It’s the third Thursday of the month and that means it’s time to join Bonny in gathering up some poetry to share with you all!
Thanks to the RWU selection this month, I discovered a new-to-me poet, Safiya Sinclair. I know several of you struggled with the poem she shared in How to Say Babylon but maybe this poem of hers will speak to you. At least I hope it will speak to you as it did to me!
The Ragged and the Beautiful
by Safiya Sinclair
Doubt is a storming bull, crashing through
the blue-wide windows of myself. Here in the heart
of my heart where it never stops raining,
I am an outsider looking in. But in the garden
of my good days, no body is wrong. Here every
flower grows ragged and sideways and always
beautiful. We bloom with the outcasts,
our soon-to-be sunlit, we dreamers. We are strange
and unbelonging. Yes. We are just enough
of ourselves to catch the wind in our feathers,
and fly so perfectly away.
Poem copyright ©2018 by Safiya Sinclair, “The Ragged and The Beautiful” from The Bare Life Review: A Journal of Immigrant and Refugee Literature, (The Bare Life Review, 2018).
That’s all from me this week! See you all back here on Monday!
I do like this one Kat! Thanks for sharing. (I’m one of those who didn’t particularly care for the poem in “How to Say Babylon.”)
I love the imagery, words, and voice in this poem, and do like it quite a bit more than the one Sinclair shared in Babylon. This poem is going to lend itself to multiple readings as I absorb more each time. Thanks for sharing, Kat!
beautiful! I like the doubt is a storming bull (that sums me up!) 🙂 I hope you are staying cool on these hot days.
I love the idea of thinking of myself as a garden, growing every which way. Thanks for sharing this one!