Rick Larios
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ricklarios.bsky.social
Rick Larios
@ricklarios.bsky.social
2.4K followers 1.3K following 1.6K posts
Book lover. Democracy lover. Dad. New York City raised and resident. Married to Cara. Picture taker. Scribbler. Doodler.
Pronouns: he, him, us
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Gorgeous afternoon in Prospect Park today. Past peak colors but still vibrant. Saw two hawks as well.
Fall colors in Prospect Park today. Treeswith lemon & lime leaves in foreground and shades of red, yellow, and orange in background. Young maple with flaming orange leaves still on its branches with blanket of leaves covering grass below. Wooden bridge over mirroring stream and trees receding in distance.
November 21, 2025 at 11:19 PM
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Happy Weekend to you!
Just got this from the Brooklyn library...listening to Regina Carter's Southern Comfort and Laura Nyro, watching end of season 3 American Diplomat
Photo of the book True Nature, The Pilgrimage of Peter Matthiessen by Lance Richardson with cover photograph of biography subject, writer Peter Matthiessen.
November 21, 2025 at 11:09 PM
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Lovely moon over Greenwood Cemetery in Brooklyn this afternoon.
Skyscape with powder blue sky, small oblong clouds, and a white line of jet exhaust. Also a wide branched tree with a sparse population of orange leaves and the top of a stone obelisk.
November 2, 2025 at 2:02 AM
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Tanaya Winder's poem as prayer, as gratitude, as life purpose, concludes with the simplest of commandments: Be a good relative--to all people, all life.
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#indigenouspeoplesday
[Text of poem Being by Tanayrelative. Wake up, greet the sun, and pray. Burn cedar, sweet grass, sage-- sacred herbs to honor the lives we've been given, for we have been gifted these ways since the beginning of time. Remember, when you step into the arena of your life, think about those who stand beside you, next to, and with you. Your ancestors are always in your corner, along with your people. When we enter this world we are born hungry, our spirits long for us to live out our traditions that have been passed down for generations. Prayer, ceremony, dance, language--our ways of being. Never forget you were put on this earth for a reason-- honor your ancestors. Be a good telative.
October 13, 2025 at 3:04 PM
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Day 31 of the #SealeyChallenge wrapping up with the dynamic duo of Rumi and translator Haleh Liza Gafori, for the second time: WATER (2025). I have only just begun, but it has the same magical clarity and seductive music of GOLD (2022). @nyrb-imprints.bsky.social
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Photograph of the paperback book cover of WATER, a selection & translation of Rumi poems by Haleh Liza Gafori. The cover image is a painting of the moon rising over a seascape, called "Humboldt Current," by Max Ernst from 1951-52. White moon rises up from the horizon in a black sky. Below the horizon is a blue ocean divided by black and white lines bending like a road or wave, perhaps representing the Humboldt Current. As with all NYRB books, WATER'S Title, author, and translators names are contained in ruled box at the covers center. [Text for the poem beginning 'My Heart breaks when I look out' MY HEART breaks when I look out on the old turning wheel of the world-- the trickery, snares, and deception. My heart breaks when I see pain planted in the soil. What will it yield but more pain? What the world has called work, I work hard not to do. [Text of the poem 'IF YOU don't know what Love is'.] IF YOU don't know what Love is, ask the desolate night, ask unkissed lips and a sallow face what they miss. Still water tells stories of the moon and stars. Bodies give body to intellect and soul. Schoolwork can't teach us what Love teaches us-- grace, warmth, civility, Their countless ways. [Text of the poem ' SELFLESSNESS IS sky'.] SELFLESSNESS IS sky. The bird of the heart flies nowhere but there.
September 1, 2025 at 2:52 AM
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Day 30 of the #SealeyChallenge & reading HAPAX (2006) by A. E. Stallings, classical scholar & poet.
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Two lines in two poems underscore past is present:
First: "Or have we always stood on shakey ground?"
Second: "But only old men made it home from Troy."
Front cover of HAPAX, Poems, by A.E. Stallings. A medieval or later icon or book manuscript illustration called "The Harrowing of Hell," which depicts Jesus's visit to hell after his crucifixion but before his ressurection. The sky is gold. Two angels hover above. Jesus is in the center, with two sets of figures on either side of him, with him taking a hand of two nearest figures who have just emerged from their coffins. Jesus stands on the lids of the two coffins, which cross beneath his feet. The collections title and author's name and the image appear on a white background. [Text of the poem Aftershocks.] We are not in the same place after all. The only evidence of the disaster, Mapping out across the bedroom wall, Tiny cracks still fissuring the plaster-- A new cartography for us to master, In whose legend we read where we are bound: Terra infirma, a stranger land, and vaster. Or have we always stood on shaky ground? The moment keeps on happening, a pendulum That clocks the heart, the heart so tightly wound, We fall mute, as when two lovers come To the brink of the apology, and halt, Each standing on the wrong side of the fault. [Text of the poem Visiting the Grave of Rupert Brooke, Island of Skyros, Greece.] Rupert, this was where, I'm sure you knew, The sea nymph Thetis took Achilles to, And hid him, with his smooth cheek and gold curls, Among the royal retinue of girls, As any mother might, to save her son, From war and death, by arrow or the gun. Odysseus, recruiting, in disguise, Set out for sale a range of merchandise, Stuffs no princess easily resists-- Fine brocade, and bangles for the wrists, All manner of adornment, silver, gold, And set a blade among them, brazen, cold-- A simple trap that might catch any boy. But only old men made it home from Troy.
