Get Lit Minute

In this week's episode of the Get Lit Minute, your weekly poetry podcast, we spotlight the life and work of poet, Victoria Chang.  Her collections of poetry include Circle (2005); Salvinia Molesta (2008); The Boss (2013); and Barbie Chang (2017). Her poems have been published in the Kenyon Review, Poetry, the Threepenny Review, and Best American Poetry 2005. Chang is the editor of the anthology Asian American Poetry: The Next Generation (2004).  Source

This episode includes a reading of an excerpt from her poem,  "Orbit", featured in our 2022 Get Lit Anthology.

Excerpt from "Obit" [Blame]

Blame—wants to die but cannot. Its

hair is untidy but it’s always here. My

mother blamed my father. I blamed my

father’s dementia. My father blamed

my mother’s lack of exercise. My

father is the story, not the storyteller.

I eventually blamed my father because

the story kept on trying to become the 

storyteller. Blame has no face. I have

walked on its staircase around and

around, trying to slap its face but only

hitting my own cheeks. When some

people suffer, they want to tell everyone

about their suffering. When the brush

hits a knot, the child cries out loud,

makes a noise that is an expression of

pain but not the pain itself. I can’t feel

the child’s pain but some echo of her 

pain, based on my imagination. Blame

is just an echo of pain, a veil across

the face of the one you blame. I blame

God. I want to complain to the boss of

God about God. What if the boss of

God is rain and the only way to speak

to rain is to open your mouth to the sky

and drown?

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In this week's episode of the Get Lit Minute, your weekly poetry podcast, we spotlight the life and work of poet, CA Conrad. They write poems in which stark images of sex, violence, and defiance build a bridge between fable and confession. They are the author of nine books of poetry and essays, including their latest book JUPITER ALIGNMENT: (Soma)tic Poetry Rituals (Ignota Books, 2020) and While Standing in Line for Death (Wave Books). A documentary about their work, The Book of Conrad (Delinquent Films), is viewable online on their website. 

This episode includes a reading of their poem,  "Glitter in my Wounds".

"Glitter in my Wounds"

first and most important

                             dream our missing friends forward

                             burn their reflections into empty chairs

             we are less bound by time than the clockmaker fears

this morning all I want is to follow where the stone angels point

                      birdsong lashing me to tears

                              heterosexuals need to see our suffering

                   the violent deaths of our friends and lovers

       to know glitter on a queer is not to dazzle but to

  unsettle the foundation of this murderous culture

         defiant weeds smashing up through cement

                      you think Oscar Wilde was funny

                     well Darling I think he was busy

                             distracting straight people
so they would not kill him
if you knew how many times I
have been told you’re not like my
gay best friend who tells me
jokes and makes me laugh
no I sure as fuck am not
I have no room in my life to
audition for your pansy mascot
you people can’t kill me and
think you can kill me again
I met a tree in Amsterdam and
stood barefoot beside it for twenty
minutes then left completely restored
     yet another poem not written by a poet

                    sometimes we need one muscle to

                                     relax so the others follow

                                 my friend Mandy calls after a

                               long shift at the strip club to say

                            while standing in line for death I am

                        fanning my hot pussy with your new book

                   will you sign it next week my fearless faggot sister

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In this week's episode of the Get Lit Minute, your weekly poetry podcast, we spotlight the life and work of poet, Elizabeth Bishop. Bishop was a perfectionist who did not write prolifically, preferring instead to spend long periods of time polishing her work. She published only 101 poems during her lifetime. Source

This episode includes a reading of her poem,  "One Art", featured in our 2022 Get Lit Anthology.

"One Art"

The art of losing isn’t hard to master;

so many things seem filled with the intent

to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster

of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.

The art of losing isn’t hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:

places, and names, and where it was you meant

to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother’s watch. And look! my last, or

next-to-last, of three loved houses went.

The art of losing isn’t hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,

some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.

I miss them, but it wasn’t a disaster.

—Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture

I love) I shan’t have lied. It’s evident

the art of losing’s not too hard to master

though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.

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In this week's episode of the Get Lit Minute, your weekly poetry podcast, we spotlight the life and work of poet, Sara Borjas. Her debut collection of poetry, Heart Like a Window, Mouth Like a Cliff was published by Noemi Press in 2019. Her work can be found in Ploughshares, The Rumpus, Poem-a-Day by The Academy of American Poets, Alta and The Offing, amongst others. She digs oldiez, outer space, aromatics, and tiny prints is about decentering whiteness in literature, creative writing, and daily life. Source

This episode includes a reading of her poem,  "Lies I Tell", featured in our 2021 Get Lit Anthology.

"Lies I Tell"

A woman has a window in her face: that is the truth. I look like my mother: that is the truth. I want to tell you I am not like her: that is the truth. I am ashamed walking in a woman’s body: that is the truth. I wish to take back everything I say: that is the truth. A window can be a mirror. It can also be a door: that is the truth. As a girl, my mother slept in a shack with no windows and one door: that is the truth. My grandma would slam windows: truth. A mother’s hands are stronger than God: truth. We often use fruit to describe a bruise, like plum or blackberry: truth. My mother’s window blackberried: truth. My mother’s door peached: truth. She loves peaches: that is the truth. My father could not stand them in our house: that is the truth. We had three doors and nine windows in our house: that is the truth. A woman has a face in her window: truth. A father has a window but I don’t know where it is: truth. What burrows is the peach fuzz, he said: that is the truth. I have never been close enough to a peach to eat one: truth. The worst things last on the skin: truth. I don’t like not having things: truth. My father has one door but I can’t find it: truth. Not all windows open: that is the truth. One night I see my father crying in the yard, head in his hands: that is the truth. I make things up that I want for myself: that is the truth.

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In this week's episode of the Get Lit Minute, your weekly poetry podcast, we spotlight the life and work of poet, Ada Limón.  She is the author of five poetry collections, including The Carrying, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award for Poetry. Her fourth book Bright Dead Things was named a finalist for the National Book Award, a finalist for the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award, and a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. Source

This episode includes a reading of an excerpt from her poem,  "A New National Anthem". See more work by Ada Limón featured in our 2021 Get Lit Anthology.

"A New National Anthem"

The truth is, I’ve never cared for the National

Anthem. If you think about it, it’s not a good

song. Too high for most of us with “the rockets

red glare” and then there are the bombs.

(Always, always, there is war and bombs.)

Once, I sang it at homecoming and threw

even the tenacious high school band off key.

But the song didn’t mean anything, just a call

to the field, something to get through before

the pummeling of youth. And what of the stanzas

we never sing, the third that mentions “no refuge

could save the hireling and the slave”? Perhaps,

the truth is, every song of this country

has an unsung third stanza, something brutal

snaking underneath us as we blindly sing

the high notes with a beer sloshing in the stands

hoping our team wins. Don’t get me wrong, I do

like the flag, how it undulates in the wind

like water, elemental, and best when it’s humbled,

brought to its knees, clung to by someone who

has lost everything, when it’s not a weapon,

when it flickers, when it folds up so perfectly

you can keep it until it’s needed, until you can

love it again, until the song in your mouth feels

like sustenance, a song where the notes are sung

by even the ageless woods, the short-grass plains,

the Red River Gorge, the fistful of land left

unpoisoned, that song that’s our birthright,

that’s sung in silence when it’s too hard to go on,

that sounds like someone’s rough fingers weaving

into another’s, that sounds like a match being lit

in an endless cave, the song that says my bones

are your bones, and your bones are my bones,

and isn’t that enough?

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In this week's episode of the Get Lit Minute, your weekly poetry podcast, we spotlight the life and work of poet, Tyree Daye. He is the author of two poetry collections River Hymns and Cardinal. Source

This episode includes a reading of his poem,  "Learning Whitney", featured in our 2021 Get Lit Anthology.

