In light of the Coronavirus crisis, Poetry Daily will continue the impromptu series, What Keeps Us. Until further notice, we will devote Wednesdays to posting poems to sustain and uplift through trying times. We thank you for reading and hope that you will share poems with your friends and neighbors. Please be well.
Keith S. Wilson

after D. H. Lawrence
shall i tell you, then, that we exist?
there came a light, blue and white careening.
the police like wailing angels
to bitter me.

and so this:
dark matter is hypothetical. know
that it cannot be seen

in the gunpowder of a flower,
in a worm that raisins on the concrete,
in a man that wills himself not to speak.

gags, oh gags.
for a shadow cannot breathe.
it deprives them of nothing. pride

is born in the black and then dies in it.
i hear our shadow, low treble
of the clasping of our hands.

dark matter is invisible.
we infer it: how light bends around a black body,
and still you do not see black halos, even here,

my having told you plainly where they are.
from the book FIELDNOTES ON ORDINARY LOVE / Copper Canyon Press
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We oppose racism, oppression, and police brutality.
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Black Lives Matter.
Series of images of the cover of Justin Phillip Reed's book, The Malevolent Volume
Justin Phillip Reed Reviewed

"With breathtaking lyrical dexterity, Reed first rebukes and then remakes western literature and myth, bringing Black queerness to the forefront, while also gesturing toward the vast, glittering kingdom those traditions loomed over and obscured."
 
via THE ADROIT JOURNAL
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Hadara Bar-Nadav on Gwendolyn Brooks's "the rites for Cousin Vit"

"Poetry is attention; poetry demands attention. We feel the breath of each word as it is given to us. And here is this stunning and vibrant poem by Brooks—a poet who is no longer alive writing about a person who is no longer alive. And yet as I read it, we are all very much here, present through Brooks’s attention to language and our careful listening."
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