"piter/patter" by heidi andrea restrepo rhodes

View this email on a browser Forward to a friend June 21, 2019   pitter/patter   heidi andrea restrepo rhodes

(for a.g., you & yours)   the night is silver in its silence moon-pop echoes of the day raked up rubble of the hours spent my, the children slumber a thousand tomorrows bubbling at their lips the dream projections lighting up the clouds' ample cotton                  relish the silence as you'll relish tomorrow and the honesty of such raucous noise, thick child feet of our unfeathered breasts, beasts we cherish hallway run, sprints to smash the mash of food tumbling, rolling right into these arms charmed in their amnesia regarding where one begins or ends reminding us of the joy of first step and the storm after the holler: mama see, mama watch pitter/patter                          pitter/patter thunder on a hardwood, heartbeat this sole and counted rhythm every generation a temporal fugitive running from the death grip every death ship's watch, yesterdays we weren't meant to make it through relish the memory ingrained in the sound how these tiny, tiny feet grip the floor, say tomorrow, tomorrow I make you tomorrow            Copyright © 2019 heidi andrea restrepo rhodes. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on June 21, 2019, by the Academy of American Poets. About This Poem   "In conversation with dear fellow poets, I found myself working to name a future-to-come that children represent as a kind of escape from the death-bound trajectories that remain integral to settler colonial temporal regimes. This poem considers how the everyday sound of young children awake and alive in their day is also the sound of generations not only having survived, but of future world-building possibility. If to be subjugated as racialized and queer bodies is an imposed/intended condition of "no-future," the minuscule and fleeting joys of young bodies in becoming and flight, stumbling across a living room into the loving arms of family, whether blood or built, is no small thing: a moment teeming with so many possible futures, alive and brimming over." —heidi andrea restrepo rhodes   heidi andrea restrepo rhodes' debut collection The Inheritance of Haunting (University of Notre Dame Press, 2019) was chosen by Ada Limón for the 2018 Andrés Montoya Poetry Prize. She is a queer Colombian/Latinx poet and lives in Brooklyn, New York. Poetry by rhodes   The Inheritance of Haunting (University of Notre Dame Press, 2019) "Hunger" by Ama Codjoe "How to Dismantle a Heart" by Rodney Gomez from "Understory" by Craig Santos Perez June Guest Editor: Samiya Bashir   Thanks to Samiya Bashir, author of Field Theories (Nightboat Books, 2017), who curated Poem-a-Day for this month's weekdays. Read a Q&A with Bashir about her curatorial approach this month and find out more about our guest editors for the year. 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

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