Poem of the Day
The People’s History of 1998
By Gbenga Adesina
The Yangtze River in China lost its nerve / and wanted vengeance.
The Yangtze River in China lost its nerve / and wanted vengeance.
The end of autumn / unfolds in a series of textures and places: / rough towels, the laundry, / the green walls of a place I belonged to.
It will continue to break, and soon, sing, elated by time, after the fact, and failure
As a girl, that’s how you made it / to first base. You didn’t kiss, / you were kissed.
I slept in the back seat like a bad thought.
And Cathay was not China.
And Vietnam was not China
Nor made in China—but close enough.
He will teach me how to seduce / Men, stags, double-winged angels
between brownstones / where yearning / confesses its nature
but no one is always on your side / not even a poet
I am we: space the gift, / a white sprit of motion—
and I would lean in close and tell you that John Wick kills women like
he’s read feminist theory