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omotarajames.bsky.social
Omotara
@omotarajames.bsky.social
400 followers 110 following 42 posts
🌈 NAACP Image Award nominated debut, “Song of My Softening” OUT NOW 🌱 PaD Guest Editor @poetsorg
"Worth the wait." —Ron Charles, The Washington Post 👇🏾
https://linktr.ee/omotarajames/?fbclid=PAAaY1S3Las3Dwvt9XE5-EtE
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omotarajames.bsky.social
Prompt: The Ekphrastic Epistolary (after Dr. Dior J. Stephens)
 
Write a poem that is directly addressed to a known person, dead or alive. Think Elton John and Princess Diana. Whether the subtext of your poem is love lost, or the mortal coil, allow the lyrical intimacy to bloom.
June 4, 2025 at 5:32 AM
omotarajames.bsky.social
Thrilled share Ama Codjoe’s sensational poem from my Poem-a-Day curation. If you have not had a chance to read the full poem, please make your way to the homepage of poets.org now! Ama’s poetry astounds. I am moved to offer a prompt, inspired by Ama’s poem, out of sheer gratitude.
June 2, 2025 at 10:03 PM
Reposted by Omotara
npr.org
Women can use a wand to collect a vaginal sample, then mail it to a lab that will screen for cervical cancer. The device will be available by prescription through a telehealth service.
By @jenniferludden.bsky.social
The FDA approves first U.S. at-home tool as a Pap-smear alternative
Women can use a wand to collect a vaginal sample, then mail it to a lab that will screen for cervical cancer. The device will be available by prescription through a telehealth service.
www.npr.org
May 10, 2025 at 6:16 PM
Reposted by Omotara
arablit.bsky.social
The Naomi Shihab Nye Prize was established in 2024 for writers in the Arab community to create book length stories for and about young Arab readers.

First prize: $1,000; second: $500.

Learn more about the prize here: www.albustanseeds.org/naomi-shihab...
March 17, 2025 at 7:35 PM
Reposted by Omotara
vaninanda.bsky.social
Seeing those men being paraded in shackles, heads shaved, heads down sent to a random country and we have no list of names, proof of criminality, or even proof of nationality is terrifying. El Salvador agreeing to keep them as long as the US keeps paying is terrifying. It could be any one of us next
asharangappa.bsky.social Asha Rangappa @asharangappa.bsky.social · Mar 18
People need to be crystal clear about something: The requirement that the government ANSWER to a court on the legal basis for detaining someone is literally the core liberty right (habeas corpus). If the government says they don’t have to do that bc “national security,” YOU can be disappeared.
March 18, 2025 at 5:06 AM
Reposted by Omotara
mehdirhasan.bsky.social
Israel just killed hundreds of Palestinians, including kids.

The US just killed dozens of Yemenis, including kids.

"Why do they hate us?" asks the American public, blissfully ignorant of what's being done in its name in the Middle East by the US and its ally Israel.

Sigh.
March 18, 2025 at 4:51 AM
omotarajames.bsky.social
Celebrate Black history. “BLK History Month” BY Nikki Giovanni
If Black History Month is not viable then wind does not carry the seeds and drop them on fertile ground rain does not dampen the land and encourage the seeds to root sun does not warm the earth and kiss the seedlings and tell them plain: You’re As Good As Anybody Else You’ve Got A Place Here, Too
February 28, 2025 at 6:36 AM
omotarajames.bsky.social
Celebrate Black poetry. “Paul Robeson” by Gwendolyn Brooks
That time we all heard it, cool and clear, cutting across the hot grit of the day. The major Voice. The adult Voice forgoing Rolling River, forgoing tearful tale of bale and barge and other symptoms of an old despond. Warning, in music-words devout and large, that we are each other’s harvest: we are each other’s business: we are each other’s magnitude and bond. From The Essential Gwendolyn Brooks (Library of America, 2005).
February 27, 2025 at 5:16 PM
omotarajames.bsky.social
Celebrate Black poetry. Excerpt from “34” (from “Blood Dazzler”).

