"Putin's Eyes," "A Gentle Flip," and "Ode to the Bronx"

Putin’s Eyes

Russia is cold

and Putin’s eyes are blank

like so much of the landscape

A little Siberia unto himself

reaching out through encryption

and hard returns

 


 

A Gentle Flip

What will it be in the end

What will take you /me down

I try not to think of it

Palm up   palm down

Both hands   a gentle flip—dead

 

 

A Gentle Flip incorporates American Sign Language in the imagery. The author is currently working on a collection of poems that contain ASL where the signs/movements are captured into words.

 


 

Ode to the Bronx

The Bronx is music
            beats buried in rhythm
                        twists and scratches
                                    of the turntable
                                                the hook of a song

The Bronx is alley
views and polar bears
Christmas trains
and summer trolleys
Poe House
beside poor house

The Bronx is fenced –
in fields and caged dreams
                        Hip-Hop and horticulture
                        Bodega beauties
And African queens

The Bronx is high
art and high crime
home runs and hallelujahs
greenways stretched
into another time

The Bronx is Congo drums
and merengue moods
beaches and barbecues
bullet-proof glass
on candy stores
tagged up
but not washed up

 

 

Regina Jamison

Regina Jamison is a writer and educator who lives in Brooklyn, New York. Her poetry has appeared in Sinister Wisdom: Black Lesbian Revolution, Mom Egg Review, Five Two One Magazine, Magma Literary Journal, The Americas Poetry Festival of New York Anthology 2016, Promethean Literary Journal, Off the Rocks: An Anthology of GLBT Writing Vols. 14 & 15, and Poetry in Performance Journal Vol. 43. Online, her poetry has appeared on Indolent Press HIV Here & Now Series, Silver Birch Press – Me as a Child Series, and Promethean eZine. She received her MFA in Creative Writing at City College in New York. Regina recommends the Human Rights Campaign Foundation.

 

Edited for Unlikely by Jonathan Penton, Editor-in-Chief
Last revised on Sunday, August 23, 2020 - 23:51