August 31, 2025 at 4:47 AM
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Day 29 of the #SealeyChallenge with Marie Howe's NEW AND SELECTED POEMS (2024). The new poems are fine but revisiting the others too, particularly from What the Living Do...wow!
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Photo of the cover of Marie Howe's New and Selected Poems. A simple deep blue cover without any images. The author's name appears in the centered lines in all caps. Below it appears the title in three lines all caps except for the word "and." The gold lettered words are contained by a thin rule, also gold. A center rule separates author name and title. [The text for the poem The Letter, 1968.] That he wrote it with his hand and folded the paper and slipped it into the envelope and sealed it with his tongue and pressed it closed so I might open it with my fingers. That he brought it to the box and slipped it through the slot so that it might be carried through time and weather to where I waited on the front porch step. (We knew how to wait then--it was what life was, much of it.) So, when the mailman came up the walk and didn't have it he might have it the next day or the next when it bore the mark of his hand who had written my name, so I might open it and read and read it again, and then again, and look at the envelope he'd sealed and press my mouth to where his mouth had been. [Text of the poem The Copper Beech.] Immense, entirely itself, it wore that yard like a dress, with limbs low enough for me to enter it and climb the crooked ladder to where I could lean against the trunk and practice being alone. One day, I heard the sound before I saw it, rain fell darkening the sidewalk. Sitting close to the center, not very high in the branches, I heard it hitting the high leaves, and I was happy, watching it happen without it happening to me. [Text for the poem The Last Time.] The last time we had dinner together in a restaurant with white tablecloths, he leaned forward and took my two hands in his and said, I'm going to die soon. I want you to know that. And I said, I think I do know. And he said, What surprises me is that you don't. And I said, I do. And he said, What? And I said, Know that you're going to die. And he said, No, I mean know that you are.
August 30, 2025 at 2:38 AM
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Day 28 of the #SealeyChallenge with Jericho Brown's THE NEW TESTAMENT (2014). So good.
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Photo of front cover of Jericho Brown's poetry collection THE NEW TESTAMENT. Inset against a dark brown background is a painting by Leon Bonnat (1833-1922), titled "Le Barbier negre a Suez" The barber of the title is standing behind a man sitting cross-legged on a carpet. The barber is leaning over the man with his left hand holding the man's head while his right hand holds a straight razor to the man's chin. The customer is wearing a light blue robe with both his hands gripping his left foot. His eyes are half-closed. The barber is wearing only a pair of white shorts. Behind them is a yellow wall with golden light on it. The author's name in yellow and the book's title in light green appears above the painting. [The text of the poem Colosseum.] I don't remember how I hurt myself, The pain mine Long enough for me To lose the wound that invented it As none of us knows the beauty Of our own eyes Until a man tells us they are Why God made brown. Then That same man says he lives to touch The smoothest parts, suggesting our Surface area can be understood By degrees of satin. Him I will Follow until I am as rough outside As I am within. I cannot locate the origin Of slaughter, but I know How my own feels, that I live with it And sometimes use it To get the living done, Because I am what the gladiators call A man in love--love Being any reminder we survived. [Text of the poem 1 Corinthians 13:11.] When I was a child, I spoke as a child. I even had a child's disease. I ran From the Doberman like all children On my street, but old men called me Special. The Doberman caught up, Chewed my right knee. Limp now In two places, I carried a child's Bible Like a football under the arm that didn't Ache. I was never alone. I owned My brother's shame of me. I loved The words "thou" and "thee." Both meant My tongue in front of my teeth. Both meant a someone speaking to me. So what if I itched. So what if I couldn't Breathe. I climbed the cyclone fence Like children in my street and went First when old men asked for a boy To pray or to read. Some had it worse-- Nobody whipped me with a water hose Or a phone cord or a leash. Old men Said I'd grow into my face, and I did.
August 29, 2025 at 3:59 AM
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DAY 27 of the #SealeyChallange, but I missed Day 26, alas, but resume here with Saskia Hamilton's first collection of poems, AS FOR DREAMS (2001). It is a superb collection of poems about death, dying, and dreams. Moving and mysterious.
