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…

Saturday Poetry – ‘This Beautiful Planet’ by Dorothea Lasky This week’s Saturday Poetry matched with mobile photography/art is entitled ‘This Beautiful Planet’ by Dorothea Lasky. Born on March 27, 1978, in St. Louis, Missouri, Dorothea Lasky received her BA from Washington University. “I’ve long been obsessed with the idea that our human experience is very unimportant when taken in the context of the endless magnitude of the universe. It’s both a comforting and terrifying reality. In terms of this poem, this reality is manifest in my current fear for our planet. Climate change dominates my thoughts most days. In many ways, this poem is a narration of this particular sort of…

Saturday Poetry – Interview with a Rose by James Cagney This week’s Saturday Poetry matched with mobile photography/art is entitled ‘Interview with a Rose’ by James Cagney. He is the author of Black Steel Magnolias in the Hour of Chaos Theory (Nomadic Press, 2018), winner of the PEN Oakland Josephine Miles Award. A Cave Canem fellow, Cagney lives in Oakland, California. I have matched mobile art by @filizakart with this image entitled ‘Beauties from the Spring’. 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.…

Saturday Poetry -WHO REAL؟ by Marwa Helal This week’s Saturday Poetry matched with mobile photography/art is entitled WHO REAL؟ by Marwa Helal. She is the author of Ante body (Nightboat Books, 2022), Invasive species (Nightboat Books, 2019), and the chapbook I AM MADE TO LEAVE I AM MADE TO RETURN (No Dear, 2017). This poem, she explains is about “Easy, e=mc2. Let me translate: Either make space or move out the way” I have matched mobile art by @incomprehensiblebugfx with this image untitled. 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…

Saturday Poetry – The moon rose over the bay. I had a lot of feelings. by Donika Kelly This week’s Saturday Poetry, matched with mobile photography/art is entitled The moon rose over the bay. I had a lot of feelings. by Donika Kelly. She is the author of The Renunciations (Graywolf Press, 2021) and is an assistant professor in the English department at the University of Iowa. About this poem, she said “often, I am thinking of how I can ground love—feeling it, being in it—and being present in my body and in joy, in my work. These moves feel so urgent to me as a black lesbian in this political…