Rhena Writes

Tag: poetry

  • (ekphrastic x glosa) ÷ cento = patchwork quilt poem



    Thou still unravish’d bride of quietness
    Thou foster-child of silence and slow time,
    Sylvan historian, who canst thus express
    A flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme
    — John Keats “Ode on a Grecian Urn”

    I could build a container to carry this being the way I move
    in my mind, unencumbered by beauty’s cage.
    Stopping at a bronze shard
    she examines it/ the sea, the red cliff, my love
    getting lost in a firebrick landscape of his
    and said, fully of an awe full of sadness,
    She touched this, her skin was inside of this.
    she was forever fascinated by putting the pieces
    together I was a mask, made a mess
    Thou still unravish’d bride of quietness

    you thought this made you special. your silence was exquisite;
    a vessel of mortal emptiness broken into a hundred thousand little pieces
    You will know each fissure as it breaks open your life
    breaking through, breaking blue and we open our mouths to
    finally celebrate it. A celebration should leave a mess —
    truth is the dead who leave everything behind
    Some paintings make me cry./I Like Crying
    I will keep broken things:/ the big clay pot
    And soft captivity involves the mind.
    Thou foster-child of silence and slow time,

    Silence kneads your fear
    to know how utterly I have slipped its gilded
    hands go back where it came from. clean the room.
    Around her, what must be evidence of
    this was all sentimental crap, you
    sweeping the broken … / glass from beneath my feet with such/ Tenderness
    she was forever fascinated by putting the pieces
    together as in. I had no idea I would be here now
    Live coiled in shells of loneliness,
    Sylvan historian, who canst thus express.

    I am a continuance of blue sky
    This body is a song-/ bird in a kiln.
    my body is not just my body, but that I’m made of old stars and
    a broken pot bright as the blood/ red edge of the moon
    Read your grief like the daily newspaper: “Fragment of a Vessel,” it read
    You are Resplendent. You are Radiant. You are Sublime.
    Then on your skin a breath caresses
    The salt your eyes have shed
    when the time came to stand and climb
    A flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme


    This cento is comprised of lines originally composed by the following poets: Claudia Rankine, Ada Limón, Adrienne Chung, Staceyann Chin, Natalie Diaz, Nadia Alexis, Ama Codjoe, Nikki Giovanni, Donika Kelly, Kai Cheng Thom, Samantha Gadbois, Lisbeth White, Destiny Hemphill, Mai Der Vang, Maw Shein Win, Alice Walker, Phillis Wheatley, Toni Morrison, Patrica Smith, Alexis Pauline Gumbs, Natasha Tretheway, Dr Jayé Wood, Ariana Brown, Maya Angelou, Joy Harjo, Athena Nassar, Audre Lorde, Lucille Clifton, Deborah A. Miranda, and Kimiko Hahn. Arranged by Rhena Tan and inspired by the artwork of Pleasure Faith.

  • Rhena, more than this poem.

    Daily writing prompt
    If humans had taglines, what would yours be?
    View all responses

    Rhena, human being being human.

    Rhena, no-one’s burden, no one’s savior.

    Rhena, good to the last drop.

    Rhena, me, myself, and I.

    Just Rhena it.

    Rhena, returning to myself.

    Rhena, creator, survivor, learner, lucid dreamer.

    Rhena, Queen.

    Rhena never goes out of style.

    Rhena, minding my own business.

    Have it the Rhena way.

    Rhena, I am here, like a good Rhena.

    Rhena, being strange.

    The slowest picker upper, Rhena.

    A Rhena is forever.

    Think Rhena.

    Rhena is it.

    The Rhena-est place on Earth.

    Because Rhena is worth it.

    Rhena gives me wings.

    Rhena, I’m doing my very best.

    The ultimate Rhena machine.

    I’m in Rhena’s hands.

    Rhena runs on Rhena.

    The best a Rhena can get.

    Rhena, I can hear me now.

    Rhena, always suffering.

    Rhena, believer.

    Rhena, more than a tag line.

    *********************

    If you enjoyed what you’ve read here, please check out other posts. Likes, shares, and reposts help get my writing out to where it needs to be. I’m also grateful for financial support. Even though I post daily, I only send out a once a week summary email to subscribers. Thank you!

  • Starve Fear. Feed Joy. (A story/ prose poem sort of a thing.)

    Daily writing prompt
    What fears have you overcome and how?
    View all responses

    Fear is a hungry beast. I find it’s overly easy to feed its gaping maw. What do I mean by that? I mean that the society and culture that I live within is a veritable buffet of delights for fear to endlessly consume. Fear, in its turn, has a bottomless stomach and is always ready to grab a clean plate and begin its trip through the hot bar. And the cold one too.

