Category: Poetry

All Summer

after“What’s LoveGottoDo?” by Richard Blanco

All summer I wander between houses, couches, in and out of Dil and Lil’s secondhand Murano, air conditionless, legs suctioned to the seats / Radio set to whatever isn’t static, most days Spanish, Mexican horns blaring, pushing down three-lane highways and rural dirt roads / All summer I am seeking re encounters, reminders of why I come home, Wednesday walks in Woodland Cemetery, Sunday lunch dates at the coffee shop that taught me how to hold my caffeine, the one folks flocked to when Starbucks was flopped down by the highway because fuck capitalism and its infiltration of small towns / All summer I am running to people excited about their shy cat and Cupid sexcapades or the job they hate that allows them to travel or the job they love that doesn’t pay, or the coworker who watches Twilight stoned every Sunday / All summer I am asking myself how I will have enough money to eat out again, but then I am at Ajanta again, at Alicia’s Ethiopian again, at the speakeasy with lighting that makes me squint like my grandma, phone flashlight poised to read the menu / All summer I am flipping from floor mat to futon, breathing in cat hair, forgetting to turn the fan on the lights off in my brother’s new apartment, in my friend’s cramped studio / They ask if I like the eggshell paint in the bathroom, the ebony accented dresser, stretch smiles when I say I prefer not to live in black and white / All summer I throw out old clothes, old shoes, get my skin checked, teeth cleaned, hug neighbors, kiss parents / Change clothes in parking lots, hide keys in flower pots

Originally published in A Personal History of Home: An Anthology

Home Again

When I flew back after ten months,

I made my mom swear

the doorknobs and light switches

weren’t two inches lower than before.

The drive into my town never changes

but there is a dollar store branch where

Kelly Auto always pumped

my bike tires for free.

Elliott is three inches taller 

and Luna has a full set of teeth.

The backyard honeysuckle is all torn out,

a stone patio nested in its place. Yet,

the same shoes litter the laundry room,

snack cupboard persistently bare of junk food.

Mom still sneaks off to bed

while Dad stays snoring on the couch.

Buehler’s Grocery sign continues boasting

the best egg salad in the county, and 

black coffee remains two dollars 

at The Daily Grind where

childhood friends in grown-up clothes 

perch to prattle about my fabulous time away.

World traveler, bird with no legs, they say 

the resemblance is uncanny.

Originally published in From Arthur’s Seat

A special edition for Motif’s Fiction and Poetry issue

Running along the boardwalk 

on the way to the shore,

In two’s and in three’s, racing 

on their way, Crematogaster 

sisters, acrobats with heart.

The farmers brought us out 

to see the mystery, a crop 

had been targeted, thirsty 

broccoli, the youngest 

sprouts, Tetramorium encircled.

Clinging to the bottom of 

a small boulder small and 

black, almost entirely invisible 

Myrmecina, cryptic but textured, 

residents on the roll.

Cinnabar creps, witch’s 

butter, and hexagonal polypores, 

Deana finds the Aphaenogaster 

hiding inside every gill, when they 

fungal foray and festival slay.

Antennae curving to insertion, or 

bent abruptly, with a notched 

clypeus or curving propodeal spines,

One character at a time, Myrmica 

unidentified.

It’s easy to feel small 

and helpless, with never-ending 

war and evil all around.

But under foot and the weight 

of the world, the ants still 

make their homes together, they

still breathe — 

and so too, should we.

Illustration by Danika Valentine and with thanks to Skyler Jay. Follow Dr. Jane and her research lab on Instagram @antlabpvd or on the web www.lovetheants.org.

Elected – Withdrawn

Inexplicable desire 

to tidy the kitchen

sweep the floor

move geraniums

into southern sun

slant of light on

the new mousepad—

Positano seascape, or 

somewhere in Liguria

each evocative

locale charged 

& relieved

you were mostly 

unconscious 

when they stormed 

the rotunda; dead 

almost at sunrise 

on the morning 

of the inauguration

spared your daughter’s

Orange County 

conservative bile

of course, you would 

have voted 

the right candidate,

morality prevailing,

even if our labor-loving

dad coerced 

& brainwashed—

the cosmos of you

unbearable today,

the messages

archived on the iPhone

blast a hole

through the chest 

each sound

tinged by

the growing dementia

of your decline 

We listened 

to the young poet

recite the new 

promises

of the earthly

administration

in the shudder

we’re not sure 

we heard

Spoiler Alert

Mildly offended, when students asked,

who I wanted to win the game? Game?

This real life three months in real time

of half-awake late nights and barely 

functioning next days. Devastating.

I had just knighted my aging dog:

Mr. Austin Powers of House Targaryen.  

