Get Lit Minute

In this week's episode of the Get Lit Minute, your weekly poetry podcast, we spotlight the life and work of American poet and spoken-word artist, Dr. Eve L. Ewing. She is a sociologist of education and a writer from Chicago. She is the author, most recently, of the poetry collection 1919 and the nonfiction work Ghosts in the Schoolyard: Racism and School Closings on Chicago's South Side. She is the co-author (with Nate Marshall) of the play No Blue Memories: The Life of Gwendolyn Brooks. She also currently writes the Champions series for Marvel Comics and previously wrote the acclaimed Ironheart series, as well as other projects. Her work has been published in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The New York Times, and many other venues. Source

This episode includes a reading of her poem, "I come from the fire city.", featured in our 2021 Get Lit Anthology.

"I come from the fire city."

i come from the fire city / fire came and licked up our houses, 

lapped them up like they were nothing / drank them like the last 

dribbling water from a concrete fountain / the spigot is too hot to 

touch with your lips be careful / fire kissed us and laughed / and 

even now the rust climbs the walls, red ivy / iron fire and the brick 

blossoms florid / red like stolen lipstick ground down to a small 

flat earth / stand on any corner of the fire city, look west to death 

/ the red sun eats the bungalows / the fire city children watch 

with their fingers in their mouths / to savor the flaming hots or 

hot flamins or hot crunchy curls or hot chips / they open the fire 

hydrants in the fire city and lay dollar store boats in the gutters / 

warrior funeral pyres unlit

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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 American poet and spoken-word artist, Natasha Trethewey. A former US poet laureate, Trethewey is the author of five collections of poetry: Monument (2018), Thrall (2012), Native Guard (2006), Bellocq’s Ophelia (2002), and Domestic Work (2000). She is also the author of a book of creative non-fiction: Beyond Katrina: A Meditation on the Mississippi Gulf Coast (2010). Source

This episode includes a reading of her poem, “Imperatives for Carrying On in the Aftermath”, featured in our 2021 Get Lit Anthology.

“Imperatives for Carrying On in the Aftermath”

Do not hang your head or clench your fists

when even your friend, after hearing the story,

says: My mother would never put up with that.

Fight the urge to rattle off statistics: that,

more often, a woman who chooses to leave

is then murdered. The hundredth time

your father says, But she hated violence,

why would she marry a guy like that?—

don’t waste your breath explaining, again,

how abusers wait, are patient, that they

don’t beat you on the first date, sometimes

not even the first few years of a marriage.

Keep an impassive face whenever you hear

Stand by Your Man, and let go your rage

when you recall those words were advice

given your mother. Try to forget the first

trial, before she was dead, when the charge

was only attempted murder; don’t belabor

the thinking or the sentence that allowed

her ex-husband’s release a year later, or

the juror who said, It’s a domestic issue—

they should work it out themselves. Just

breathe when, after you read your poems

about grief, a woman asks: Do you think

your mother was weak for men? Learn

to ignore subtext. Imagine a thought-

cloud above your head, dark and heavy

with the words you cannot say; let silence

rain down. Remember you were told

by your famous professor, that you should

write about something else, unburden

yourself of the death of your mother and

just pour your heart out in the poems.

Ask yourself what’s in your heart, that

reliquary—blood locket and seed-bed—and

contend with what it means, the folk-saying

you learned from a Korean poet in Seoul:

that one does not bury the mother’s body

in the ground but in the chest, or—like you—

you carry her corpse on your back.

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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 American poet and spoken-word artist, Nicole Sealey.  Sealey is the author of Ordinary Beast (Ecco Press, 2017), which was a finalist for the PEN Open Book and Hurston/Wright Legacy Awards. Her chapbook, The Animal After Whom Other Animals are Named (Northwestern University Press, 2016), was the winner of the 2016 Drinking Gourd Chapbook Prize.  Source

This episode includes a reading of her poem, “Object Permanence”, featured in our 2021 Get Lit Anthology.

“Object Permanence”

(for John)

We wake as if surprised the other is still there,
each petting the sheet to be sure.

How have we managed our way
to this bed—beholden to heat like dawn

indebted to light. Though we’re not so self-
important as to think everything

has led to this, everything has led to this.
There’s a name for the animal

love makes of us—named, I think,
like rain, for the sound it makes.

You are the animal after whom other animals
are named. Until there’s none left to laugh,

days will start with the same startle
and end with caterpillars gorged on milkweed.

O, how we entertain the angels
with our brief animation. O,

how I’ll miss you when we’re dead.

