words live here archive

http://poembouquet.blogspot.com

http://effusivethoughts.wordpress.com

http://www.yourdailypoem.com/

http://versedaily.org

https://lunchboxpoems.tumblr.com/

https://poets.org/poem-a-day

Best American Poetry (Lehman)

When you come, bring your brown- ness so we can be sure to please

the funders. Will you check this box; we’re applying for a grant.

Do you have any poems that speak to troubled teens? Bilingual is best.

Would you like to come to dinner with the patrons and sip Patrón?

Will you tell us the stories that make us uncomfortable, but not complicit?

Don’t read the one where you are just like us. Born to a green house,

garden, don’t tell us how you picked tomatoes and ate them in the dirt

watching vultures pick apart another bird’s bones in the road. Tell us the one

about your father stealing hubcaps after a colleague said that’s what his

kind did. Tell us how he came to the meeting wearing a poncho

and tried to sell the man his hubcaps back. Don’t mention your father

was a teacher, spoke English, loved making beer, loved baseball, tell us

again about the poncho, the hubcaps, how he stole them, how he did the thing

he was trying to prove he didn’t do.