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Photo of the front cover of AS FOR DREAMS, poems by Saskia Hamilton. The cover features a full bleed of a painting by Piero Della Francesca, Italian Renaissance artist and mathematician. The painting is a detail of The Dream of Constantine, depicting the sleeping emperor in a canopied bed, guarded by two armored soldiers and an aide or servant, sitting on the frame of the bed, his left elbow resting on the mattress, his hand holding his head up as he regards the soldier to his right. Constantine is asleep, covered by a white sheet and crimson blanket. The book title and author name are in white letters. [Text of the poem Reverence.] Your silence is so complete, I can hear it pull me from one end of the century to the other. The geese call themselves together for the journey. The bells ring past the hour; they urge us on. There is no alphabet for that sound. If I said it right and deposited it in the whorl of your ear. Do not echo so, do not echo thus. What of it? Why do I trouble myself? There is nothing left to be learned from those letterings. Close the book. Winter is on its way, the city is waking. Gray and surprisingly warm today. Thirty-seven leaves left on the tree outside and a whole day to make use of. [Text of the poem Late Winter, the first of two poems with that title.] Very strange, yellowy light this morning. The sky absolutely white. A storm is gathering that I try to keep from gathering in my house. I don't know how to relate my longing or tell a story so you'll see. What I say is not true and you should not trust me. When I have found it you will be able to tell from the breath inside the language. I used to think it was the cunning of sickness. Now I think it is the cunning of love. [Text of the poem Listen.] The swallows rose from the fields and flew east from every direction. Flight patterns as efficient as the mind's. -- I have the ingredients of the dream in my hands in the morning.
August 27, 2025 at 11:45 PM
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Day 25 of the #SealeyChallenge and Rita Dove's classic 1999 collection ON THE BUS WITH ROSA PARKS. From the long poem "Cameos" to the poems in the final, title section. It is richly rewarding and provocative, with moments of sweetness and wonder.
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Photo of the cover dust jacket of Rita Dove's Poems, ON THE BUS WITH ROSA PARKS. Ther is a black and white from the inside of a bus somewhat obscured by design elements, which look like wallpaper, which take up the lower two thirds of the cover. [Text for the poem The First Book.] Open it. Go ahead, it won't bite. Well...maybe a little. More a nip, like. A tingle. It's pleasurable, really. You see, it keeps on opening. You may fall in. Sure, it's hard to get started; remember learning to use knife and fork? Dig in: You'll never reach bottom. It's not like it's the end of the world-- just the world as you think you know it. [Text for the poem Singsong.] When I was young, the moon spoke in riddles and the stars rhymed. I was a new toy waiting for my owner to pick me up. When I was young, I ran the day to its knees. There were trees to swing on, crickets for capture. I was narrowly sweet, infinitely cruel, tongued in honey and coddled in milk, sunburned and silvery and scabbed like a colt. And the world was already old. And I was older than I am today. [Text for the poem For Sophie, Who'll Be in First Grade in the Year 2000.] No bright toy this world we've left you. Even the wrapping is torn, the ribbons grease-flecked and askew. Still, it's all we have. Wait a moment before you pick it up. Study its scratches, how it shines in places. Now love what you touch, and you will touch wisely. May the world, in your hands, brighten with use. May you sleep in sweet breath and rise always in wonder to mountain and forest, green gaze and silk cheek-- dear Sophie, littlest phoenix.
August 26, 2025 at 3:17 AM
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Day 24 #SealeyChallenge W.S. Merwin's THE RAIN IN THE TREES (1988) @sealeychallenge.bsky.social
I am coming to Merwin late in my reading life uncertain why it took me so long. So much brilliant lyricism, elegant language and narrative, so much natural engagement with the world.
Cover of W.S. Merwin's 1988 collection THE RAIN IN THE TREES. The cover photograph by J.D. Griggs, "Mist in Ohia Forest, Hawaii National Park" (1988), shows a stretch of Hawaiian rain forest, narrow blue-white trunks of tree rising on a mountainside surrounded by leafy bushes. The title and author name over-printed in yellow type. [Text of the poem Late Spring.] Coming into the high room again after years after oceans and shadows of hills and the sounds of lies after losses and feet on stairs after looking and mistakes and forgetting turning there thinking to find no one except those I knew finally I saw you sitting in white already waiting you of whom I had heard with my own ears since the beginning for whom more than once I had opened the door believing you were not far [Text for the poem Empty Water.] I miss the toad who came all summer to the limestone water basin under the Christmasberry tree imported in 1912 from Brazil for decoration then a weed on a mule track on a losing pineapple plantation now an old tree in a line of old trees the toad came at night first and sat in the water all night and all day then sometimes at night left for an outing but was back in the morning under the branches among the ferns the green sword leaf of the lily sitting in the water all the dry months gazing at the sky through those eyes fashioned of the most precious of metals come back believer in shade believer in silence and elegance believer in ferns believer in patience believer in the rain
August 25, 2025 at 3:32 AM
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On Day 23 of the #SealeyChallenge sharing a second book by Anna Swir, FAT LIKE THE SUN (1986),a British edition of her selected poems: poems of love, lust, marriage, childbirth & motherhood, fidelity & betrayal, aging, women's bodies, etc.