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In this week's episode of the Get Lit Minute, your favorite poetry podcast, we spotlight the life and work of poet Evie Shockley.


“because there should be love”

there should be love poems. iridescent odes to skies

and their fluid, mutating blues, their restless canvases

where we cast the adjectives—brilliant, dark, deep, clear—  

that name our daily moods, ringing doubt and delight,

confusion and cheer, the brave lines we spit to spin

out the re-newed story of two lives winding themselves 

into joy. there should be lyrics that hit all the notes—do,

 mi, sol—in the scale, that belt them out as they arrive—

passionate, pushy, pulsating, unpredictable—breathing 

the whole—billie, abbey, ella—range of the torchlit heart. 

there should be love poems, star-sprung stanzas that try 

out the rough ballad of two lives lifting themselves 

higher together than apart: that sing it: breaking relief.

each waking, that the hours are ours to share: certainty

that silver-lines even cumulonimbus ire: the your hand

in my hand in your hand of right now, and from now on. 

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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 American poet and spoken-word artist, Angel Nafis. She is the author of BlackGirl Mansion (Red Beard Press/ New School Poetics, 2012). Her work has appeared in The Rattling Wall, The BreakBeat Poets Anthology, MUZZLE Magazine, The Rumpus, Poetry magazine, and elsewhere. 

“Woo Woo Roll Deep”
it’s not just me. Be clear,

the whole squad Woo Woo. Kin

stay lifted up in metal clouds. Or

knuckle deep in earth. Talking

about how they periods right

around the corner and what that means

alongside Chani’s latest Mercury read.

Shira can’t wait to tell you

about the dream she had.

Big eyes growing wider at each detail.

Freaked out and charged at the spirit’s hooks

deep in her brain’s knowing signal.

It all connected. Courtney paints

one wall miss-my-daddy red

in every new home she stays in.

Morgan say she wants to find love

this year, keeps a rose quartz between

her tits. Gio the 3rd grade teacher

in Bed-Stuy use to end her emails

‘bet you love could make it better.’

A week after the 314th police killing this

year, Jenna mixes up a tincture of charcoal,

lemon, and lavender in little spray bottles.

Hands them out to us after burgers in Harlem.

Woo Woo. Jozie got her man’s EKGs tatted

on her ring finger. 3 years since he crossed

and you best believe she correct when she

talk about him in the present-tense. Gerloni

keeps a frothy pot of black eyed peas boiling

on News Years day. Marlee staves off the yeast

with a garlic clove in her puss. You can’t tell us

shit. We always down for the miracle.

The regular-as-fuck dawn making brand new

the farm of our hearts. Jessie, the filmmaker

slash jewelry maker slash teaching-artist, dangles

a dried out tea bag above her nose, gapes

intently at this new face of God appearing

right before her like, isn’t this just

the most beautiful thing

you’ve ever seen?

Read more at our anthology. 

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In this week's episode of The Get Lit Minute, your weekly poetry podcast, we spotlight Harryette Mullen, a poet and a professor of English at the University of California, Los Angeles. Mullen has said, “writing became important to me when I was very young. It was the only way I could communicate with my father after my parents were divorced. My mother believed in educating ‘the whole child.’ She made sure my sister and I always had books to read, and she somehow found money to pay for music and dance lessons. She also encouraged us to draw and write. My sense of poetry was awakened by the formal and informal, written and oral rhymes and rhythms of family, church, and school.”

“We Are Not Responsible”

We are not responsible for your lost or stolen relatives. 

We cannot guarantee your safety if you disobey our instructions. 

We do not endorse the causes or claims of people begging for handouts. 

We reserve the right to refuse service to anyone. 

Your ticket does not guarantee that we will honor your reservations. 

In order to facilitate our procedures, please limit your carrying on. 

Before taking off, please extinguish all smoldering resentments. 

If you cannot understand English, you will be moved out of the way. 

In the event of a loss, you’d better look out for yourself. 

Your insurance was cancelled because we can no longer handle

your frightful claims. Our handlers lost your luggage and we

are unable to find the key to your legal case. 

You were detained for interrogation because you fit the profile. 

You are not presumed to be innocent if the police 

have reason to suspect you are carrying a concealed wallet. 

It’s not our fault you were born wearing a gang color. 

It is not our obligation to inform you of your rights. 

Step aside, please, while our officer inspects your bad attitude. 

You have no rights we are bound to respect. 

Please remain calm, or we can’t be held responsible 

for what happens to you.

