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Friday is here again, poetry fans, and apparently this is Florida writers' week at SHINE, where today we're shining the spotlight on the delightful work of Peach Delphine (earlier this week was fellow-Floridian, Jack Carenza)! Please enjoy Peach's three poems: "Garden Weather," "Residual Shoreline," and "Cold Fried Chicken Wings." Thank you, Peach, for sharing your gift for words with the SHINE international poetry community! Garden Weatherfortitude is a foreign land question everything in deep silence house breathing i still get up at all hours just to walk all three rooms kitchen table sitting with forecast timing sunrise shock and awe sunflowers planted for you and some old man in my past told me living was all learn to garden grow things read everything you can pointed at my left arm still bandaged don't do that again and i promised i wouldn't both knew it was lies but this sunflower belongs to you still here still lighting my horizon I don't need to see you to know you are beautiful voice I could never forget laugh I still hear in dream after all these years living is the point this wedge of my heart freely given another sunflower leaning out from trellis one more reward for survival standing in awe house high sunflower bee loved face full of sun and wind Residual Shorelinewoke raw a little damp found my pelt at threshold again with liberation from lived experience any hide is common property yet again extractive professionals strip mining flesh eating word breath right off my tongue cut and come again greens bolting self sowing such that I am another's plentitude and sustenance state of tourism people coming from shithole states to get come to drink forbidden word fruit of unknowing taste ever on lips sour sweet salt salt salt so I was cooking tending things as tourists talk as tourists do between voyages of discovery regularly scheduled organizing dry storage reefer box reach in ordering inventory is how I ciphered my first therapist was a deprogrammer then affirming care came along they transitioned seamlessly who knows now their apprentices supervising mental health units somewhere practicing that craft on prisoners even what's in your head can be taken someone has to accept burlap coarse backdrop for others to shine thick as cownose rays migrating just offshore naturalized parakeet clouds sunset shards red eyed spoonbills wade ashen spindly egrets stalking grasses what catches eye or remains peripheral something is always watching mindful what can be eaten or fucked plight of high functioning dazzled by spectacle a tell of priorities eluding vision feral near feral bound by hunger feeding in darkness even here thicket mangrove tangle perfumed with mosquitoes all my days slow tempo crushed shell eating despair from my heart committing to memory what cannot be carried singing fragments everything learned must be taught the Gulf claims its own once instructed as amphibious fluent creatures but all our clicks and whistles remain unanswered we have yet to waken the sleepers Cold Fried Chicken Wingsmarginal outside all text linear garden fenced floating concertina clouds artificial horizons physical divisions accepted for so long in kitchens a degree meant management not dragging mats or scrubbing grill grates pumice stone on flattop working it glass smooth sugar in some circles a femme on the line was a knife wife people gave you space having shown what it takes daily relentlessly quality of knife work shapes turning veg smoking each station throwing shade maintaining through rush proletarian solidarity mopping doing lines in dry storage hot boxing a fat one in reefer box living off espresso hot bread charcuterie and beer before finally burning out crispy as could be ringing that bell expediting in my sleep it was a year of clinic bombings starting HRT legit getting face cleared marking time bleak days her collapsing immune system full draws viral counts watching her fight to keep from slipping through cracks a horrible sifting of people enduring separation early learning value of holding hands of living without expectation except for ourselves solidarity of outside yet inside medical exile minimal care sedimentary layers ancient sand dunes we learned to cultivate old foods of liberation sustenance what can be grown in the narrowest spaces turning sand near sugar sand into dirt into cowpeas limas chiles an extra margin of food security we helped make a sanctity created by hand holy okra divine tomatoes cowpeas climbing spiraling through all my dreams all that protects us from a community indifferent to our eradication sunflowers planted for no damn reason better than bee happiness her happiness worn faces sun faded wind shimmied rooted in sand near sugar sand all our skills centered on survival on softening the ride carrying each other as far as we can
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SHINE - International Poetry Series
Click here for submissions and more
From the international poetry community, we have a "luxury of stars," as Sylvia Plath might say, and it is SHINE's honor to provide a home for their words with the online Spotlight series as well as SHINE Quarterly. Click on the logo above to learn more. And...keep writing, keep shining!
In poetry, Samantha Terrell, EIC SYLVIA PLATH
Stars Over the Dordogne Stars are dropping thick as stones into the twiggy
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