Letter To My Unborn Self Saymoukda Duangphouxay Vongsay

June is Immigrant Heritage Month and the month that holds World Refugee Day. From the moment they land in the United States, many immigrant parents and children reverse roles. Saymoukda Duangphouxay Vongsay’s parents did the impossible. They made sacrifices and uprooted their lives so they could cement themselves as American citizens for the future of their families. In Saymoukda Duangphouxay Vongsay’s poem “Letter To My Unborn Self”, translating for her parents has its hardships and surprises. However, as a reader you feel like translating is a way for the writer to honor their sacrifices.

Read More »
June 26, 2022

Advice From Elders by Maikao Xiong

“When you’re older, you’ll understand.” It is a phrase we have all heard. As we grow older, situations from our youth begin to make sense. However, despite all the knowledge, life experience, and “adultness” you have acquired over the years, there are still those matters you may never understand like tipping, car mechanics and how many exemptions you should claim on your taxes? Read “Advice From Elders” by Maikao Xiong and you will come up with your own list of:
I still don’t understand.

Read More »
June 19, 2022

Body Clues Priscilla Mayowa

Read “Body Clues” by Priscilla Mayowa and you will see it is not simple for everyone to embrace their bodies. Especially when your body causes you pain, keeps you from socializing, and makes you feel different from the rest of society, appreciating your body becomes even more difficult. Take a moment to acknowledge that you’re doing the best you can and that you are perfectly OK right now. Pay attention to what your body is telling you, and don’t beat yourself up if you need to take it easy. Exercise self-love and care by listening to your body.

Read More »
June 12, 2022

Poblano by Níce G. Flores

Nature’s beauty can be seen in a harvest and in this poem, Poblano Harvest by Níce G. Flores.
You can feel the heat and the hard work this farmer endures in the field. Next time you are at the grocery store, picking out produce, remember the hard work it took to get that poblano in your grocery cart.

Read More »
June 5, 2022

Conveyor Belt by Sabrina Lor

Life happens and we move along or we move along and life happens. Half the happiness is being ok with what you do get. “In Conveyor Belt” by Sabrina Lor, you will never be ready for what the ride will bring to you.

Read More »
May 29, 2022

I Don’t Know You but I Know You by Angerise Carter

Strangers are walking fiction. Our brains, on the other hand, force us to actively imagine who we see walking towards us, even if what our thoughts make up are dangerously untrue. We care about appearance; we are quietly vain, but we are also private investigators, trying to figure out what each stranger passing us by could hint at. Remember, every stranger is someone and more importantly every stranger is someone’s partner, caregiver, offspring or sibling.

Read More »
May 22, 2022

A Cricket Climbs Up by Matthew Koob Pheej Yang

Crickets have been known to be a symbol of prosperity. This five lined poem gives the reader all the hopes and feels of good luck and happiness. I don’t know about you, but when I read it I could feel the warm wind on the back of my neck. Follow the link, take a read and let this cricket connect you to being a believer in your instincts and spiritual guidance.

Read More »
May 15, 2022

I Don’t Know It Yet, But This Is Living by Zakiah Goff

On days when life seems pointless and you’re just going through the motions, there’s always that empty pit someplace inside your spirit that never seems to fill. Zakiah Goff addresses this gut wrenching feeling in “I Don’t Know It Yet, But This Is Living”. We all have felt this at some point, or many points, in life: is life ever going to get better?

Read More »
May 8, 2022

Poppies by Sarah Degner Riveros

The petals of a poppy flower are pompous, they may be of nearly any color. But after reading
Sarah Degner Riveros poem Poppies, we all know that these poppies are red beneath hazy yellow skies. A poem you can visually see for your first Sunday in May, and May Day at that!

Read More »
May 1, 2022

On the Trail by Janna Knittel

The only place that feels vast enough to hold sadness this deep and wide is in nature, looking out into forever. Just as grief is a constant in our lives, so are the trees and trails we can get lost in. Walk about the trail with Janna Knittel in her poem On the Trail.

Read More »
April 24, 2022

Rising by Debra Darby

When we make daily attempts to modify and improve what we can control, hope may build determination and grit—the ability to bounce back and remain resolute despite setbacks and death. Rising, a poem by Debra Darby, emphasizes the significance of optimism and endurance.

Read More »
April 3, 2022

Other Places by Greta Blackwell

What happens when feelings and life’s difficult experiences are weaved together with images and words?

You get a graphic poem like Other Places by Greta Blackwell.

Greta’s graphic poem perfectly captures her inner thoughts with wonderful inky images that lead you through a narrative that shows the viewer the sensations communicated in language frame by frame in such a way that the video appears inextricably linked to each of the various digital scenes and words on the screen. This graphic poem is marvelous.

Read More »
December 26, 2021

Running by Chenel Sanders

As a reader, you can feel the feet hitting the pavement of life on this poem. This poem leaves my heart pounding and the only way to do it justice, is to plead with you to read it. If life is a sport, it is rigged. Thank goodness for poetry, so poets can sing their truth!

Read More »
December 12, 2021

Fossil Hunting at John Lennon Airport, Liverpool by Jude Nutter

Some poems linger in your mind long after you’ve read them. Everyone has a favorite poem. If you haven’t found yours yet, remain with us; every Sunday, we’ll assist you in your search. Visit SML to read Tina Gross’s favorite poem Fossil Hunting at John Lennon Airport, Liverpool by Jude Nutter, which she is sharing with us as our guest editor. Perhaps it will be yours as well.

