Saturday Poetry – ‘Crossing the Line’ by E. Ethelbert Miller This week’s Saturday Poetry matched with mobile photography/art is entitled ‘Crossing the Line’ by E. Ethelbert Miller. “I wrote this poem at The Line Hotel in Washington, D.C. It’s an outgrowth of a meeting with my friend Maria Otero who was born in Bolivia. In the first stanza, there is a reference to miners. We all struggle to mine love in our relationships. The poem focuses on the commitment required to maintain a friendship over decades. It’s about aging and acknowledging another person’s beauty and how it changes, but is forever eternal. What holds the poem together is the ritual…

Saturday Poetry – ‘To the Sea’ by Anis Mojgani This week’s Saturday Poetry matched with mobile photography/art is entitled ‘To the Sea’ by Anis Mojgani. “This poem comes from how things in ourselves we are sometimes self-conscious about are often things in us that others love, and also speaks to the humanness of wanting to be known by and to know others. A person in my life whom I love often says she is rambling when she seemingly starts to ramble, and, between her being a quiet person and me loving the sound of her voice, I take little issue with this. One evening on a drive, this very thing…

Saturday Poetry – ‘To the Sea’ by Anis Mojgani This week’s Saturday Poetry matched with mobile photography/art is entitled ‘To the Sea’ by Anis Mojgani. “This poem comes from how things in ourselves we are sometimes self-conscious about are often things in us that others love, and also speaks to the humanness of wanting to be known by and to know others. A person in my life whom I love often says she is rambling when she seemingly starts to ramble, and, between her being a quiet person and me loving the sound of her voice, I take little issue with this. One evening on a drive, this very thing…

Saturday Poetry – ‘Morning in the Burbs’ by Marcus Wicker This week’s Saturday Poetry matched with mobile photography/art is entitled ‘Morning in the Burbs’ by Marcus Wicker. He is the author of Silencer (Mariner Books, 2017) and Maybe the Saddest Thing (Harper Perennial, 2012), which won the National Poetry Series and was a finalist for an NAACP Image Award. He has received fellowships from Cave Canem, the Fine Arts Work Center, and the Poetry Foundation. Wicker is the poetry editor of Southern Indiana Review, and he teaches at the University of Memphis. I have matched mobile art by @hereinmyownskin_365 with this image untitled.  If you would like to be featured in our Saturday…

Saturday Poetry – ‘Untitled for a Reason’ by Tara Betts This week’s Saturday Poetry matched with mobile photography/art is entitled ‘Self-Care Is a Psy-Op’ by Jameka Williams.  I have matched mobile art by @1000worte with this image entitled ‘Winter Noon’. “So, when I was writing this poem, I was talking to someone who I knew there was no way I could ever be within 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?…

Saturday Poetry – ‘Self-Care Is a Psy-Op’ by Jameka Williams This week’s Saturday Poetry matched with mobile photography/art is entitled ‘Self-Care Is a Psy-Op’ by Jameka Williams.  I have matched mobile art by @_klimtt with this image untitled. “I’m addicted to the Internet. I waste a lot of time self-soothing with tweets and clips. I come across a glut of ‘self-care’ online content, creators masquerading as therapists. It’s hardly possible to care for one’s self in the modern world under capitalism. The speaker of the poem is without community. She can’t make sense of her addictions, her wasteful pastimes, and her individuality in the murky ‘sameness’ of the digital village.…

Saturday Poetry – ‘Morning Song’ by Naomi Shihab Nye This week’s Saturday Poetry matched with mobile photography/art is entitled. ‘Morning Song’. by Naomi Shihab Nye. She gives voice to her experience as an Arab-American through poems about heritage and peace that overflow with a humanitarian spirit. I have matched mobile art by @wander_in_wonder_woman with this image entitled ‘Yellow illuminates the soul; welcome to the bright side of life. ✨💛✨’. If you would like to be featured in our Saturday Poetry section, please ensure you include the hashtag #theappwhisperer on any images posted to Instagram. This will mean we will be able to consider it. To view the others we have published in this…

Saturday Poetry – ‘The Splendid Body’ by Rebecca Lindenberg This week’s Saturday Poetry matched with mobile photography/art is entitled ‘The Splendid Body’ by Rebecca Lindenbergo. “This poem is part of a longer project called Our Splendid Failure to Do the Impossible. That project began during the Covid-19 lockdown, because, everywhere I looked, I saw the words ‘diabetes’ and ‘severe outcome’ within an inch of each other on page after page of news, public service announcements, medical studies, etc. As a Type 1 diabetic for over thirty years now, I found that scary and distracting. That, in turn, prompted me to write more directly about my experience growing up with an…

Saturday Poetry – ‘Self-Portrait as Lilith’ by Elizabeth Acevedo This week’s Saturday Poetry matched with mobile photography/art is entitled ‘Self-Portrait as Lilith by Elizabeth Acevedo. “This poem, like many of my poems, is interested in complicating and subverting what we think we know about biblical, mythical, and/or folkloric figures. It is theorized that Lilith, Adam’s first wife, was banished from Eden for being disobedient to her husband. Rendered in the Bible as a ‘she-demon,’ little is written about Lilith’s creation and banishment, but she loomed large in my imagination, especially in my first year of marriage. What would it mean to be that kind of woman? What would it mean to love…

Saturday Poetry – ‘In Praise of Dreams’ by Gary Soto This week’s Saturday Poetry matched with mobile photography/art is entitled ‘In Praise of Dreams’ by Gary Soto. Born in Fresno, California, in 1952, Gary Soto is a poet, novelist, and children’s author known for his reflections on the Chicano experience. “Years ago, a poet friend showed me a photo of her cat, taken on the spur of the moment, with a cigarette in her furry chops. The cat was walking across a thick springy lawn. If I hadn’t trusted my friend, I would have shrugged and said, ‘I don’t believe it for one second—get me another beer, please.’ This poem of…