Tag: Featured Poem

Featured Poem of the Week

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Susan Brearly

She brings with her, wisdom, experience, and the gift of gab within various forms of writing. She is unafraid to share what needs to be shared, regardless of its content. What she has given to A Cornered Gurl cannot be described. With each piece, new eyes set their sights on our small community and there’s no doubt that we will continue to grow. Her poem Syncopation is this week’s feature.

Syncopation

Photo by Jon Tyson on Unsplash

Ah, my heart.
Jumping, fluttering, pausing
In syncopation.

A defect, 
modern science informs.

Lying still 
hear it, feel it
Reminding
every moment
This is the SPARK

Life, the gift

Death lingers, 
lingers in the pause, the void,
between this beat and the next.

A child’s terror
Knowing.

Listen
MY BREATH, MY HEART
It stopped.

No, they say. 
Your mind, it’s there.

Again. 
Again.
Again.
Night after night.
Terror.
Certainty.
Death is near.
Death is here.

Passion’s embrace.
Remember, heart says.
You are fragile
in this flutter
in this pause
in this deep murmur, the silence in the space between breaths,
an echo chamber of the universe
that whispers, “death is near, death is here.”

Whispering, “choose . . .”
Life?
Or Death?

I choose to move.

I run.

Thanks, Jennifer Kindera for this great article

*Children who are telling you about their very real physical experiences need empathy and the full gift of your attention and time. Believe them; believe in them.

Originally published in A Cornered Gurl via Medium.

Featured Poem of the Week

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Zuva

Zuva is one of our newest contributors to A Cornered Gurl and she comes to the publication with strength, power, brutal honesty, and “black excellence” in her bones. I love reading this young one and she decided to answer the “Young Minds of Medium Inspiration Call” with the following piece entitled: The Making of a Government Manifesto–Erasure Piece. At nearly twenty-three years old, Zuva is already making waves with her work and if you are in her way, you will be moved. And now, for her poem as our featured work for the week:

Photo by Rosemary Ketchum from Pexels

The Making of a Government Manifesto–Erasure Piece.

Immigrants are “stealing your jobs” but really it’s machines

A homeless man asks me for change, the world is contactless now

Education is free when it protects and promotes government agenda

Does the voice of oppressors get silenced or do they learn how to whisper and

pass secret notes?

men are taught to hate feminists when we want to help them too. Nothing changes

Obesity is a money-making industry,

that’s why salads ain’t cheap

They’re crippling our NHS to privatisation

This is how it’s meant to be

Trump is to cause divide

And illustrate your rights still don’t matter

People are gunned down for being people

Children are shot then and called victims

*It is very easy to look at the world and just see the negative. But when you look again you can find and create hope.

Originally published in A Cornered Gurl via Medium.

Featured Poem of the Week

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Ashwini Dodani

Ashwini was recently added to A Cornered Gurl as a contributor and is a faithful supporter and pretty well known Writer on Medium. He specializes in gut-punching, knee-buckling poetry, and can also melt your heart too. He is the Editor and sole host of From The Poet’s Heart, a publication on Medium that is budding beautifully. What he will bring to the publication is a sound and consistent flow of the beauty of words and I am rather happy he is now apart of our community. His poem “Standing Up For Myself” is this week’s feature.


Standing Up For Myself

Not Your Business

Photo by Allan Gonzalez Vega from Pexels

Of Course!

Stare at me, as you always do,
judge as you always do,
measure me in all the small capacities
you can but I will not be affected,
and I will not even let you know that I am not…

I don’t expect you to know
my battles, my pain,
my insecurities, my leftover sanity,
my ego melted into self-respect,
my self-respect shattered into hollowness,
No, I seriously don’t,
But if you can, if you really can,
do take those eyes off me,
that keep doubting and make me
even unsure of my most determined
decisions, I request not command
to let me be, and take my beliefs
to turn them into reality…

But somehow I can sense, you won’t change,
and hence I am forced to tell you in your face,
I am standing up for myself,
and it’s none of your business…

 

More poetry by me and 50+ others, join us at From The Poet’s Heart.