"Learning Whitney"

My father loved my mama

quiet. She never was.

Sang as she dusted,

Whitney was her back-up singer.

He’d disappear, stumble in,

bright blues still in his mouth.

I come from a family of men

who thought saying I love you

was something you saved for sleep or the dead

and tears could get your ass whooped.

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In this episode of the Get Lit Minute, your weekly poetry podcast, we spotlight the life and work of poet, Traci Brimhall. Her poems have appeared in The New Yorker, Poetry, and New England Review, among others. Some of her work has also been featured on Poetry Daily, Verse Daily, Best of the Net, PBS Newshour, and Best American Poetry 2013 & 2014. Source

This episode includes a reading of her poem,  "Oh Wonder", featured in our 2021 Get Lit Anthology.

"Oh Wonder"

It’s the garden spider who eats her mistakes

at the end of day so she can billow in the lung

of night, dangling from an insecure branch 

or caught on the coral spur of a dove’s foot

and sleep, her spinnerets trailing radials like

ungathered hair. It’s a million pound cumulus. 

It’s the stratosphere, holding it, miraculous. It’s

a mammatus rolling her weight through dusk

waiting to unhook and shake free the hail. 

Sometimes it’s so ordinary it escapes your notice—

pothos reaching for windows, ease of an avocado

slipping its skin. A porcelain boy with lamp-black 

eyes told me most mammals have the same average

number of heartbeats in a lifetime. It is the mouse

engine that hums too hot to last. It is the blue whale’s 

slow electricity—six pumps per minute is the way

to live centuries. I think it’s also the hummingbird

I saw in a video lifted off a cement floor by firefighters 

and fed sugar water until she was again a tempest.

It wasn’t when my mother lay on the garage floor

and my brother lifted her while I tried to shout louder 

than her sobs. But it was her heart, a washable ink.

It was her dark’s genius, how it moaned slow enough

to outlive her. It is the orca who pushes her dead calf 

a thousand miles before she drops it or it falls apart.

And it is also when she plays with her pod the day

after. It is the night my son tugs at his pajama 

collar and cries: The sad is so big I can’t get it all out,

and I behold him, astonished, his sadness as clean

and abundant as spring. His thunder-heart, a marvel 

I refuse to invade with empathy. And outside, clouds

groan like gods, a garden spider consumes her home.

It’s knowing she can weave it tomorrow between 

citrus leaves and earth. It’s her chamberless heart

cleaving the length of her body. It is lifting my son

into my lap to witness the birth of his grieving.

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In this episode of the Get Lit Minute, your weekly poetry podcast, we spotlight the life and work of poet and writer, Tommye Blount. He is the author of Fantasia for the Man in Blue (Four Way Books, March 2020) and the chapbook What Are We Not For (Bull City Press, 2016). Source

This episode includes a reading of his poem,  "The Pedestrian", featured in our 2021 Get Lit Anthology.

"The Pedestrian"

When the pickup truck, with its side mirror,

almost took out my arm, the driver’s grin

reflected back; it was just a horror

show that was never going to happen,

don’t protest, don’t bother with the police

for my benefit, he gave me a smile—

he too was startled, redness in his face—

when I thought I was going, a short while,

to get myself killed: it wasn’t anger

when he bared his teeth, as if to caution

calm down, all good, no one died, ni[ght, neighbor]—

no sense getting all pissed, the commotion

of the past is the past; I was so dim,

he never saw me—of course, I saw him

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In this week's episode of the Get Lit Minute, your weekly poetry podcast, we spotlight the life and work of a highly esteemed performing poet, Sekou Sundiata. He wrote for print, performance, music and theater.  Source

This episode includes a reading of his poem,  "Shout Out", featured in our 2021 Get Lit Anthology.

"Shout Out"

Here’s to the best words

In the right place

At the perfect time to the human mind

Blown-up and refined.

