Category Archives: #poetry

It’s National Poetry Month!

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If Halloween and National Poetry Month were in the same month, my utter happiness would be complete. Alas, I only get to celebrate my birthday during Poetry month. To kick off the Poetry Month celebrations, one of my own:

Love Doesn’t Rhyme By Nicole Kapise Perkins

“How are you, really?”

Just one of the many things you said with too many miles between us;

you were the sun of my sky,

and yet we never exchanged friendship bracelets,

never repressed words or scary truths.

My therapist asks me to talk about you,

how we kept moving without coming forward,

the silence between us,

the things you said at 2AM when you thought no one was listening

but I was.

Am I no one?

I often feel like my body is a graveyard,

darkness planted in salted earth,

Romans laughing as Mona rots—

can people change?

All of my ghosts say no;

they snicker and point at my inner child

as she walks on eggshells,

so fearful of dying summer.

Every new September

I wake up somewhere between now and then,

a half-remembered dream:

nectar on my tongue,

withering flowers and rotting fruit—

“I am not afraid,” she says, “I was born for this.”

Bathed in a golden aura, she burned in twin flames.

I wake in sunlight

with the realization that people I don’t know have a life as vivid as my own;

you, in your sleep,

used to recite Angel numbers.

We’re strangers again,

we shared a kiss that didn’t know it was the last one.

Your sun sign wasn’t compatible,

there were too many storms to weather

and you never mastered the art of finding beauty in toxicity.

I look around at the empty chairs spaced around the office like wallflowers at a dance.

“He smelled like a bonfire,” I say.

“He tasted like burned coffee. Love doesn’t rhyme. It doesn’t make any sense.”

Net Galley Review: The Lost World by Celia Drill

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Celia Drill’s The Lost World is some of the best contemporary poetry I have ever read. Her work is enthralling; she plays with language, creating images in the mind that are a kaleidoscope of emotion and thought. I found myself highlighting entire poems instead of single lines. I read her poems two, three times over, looking for meaning withing the meaning. Drill creates surreal landscapes of sound—I read her poems out loud, wanting to feel the flow of her language.

Drill’s poem “The Raven” describes the raven thus: “When the raven appears, he is never a bird; he is always a small, dark man. He walks with a cane, with God as his witness.”

A bird dies alone in the snow: “I take her home to forest’s solace, lay her in the dark earth beneath joined pines […] The forest is mourners holding hands. My dead bird recedes into roots. And unlike me, silent stranger in dimming woods, she sings from networked branches.”

Celia Drill crafts lines of such beauty: “Rain makes widows of the ghost pines…”; “There is no time, say the dragonflies, only color.”; “Sweetness spirals from the throats of violet, coalesces, sisterhoods of stars.” Her poem “Mug for Lapsang Souchong” is as graceful as the fox that the potter dreams of.

We know writers are artists, and in The Lost World Celia Drill embodies this ideal. “I am only a sparrow,” she says, “but I am voluminous.”

Goodreads Challenge!

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Slightly delayed, but we are still in January for about eight more hours, so…Goodreads Challenge update!

Last year I managed to beat my goal of 145 books, finishing at 152. This year I have set a goal of 150 books. I have completed nine so far, seven of which were poetry eBooks with an average of 150 pages, give or take. I have some hefty books on my planned TBRs for the next few months, March especially, so we’ll see how quickly I get through them. I am a fast reader naturally, but I do not just breeze through a book for the sake of getting it finished. I do take the time to read thoughtfully and make notes or copy things into my Commonplace Book. Many of my nonfiction books look like little porcupines with sticky tab quills.

My reading time will also be slightly reduced as I am setting aside time in the evenings to write because my poetry manuscript is not going to finish itself (though it would probably require far less editing if it did). How is it that something that sounds so meaningful when you first write it sounds like a four year old telling a story when you go back and read it a week later? I mean no disrespect to four year olds: my Finch is an excellent storyteller. His Mόraί, on the other hand, is a slightly off-kilter poet.

