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Notes Toward a Poem on Self-Care...

​start with decisions — take a break from mirrors…
decide to stay in bed today and tomorrow… count
time only through midnights… isn’t there some voodoo
about being the middle child/ of a middle child?… you
should Google that… start humming… to broken
bones of electrical appliances… that
old CD player? yep you can fix it… take on do-it-
yourself projects — face cream, shelves, the perfect
guacamole, and a Home Alone arsenal just in case
a Joe Pesci-like villain tries to arrive… pretend
the varnish brush is a stag horn… who needs an app
for calm??… be greedy about breathing… be
greedy about breathing… avoid phone conversations
and relate only through yes and no texts or emails… 
hey baby, can I be your Melanin Maid Marion? yes
… does _____ have a job? oh no girl… is your brother/
father/husband accounted for?… (silence)… yes…
if voice is required, realize that he/she/they can’t be
your Sun… trust what you can hold in the hand…
when we talk the body vibrates… aim for a dinosaur
roar when people least expect it… enjoy words like
Kilimanjaro and origami… write odes to the Do-rag,
… sonnets to the Soul Train line where you dance
in military-choreographed precision… so fresh
and so clean Outkast, take a look it’s in a book Reading
Rainbow…  Jolly Ranchers, your mother’s kitchen
table… at any altitude remember that ink can hold
the right kind of memory…
Picture
Unknown. Hanging flower arrangement by a mirror, about 1865. Hand-colored albumen silver print. The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles.

#45 Vibrations

at work they talk of taxonomies
                         how words creates bubbles
            of conversation   matter
until everyone is on the same name page
                   homogeneous white wonder
     bread on top of unlined paper
            about who and what matters
when it comes to funding    female bodies curled
        like a fig      manmade grassy knolls with
little grass    but I sometimes think no   the room
     is too small    there isn’t enough light for
this conversation  it’s always starless here   I say where
           are the gone things   not pretty enough for bows

Cynthia Manick is the author of Blue Hallelujahs (Black Lawrence Press, 2016). A Pushcart Prize nominee with an MFA in Creative Writing from the New School, she has received fellowships from Cave Canem, Fine Arts Work Center, Hedgebrook, Poets House, and the Vermont Studio Center. She serves as East Coast Editor of Jamii Publishing and founder of the reading series Soul Sister Revue. Manick’s work has appeared in the Academy of American Poets’ Poem-A-Day Series, African American Review, Bone Bouquet, Callaloo, Kweli Journal, Muzzle Magazine, The Wall Street Journal, and elsewhere. She currently resides in Brooklyn, New York.
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  • Home
  • About
    • Masthead
  • Archive
    • Issue One
    • Issue Two
    • Issue Three
    • Issue Four
    • Issue Five
    • Issue Six
    • Issue Seven
    • Issue Eight
    • Issue Nine
    • Issue Ten
    • Issue Eleven
    • Issue Twelve
    • Issue Thirteen
    • Issue Fourteen
    • Issue Fifteen
  • Guidelines