Read more about Mullen and her work at  http://getlitanthology.org/poemdetail/77/

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In this week's episode of the Get Lit Minute, your weekly poetry podcast, we spotlight Puerto Rican writer, Wille Perdomo. He is the author of The Essential Hits of Shorty Bon Bon (Penguin Poets, 2014), a National Book Critics Circle Awards finalist, Where a Nickel Costs a Dime (W. W. Norton & Company, a Poetry Society of America Norma Farber First Book Award finalist, 1996),[1] Postcards of El Barrio (Isla Negra Press, 2002), and Smoking Lovely (Rattapallax Press, 2003),[2] which received a PEN Beyond Margins Award.[3] His children's book, Visiting Langston, received the Coretta Scott King Honor. Perdomo was also the recipient of a New York Foundation for the Arts Poetry Fellowship in 2001 and 2009.

“Bad Habits”
 
Petey liked to twist the right end of his mustache when he was

   listening for updates. (Y’all remember Petey. He was always

   on that chuck chill-out tip, but most days he didn’t get

   to choose.)

When he ignited a squabble, Chuna would slap his right thigh to

   get every syllable out with a violent scansion.

Tommy Lee threw rocks at unsuspecting pigeons.

Dwight kept his right hand tucked into the crotch of his Lees,

   steady stunting on some bollo.

Angel bit his tongue when he wanted to ask a question.

Max counted his money and his money counted him.

Brother Lo liked to whistle “All the Things You Are” when it

   rained that Puerto Rico rain.

Chee-wa’s nose used to break out into an anxious table of

   contents when he was skied up.

Papu would dance if he wanted to make a point. So, imagine

   him saying, Nah, nah, nah, fuck that shit, and poppin’ &

   lockin’ on every word.

Nestor hated the words Stop, I was only playing.

Loco Tommy blinked three times, convulsively, and then tapped

   the right side of his face against his right shoulder blade.

Jujo spit and spit and spit and spit.

Popeye had a villainous laugh.

Dre loved to crash revivals.

Chino Chan did back handsprings from sewer to sewer

   whenever he received good news.

Georgie could scratch his ankle straight through a

   graveyard shift.

The first thing out of Skinicky’s mouth was always a feeling.

Learn more about Perdomo and read the full poem "Bad Habits" via our Get Lit Anthology. 

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In the latest episode of the Get Lit Minute, your weekly poetry podcast, we spotlight John Murillo, the author of the poetry collection Up Jump the Boogie (Cypher 2010, Four Way Books 2020. Learn more about Murillo and discover his other poems by visiting our Virtual Anthology.

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In this week's episode of the Get Lit Minute, your weekly poetry podcast, we feature the life and work of American Poet Jamaal May. Born and raised in Detroit,  May's first book, Hum (2013), won a Beatrice Hawley Award and an American Library Association Notable Book Award and was an NAACP Image Award nominee. Hum explores machines, technology, obsolescence, and community; in an interview, May stated of this collection, “Ultimately, I’m trying to say something about dichotomy, the uneasy spaces between disparate emotions, and by extension, the uneasy spaces between human connection.”

“Pomegranate Means Grenade”

The heart trembles like a herd of horses. —Jontae McCrory, age 11

Hold a pomegranate in your palm,

imagine ways to split it, think of the breaking

skin as shrapnel. Remember granada

means pomegranate and granada

means grenade because grenade

takes its name from the fruit;

identify war by what it takes away

from fecund orchards. Jontae,

there will always be one like you:

a child who gets the picked over box

with mostly black crayons. One who wonders

what beautiful has to do with beauty, as he darkens

a sun in the corner of every page,

constructs a house from ashen lines,

sketches stick figures lying face down-

I know how often red is the only color

left to reach for. I fear for you.

You are writing a stampede

into my chest, the same anxiety that shudders

me when I push past marines in high school

hallways, moments after video footage

of young men dropping from helicopters

in night vision goggles. I want you to see in the dark

without covering your face and carry verse

as countermeasure to recruitment videos

and remember the cranes buried inside the poems

painted on banners that hung in Tiananmen Square—

remember because Huang Xiang was exiled

for these. Remember because the poet Huang Xiang

was exiled for this: the calligraphy of revolt.

Always know that you will stand nameless

in front of a tank, always know you will not stand

alone, but there will always be those

who would rather see you pull a pin

from a grenade than pull a pen

from your backpack. Jontae,

they are afraid.

More at http://getlitanthology.org/poemdetail/74/

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In this week's episode of the Get Lit Minute, your weekly poetry podcast, we spotlight Kevin Young, American poet and teacher of poetry and the director of the Smithsonian Institution National Museum of African American History and Culture.

Read his full poem "Ode to Midwest" via our Get Lit Anthology. 

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