My partner: son of Dany of House Targaryen 

as our mother—multiple strokes, 

fractured hip—no longer

able to track conversation, is crowned 

mother who won’t die. Meanwhile,       

Daenerys Stormborn, Mother of Dragons, 

Queen of Seven Kingdoms goes mad 

and is stabbed to death in just two 

episodes? If I’d watched 

the series from the start, 

over an eight-year period, there’d be 

no wrath crazed enough. No Winterfell 

unfallen, no north wall tall enough to watch 

White Walkers fall and shatter from. 

In Feel Fly (In Field Fly)

She insisted on driving me

and making sure the uniform

was spotless, knotted with three

thick pieces of black fabric

to the inside upper right seam

just below the belt in case

I needed to ward off the evil eye.

Never alone in this ritual, 

our multiethnic team full 

of superstitions and mis-

pronouncements. Her English

never good enough for the citizen-

ship exam, which she aced in

decent Spanish. Remembering

Mineola, NY as the test site

to the border patrol questions

that night after venturing over

to the Canadian side of Niagara

without her ID. What pride

and surprise that day

at the game when the umpire

missed the call and mamma

startled up in a holler, 

“in feel fly, in feel fly”—

as that impossibly tall ball

dropped, uncatchable falling 

star, and we lost the game.  

Poet-editor-translator, Peter Covino’s most recent book, What Sex Is Death? Dario Bellezza, Selected Poems (2025) won the Wisconsin Press Prize for Poetry in Translation. He is an associate professor of English and Creative Writing at the University of Rhode Island, and his poetry has been published widely in such journals as the Academy of American Poets’ Poem-a day, American Poetry Review, Paris Review, Seneca Review, and the Yale Review, among others.

l. 

i was a wife 

to interminable hospitality. i ripped open the couch

and ate the cushions 

until i was comfortable.

am i obsessing on a singular idea

of the home? i want 

so endlessly; i drip tomato sauce on a white blouse

and remove it to rinse it off in the sink. 

the sensuality of the scene 

haunts suburbia for weeks. 

i write a love song to my lover, who

faints into the curve of her chaise.

a particularity of reflection; i pull back the view and

see myself everywhere. i claw at the walls.

i am no longer a ghost, but merely 

a woman at the sink. i lower my mouth to the running water

and the drops get on my skin.

ll.

rhyme scheme like two bodies in concert,

walk down a night street three-in-a-row, we;

i take a drag off your cigarette,

i don’t smoke but neither do you.

you want to say something but instead

you’re crawling down the street on hands and knees and

saying “there was a button here, i lost it

three years ago, my jacket

is still missing it.” 

in our car, out in the street, 

you are all smoke in a jean jacket cool,

the button is still missing and 

you pin it shut with my earring. 

Slipping two five-dollar bills inside her casket. After, sitting in your car watching everyone filter out. Neither of us crying, not even when the radio cut and the sun peeked through the fog like an outstretched palm. Like the mole my father and I shared, growing back after he left — never bringing myself to remove it from my chin twice.

Watching you through the kitchen window crouching to your knees, holding a paper napkin, picking tomatoes for the birds. With a care you’d give anything soft and alive I wrapped a thread around my finger and pulled, imagined squeezing air from you until you were paper I could fold.

Early mornings kneading dough while Mom grew weaker. Using a paintbrush to spread butter, watching the sunset spread like oil and become more of itself. Later, digging for loose socks in a pile of your clothes, trying to match them all up.

Dry heaving into a wastebasket under the desk, yellow-white bile hiding numbers on dead receipts. Sitting in a parked car pushing beads onto string, making bracelets in a quiet machine. Going to the nail salon so someone would touch my hands.

Walking to the deli and ordering a coffee smaller than my palm, watching a cigarette bounce off the pavement like skipping stones in a lake. Seeing you through the laundromat window washing socks and a handkerchief. Walking past a missing persons sign of my face tacked to a post.

Sitting on a towel in the middle of the West with an open mouth. Waiting for you by the tilted clock, having just awoken in my bright red sheets. I thought I saw you, holding something close to an ornament, looking for me, although it was only the shadow of someone much older, a child holding a kite, trailing along the water’s edge, and a thousand greying seagulls left for dead. •

As I strolled down a thriving and sundrenched Wickenden Street this past weekend and made my way toward Coffee Exchange to meet Vladimir Jean, the curator of PVD’s Afroverse and a nominee for the 2025 RI Spoken Awards, I stumbled upon our subject standing outside the coffee shop snapping impromptu photos of the blissful spring day on his phone.