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Photo of the cover of Anna Swir's FAT LIKE THE SUN, published by The Women's Press, aka The Raving Beauties. Cover image is a highly stylized image of the sun, with a smiling face. [Text for poem titled First Madrigal.] That night of love was as pure as an ancient musical instrument and the air around it. It was as sumptuous as a coronation feast. As carnal as a pregnant belly. As abstract as a number. It was only a moment of life, yet it wanted to be the culmination of life. A transient moment, and it wanted to master the meaning of the world. That night of love had ambitions. [Text of the poem TwovOld Women.] The two of us sit in the doorway, chatting about our children and grandchildren. We sink happily into our oldwomanhood. Like two spoons sinking into a bowl of hot porridge. [Text of the poem A Dream of My Dead Mother.] Last night I held my mother close to me. We were dancing on the soft turf. My body dissolved like mist in the soft sunlight of her love. Our two bodies, two mists, mingled in bliss like before I was born.
August 24, 2025 at 4:23 AM
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Day 22 of the #SealeyChallenge: THEOPHANIES, very, very fine debut collection by Sarah Ghazal Ali. @alicejamesbooks.bsky.social
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Man, the ending "I've learned to cull / from wait, / to walk until water appears."
Cover of Theophanies by Sarah Ghazal Ali, featuring a full bleed cover image by the late graphic artist Dan Hillier. The image features a human figure kneeling in a prayerful pose over a flowering bush that has light or energy flowing upward into the figure's face, which is completely hidden behind the strongly defined column of light. The figure has long hair and is wearing a full length flowing robe with wide sleeves. The figure's arms are crossed at the wrists, palms against chest. Title is at the top, author at the bottom. [Text of poem Mother of Nations:] By now it's almost boring: the peal of Sarah's bewildered laugh. The sidelined matriarch, barren until she wasn't. I pretend not to hear Sarah's bewildered laugh. How does a barren tomb sound? Waiting until she wasn't. I pretend to be honeycomb sucked clean, scraped raw. The sound of a barren tomb: waiting each month for the inevitable wilt of a cervix sucked clean, scraped raw. Hajar had it easy--until she didn't-- sprouting, spared the inevitable monthly wilt. Sarah's throat plumed right in God's face. Hajar had the easy job until she didn't. But enough. It's boring--watching faith peel. [Text of the poem Ghazal on the Day of] Like God, I'll create in my image. Go on, pass judgment --like I'm not already waiting for judgment, like I don't tease, don't taunt to turn His eye my way. Like I'm not expiring, short-sticked by a judgment foretold in unreachable, spiraling math. Each sky's bloated yolk barrels toward the day of judgment Seeded, I take seeds to stifle my soil's waiting green. I liken my name to apology. I wield judgment like a snapped beak and shovel night from my abdomen. Are you watching, O corkscrew calamity, O decree, O closer than jugular? Come for this constellating mess. I'm sorry for laughing, O giver, not for taking, so judge. [Text for the poem Epistle: Hajar.] Agate, alyssum, apricot--simple pleasures I can still pronounce in this desert. Love's only dominion, the clear well-walked path to drinkable water. I hesitate to ask for answers, remembering the others forsaken in a basket, garden, well. There's no one left to write to but I'd tell of the tree, its sweet shade at high noon. The untorn snakeskin I found while digging for wetness in the sand. Against the crude mountains, his turned back whittled down by my calls. I've learned to cull want from wait, to walk until water appears.
August 23, 2025 at 12:48 AM
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#SealeyChallenge Day 21 POEMS OF THE NIGHT by Jorge Luis Borges, edited by Efrain Kristal with various translators. Poems of the night, of dreams and insomnia, of light and darkness, mystery and magic.
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#night #poetry #JorgeLuisBorges
Photo of Penguin Classics poetry collection, POEMS OF THE NIGHT by Jorge Luis Borges. The cover illustration depicts a profile silhouette of Borges against a charcoal background. Constellations of yellow stars suggest facial features: hair, eyes, ear, lips, nose, and eyebrow. [Text for the poem The Young Night.] And now the lustral waters of night absolve me from the many colors and the many forms. In the garden, birds and stars exalt the longed-for return of the ancient norms of sleep and shadow. Darkness is sealing the mirrors which copy the fiction of things. Goethe said it best, "everything near becomes far." Those four words capture the entire twilight. In the garden, roses cease to be roses; they wish to be the Rose. [The poem was translated by CM. Christopher Maurer.] [The text for the poem The Gift.] In a page of Pliny we read that in all the world no two faces are alike. A woman gave a blind man the image of her face without a doubt unique. She chose the photo among many; rejected all but one and got it right. The act had meaning for her as it does for him. She knew he could not see her gift and knew it was a present. An invisible gift is an act of magic. To give a blind man an image is to give something so tenuous it can be infinite something so vague it can be the universe. The useless hand touches and does not recognize the unreachable face. [Translated by CM, Christopher Maurer.] [The text for the poem The Forging.] Like the blind man whose hands are precursors that push aside walls and glimpse heavens slowly, flustered, I feel in the crack of night the verses that are to come. I must burn the abominable darkness in their limpid bonfire: the purple of words on the flagelated shoulder of time. I must enclose the tears of evening in the hard diamond of the poem. No matter if the soul walks naked and lonely as the wind if the universe of a glorious kiss still embraces my life. The night is good fertile ground for a shower of verses. [Translation is again by Christopher Maurer.]
