the map.
I wanted you to know the way along roads blurred by a fury of rain. I yearned for you to reinvent yourself as lightning spread its repertoire, its variations.
But love is each repetition, each small return; night after night love is the way you gather the birds, lifting their cage like a lantern.

February 14, 2025 at 5:56 PM

That Woman

@angryfemalepoet.bsky.social

No. 3 is by Menna Elfyn, Welsh language activist extraordinaire; Couplings.

February 14, 2025 at 5:54 PM

That Woman

@angryfemalepoet.bsky.social

Yes I missed posting numbers 2-6 in the countdown because life but for the record, here’s a few of them. It was wonderful finding them all.
No. 2 is from A Blood Condition by Kayo Chingonyi

February 14, 2025 at 5:51 PM

That Woman

@angryfemalepoet.bsky.social

The most gorgeous of love poems, the absolute number one in my #Valentine’s countdown, mid-air from The Air Year by @carolinebirduk.bsky.social

#poem #poetry #lgbtq

Mid-air
There is a corner of the city where the air is soft resin. Step in and it hardens around you. Suspended in amber. We made
the mistake of kissing there. I mean, here.
Our mouths midway across the same
inhalation like robbers mid-leap between rooftops. If kisses were scored by composers they'd place the breath on the upbeat. Oh God. Music preceded by mid-air,
when the baton lifts, the orchestra tightens: 'And' before the 'one two three.' And the sunlight is meticulous. And the river holds its tongue. And your silver earring steels like an aerialist's hoop, caught mid-spin. A note almost sung. Locked in the amber of the and.
We just want to land or be landed on.

February 14, 2025 at 5:49 PM

That Woman

@angryfemalepoet.bsky.social

No. 7 in my unconventional love poems countdown is this gentle and hopeful passage; from Bright Fear by Mary Jean Chan @faberbooks.bsky.social

XVI

Home, my therapist suggests, is where
you don't have to explain yourself.
Where is that place? Perhaps
here is home, in the long poem
of our lives. Where she offers
me a cup of freshly brewed
oolong tea, and I am moved
by the scent of something
bittersweet. Where our thoughts
spill over as I adore the warmth
in your voice. Where the afternoon
light is so kind, and the corgi lies
fast asleep at our feet. Where I begin
to speak, and you hear me, unequivocally.

Cover of Bright Fear. Plain yellow with blue and orange lettering.

February 12, 2025 at 3:02 PM

That Woman

@angryfemalepoet.bsky.social

No. 8 in my #Valentine’s poetry countdown. I was looking mainly for unconventional poems/poets, but this one reminded me of when I first came across Philippe Jaccottet, late at night in a the uni library, when I was homesick and supposed to be writing science essays… Distances, transl. Derek Mahon.

Distances

Swifts turn in the heights of the air;
higher still turn the invisible stars.
When day withdraws to the ends of the earth their fires shine on a dark expanse of sand.

We live in a world of motion and distance.
The heart flies from tree to bird,
from bird to distant star,
from star to love; and love grows
in the quiet house, turning and working,
servant of thought, a lamp held in one hand.

PHILIPPE JACCOTTET
translated from the French by Derek Mahon

Tournent les martinets dans les hauteurs de l'air :
plus haut encore tournent les astres invisibles.
Que le jour se retire aux extrémités de la terre, apparaîtront ces feux sur l'étendue de sombre sable...

Ainsi nous habitons un domaine de mouvements
et de distances; ainsi le cœur
va de l'arbre à l'oiseau, de l'oiseau aux astres lointains,
de l'astre à son amour. Ainsi l'amour
dans la maison fermée s'accroît, tourne et travaille,
serviteur des soucieux portant une lampe à la main.

February 11, 2025 at 9:32 PM

That Woman

@angryfemalepoet.bsky.social

Very behind on my Valentine’s poetry countdown but here is no. 9 in my unconventional love poems search: One Life is Brief, from Singular Bodies (Anhinga Press) by Ruth L. Schwartz

#poem #LGBTQ #Valentine’s

One Life is Brief
for Alison

Because there is always rain, the flooding
which kills certain things, transforming others,

the dying woman wants chocolate halvah
held to her mouth so she can lick the crumbs,

you want to be a belly dancer
and the mother of ten children,

the body wants what it always wants,
to burn like fire in the wet woods.

Even its infidelities are a form of faith,
a naked, thirsty flame.

The rain is falling, the rain is falling
and still what we want

could eat up the forest,
guzzling, roaring with love.

February 10, 2025 at 10:36 PM

That Woman

@angryfemalepoet.bsky.social

Unconventional love poems, Valentine’s countdown no. 10. Yes, by Tess Gallagher.

Yes

Now we are like that flat cone of sand
in the garden of the Silver Pavilion in Kyoto designed to appear only in moonlight.

Do you want me to mourn?
Do you want me to wear black?

Or like moonlight on whitest sand
to use your dark, to gleam, to shimmer?