17.
Wait with me.
Watch me sleep in this room
that looks so much like night.
I’m gon’ wake up, I swear it
to some kind of sun.
February 26, 2025 at 5:15 PM
Reposted by Omotara
chiaradilello.bsky.social
2. Continuing #blackhistorymonth #poetry, hopefully you don't need me to tell you to read Omotara James's SONG OF MY SOFTENING. I'm gonna say more but need to go teach some students 😅 @omotarajames.bsky.social
Cover of Song of my Softening by Omotara James. Shows the back of a black woman with short hair and some simple gold jewelry, wearing a skirt but no top. She stands in front of a green background that shows the shades of her dark brown skin and how her back ripples as she raises her arms as if posing or dancing.
February 24, 2025 at 6:19 PM
omotarajames.bsky.social
Celebrate Black poetry. “Beatitude” by John Keene
Love everything Love the sky and sea, trees and rivers, mountains and abysses. Love animals, and not just because you are one. Love your parents and your children, even if you have none. Love your spouse or partner, no matter what either word means to you. Love until you create a cavern in your loving, until it seethes like a volcano. Love everytime. Love your enemies. Love the enemies of your enemies. Love those whose very idea of love is hate. Love the liars and the fakes. Love the tattletales and the hypercrits, the hucksters and the traitors. Love the thieves because everyone has thought of stealing something at least once. Love the rich who live only to empty your purse or wallet. Love the poverty of your empty coin purse or wallet. Love your piss and sweat and shit. Love your and others’ chatter and its proof of the expansiveness of nothingness. Love your shadows and their silent censure. Love your fears, yesterday’s and tomorrow’s. Love your yesterdays and tomorrows. Love your beginning and your end. Love the fact that your end is another beginning, or could be, for someone else. Love yourself, but not too much that you cannot love everything and everyone else. Love everywhere. Love in the absence of love. Love the monsters breeding in every corner of the city and suburb, all throughout the soil of the countryside. Love the monster breeding inside you and slaughter him with love. Love the shipwreck of your body, your mind’s salted garden. Love love.
February 25, 2025 at 1:39 AM
omotarajames.bsky.social
Celebrate Black poetry. “little prayer” by Danez Smith
let ruin end here let him find honey where there was once a slaughter let him enter the lion’s cage & find a field of lilacs let this be the healing & if not let it be From Don’t Call Us Dead (Graywolf Press, 2017). Copyright © 2017 by Danez Smith. Used by permission of The Permissions Company, Inc., on behalf of Graywolf Press, www.graywolfpress.org.
February 23, 2025 at 6:19 AM
omotarajames.bsky.social
Celebrate Black poetry. “Ode to the Common Clothes Moth” by Tyree Daye
For De Lissa In these days of less and less sun your love points and I follow like the blind moths you beg me not to kill half-asleep and the sun lesser than a minute before I’ll let you go into the night and you say and I follow your love of winged things to the back door watch you empty your hands into the sky In the morning you will wake before me and walk out into the yard the sun acts like a father as if it never left moths sing of you from wherever moths go to sing
February 21, 2025 at 10:00 PM
Reposted by Omotara
nicolechung.bsky.social
“parents in Kenya whose children are believed to have tuberculosis cannot get them tested. There is no clean drinking water in camps in Nigeria or Bangladesh for people who fled civil conflict. A therapeutic food program cannot treat acutely malnourished children in South Sudan.”
Emergency Food, TB Tests and H.I.V. Drugs: Vital Health Aid Remains Frozen Despite Court Ruling (Gift Article)
The Trump administration appears to be flouting a judge’s order pausing the dismantling of U.S.A.I.D.
www.nytimes.com
February 20, 2025 at 11:44 PM
Reposted by Omotara
marshhawkpress.bsky.social
Calling all poets! Enter the Marsh Hawk Press Poetry Prize for a chance to win $2,000 and publication. Submissions open until April 30th! ✍️✨ #PoetryContest #WritingCommunity
February 20, 2025 at 9:41 PM
Reposted by Omotara
abitchislive.bsky.social
Come write poems with me!
February 21, 2025 at 12:50 AM
Reposted by Omotara
amiwarmer.bsky.social
I’m infinitely grateful to Jennica Harper for introducing me to the poetry of Omotara James. Reading ‘Song of My Softening’ as a fat woman is a fucking gift, and the collection offers so much more beyond that.