August 22, 2025 at 3:16 AM
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Day 20 of the #SealeyChallenge and, for a change of pace, the inspiration is not a particular book but a walk on the Robert Frost Interpretive Trail in Ripton, Vermont.
The trail has Frost poems posted along its walk.
#RobertFrost
Screen shot of Vermont Trail Guide for the Robert Frost Interpretive Trail , which includes a photo of the meadow that the trail loops around. [Text for the poem The Pasture.] I'm going out to clean the pasture spring; I'll only stop to rake the leaves away (And wait to watch the water clear. I may): I shan't be gone long.--You come too. I'm going out to fetch the little calf That's standing by the mother. It's so young It totters when she licks it with her tongue. I shan't be gone ling.--You come too. [Text for poem The Secret Sits.] We dance round in a ring and suppose, But the secret sits in the middle and knows. [Text for the poem Something for Hope.] At the present rate it must come to pass, And that right soon, that the meadow- sweet And steeple bush, not good to eat, Will have crowded out the edible grass. Then all there is to do is wait. For maple, birch, and spruce to push Through meadowsweet and steeple bush And crowd them out at a similar rate. No plow among these rocks would pay. So busy yourself with other things While the trees put on their wooden rings. And with long-sleeved branches hold their sway. Then cut down the trees when lumber grown, And there's your pristene earth all freed From lovely blooming but wasteful weed And ready again for the grass to own. A cycle we'll say of a hundred years. Thus foresight does it and laissez faire, A virtue in which we all may share Unless a government interferes. Patience and looking away ahead, And leaving some things to take their course. Hope may not nourish a cow or horse, But *spes alit agricolam* 'tis said. * spes alit agricolam means "hope sustains the farmer"
August 21, 2025 at 12:36 AM
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#SealeyChallenge Day 19, Linda Pastan's INSOMNIA (2015), beautifully wrought poems of life, craft, mortality, and simple moments looming large.

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Cover of Linda Pastan's 2015 collection INSOMNIA, featuring a painting by Arthur G. Dove, "Me and the Moon" from 1937. The image is trippy, non-representational composition of orange, yellow, brown, and blue on a black background. There is a yellow circle that could be said to represent the moon if you wanted to press that point. [Text of the poem, The Gardener.] He's out rescuing his fallen hollies after the renegade snowstorm, sawing their wounded limbs off quite mercilessly (I think of the scene in King's Row, the young soldier waking to find his legs gone). He's tying up young bamboo-- their delicate tresses litter the driveway-- shoveling a door through the snow to free the imprisoned azaleas. I half expect him to tend his trees with aspirin and soup, the gardener who finds in destruction the very reason to carry on; who would look at the ruins of Eden and tell the hovering angel to put down his sword, there was work to be done. [Text of the poem IN THE ORCHARD.] Why are these old, gnarled trees so beautiful, while I am merely old and gnarled? If I had leaves, perhaps, or apples... if I had bark instead of this lined skin, maybe the wind would wind itself around my limbs in its old sinuous dance. I shall bite into an apple and swallow the seeds. I shall come back as a tree. [Text for the poem ELEGY.] Our final dogwood leans over the forest floor offering berries to the birds, the squirrels. It's a relic of the days when dogwoods flourished--creamy lace in April, spilled milk in May-- their beauty delicate but commonplace. When I took for granted that the world would remain as it was, and I would remain with it.
August 20, 2025 at 1:42 AM
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Day 18 of the #SealeyChallenge Stephen Dunn's LOOSESTRIFE, Poems (1996), evocative poems of humanity contending with temptation, doubt, hope, and our own susceptibility to weakness and persistence.
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Cover of Stephen Dunn's 1996's poetry collection LOOSESTRIFE. The cover image is of a painting by Howard Hodgkin called "Reading the Letter, 1977-80." The painting is abstract shapes in bold colors, dramatic and mysteriously arranged over a red background with motifs you might find on fabrics. The shapes have volume and shadows: green, blue, a gold verticle rectangle, a dark puff of grey-black cloud, etc. In the white pace above is the author's name, book title, and the word poems. [Text for the poem "After Making Love."] No one should ask the other "What were you thinking?" No one, that is, who doesn't want to hear about the past and its inhabitants, or the strange loneliness of the present filled, even as it may be, with pleasure, or those snapshots of the future, different heads on different bodies. Some people actually desire honesty. They must never have broken into their own solitary houses after having misplaced the key, never seen with an intruder's eyes what is theirs. [Text of the poem, "Solving the Puzzle."] I couldn't make all the pieces fit, so I threw one away. No expectations of success now none of that worry The remaining pieces seemed to seek their companions. A design appeared. I could see the connection between the overgrown path and the dark on the hill. Something in the middle, though, was missing. It would have been important once. I wouldn't have been able to sleep without it. [Text of the poem, "Heaven." After the extravagent letter came I remembered how praise can keep you from belonging to yourself, and all that afternoon I belonged to some vagrant, sweet floating thing. That old daystar, the sun, turned elsewhere, and the sky darkened as it must. I lay awake while a light rain fell-- a drummer brushing his drum and tapping the rim. A rain like that comes from heaven, my mother would have said, who didn't believe in heaven. It always made perfect sense, feeling things at least two ways. I drifted off hearing my name sung--just the rain, really, getting insistent, but by then I was near that place dreamers lean into, baffled, becalmed.