The words “playful, childlike, and curious” come to mind when reminiscing on this moment and the conversations that followed. For the next hour, Vlad and I got acquainted while discussing the evolution of Afroverse and how it has grown with him over the past two years. Afroverse is a spoken word poetry brand dedicated to amplifying marginalized voices while “promoting a deeper understanding and appreciation of their work.” A one-man show run by Vlad himself, the brand has grown a notable and organic following in the PVD area. “Creatively I’m Don Draper in there, I call all the shots,” Vlad says. Aside from his girlfriend, Annabell, who occasionally suggests ideas and supports his vision, he runs the poetry night completely on his own. Vlad takes great pride when reflecting on the time he spent learning Canva and web design so that he could boost Afroverse’s online presence. The learning curve was no deterrent from his goals, as he explains, “Making the flyers and website has been one of my favorite parts. I have a good ability to learn new things and utilize them the way that I want to.” Vladimir is a walking testimony of what it means to “do what you can with what you have” and learn along the way. Take his story as a source of inspiration that all the tools you need are already within you.

The Birth of a Universe

Afroverse began as a casual idea between friends. A buddy who was working at Union Burrito in Riverside suggested that Vlad start a poetry night after seeing him perform at several open mics in the area. As a former student of architecture who creates cities in his free time, Vlad is a natural worldbuilder, and took the challenge head-on. He reflected on his community’s need for a space dedicated to connection and free expression after the COVID-19 pandemic and decided to bring the idea to life in February of 2023. Vlad landed on the name Afroverse as a symbol of the organization’s mission to “synchronize with Black and Brown expression.” As a HaitianAmerican who has spent his life immersed in Providence’s assorted diaspora of African cultures, Vladimir felt called to provide a space dedicated to uniting Black and Brown spoken word artists and enthusiasts from all identities. The curator says that the term Afro felt uniting across all Black and Brown people, and the idea of uniting these identities through spoken word was a way of “expanding our universe.” Thus, the Afroverse was born. After a few months of hosting at Union Burrito, Vlad ran into some issues with a change in management and had to take a temporary break to relocate. Not long after, he reconnected with a former Union bartender who was now working at Hide Speakeasy within The George on Washington Street.

The bartender shared that The George was looking for ways to increase traffic to their speakeasy, so Vladimir used this opportunity to relaunch the Afroverse open mic series with an event titled Hide-N-Speak, playfully drawing on the show’s secret location. Their most recent open mic, Hide-N-Speak Vol. XVIII, occurred on Thursday, March 20, and featured 3x Boston Music Awards Poet of the Year Amanda Shea (@amandasheaallday on Insta), along with award-winning literary and performance artist Jason “Jaybird” Walker (@jaybirdewalker on Insta). Although Vlad says that selecting the featured poets often comes naturally, he does “try to spice it up and bring different poets together and present them in a thoughtful order.” This is one major distinction between Afroverse and other open mics or poetry slams in the region. The event is intentionally curated, as Vlad carefully considers which poets are performing back-to-back and how this impacts the overall spirit of the show. Afroverse also prioritizes intimacy as a key ingredient for creative vulnerability. As the host states, “Part of my intention is not to put too many cameras on everyone.” This consideration for privacy results in a warm, low-key environment that coaxes artists into sharing their most powerful and unapologetic pieces with an attentive audience.

The Future of Afroverse– Coming Soon Enough

Vladimir sees a lot of opportunity to expand the Afroverse brand and its mission over the coming months. Beyond poetry, he hopes to eventually host art galleries, film nights, and galas, aiming to open up more discussion forums among Black and Brown communities in RI. He would like to express Afroverse’s appreciation and gratitude for everyone who comes, shares, and performs at his events. “Without a strong community, people are hurting and closed off,” he says, “This started really informal and is growing into something that I would have never imagined two years ago.” •

To keep up with Afroverse’s upcoming Hide-N-Speak events and donate to their mission, visit afroversepvd. com or follow @afroversepvd.

Fernando Pessoa, early 20th-century Portuguese poet, is famous for the creation of his three literary personas, or heteronyms. Pessoa wrote under these heteronyms to not only distance the act of writing poetry, but as a tool of identity and perception; that poetry, as is any art form, creates another self divisible by its creator, and when it is observed by the reader it is given life through the perceiver. For we, when we read something, cement its existence. The biggest mystery in this relationship of perception is the emotion it conjures in us; what is this bridge across valleys? It is unnamable, slippery; it lays, a tantalizing rock, at the bottom of a stream. Yet we continue to grapple with this ambiguity through art, through poetry. This Poetry Month, I wanted to highlight some of my favorite poetry books to celebrate the sculptures behind the form.

Louise Glück – The First Four Books of Poems (1995)

Out of these pages moan a desperate wind. The sound of time escaping us, the whistle of a train we didn’t board heading off across a grey plain. Glück, an American poet who won the Nobel Prize in Literature just three years before her late death, uses the regularity of domestic landscapes to portray grief; the entities of loss that float around the spaces we habit. Her poems slip aside the veil of reality to reveal the dark theater of our ghosts and how they operate, lingering amongst us in their knowing. The first poem of her book, The House on Marshland (1975) is titled “All Hollows” and is a perfect testament to her prowess, “Even now this landscape is assembling./ The hills darken. The oxen/ sleep in their blue yoke,/ the fields having been/ picked clean, the sheaves/ bound evenly and piled at the roadside/ among cinquefoil, as the toothed moon rises: // This is the barrenness/ of harvest or pestilence./ And the wife leaning out the window/ with her hand extended, as in payment,/ and the seeds/ distinct, gold, calling/ Come here/ Come here, little one // And the soul creeps out of the tree.”