    I’ll feed it unnecessary purchases of bits and bobs I’ve seen advertised as being able to make me happier, prettier, younger, even wealthier. Fear will consume them all. And I? No happier, no prettier, no younger and perhaps a little bit poorer. And still Fear’s belly rumbles with hunger, demanding ever more time, attention, quick fixes, superficial dalliances into this and that. “You’re missing out,” he whispers into my jewel-laden ear. And I succumb. And still he devours more.

    Fear holds my attention with its adrenaline and thrills, its glitter and shine, its shadows and mirrors. Caught up in the echantment of his own illusions, he pulls back a curtain to reveal his greatest weapon: death.

    But, alas, Fear has overplayed his hand. For Death reminds us, “I’ll meet all of you regardless of how you spend your time. You’d do just as well to invite Fear into your heart as you would with his twin, Joy. It’s all the same to me.”

    And so I pass Joy a clean plate from the buffet of earthly delights: a long stretch, a deep breath, the breeze shifting the juniper branches, a sip of clean water. And together we eat our fill. And then some.

    ********************

    If you enjoyed what you’ve read here, please check out other posts. Likes, shares, and reposts help get my writing out to where it needs to be. I’m also grateful for financial support. Even though I post daily, I only send out a once a week summary email to subscribers. Thank you!

  • Practice. Practice. Practice.

    Daily writing prompt
    What are you good at?
    View all responses

    I’ve been thinking off and on about this question since I read it last night. And each time, when my mind has started to wander towards figuring out how I’m going to answer it when I eventually sit down at my computer, I’ve gently tugged it back to the present moment.

    Am I good at this gentle tugging? Maybe. But “good” is a relative term isn’t it? Certainly it’s something that I’m trying to practice regularly, this gentle tugging of my mind to the present moment. I don’t think that there’s a way to grade it or assess whether or not I’m “good” at it.

    But even here, now, I’m sitting at my computer answering this daily prompt. My mind will start to wander towards trying to guess at what I’m “supposed” to write. My mind will wonder, “What are other bloggers writing in response to this question?”

    Tug. Tug. Gently. Gently.

    I can feel the keys underneath my fingertips.

    Ah! The miracle that my muscles, sinew, neurons remember where to place each finger in order to get the desired result. How is it that I remember how to spell the words: memory, gentle, mind, and wander?

    I might consider for a moment going down a google rabbit hole to read the science behind this process of what I’m doing here.

    But, remember? Tug. Tug. Gently. Gently.

    My chair is uncomfortably out of alignment from my desk and screen. I rearrange myself. The chair squeaks.

    Gentle tug.

    I hear the car tires on the highway outside of my house; a flare of frustration at the speed everyone seems to be driving.

    Tug. Tug.

    I worry. Is this enough words? Did I answer the question? Will someone read this and feel or think something?

    Tug. Tug.

    My feet are resting lightly on the stack of blankets under my desk. I stretch my toes.

    I pull my mind back to my breath. Breathe.

    This. This is what I’m good at.

    ************************

    If you enjoyed what you’ve read here, please check out other posts. Likes, shares, and reposts help get my writing out to where it needs to be. I’m also grateful for financial support. Even though I post about daily, I only send out a once a week summary email to subscribers. Thank you!

  • Free your mind…

    Daily writing prompt
    What does freedom mean to you?
    View all responses

    …and the rest will follow. — En Vogue, Free Your Mind

    Emancipate yourself from mental slavery

    None but ourselves can free our minds.

    –Bob Marley, Redemption Song

    After reading the daily prompt, I was thinking about different song lyrics that spoke to freedom. A few crossed my mind and I decided I would put them in my post, but first I wanted to listen to the music in my music player. If nothing else, to double check that I had the lyrics correct. But also just because I like these songs and wanted to listen to them.

    I opened up my music player on my computer and everything looked different. Well, not everything, but just enough that I couldn’t figure out how to search for specific songs, something that I’d done just a day ago. Unfamiliar. I was lost and frustrated. I wanted the system to work the way that I was used to, the way that I had expected it to. And it wasn’t.

    I was internally raging at the designers who made this music player, who changed it so often as to make it impossible for me to keep up who made it so NOT intuitive.

    And behind that, I was raging at myself. Annoyed that I wasn’t able to keep up with rapidly changing technology. Regretting that over the years I’ve sold off all of my CDs. It was so easy back then when I could just find the album I wanted and pop it in the CD player. Past me should have tried harder to keep everything the same for future me. Arrrgh!