August 19, 2025 at 3:54 AM
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##SealeyChallenge Day 17: IF THEY COME FOR US (2018) by Fatimah Asghar, a brilliant and, one can say retroactively, prophetic (see the poem "When the Orders Came") collection of poems that blend family and global history.
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@poetry
#truthiswoke
Cover illustration of Fatimah Asghar's poetry collection IF THEY COME FOR US. Colorful illustration by Shyama Golden showing three young West Asian women sitting cross-legged together wearing colorful clothing surrounded by a floral design. [Text for the poem "Lullaby," dedicated for Khudeja.] when the sadness comes my sister tells me a story-- a man buried in pakistan a woman buried in new york city when we sleep they wake opposite sides of the world the planet opens a tunnel where they meet: dirt sky & worm stars. the lovers dance, all night, their way back my father's fingertips pressing against my mother's crooked smile. her henna-dyed hair light the underworld the mole on his lips left side winks the dark. [Text for the beginning stanzas of the poem "When the Orders Came". The final stanza is contained in the next photo & the alt text below.] "[We are] calling for a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States." --Donald Trump's administrative team, December 7, 2015 they shipped us to the sanctuary camps & we forgot our other countries. like good schoolchildren we sang the anthem loud, so loud until we could hear nothing else. not the birds delighting over their young, or the dog's snarl at our feet, or him on the news hourly, growling. this is the cost if looking the other way when they come for us I build safety inside you & wake in cuffs I'm all mouth. every morning I whisper "my country my country my country" & my hands stay empty what is land but land? a camp but a camp? sanctuary but another grave? I am an architect I permission everything into something new I build and build & someone takes it away [Text for the last stanza of the poem "When the Orders Came." into something new. I build & build & someone takes it away.
August 18, 2025 at 3:10 AM
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#SealeyChallenge Day 16: Gary Snyder's DANGER ON PEAKS (2004), a collection of prose and poems, including haibuns about our world and us.
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#poetry
#nature
#haibun
Cover of Gary Snyder's DANGER ON PEAKS. The cover features a black and white photo of an aerial view of Mount St. Helens on a blue background with blue above with knockout white type and the author's name. The title appears at the top of the photo in a black banner, also knockout white type, all lower case. The word "poems" appears in small type in the blue underneath the photo. [Text of the poem "Icy Mountains Constantly Walking," which is for Seamus Heaney.] Work took me to Ireland a twelve-hour flight. The river Liffy; ale in a bar, So many stories of passions and wars-- A hilltop stone tomb with the wind across the door. Peat swamps go by: people of the ice age. Endless fields and farms-- the last two thousand years. I read my poems in Galway, just the chirp of a bug. And flew home thinking of literature and time. The row of books in the Long Hall at Trinity. The ranks of stony ranges above the ice of Greenland. [Text of the haibun "One Day in Late Summer."] One day in late summer in the early nineties I had lunch with my old friend Jack Hogan, ex-longshore union worker and activist of San Francisco, at a restaurant in my small Sierra town. The owner had recently bought and torn down the adjoining brick building which had been in its time a second-hand bookstore, "3Rs," run by a puckish ex-professor. Our lunch table in the patio was right was where his counter had been. Jack was married to my sister once. We all hung out in North Beach back in the fifties, but now he lives in Mexico. This present moment that lives on to become long ago [Text for the poem "Loose on Earth."] A tiny spark, or the slow-moving glow on the fuse creeping toward where ergs held close in petrol, saltpeter, mine gas, buzzing minerals in the ground, are waiting. Held tight in a few hard words in a dark mood, in an old shame. Humanity, said Jeffers, is like a quick explosion on the planet we're loose on earth half a million years our weird blast spreading-- and after, rubble--millennia to weather, soften, fragment, sprout, and green again
August 17, 2025 at 3:42 AM
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#SealeyChallenge Day 15, Khadijah Queen's 2020 collection ANODYNE.
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#RomareBearden
#poetry
The cover of ANODYNE, Poems, by Khadijah Queen's. Title and author appear across the bottom of the cover over a white background with a one-word comment by Ilya Kaminsky, "Brilliant." The cover image by Romare Bearden has represental and abstract elements: a woman's head in profile adorned with flowers, her hand holding a rose; below, in front and on top are Matisse-like sweeps and cuts of bright colors, blue, pink, yellow, orange and green. [Text of poem, "I Have a Method of Letting Go"] Asthmatic child in a house full of smokers, I crawled once under toxic clouds to find my mother I was so brave I almost died, or desperate I wanted her more than breath I was so small & she could sing anything alive, almost She didn't really know, doesn't know now-- She is familiar with duty & made me so I can't live on that loss In 1977 a bullet turned my brother into dust His 18 years here, an invisible talisman we hold in our callous living Sometimes I think my mother smoked to pretend to breathe him in
August 16, 2025 at 3:24 AM
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#SealeyChallenge Day 14, GOLD (2022), poems by Rumi, selected and exquisitely translated by Haleh Liza Gafori.