@omotarajames.bsky.social
Shiny new copy of Omotara James’ debut poetry collection, Song of My Softening, laying on my kitchen island.
February 20, 2025 at 6:05 PM
omotarajames.bsky.social
Celebrate Black poetry. “When A Nigga Call You a Faggot” by Jzl Jmz (FKA jayy dodd) aka [Lady Tournament]
When A Nigga Call You a Faggot You gotta laugh at least once. Like the pot calling the kettle A more dangerous thing. When he spits it your mouth, you must swallow the sour, hurt of anxiety. How your lips make him salivate. When he swings his fist, duck down and tackle him to the ground with soft kisses. When a nigga call you a faggot, He’s calling you by his first name. He’s telling you about his-self. His own fault lines splitting his tongue, toxic and tender. He’s crying for help from the bottom of the ocean. When it discharges from his throat, imagine it lands on the shores of which both your bodies washed up. When a nigga calls you a faggot, you still gotta call him brother. You still gotta pray he makes it home at night.
February 20, 2025 at 6:19 PM
Reposted by Omotara
mjerkins.bsky.social
Today, I found out that the Department of Defense banned the Well-Read Black Girl anthology by Glory Edim. I was one of its contributors.

I'm really hurt right now. So if you have it in you, please buy books by Black women from independent bookstores.
February 19, 2025 at 11:44 PM
omotarajames.bsky.social
Celebrate Black poetry. “Summer” by Robin Coste Lewis.
Summer Last summer, two discrete young snakes left their skin on my small porch, two mornings in a row. Being postmodern now, I pretended as if I did not see them, nor understand what I knew to be circling inside me. Instead, every hour I told my son to stop with his incessant back-chat. I peeled a banana. And cursed God—His arrogance, His gall—to still expect our devotion after creating love. And mosquitoes. I showed my son the papery dead skins so he could know, too, what it feels like when something shows up at your door—twice—telling you what you already know.
February 19, 2025 at 4:41 PM
Reposted by Omotara
jxzzhndz.bsky.social
📍💃🏿 COVER REVEAL (& pre-order link) nightboat.org/book/local-w...
December 17, 2024 at 11:37 PM
omotarajames.bsky.social
Celebrate Black poetry. “Why I Left the Garden” by Ama Codjoe
After I lost my breast, I became a woman sutured by a kind of knowledge. All day I moved as if walking was no different from falling. I owned the potholes and the riddled sky. I owned nothing at all. Even from far away, I could hear the record skipping. Time was running out of hands. Of faces.
February 17, 2025 at 5:47 PM
omotarajames.bsky.social
Celebrate, Black poetry.

[When I come home they rush to me, the flies] by Aracelis Girmay
[When I come home they rush to me, the flies] by Aracelis Girmay When I come home they rush to me, the flies, & would take me, they would take me in their small arms if I were smaller, so fly this way, that way in joy, they welcome me. They kiss my face one two, they say, Come in, come in. Sit at this table. Sit. They hold one hand inside the other & say, Eat. They share the food, sit close to me, sit. As I chew they touch my hair, they touch their hands to my crumbs, joining me. The rim of my cup on which they perch. The milky lake above which. They ask for a story: How does it begin? Before, I was a child, & so on. My story goes on too long. I only want to look into their faces. The old one sits still, I sit with it, but the others busy themselves now with work & after the hour which maybe to them is a week, a month, I sleep in the room between the open window & the kitchen, dreaming though I were the Sierra, though I were their long lost sister, they understand that when I wake I will have to go. One helps me with my coat, another rides my shoulder to the train. Come with me, come, I say. No, no, it says, & waits with me there the rest whistling, touching my hair, though maybe these are its last seconds on earth in the light in the air is this love, though it is little, my errand, & for so little I left my house again.
February 16, 2025 at 12:04 AM
omotarajames.bsky.social
Celebrate Black poetry.

All My Friends Are Sad & Bright

after Richard Siken
by Cameron Awkward-Rich
I think door & there is. Open & here’s a room where everything you’ve lost is washed ashore. We’ve seen the news. We know the story. How even our bodies hurt us sometimes so much. Room of broken mirrors. Room of salt. Room of marigolds & it’s your party, baby. Here’s a crown, here’s a gown & no man just around the corner, all your eyes on you. I think gunflower & here’s a field. Here’s a room where every bullet planted blooms. Boy with flower. Boy with metal rose. What’s done is done. What fire fords you. I was a child once. Anything could be my kingdom, all I had to do was say— Here’s a room of water & gold & nothing else. A room in which a man takes back his blood. Goodbye blood. Goodbye stars. Goodbye dead light troubling the dance your body does all by itself. I was by myself once, beside myself, breath fogging up a window & what’s on the other side? Only everything you wanted & here’s a room of everything you wanted. Think peppermint & myrrh. Think loved & you don’t even have to die. Copyright © 2019 by Cameron Awkward-Rich. Originally published in Dispatch (Persea Books, 2019).
February 12, 2025 at 8:49 PM