I gleam. I mourn.

TESS GALLAGHER

February 5, 2025 at 3:57 PM

That Woman

@angryfemalepoet.bsky.social

Unconventional love poems, #Valentine’s countdown no. 11: Assurance, by the trailblazing Emma Lazarus. Did you know the Statue of Liberty poem, the ultimate American zeitgeist poem “Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses…” was by a queer female Jewish activist 💪? I didn’t…
#poem #LGBTQ

Assurance
Emma Lazarus

Last night I slept, and when I woke her kiss
Still floated on my lips. For we had strayed Together in my dream, through some dim glade, Where the shy moonbeams scarce dared light our bliss.
The air was dank with dew, between the trees, The hidden glow-worms kindled and were spent.
Cheek pressed to cheek, the cool, the hot night-breeze
Mingled our hair, our breath, and came and went, As sporting with our passion. Low and deep
Spake in mine ear her voice: 'And didst thou dream,
This could be buried? This could be sleep?
And love be thrall to death! Nay, whatso seem, Have faith, dear heart; this is the thing that is!' Thereon I woke, and on my lips her kiss.

February 4, 2025 at 11:33 AM

That Woman

@angryfemalepoet.bsky.social

Unconventional love poems Valentine countdown- I’m having a jaded cynical day today so here’s ‘Casanever’ at no. 12, by @nicaubury.bsky.social
#poetry #Valentine

To most men, the notion
Of 'romance and mystery'
Means clearing the porn from
Their Internet history.

February 3, 2025 at 2:45 PM

That Woman

@angryfemalepoet.bsky.social

Unconventional love poems Valentine countdown: No. 13, the luminous Story of a Hotel Room.
More about the poet, Rosemary Tonks, here: www.theguardian.com/books/2014/m...

Story of a Hotel Room
Rosemary Tonks
Thinking we were safe - insanity!
We went in to make love. All the same
Idiots to trust the little hotel bedroom
Then in the gloom...
... And who does not know that pair of shutters
With the awkward hook on them
All screeching whispers? Very well then, in the gloom We set about acquiring one another Urgently! But on a temporary basis
Only as guests - just guests of one another's senses.

But idiots to feel so safe you hold back nothing
Because the bed of cold, electric linen
Happens to be illicit ...
To make love as well as that is ruinous.
Londoner, Parisian, someone should have warned us
That without permanent intentions
You have absolutely no protection -
If the act is clean, authentic, sumptuous,
The concurring deep love of the heart
Follows the naked work, profoundly moved by it.

February 2, 2025 at 10:19 AM

That Woman

@angryfemalepoet.bsky.social

Unconventional love poems Valentine countdown no.14, coming in hot- look away now if you’re squeamish for this is ‘Poem while Reading Miroslav Holub in the Genito-urinary Clinic Waiting Room’ by Rich Goodson… #poem #valentine #LGBTQ+

Poem while Reading Miroslav Holub in the Genito-urinary Clinic Waiting Room

Rich Goodson

Live, alive-ho! These bugs! These bugs! Alive!
They've leapt between us since we flapped in slime,
jump ship, like pirates, to the brink of Time.
We're hit. We take in water. They survive.

& here we wait for test results, pretend
to read. You: What Car? Me: Holub's Selected
which permeates my bones till I'm infected.

Does every rhyme of loins sound out the end?

If you weren't such a bloke I'd hold your hand uncurl it, break it open like a tight
wet waterlily bulb, there to find - stowed -
the toxic larvae of angels. I'd wind the clocks back to that hot, barbaric night.
I'd burn them off your palm, watch them explode.

February 1, 2025 at 9:35 AM

That Woman

@angryfemalepoet.bsky.social

Just to let you all know, henceforth I shall be ending all conversations with a gnomic look and the utterance ‘I think you are now covered by snow’.

SNOW PIECE
Think that snow is falling.
Think that snow is falling everywhere
all the time.
When you talk with a person, think
that snow is falling between you and
on the person.
Stop conversing when you think the
person is covered by snow.
yoko ono
1963 summer

January 27, 2025 at 2:31 PM

That Woman

@angryfemalepoet.bsky.social

It’s the eleventy billionth of January today. FML.

January 24, 2025 at 1:37 PM

That Woman

@angryfemalepoet.bsky.social

A lot of things happened in the world today, not all of them obviously good. This evening, let someone else look after our dreams for a moment.

THE DREAM KEEPER
by LANGSTON HUGHES

Bring me all of your dreams,
You dreamers,
Bring me all of your
Heart melodies
That I may wrap them
In a blue cloud-cloth
Away from the too-rough fingers
Of the world.

January 20, 2025 at 11:00 PM

That Woman

@angryfemalepoet.bsky.social

Are you a White-liver'd Son of a Fleet-street Bumsitter, begot upon a sedan Chair at Noonday?, or did you just walk past the wrong lady with the wrong face on you?