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Cover and three poems to sample.
[Cover of GOLD (2022). Poems by Rumi, Selected and translated by Haleh Liza Gafori] The cover is a full bleed of a Max Ernst painting from 1964 called "Yellow Sea, Blue Sun." There is a blue circle set high in a field of yellows that range from green-yellow to lemon yellow to gold. There are thin horizontal lines in green that suggest more a wall than a sea but that's the title of the painting, not the book. A green text box holds title, poet and translation credit. [Text of untitled poem "Where the water of life flows"] Where the water of life flows, no illness remains. In the garden of union, no thorn remains. They say there's a door between one heart and another. How can there be a door where no walls remains? [Text for the untitled poem "Why plague your heart with indecision?"] Why plague your heart with indecision? Your heart is your pulpit and throne. Don't step down. Intelligence is your crown. Only gems drawn from the depths of you can adorn this crown. Gather them. [Text of the untitled short poem "Your naked freedom"] Your naked freedom is your shield.
August 15, 2025 at 2:39 AM
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#SealeyChallenge Day 13, from MIDWOOD, by Jana Prikryl. 24 poems are titled Midwood. Windows are important for their views & their time travel. Nothing is static. All is crystal clear like a dream with shifting logic, characters, & intimations. Gorgeous mysteries.
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Photo of the cover of MIDWOOD, Poems by Jana Prikryl. The book's cover is a painting by Emma Webster called "An Aside" from 2018. It is a slightly surreal landscape with three trees with fanciful foliage. There is also a skeletal stump that looks almost cactus. There are green fields and blue low hills in the distance. There is a transitional sky, dawn or dusk, with pink and orange low to the horizon and shades of deep blue higher up. In the lower left corner are some large rocks with two figures sitting, one is holding the foot of the other. [Text for the poem The Theater] We browsed and as usual that one i hadn't read. At showtime we lay down between the stacks where we could only listen to the actors. Our faces close, my hands tucked under my chin and legs drawn up like an animal's. I felt such tenderness for you and knew it wasn't returned--this as usual I couldn't understand. Before, when our plane landed in the river behind another that had done the same, dunked it's passengers then pulled itself up and over to the gate with harm to none, you weren't surprised. You had that confidence we wouldn't sink. I couldn't understand but both of us were walking through the gate by then, untouched by danger. Surprise was my own possession. [Text for the poem Living Room] The one to be mastered is you yet I keep trimming the sheets around my person with these, the little man who's four got us up for sunrise in the living room because it's very beautiful he said as color toweled off, the sun adjusting the face it wears all day, but mama it looks like the sun is setting. [Text for the poems The Coach] Players from opposing teams practiced together sending the soccer ball up as one clear bell after another and I whispered to an ear beside me, do you think parity with such splendor is possible in the other arts but the coach heard and advised me to keep my distance from comparison, he had the face I now see of the squire in Bergman's film
August 14, 2025 at 4:14 AM
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Day 12 of #SealeyChallenge: Jim Harrison's late collection IN SEARCH OF SMALL GODS (2009), which contains beautiful poems on aging, memory, & living to nature's rhythms.
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Cover & one poem, Sunday Discordancies, in which he advises the hummingbirds to just slow down.
Cover for Jim Harrison's 2009 collection of poems, IN SEARCH OF SMALL GODS. Cover image is a full bleed landscape painting by Russell Chatham titled "Spring Moonrise over the Sangre de Christo Mountains. Foreground shows a stream running through a marshland. Then a forest in the middle distance. And then a desert mountain beyond. The sky is a rose red and it holds an enormous white moon. The author's name appears top center in black type and title appears in knockout white over the dark forest in the bottom third. [Text of the poem Sunday Discordancies.] This morning I seem to hear the nearly inaudible / whining grind of creation similar to the harmonics / of pine trees in the wind. My outrageously lovely / hollyhocks are now collapsing of their own weight, / clearly too big for their britches. I'm making notes / for a novel called "The End of Man and Not Incidentally / Women and Children, a fable for our low-living time. / Quite early after walking the dogs, who are frightened / of the sandhill cranes in the pasture, I fried some ham / with a fresh peach, a touch of brown sugar and clove. / Pretty good but I was wondering at how the dogs / often pretend the sandhill cranes don't exist despite / their mighty squawks, the way we can't hear / the crying of coal miners and our wounded in Iraq. / A friend on his deathbed cried and said it felt good. / He was crying because he couldn't eat, a lifelong habit. / My little grandson Silas cried painfully until he was fed / macaroni and cheese and then he was merry indeed. / I'm not up to crying this morning over that pretty girl / in the rowboat fifty-five years ago. I heard on the radio / that we creatures have about a billion and a half / heartbeats to use. Voles and birds use theirs fast / as do meth heads and stockbrokers, while whales / and elephants are slower. This morning I'm thinking / of recounting mine to see exactly where I am. / I warn the hummingbirds out front, "Just slow down," / as they chase me away from the falling hollyhocks.