To long conversations and the

Philosophical ramifications of a beautiful day.

To the twelve-steppers

At the thirteenth step

May they never forget

The first step.

To the increase, to the decrease

To the do, to the do

To the did to the did

To the do to the did

To the done done

To the lonely.

To the brokenhearted.

To the new, blue haiku.

Here’s to all or nothing at all.

Here’s to the sick, and the shut-in.

Here’s to the was you been to the is you in

To what’s deep and deep to what’s down and down

To the lost, and the blind, and the almost found.

To the crazy

The lazy

The bored

The ignored

The beginners

The sinners

The losers

The winners.

To the smooth

And the cool

And even to the fools.

Here’s to your ex-best-friend.

To the rule-benders and the repeat offenders.

To the lovers and the troublers

The engaging

The enraging

To the healers and the feelers

And the fixers and the tricksters

To a star falling from a dream.

To a dream, when you know what it means.

To the bottom

To the root

To the base, uh, boom!

To the drum

Here’s to the was you been to the is you in

To what’s deep and deep to what’s down and down

To the lost, and the blind, and the almost found.

Here’s to somebody within the sound of your voice this morning.

Here’s to somebody who can’t be within the sound of your voice tonight.

To a low-cholesterol pig sandwich smothered in swine without the pork.

To a light buzz in your head

And a soundtrack in your mind

Going on and on and on and on and on like a good time.

Here’s to promises that break by themselves

Here’s to the breaks with great promise.

To people who don’t wait in the car when you tell them to wait in the car.

Here’s to what you forgot and who you forgot.

Here’s to the unforgettable.

Here’s to the was you been to the is you in

To what’s deep and deep to what’s down and down

To the lost, and the blind, and the almost found.

Here’s to the hip-hoppers

The don’t stoppers

Heads nodding in the digital glow

Of their beloved studios.

To the incredible indelible impressions made by the gaze as you gaze in the faces of strangers.

To yourself you ask: Could this be God? Straight up!

Or is it a mask?

Here’s to the tribe of the hyper-cyber

Trippin’ at the virtual-most outpost at the edge on the tip

Believin’ that what they hear is the mothership

Drawing near.

Here’s to the was you been, to the is you in

To what’s deep and deep, to what’s down and down

To the lost, and the blind, and the almost found.

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In this week's episode of the Get Lit Minute, your weekly poetry podcast, we spotlight the life and work of poet and spoken-word artist, Saul Williams. He has been breaking ground since his debut album, Amethyst Rock Star, was released in 2001 and executive produced by Rick Rubin. Most recently, Williams’ released his latest music works entitled, Encrypted & Vulnerable (July 2019), which acts as the score to his forth-coming directorial debut musical, Neptune Frost. Source 

This episode includes a reading of his poem,  "Indigo On", featured in our 2021 Get Lit Anthology.

"Indigo On"

…and you don’t stop

and you don’t stop

and you don’t…

stop letting cities define you

confine you to that which is cement and brick

we are not a hard peoples

our domes have been crowned

with the likes of steeples

that which is our being soars with the eagles

and the Jonathan Livingston Seagulls

yes, I got wings

you got wings

alas God chillun got wings.

So lets widen the circumference of our nest

And escape this urban incubator

The wind plays the world like an instrument

Blows through trees like flutes

But trees don’t grow in cement

And as heart beats bring percussion

Fallen trees bring repercussions

Cities play upon our souls like broken drums

We drum the essence of creation from city slums

But city slums mute our drums

And our drums become hum drum

‘cause city slums

have never been where our drums are from

just the place where our daughters and sons

become offbeat heartbeats

slaves to city streets

where hearts get broken

when heart beats stop

broken heartbeats become breakbeats

for niggas to rhyme on top

but they rhyme about nothing

they don’t have nothing to rhyme about

‘cause they’ve never seen the moon

your styles can’t be universal

if your not intoned with the wind.

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