I recently shared a post about my February TBR, so I won’t review it here. My March reading list will be in the theme of Women’s History Month. Sister and I are expecting to have TWTCNS finished by late March, and we have chosen one of the books on my TBR to be our next Sister Read.

Are you on Goodreads? Let’s connect! You can find me at https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/12594094.Nicole_Kapise_Perkins . What are you reading right now? Do you have a reading goal for this year? Let me know. In the meantime, be well, and keep reading!

Poetry Review: Mexican Bird by Luis Lopez-Maldonado

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Mexican Bird by Luis Lopez-Maldonado tells a heart-rending, painfully beautiful story. It is a reality I as a white heterosexual woman will never experience; Lopez-Maldonado’s pain, hope, desire, sorrow, and need come through every line, illustrating the life of a beautiful soul, often marginalized and misunderstood, but wholly worthy of reverence.

NetGalley Review: Scavengers 1.2

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Editor Shilo Niziolek has curated a collection of poetry, prose, and artwork that is a choir of voices. Each piece is as carefully selected as a soloist in an opera, showing readers a look into each contributor’s imagination. Readers walk through realms of experience and vision. Each piece made me think of wandering a house of many doors, stepping into a new world of thought with the turn of a knob. This is Scavengers 1.2; I am looking forward to 1.3.

NetGalley Review: On the Subject of Blackberries by Stephanie Wytovich

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This book explodes into your psyche. Wytovich takes her readers by storm, pulling them into a maelstrom of emotion and language and sensation. “My name is werewolf, death-cup, noise,” she screams charging through hordes of grinning demons.
Ghost girls watch from garden shadows as you daintily sip poisoned tea; we dine with witches on thornapple, mushrooms, wild strawberries, and boiled spiders. “Three times I came to tea,” the mystical triad, three wishes, click your heels three times, and you too can read the omens. Wytovich illustrates with words, creating fantastical paintings: “She stood inside the four corners / securely in sunlight–smiling / a fairy princess against / my unwelcoming face / precious, with a quiet respect.”
Wytovich’s writing brings to mind the work of Charlotte Perkins Gilman and Mary Oliver, but her voice is uniquely, angrily, her own. She questions suffering and disturbance and gives us an illusion of genteel femininity shielding ferocious womanhood. Yet there is beauty glowing behind her ferocity: “Awakened, a trailing mist / hugs my morning tea / an early love, shining.”
in “On the Subject of Blackberries” Stephanie Wytovich has created a universe of thought. You cannot read her writing and be unaffected. It forces you to consider what is real and what we are told is false, though only the reader knows for sure.

Advanced Review: Yet Still, She Shines by Katheryn Louise

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Poet Katheryn Louise gifted me a special prelaunch copy of her beautiful collection Yet Still, She Shines. The anticipated release date is January 24, 2024, and I urge you to secure yourself a copy of this beautiful collection. Kathryn Louise’s Yet Still, She Shines is a masterpiece of imagery and emotion. She opens with a brilliant burst of summer, showering readers with color and heat. Dragonflies carry messages of hope to those willing to listen, love’s heat sears the heart as a midnight breeze caresses the cheeks, lovers find wholeness in each other’s strength. She contemplates forever, “Let’s read this next chapter slowly,” she suggests, so as not to waste a single honey-drenched moment. She reminds us that “without sorrow, nothing tastes sweet.” She leads her readers into the liminal spaces, “The space between what was / and what will be: / a beautiful place of calm, / of leaning in and listening, / of imagination and planning, / of surrendering/ and allowing.” Kathryn Louise brings light into “the darkest of places, the tiniest of spaces;” helping us to see that true love exists, and comes when we least expect it.

Kathryn Louise invites readers to recall the unfettered joy of childhood nonsense; she asks them to feel the rhythm of the waves, and reminds us all to cherish each fleeting moment of our lives, the winter sunsets, coffee drunk on the porch overlooking spring blossoms, to stay present and live now. Her words illustrate life, togetherness, the highs and hurts of love, and the pain of loss. You look into shadows and see the light on the other side, and you are awakened. She crafts such exquisite lines: “Just walk by my side / as we tackle / each little pain / from the past, / for we are but / mirrors for each other–“
Yet Still, She Shines is a truly beautiful collection of poetry, elegant in its simplicity and expression. I feel certain that this volume will be a meaningful addition to people’s poetry shelves.