August 13, 2025 at 2:32 AM
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#SealeyChallenge Day 11: MODERN POETRY by Diane Seuss. So so good and so much fun to read, like Wanda Coleman on both counts.
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Cover and three short poems, though the long-lined, two and three page poems are amazing.
Cover photograph of a young woman in muted colors of an old photograph on the cover of Diane Seuss' book of poems titled Modern Poetry. The young woman is looking askance at camera, head titled slightly, right eyebrow raised. Her right hand is holding a black flower like piece of fabric and four rings are visible . She has an old style hat and winter coat, shoulder and collar. Some specks or drops of dust or powder appear on the image. A line of small red type at the top reads By the author of frank: sonnets, winner of the Pulitzer Prize. (Part of a tea mug and envelope appear on the left bottom edge of the photo, not the cover.) [Text of the poem Little Song] You can't stay vigilant and remain alive. Or infinite vigilance is a kind of death. Or you can't be present tense. That is, tense about the present. Here, you said in school. Present. But you were not. Your mind back home eating sweet elephants from a jar. Or placing Thumbelina in a milkweed car. What luxury, to think of milkweed cars and cookie jars and turning lights on in the dark or lights off in the light or dreams of dropping vigilance or memories of negligence, heedless, in your posh knee socks, your ritzy lamb, your lush pop beads, your lilac jam, your breathless, deathlesx, feckless, little song. [Text of the poem Comma.] To never be touched again. That line has a sound. Hear it? I don't want to bring a story to it. Not even an image. It has a sound. Listen. To never be touched. Oh, a nurse, a doctor, but to never to be touched in that way. You know what way. Listen. Hear it. Let's not tag it with a feeling. Give me a break. What possible song would you play when you toss my ashes, someone once asked me. There is no song, he said, don't narrativize, Diane. Don't narrativize Diane. See what a comma can do? [Text for the poem Weeds] The danger of memory is going to it for respite. Respite risks entrapment, which is never good. Don't debauch yourself by living in some former version of yourself that was more or less naked. Maybe it felt better then, but you were not better. You were smaller, as the rain gauge must fill to the brim with its full portion of suffering. What can memory be in these terrible times? Only instruction. Not a dwelling. Or if you must dwell: The sweet smell of warm weeds then. The sweet smell of warm weeds now. An endurance. A standoff. A rest.
August 12, 2025 at 2:52 AM
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##SealeyChallenge Day 10: THE GHOST FOREST, New and Selected Poems (2024) by Kimiko Hahn. She is one of our literary greats & this collection not only spans her career but expands it with poems that converse with earlier work--a glance looking backward. @sealeychallenge.bsky.social #poetry
Cover image of Kimiko Hahn's New and Selected Poems. The black background has three lines of type (title, subtitles, author) separated by a pair of inset images. One is a simple photograph of sky and marsh with tall, gray tree trunks that are branchless except for a few stubs. Behind them is a hazy blue sky and two low clouds. The second image is a filtered version of the first. It is darkened as if it were suddenly deep dusk. The clouds disappear in the dimmed light. White paint or chalk appears at the left edge and near the right lower edge. In the top pair, you see the full photograph, but half of the second image bleeds off the cover. In the lower pair, it is the second image that is full & the blue-skied photo that turns the corner to the spine. [Text for the poem A Riotous Disorder] She mistakes one word for another-- Something her brain naturally concocts. Her unruly gray matter and her heart Mistake one word for an other-- "Razor" for "river", "cistern" for "sister". Even "cock" for "clock". She mistakes one word for a mother-- A safe her brain naturally unlocks. [Text for the poem [Follow wherever]. The last word in each line appears in bold type on the page but are all cap below...if you read these words vertically down, they constitute another poem.] In bedtime stories, a girl or girls must FOLLOW instructions (or the wind) WHEREVER the concrete, the visible or THE voice (like that of a TREE) leads her. She walks a path until it BRANCHES, then halts, fancies she'll MAKE a choice because choice isn't foretold. She ARCHES her back then her eyebrows. She finds herself IN a clearing where animals badger. THE possum says, "Light can be TORRID. The moonlight more than the SUN." [Text for the poem "Ode to the Mud in Corona Park"] "Walk so silently that the bottoms of your feet become ears." --Pauline Oliver's After all, you persist this late winter to offer history and souvenir so I walk--as a teacher instructed-- "listening to you with my feet." I hear the slow creak of a glacier, ice sheets breaking stone into terminal moraine. I hear the waters in a glacial lake and rivulets. Torrents turning earth to marsh. Then, the Lenape hunted then the Dutch used tufts and twigs for grazing animals. I hear their lowing. I hear muskets. I hear the metal on road and rail. And after the rich enjoyed a quiet green resort, there came dumping. Can you hear the tons of ash? Can you hear the stench and infestation? Can you hear the fur trappers and squatters? I hear them and the locals collecting firewood. I hear the lawns unrolled for the fair. The vigils and games! (The crimes-- we can't forget the crimes--) Hear the picnic benches and picnickers. Hear the macadam. The gravel. Hear new stampedes. New ardor. The centuries whisper to my feet.
August 10, 2025 at 6:46 PM