Weekly Edition #42
Art by Adrian Zhong
Improbable Apiary by Maya Owen
after Kaveh Akbar
Four bees were found in a woman’s eye,
surviving by drinking her tears. They say grief
is good protein. I could not make this up.
And why act surprised? The universe
has already written the poem you were going
to write. Then it winks like this
at your efforts to pollinate anything
with your melancholy, its sticky black legs.
My sister calls. She’s heard it too,
it’s as we suspected: a woman
is one kind of apiary. Today the world
seems full of them, small and improbable:
this poem, for one.
Well aren’t there bees in it?
Soon, I’m convinced, my doctors will notice
the noise of their wings, the veins
clogged with honey—the whole hive
I’ve harboured, and who’ve
been making a meal
of my heart.
Found on Rattle Magazine
Other poems I enjoyed reading this week: (click the links to read the full poem)
"Sometimes
everything
seems
so oh, I don’t know." -Poem by Joe Brainard
"Though I lack the art
to decipher it,
no doubt the next chapter
in my book of transformations
is already written.
I am not done with my changes."
"You live in the caesura of our times,
the sound of nations, persons, breaking around you.
If poetry can only save itself,
then who will hear it after it has fled
from the nations and the people that it could not save
even a remnant of for a remembering?"
-Advice to a Young Poet by Kendel Hippolyte
"I would like to say
something to everyone I see (an entire
city) but I’m unsure what it is yet.
Each time I leave my apartment
there’s at least one person crying,
reading, or shouting after a stranger
anywhere along my commute.
It’s possible to be happy alone,
I say out loud and to no one
so it’s obvious, and now here
in the middle of this poem." -June by Alex Dimitrov
Recommended Listening:
Xeno Canto (a collection of bird sounds) One to One: Heavenly Father - Bon Iver Going Through It Among The Leaves by Fireghost Diving Woman - Japanese Breakfast The Process: An interview series exploring the process of survival as a creative + Read the interview with founder Shannon Byrne on creative collaborations here.
Links of the Week: Exhibition Hockney – Van Gogh (I would do anything to see this exhibition in person. :''( ) Dorothy Parker reviews A.A. Milne's The House at Pooh Corner, 1928 My Place: Florence Welch Antoine de Saint-Exupéry on How a Simple Human Smile Saved His Life Introducing 'Grito', Lauren Vied Allen's VSCO Voices Project Meanwhile: Wendy MacNaughton's illustrated column about the big implications of seemingly small things 10 Indian designers who are reimagining the English alphabet for an Instagram challenge (some gorgeous art in here for the #36DaysOfType challenge)
Lastly, I got featured on Platform Magazine today and couldn't wait to share the interview here. It feels so special to tell my story and realise how far The Alipore Post has come in the last 4 years.
Thank you all for being a part of this journey :)