Review: Provocative is a Girl’s Name

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Mimi Flood’s amazing, powerful book Provocative is a Girl’s Name is a commanding, painful book. Flood’s words are raw, shocking, and truthful. There is anger, there is rage, and hatred, and there is love as well: love for who she is, love for her fellow women. As a sexual violence survivor, this was a hard book to read, and I advise readers to be aware. Flood doesn’t sugarcoat reality. She says what needs to be said proudly, in a voice that rings from the pages like a queen challenging the wrongs of the world. (ARC provided by Querencia Press)

Review (and not a little fangirl raving): Bad Omens by Jessica Drake-Thomas

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Jessica Drake-Thomas’ Bad Omens is on my list of best books for the year. This poetry collection is steeped in mystery and folklore, with a dash of mythology and a hint of history. In other words, Drake-Thomas has managed to fit all of my favorite themes into her book. This is a very late posting on my blog as I read and reviewed this back in February. Since then I have read it twice more, and I love it even more than before.

She opens this collection with an audience with a soothsayer: “Speak to me/as if I’m covered in blood…or don’t speak/ at all. /Bring me a gift–/ mouthful of sour cherries, /black toad, /smooth rune-stones. / In return, / the knowledge / you’ve been denied…” She will guide you, give you knowledge, and with that knowledge the power you desire, you deserve. We walk with a dark goddess lamenting the light she has lost and praise Eve’s daring and the gifts she gave her daughters.

Readers walk the path generations of witches have traversed communing with nature and night; we are women, we are phoenixes, we are sirens and the weak-minded our prey. We practice alchemy in a bath perfumed by belladonna, serenaded by seabirds; later we will run with wolves. Drake-Thomas weaves mythology with Tarot on a journey to free herself from the oppression of one considered good because he was God-fearing; when a woman is called a witch, consider, who was the wicked one?

My favorite poem in her collection, The Empress Reversed, alludes to two things I love: the television show Penny Dreadful, and The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman (I will share the full poem at the end of this post, it’s so evocative). And this exquisite line from Ophiophagy: “I may be asleep when/ disaster arrives, but/ I’ll dream of dandelion pie & stars” (I have been working on a collection of golden shovel poems inspired by women writers, and I have included this line. There is magic in these words.)

In La Fee Verte a Tarot reader gives the narrator the Tower, a powerful card, one to be wary of, and she falls into a Wonderland of absinthe and arsenic, dancing faeries glowing with radium. In her book, Death comes on his pale horse and the Goddess waits at the crossroads–which will you choose?

I am absolutely in love with this book (in case you couldn’t tell). I am eagerly awaiting what magick Jessica Drake-Thomas conjures in her next book. This was an ARC given by Querencia Press and I am so grateful that they sent it. As promised, below, The Empress Reversed, by Jessica Drake-Thomas, from Bad Omens.

The Empress Reversed 

There’s a brisk trade for photographs of dead women*, 

you know— 

men like their women silent, passive. 

Weak, soft as a kitten. 

They cannot stand a mad woman, 

who speaks in tongues, 

knows secrets. 

A woman is only as good 

as those she trusts. 

Her blue lips gape— 

spiders come crawling 

out of her mouth 

her eyes go black. 

She lifts up off her feet, 

head thrown back. 

There’s a demon beneath her skin, 

scratching to get loose. 

Like this pattern she’s dragging her nails down— 

yellow wallpaper, purple orchids, 

death cap mushrooms, 

a woman slipping out 

of her body, her prison. 

Have you seen the signs? They’re in 

patterns that birds make in the sky, 

footprints marking the road she took, 

veins in leaves, the way the cards fall, 

how the moon occludes itself. 

Who is this? Who’s it from? 

The cold woman, with eyes of blue flame. 

The prints end, the trail runs dry. 

Your questions do not. 

*Penny Dreadful, Season One, Episode Seven