Saturday Poetry – ‘Untitled for a Reason’ by Tara Betts

Saturday Poetry – ‘Untitled for a Reason’ by Tara Betts

This week’s Saturday Poetry brings you the soul-stirring poem titled ‘Untitled for a Reason’ by Tara Betts. She is a Black American poet and the author of Refuse to Disappear (Word Works Books, 2022); Break the Habit (Trio House Press, 2016); and the chapbook 7 x 7: kwansabas (Backbone Press, 2015). She lives in Chicago. When asked what this poem is about, she expressed “so, when I was writing this poem, I was talking to someone who I knew there was no way I could ever be with in the way that I had hoped. Even though it was clear, it reminded me that my heart had not shrunk and that having those aspirations for love was still possible for me. So, what does it mean to write about a love unrequited yet still imagined? I didn’t want to write a blazon or some other form, but I wanted to explore that question in images that evoked my yearning, even though it was only a limited joy.”

For this edition of Saturday Poetry, we have paired Tara Betts emotive words with mobile art by the talented @prarthana_dhanjal with the captivating artwork complementing the poem’s essence beautifully, creating a symphony of emotions.

Saturday Poetry – ‘Untitled for a Reason’ by Tara Betts

you are curled under
unconsummated kiss,
folded into the violence
of blueberries crushed
between teeth, dying
sugars of once growing
fruit, and i let it linger.

your hands map
a body that requires
no discovery,
nor conquest.

you speak softened
drama of fury and frenzy,
quiet underbelly, light
beaming into peaceful
dark interrupted by
minor collisions
bodies were built
to withstand. you,
looping daydreams
and gasps silent
under skin until
partitions of distance
and judgment lapse
into surreptitious mist.

you are the laugh
that falls orange
against my cheek
and dries slight
sweat cooling.

in the smallest fleck
of imagination, you
become a dream
i needed to recall
as muscles found
new persistence
flexing in a crucible
where the world
expands beyond
the steady scruff
of sandpaper
graded routine. you,
small map unfolding
a globe that vanished
within mundane block.

you open a door
with a word, if any,
or a pause hanging
like an ornament
in your full smirk.

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