All posts tagged: Poetry

Writing from the 2022 Outpost Fellows

A note from Outpost founder Ricardo Wilson

Launched in 2022, Outpost is a residency for creative writers of color from the United States and Latin America. Each September, we welcome two writers and award them with a stipend as well as complimentary travel, lodging, and meals to spend a month cultivating a generative writing community in the mountains of Southern Vermont. STEFFAN TRIPLETT and MARICEU ERTHAL, whose work you will encounter below, are exceptionally talented, and we feel quite privileged to have had them represent Outpost’s inaugural cohort. Thanks to the ongoing support of our funding community, we have been able to increase the stipend to $2,000 for our 2023 cohort. Applications are open and will close January 15th.

 

Writing from the 2022 Outpost Fellows
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Room of Darkness

By MONA KAREEM
Translated by SARA ELKAMEL

Image of a balcony

 

Farwaniya, Kuwait

“Darkness alone is in my voice.” — Jean Sénac

 

I am of darkness.
My nation is an aging butterfly,
the desert my prayer.

I wash in rain’s saliva.
In my supplications, the sun dances
on the tips of her toes.

Room of Darkness
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Ode to Powerline

Winner of the 2022 DISQUIET Prize for Poetry

By DARIUS SIMPSON 

 “if you’re ever lonelayyyy, stop, you don’t have to be.”
Powerline                                    

you, thrust open leather vest glisten chest in the desert
you, both knee beggin in silver pants plus rain
you, break a lover wide to see what lyrics may flow                                                            

Ode to Powerline
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Bones and Ghosts

By DAVID MILLS

From my row house mailbox, I fished
an envelope: no address, just “David.” 
scrawled. In my room, I read: e-mails 

bounced back, calls orphaned. If you’re 
alive and don’t want to talk I get it.
Though six hours across
the Atlantic
is much farther than six along it. If 
need be, I will kneel before your grave.  
here’s my number. just in case.

Bones and Ghosts
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Jerome Sons

By TERRI WITEK

 

I ask my sons what they want from St. Hieronymos, too old to befriend. Red hat, my dead son says. Fat book, my live son requests. No one mentions a lion, meandered in.

The lion asks for an edit= do these sons mark jars filled with body parts? Baboon son, jackal son? They flatten to black-rimmed eyes. No.

I climb through mountain sons. They are finding how far blue takes them. They are learning the ropy muscles of a man (higher animus/ they r anonymous) becalmed in a cave mouth. His red hat and book, the little fire.

Jerome Sons
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