How to swear like an actual 18th century Billingsgate fishwife, from
Sounds & Furies by Jonathon Green (@littlebrown.bsky.social) 🤩❤️

Ward's companion pullshim away: ‘Let's seek another Apartment: These saucy Tongud old Whores will tease us to Death.’ Bad move. "Which unhappy words one of them over-heard; and starting up like a Fury, thus gave her Lungs a Breathing.”
“You White-liver'd Son of a Fleet-street Bumsitter [prostitute], begot upon a [sedan] Chair at Noonday, between Ludgate and Temple-Bar. You Puppily off-Spring of a Mangy Nightwalker, who was fore'd to Play the Whore an Hour before she cryd out [i.e. in childbirth], to pay the Bawd her Midwife, for bringing you, you Bastard, into the World. Who is it that you call Whore?”

January 17, 2025 at 11:45 AM

That Woman

@angryfemalepoet.bsky.social

Sharing a bad night’s sleep and a new morning with Anna Akhmatova, translated from the Russian by DM Thomas. From Evening, written in 1909.

from Evening

The pillow hot
On both sides,
The second candle
Dying, the ravens
Crying. Haven't
Slept all night, too late
To dream of sleep …
How unbearably white
The blind on the white window.
Good morning, morning!

Cover of Selected Poems by Anna Akhmatova, Vintage.

January 16, 2025 at 11:16 AM

That Woman

@angryfemalepoet.bsky.social

For some reason, this is the poem that speaks to me today, in the dark, wintry weather we’re having.
Tracks, by Tomas Tranströmer,
translated from the Swedish by Robin Fulton

Tracks
TOMAS TRANSTRÖMER
Translated from the Swedish by Robin Fulton

2 am: moonlight. The train has stopped
out in the middle of the plain. Far away, points of light in
a town,
flickering coldly at the horizon.
As when a man has gone into a dream so deep he'll never remember having been there when he comes back to his room.
As when someone has gone into an illness so deep everything his days were becomes a few flickering points,
a swarm,
cold and tiny at the horizon.
The train is standing quite still.
2 am: bright moonlight, few stars.

January 14, 2025 at 1:54 PM

That Woman

@angryfemalepoet.bsky.social

Wrestling with taxes, but deciding to go high…

Cover image of Let the light pour in by Lemn Sissay

If you don't do it today There will be no end
Decompress the stress And then press send

January 8, 2025 at 2:34 PM

That Woman

@angryfemalepoet.bsky.social

In January 1947, the editor of The Poetry Review from @poetrysociety.bsky.social, one Hugh Wilgus Ramsaur, was in a splendid grump, accusing the older authors submitting to their competition of ‘experimenting’…
Of all the things to do with a poem!

The Premium Editor's Report
F I were asked for my most outstanding impression of this Premium Competition I should say that is was a feeling of surprise, mingled with regret; at the poor showing of many of our older competitors whose poems seemed at times to be either perfunctory or to wear a tentative aspect, as though their authors had either lost their old touch or were experimenting. Human beings are much too often aflicted with a desire for change and this I suppose is natural to the spirit of man, but it remains true that change for its own sake is seldom good and one can go farther and fare much worse with nothing but regret to repay the effort. There are therefore many new names in our Honours List and many of the poems so distinguished have a character, no doubt natural to their writers, which is novel to this contest and I do not think that my preference for them is due to any change in myself. What has attracted me has been that very air of serenity or sureness which always attends things written in a manner normal to the writer.

January 6, 2025 at 10:50 AM

That Woman

@angryfemalepoet.bsky.social

Fresh, powerful words to start the year with: ‘With my back to the world, 1997’ by @victoriachang.bsky.social
‘The best thing about emptiness is if you close your
eyes in a field, you'll open your eyes in a field.’

With My Back to the World, 1997
This year I turned my back to the world. I let language face
the front. The parting felt like a death. The first person ran away like a horse. When the first person left, there was no
second or third person as I had originally thought. All that remained was repetition. And blue things. This year I stopped shaking the rain off of umbrellas and nothing bad happened.
The terror of this year was emptiness. But I learned that it's
possible for a sentence to have no words. That the meaning of a word can exist without the word. That life can still occur
without a mind. That emptiness still swarms without the world. That it can be disconnected from the wall and still
light up. The best thing about emptiness is if you close your eyes in a field, you'll open your eyes in a field.

January 1, 2025 at 12:19 PM

That Woman

@angryfemalepoet.bsky.social

Something soothing, for the heart and mind frayed and frazzled by being home with all relatives in situ…

‘Nothing Is Too Small Not to Be Wondered About’, by Mary Oliver, from Felicity (pub. Corsair Poetry)

December 27, 2024 at 10:20 PM

That Woman

@angryfemalepoet.bsky.social

Famous Seamus: a beautiful one for thinking towards the New Year. Anything Can Happen, from District and Circle.

December 23, 2024 at 3:32 PM

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