Originally published in A Cornered Gurl via Medium.

Featured Poem of the Week

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TheWayISam:

Sam is a fairly new contributor to A Cornered Gurl and she came thundering through the publication’s queue with a powerful, but a subtle-in-emotion poem about insomnia. She is making her mark on Medium and doing so tremendously. With addictive language and great line placement in her poetry, I am happy to have Sam in ACG via Medium and this week, Insomnia is the feature.

Photo by Megan te Boekhorst on Unsplash

Primp and prep and spray
Lavender to melt the day away
Pins and needles poke me as I lay in bed
Awake.

Tortured by my thoughts
My worries consume me
My anticipation energizes me
The moment my head hits the pillow
I’m Awake.

Snoring echoes all around me
Amplified by the silence
Suffocated with exaggeration
And taunts me.

I am truly astonished by your ease in bed
When awake, you are a ball of nerves.
You are asleep mid-sentence
Fully tranquilized by contact with a pillow.

No drug or music
No distraction or sedation
Will rouse me from this Hell.
I’m Awake.

Originally published via A Cornered Gurl on Medium.

Featured Poem of the Week

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Lowen Puckey 

An advocate for mental health, disability, and chronic illness–she pens her words carefully but manages to add so much strength to them too. She is an active contributor to A Cornered Gurl and is giving our little community lessons in life through words. The poem that I have selected to feature is entitled, “Lines On My Body.” It is an amazing flow of words and ends solidly too. Everything about it makes me happy to be a writer of the genre, poetry. And now, “Lines On My Body.”

Lines On My Body

Maud Wagner, the United States’ first known female tattoo artist. wikicommons

I want these lines on my body
showing my journey,
expressing my womanhood–
bold patterns of identity
from a feminine hand.

But there is part of me
that shouts don’t do it!
No man will touch you–
(not this man but maybe the next).
No job will have you–
(not this job but maybe others).

So, perhaps, like that poem about
the old lady wearing green shoes
(or was it purple? or red?)
because she finally felt free
to do so — perhaps, like her, I’ll
finally cover myself in the beautiful
images of my life when I’m sixty;
when I don’t need to care about
the bank manager anymore, or
the boyfriend. Maybe then I can say:

I don’t have a photo album or
a Facebook page — don’t need it.
It’s all on me. Part of me. Come.

See me.

Originally published in A Cornered Gurl via Medium.

Featured Poem of the Week.

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Mitul Bhat is one of Medium’s newest users, but his words prove that he has been writing for a long time. Recently added to A Cornered Gurl, Mitul shared a poignant and emotional piece of poetry where he personifies a bullet in hopes of inspiring it to not kill him. Please make him feel welcome, beautiful people. And now, the piece in question:

Bullet, I Need Your Help!

Photo by Art by Lønfeldt on Unsplash


Bullet, discriminate

I beg you, miss your target

We have lost our ability to love

You ‘miss’ and teach us now and how!

Hit the wall by my side

And let my heart beat, for some more time.

I have promised my son

I’ll be there for the school play in the evening

And that’s where I so want to be.

But, I need your help in making it happen.

If you hit your mark,

I’ll fall here, where I had only come to pray.

One more body to clean

yet another number flashing on the screen.

A topic of another debate

A condolence remark

And some mail forwards.

My son will still be on stage

A tear hidden, he will play the part

Fully aware,

in the audience somewhere

is but one empty chair.

Bullet, whether your shooter likes it or not,

The show must go on…

I know you have a job to do

A target to hit and a place to be

All I ask is, do a sloppy job.

The man behind the trigger can no longer think

He won’t even notice

So ashamed are you of him,

You chose to miss me

and hide your face in the wall instead.

You will still have your freedom

from the gun and me one more chance

to spread the love.

Heart beating still alive,

I might be able to change the man, save the race.

But I need that one chance!

To bring love back into the heart

where only hate remains.

For when I do,

I’ll remember

It all started with you.

Originally published in A Cornered Gurl via Medium. Thank you for reading, beautiful people.