John Ashbery – Can You Hear, Bird? (1995)

Okay okay okay, I picked this one up at The Book Barn in Connecticut, and if you’ve ever been you know that place is both a heaven and a hell for book people. You have to go in with a grand plan, or else you’re absolutely screwed. This time I went right to the poetry section, and picked up Ashbery’s 17th book from the shelf (which I later found was a signed copy). There aren’t many words to express Ashbery’s poetry except that it is unfathomable genius; his work is ethereal and bizarre, yet grounded in his narration. When one reads Ashbery it is almost like they are following a character around an eternal playground. There is joke in his verse, each poem a sardonic microcosm of the absurdity that congeals existence. The poems in Can You Hear, Bird? are alphabetized A through Y, with titles such as “Dangerous Moonlight”, “Do Husbands Matter?” ,“Many Are Dissatisfied”,and “Yes, Dr. Grenzmer. How May I Be of Assistance to You? What! You Say the Patient Has Escaped?” It’s impossible, or just dissatisfying, to read poetry without Ashbery. Or as a line from the last title poem mentioned, “such is my story/ but I’m glad to be having this chance to tell it to you/ even though we are in a silent movie and can speak only words/ painted with milk. Yet someone comes to care about them: // There is always someone to care, somewhere”.

Anne Sexton – The Book of Folly (1972)

It’s hard to talk poetry without Anne Sexton’s name coming up. She is arguably one of the most famous poets of the 20th century, and is categorized in stature alongside contemporaries such as Sylvia Plath and Robert Lowell. I picked up The Book of Folly for the name of the author alone, not quite sure what I was embarking on. After reading the first few poems, I realized the magnitude of what I had in my hands was unshakable. Sexton writes in this book from politics and childhood – the cruelness of our bodies and our desires, a burrowing presence in a world that does not want us but is forced upon us anyway. I love this stanza from her poem, “Anna Who Was Mad”, “Give me a report on the condition of my soul./ Give me a complete statement of my actions./ Hand me a jack-in-the-pulpit and let me listen in./ Put me in the stirrups and bring a tour group through./ Number my sins on the grocery list and let me buy.” In the second part of the book, titled “Three Stories” Sexton writes amazing, strange prose pieces like “Dancing the Jig,” and “The Letting Down of The Hair” that confront ideas of domesticity, sexuality, and public perception in a way that will ultimately ruin you through their sorrow; these futile endings and beginnings. Yet, such is Sexton.

Harryette Mullen – Sleeping with the Dictionary (2002)

Cozied among the stacks of a small, used bookstore in the cellar of an NYC library was where I found Mullen’s work, Sleeping with the Dictionary, as though it was living up to its namesake. Crouched in the corner, I read the first line of the first poem “All She Wrote”, “Forgive me, I’m no good at this. I can’t write back. I never read/ your letter” and found myself a day later on the train back to RI, completely immersed in the technical play of Mullen’s language. Mullen traces gender, race, and politics through the discourse of a poet’s writing companions, Roget’s Thesaurus and The American Heritage Dictionary. Using these tools, Mullen writes poems to confront and re-frame the relationship between African American and English language. She writes in her poem “Present Tense”, “Now that my ears are connected to a random answer machine,/ the wrong brain keeps talking through my hat. Now that I’ve/ been licked all over by the English tongue, my common law/ spout is suing for divorce… I can forgive/ everything and forget nothing… Now as the reel unravels, our story/ unwinds with the curious dynamic of an action flick without a/ white protagonist.” Mullen’s poems are smooth stones that sit in the mouth, and with each turn of the tongue a new world is revealed.

Frank O’Hara – Meditations in an Emergency (1957)

I remember reading O’Hara’s poem, Meditations in an Emergency, and becoming obsessed with finding his book. When I was gifted Meditations in an Emergency, I devoured it. O’Hara (leader of the “New York School” of poets, which Ashbery was a part of) writes poems of intellectual stature and emotion that desire to be read before a purple skyline. They are beatific, enormous; his poems are paintings that grant the reader supreme access into an abstract world of twisted irony. O’Hara writes in “For Grace, After a Party,” “You do not always know what I am feeling./ Last night in the warm spring air while I was/ blazing my tirade against someone who doesn’t/ interest // me, it was my love for you that set me // afire, and isn’t it odd? for in rooms full of/ strangers my most tender feelings // writhe and/ bear the fruit of screaming.” •