    I know. It’s ridiculous. Take a breath.

    Because now me actually doesn’t want to have stacks and stacks of CDs to store and maintain. (No matter how satisfyingly familiar the clack clack of jewel case against jewel case sounds, no matter how much I relish unfolding the liner notes.) Present me really, really enjoys the convenience of being able to pull up music.

    No. This internal rage was something else. It was me demanding that I “get it right.” I’ve listened to both songs, Free Your Mind and Redemption Song, perhaps dozens of times in my life. And yet, still, part of me felt that in order to write about them properly today, I needed to listen to them again. In other words, my lived experience is never enough. Even for my own blog.

    Where does this come from?

    Something that someone once said to me popped into my head. I was in high school and I was wearing a new dress. This person came up to me and said, “I liked your dress until I saw that it had pockets.”

    At the time, I didn’t realize what an odd thing that was to say. And I suspect it’s because when day after day, people are commenting (overtly and covertly) on your clothes, the way you look, how you sound, and your body in general, one comment more comment doesn’t particularly warrant attention in the moment.

    But now-me can see how truly strange it is that someone might comment on someone else’s clothes in this way with an air of taking offense that a dress might have pockets and that said-pockets might be used and useful.

    This was far before the “it has pockets!” meme. Perhaps it is was this meme that made me realize just how “out of pocket” that comment was. (Yes. I did just have to write that.)

    So how does all of this relate to freedom and what it means to me? Some days, it feels like I’m caught under this massive pile of these sorts of comments and experiences that make me question myself. Comments from teachers and professors that infer that I’m not trying hard enough or that I’m not enough; implicitly messaging of the society that I live in that disregards bodies that look and behave like mine; the culture of comparison and competition that seeps in everywhere. It takes a great deal of my mental, physical, emotional energy to overcome these comments and expectations.

    But increasingly, I’ve been able to see where I’m getting a helping hand. People who wear dresses are suddenly on-line espousing the benefits of pockets and are genuinely excited about something so simple. This provides the ammunition I need to shoot down the “I like the ‘I liked your dress until’ comment.” Or better yet, to just ignore it. Focus, instead, on how much my daughters enjoy pockets. I’ll read a line from a book and it will feel like the writer reached out and lifted one of these expectations I’ve been living under. (As with Cole Arthur Riley’s reminder, “I am no one’s burden. I am no one’s savior.”)

    Or, yes, sometimes it’s a song. As with En Vogue’s Free Your Mind, “Before you can read me, you got to learn how to see me. I said.”

    In the end, it comes down to me. It’s, in part, up to me to write myself down so that there’s something there to be read, something to be seen.

    In other words, as Bob Marley asks, “Won’t you help to sing these songs of freedom?”

    ***********************

    If you enjoyed what you’ve read here, please check out other posts. Likes, shares, and reposts help get my writing out to where it needs to be. I’m also grateful for financial support. 

  • Keeper of all knowledge…

    Daily writing prompt
    What’s a job you would like to do for just one day?
    View all responses

    … of myself. (If you’ve been following my posts, you saw that coming.)

    I’ve sometimes thought that it would be nice to be a postal delivery person. They walk a lot of miles. I enjoy walking. And I like the idea that maybe I’ll be delivering a love letter or a postcard from some far-flung destination or a homesick lament from sleep away camp. But then I remember that most mail is bills. And advertisements. And I remember how much my dog hates delivery people and that that and the weather must make their jobs very hard. I talk myself out of it.

    So maybe I’d like to be a wizard for a day. Or a bullet proof shield, able to place myself around American and Palestinian children alike. All the children, in fact. But then I remember that one day would not be enough.

    Maybe I’d like to be a fan, strong enough to blow away all the climate change (but not so strong as to throw us back into an ice age). I think it would take less than a day. But is a fan really a job? Or just an object?

    I think I’d like to be a people pleaser and when I say people, I mean myself. I’d like to be a greeter like at Walmart — but just greeting myself, continually all day. Asking myself if I need any help and then giving it to myself.

    For 24 hours, I’d like to be a park ranger. I’d like to be an elder. An ancestor. I’d like to be a child again, imagining like it was my job. I’d like to be a swimmer.

    I’d like, for 24 hours, to be a connector, like of ideas. Did you ever notice that both Joel from The Last of Us and Hopper from Stranger Things are father figures in fraught relationships with super-powered teenage girls and a variation of the name Elle (Ellie and Eleven) AND they both have biological daughters named Sarah who died? I would like to connect these sorts of ideas for people because clearly SOMETHING is going on here and I cannot be the only person who is thinking about it.

