Microwave Popcorn by Harmony Holiday

View this email on a browser Forward to a friend September 22, 2015   Microwave Popcorn   Harmony Holiday

I think a lot of y’all have just been watching Dr. King get beat up and,          ah                         vacillating opportunists straining for a note of militancy            and ah      Hold your great buildings on my tiny wing      or     in my tiny   palm           same thing  different sling     and then they shot him   and     uh               left him on the front lawn  of      everyone’s    vulgar  delirium   for          having been chosen       walking home that night       that’ll                show you     like   candy     and   love   god     openly          reverse   order            A bird gets along beautifully in the air, but once she is on the ground           that special equipment hampers her a great deal.             And               Thereby home never gets to be a jaded resting place.            Copyright © 2015 by Harmony Holiday. Used with permission of the author. About This Poem   “This poem addresses spectator culture, the so-called emancipated spectator, the baffled displacement that occurs when voyeurism is confused with freedom or empathy or comprehension, and the numbing auto-didacticism that in turn displaces interaction. Martin Luther King becomes Trayvon Martin with a vast black fastness, and the clipped wings of the imagination spread like scars.” —Harmony Holiday   Harmony Holiday is the author of Negro League Baseball (Fence Books, 2011) and Hollywood Forever, forthcoming from Fence Books in 2016. She curates the Afrosonics archive of Jazz Poetics and audio culture, and teaches at Otis College in Los Angeles. Poetry by Holiday   Negro League Baseball (Fence Books, 2011) "Mouth Full of Grounds" by Justin Marks "For Some Slight I Can't Quite Recall" by Ross Gay "Iva's Pantoum" by Marilyn Hacker Poem-a-Day   Launched during National Poetry Month in 2006, Poem-a-Day features new and previously unpublished poems by contemporary poets on weekdays and classic poems on weekends. Thanks for being a part of the Academy of American Poets community. To learn about other programs, including National Poetry Month, Poem in Your Pocket Day, the annual Poets Forum, and more, visit Poets.org.   You are receiving this e-mail because you elected to subscribe to our mailing list. If you would like to unsubscribe, please click here.   © Academy of American Poets 75 Maiden Lane, Suite 901, New York, NY 10038