We are kicking off our 2013 Albany Word Fest Online Open Mic with three poems by poet Kenyatta Jean-Paul Garcia. Garcia is the author of This Sentimental Education and Enter the After-Garde. He was raised in Brooklyn, NY and has a degree in Linguistics from SUNY Albany. He was a cook for a dozen years but now spends his nights putting boxes on shelves. By day, he runs two websites, kjpgarcia.wordpress.com and altpoetics.wordpress.com.
Better Ending
Oceans are a continuation of sky
drenched and impatient
with brine
in its teeth
On brackish waves
whispers are lost
While sacrifices never forgotten
* * *
Stream and rhythm
are one in
morphological past
And there are other words
from dead languages
seen only in
memories of transliterations
passed over.
No language is dead
so much as hidden.
Words like to run
and do best
when detached from
black skin of text.
Clay left with stylus pressings
are footprints
of sounds getting away.
* * *
Mist is metaphor
being carried
with a tribute to Eurydice
and Lot’s wife.
Tired of song and sermon
salt seemed
a better ending.
There Are Places
there are places
where even
sand sings
bel(le) ami(e)
through
wind’s reminding
under stars.
it wasn’t snowing
upon meeting
though connection
keeps coming
down
until
“rinsed by dreams” (Zagajewski)
Begins By
Surgery begins by severing
* * *
Petrarch is worthless without Laura
and if only
Virgil could have kept Dante
stranded in the lower levels
it would have
saved the world
a lot of
ugliness
* * *
Cold, dark, passive
has a residence
here
Pushed away by light –
hot and active –
angered by shade
Downtrodden again – as always – as though birth itself began as boring
* * *
Lace streets
keep closed the city’s corset
while propping up
assets
less and less envied
with by and by
eras.
* * *
Cleaved?
No, flat?
Desire increases anyway
with senses divided
among themselves.
All throughout Word Fest week, Albany Poets will be publishing local poetry on the website in what we are calling the Word Fest Online Open Mic. Poets who wish to participate are encouraged to send their poems and a brief bio to albanypoets@gmail.com with “Online Open Mic” in the subject line.
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