    For 24 hours, I’d like to be a weaver. An illustrator. A singer and musician. A storyteller. A shaman. A healer. I’d like a day to heal the world or at least the little patch of nature outside my back door. That would probably be enough for me. I’m no one’s burden, after all. I’m no one’s savior. Are we talking about jobs? Or skills?

    If I had a day to be any job, I’d like be the keeper of the flame.

    **********

    If you enjoyed what you’ve read here, please check out other posts. Likes, shares, and reposts help get my writing out to where it needs to be. I’m also grateful for financial support. 

  • The shrug emoji is my fave

    Daily writing prompt
    What are your favorite emojis?
    View all responses

    There was a time that I convinced myself that emojis were not an effective way to communicate. Yeah. I was probably a bit of a snob. More than a bit. I believed that complete words were more effective. I was awfully precious about the power of written language. But also I felt I owed the world and everyone in it. (Well, except myself.) Text me a question or thought? I’m going to respond. And I’m going to respond thoroughly and completely. I’m going to consider every single eventuality and variation embedded in the question and my response. It was exhausting.

    It’s not that I use emojis all the time now but I’ve come to appreciate them. It’s probably the influence of my kids. It’s hard to hate on anything that brings them so much joy. Parenthood changes a person. Or at least it changed me.

    Back to the shrug emoji. Maybe I like it because I’m Gen X. We’ve always been characterized as the aloof, apathetic generation. And maybe my love of the shrug is born of that. If it is that, there’s an element of “giving them what they want” in my usage of it. In other words you (the older generation) characterized us as being apathetic, so that’s what I’m going to give you. I’m not going to waste my time trying to convince you that I and my entire generation are more than what you’ve reduced us to. Instead, I’m going to enjoy simply being. I have nothing to prove to you. And if you interpret that as apathy, so be it. There’s nothing to be done about that.

    The shrug is more than just apathy anyway. I had the realization recently that there’s immense power in the words, “I don’t know.” I used to feel like I had to be everything to everyone. I had to always know the answers. I had to have the right words at all times. The shrug absolves me of all of that in the same way that “I don’t know” does. I’ve taken to just saying those words, even in response to questions as seemingly basic as, “how do you feel?” I’ve absolved myself of always having to have a response to that question. To all questions, in fact. I think that this kind of behavior is sometimes called “stonewalling” and it may be considered, in some circles, anti-social. And if me centering myself above the questioning of others is anti social, then so be it.

    In other words: 🤷🏻‍♀️

  • The Next 100 Seconds (A prose poem)

    (after Susie Q. Smith)

    Do not brace yourself. In the bracing, there is hesitation, and in the hesitation, there is doubt. There is no room for doubt here. Begin counting as soon as you’ve turned the handle all the way to cold. You will still have one or two seconds of warm water but this isn’t cheating because it’s not; this is your shower. Turn your back to the stream of water. Cross your arms over your chest, if they aren’t already there. First will come the gooseflesh and then the hitch in your breath (or maybe it’s the other way around; the fine details of sequence have little meaning at this point). Your breath will come in sobs. Allow them: these forceful diaphragm kicks. Your lungs are the seat of your grief, which your breath might want to kick around, shake up, expel every so often.

    Remember to keep counting. Begin to move from side to side, allowing the water to cascade over each shoulder. You can think of this as a warm up if that doesn’t somehow seem like a cruel joke. Gradually increase your movements. Soon you will be rotating your whole body under the stream of water. 

    Keep counting. You’ve been here before. Allow the memories of every other time you’ve been a bad-ass rise. That time you birthed a ten and a half pound baby. That time you said, “no” without explanation. That time you did not fill the awkward silence. That time you asked for help after the other time you asked for help and no one offered. That time you birthed a nine and a half pound baby. That time you said, “I don’t like that.” The time you lied and, in lying, remained true to yourself. That time you didn’t feel like smiling and so didn’t. Those times you smiled anyway and extended yourself grace later. That time you showed up to what everyone else knew was a gunfight and you didn’t even have a knife and you stayed anyway. That time you walked away. 

    Keep counting. You’re almost at the end. You can almost hear your Nordic forbear’s proud backslaps. Perhaps they even nod towards their tropical counterparts, who also value cold water, if not the displays of affirmation. No matter. You are whole. 

    Or skip the cold water. Read a poem instead. Read this poem instead. Keep counting. Look back up the page. How far you’ve come. A whole handswidth. Keep counting. Reach 100. Write a poem.