Read More »
November 28, 2021

My Father’s Fledgling by Robyn Katona

We are all raised by someone who was or is something else other than a parent. Parents are not some kind of indestructible, all-knowing superman. They are individuals with real fears, worries and battles, as well as real hopes and dreams. Forgiving our parents is a core task of adulthood and one of the hardest kinds of forgiveness. As Robyn Katona suggests in her poem “My Father’s Fledgling”, forgive your father for being human, his wings are clipped.

Read More »
November 7, 2021

Lifting a rose gold sun by Denise Hanh Huynh

Asian American women were already dealing with the brunt of racist attacks in the past year. Besides this, Asian women have a long history of suffering from harmful stereotypes that objectify and depict them as submissive, meek and hypersexualized, erasing their individuality. Eight individual women, with individual backgrounds and lives died on March 21, 2021 in Atlanta, GA and Denise Hanh Huynh memorializes them in her poem Lifting a rose gold sun.

Read More »
October 31, 2021

Water from Motherland by Narate Keys

A river carves and shapes the landscape and also the people. Narrate Keys is carved by two rivers, the Tonle Sap River and the Mississippi River. Across the world, and closer to home, Narrate’s river’s are under threat due to climate change.

Read More »
October 24, 2021

A Fractioned Man by Comrade Tripp

It’s not necessarily that Comrade Tripp wanted to stop being mixed race, but that he wanted being treated differently to go away. Each of our own experiences is incredibly unique, depending on who we are raised by, where we were raised, how we look. I think Comrade figured out another language, besides comedy, to express himself. That language is poetry, his mother’s language.

Read More »
October 17, 2021

She Tilts the Axis of Herstory by Pacyinz Lyfoung

The Hmong have been marginalized, oppressed, and silenced throughout history. Sunisa “Sunni” Lee is a Hmong refugee descendant that carries within her blood and DNA centuries of generational trauma and oppression. In 2021, the Hmong have a face. That face is Sunisa Lee.

Read More »
October 3, 2021

Meet Minneapolis Creative Khadijo Abdi 

Others receive positive feedback that makes them feel good about themselves and confident in their abilities, while someone with impostor syndrome takes praise from others as an exaggeration rather than a true reflection of their abilities. People with impostor syndrome are unable to internalize success. Imposter by Khadijo (JoJo) Abdi addresses this issue that many women with multiple and diverse identities face.

Read More »
September 5, 2021

Poets Abdi Mahad and Louise K. Waakaa’igan in Conversation

In this conversation, Lyricality’s “Read Poetry 2020” poet Abdi Mahad reads his translation of “Within” by Louise K. Waakaa’igan and responds with his own poem in English.

Abdi Mahad is a poet, editor, educator and translator, who wants to tell of the beauty of Somalia before the war happened.

Read More »
August 22, 2021

Poets Heid E. Erdrich and Louise K. Waakaa’igan in Conversation

In this conversation, Heid E. Erdrich reads “Weweni” by Louise K. Waakaa’igan and responds with her poem “Territory was Not Virgin and Neither was I (Virgin).”

If you visit the website heiderdrich.com you will find a modest biography saying that she is is the author of seven collections of poetry, a non-fiction Indigenous foods memoir, and she’s editor of two anthologies. Heid grew up in Wahpeton, North Dakota and is Ojibwe enrolled at Turtle Mountain.

What her website will not tell you, is that if you have the delve into her substantial oeuvre, you will discover that Heid E. Erdrich is a poet working in the vast realm of prophetic imagination.

Read More »
August 15, 2021

Poets Su Hwang and Louise K. Waakaa’igan in Conversation

In this conversation, Lyricality’s “Read Poetry 2020” poet Su Hwang reads “Father” by Louise K. Waakaa’igan and responds with her poem “Eomma.”
Su Hwang is a poet, activist, stargazer, and the author of Bodega, Lyricality’s selections for “Read Poetry 2020” and recipient of the 2020 Minnesota Book Award in poetry. Su’s poems invite us to recognize trauma and to, in her words, “rage responsibly.” Her poems invite us to concede our egoistic ideals and fantasies to the truth of experience, as she writes in her poem “The Price of Rice”

Read More »
August 8, 2021

Poets Paige Riehl and Louise K. Waakaa’igan in Conversation

In this conversation, Lyricality’s “Read Poetry 2020” poet Su Hwang reads “Father” by Louise K. Waakaa’igan and responds with her poem “Eomma.”
Su Hwang is a poet, activist, stargazer, and the author of Bodega, Lyricality’s selections for “Read Poetry 2020” and recipient of the 2020 Minnesota Book Award in poetry. Su’s poems invite us to recognize trauma and to, in her words, “rage responsibly.” Her poems invite us to concede our egoistic ideals and fantasies to the truth of experience, as she writes in her poem “The Price of Rice”

Read More »
August 1, 2021

Sky Trees Phoem by Jerry Wellik

“When I first encountered Jerry Wellik’s “Sky Trees Phoem” I questioned whether it that “h” was a typographical error…. Reading poetry helps me practice the skills of curiosity and wonder, and that increases my awareness, gratitude, and delight.

Read More »
July 25, 2021

Amending an Inheritance by Beth Spencer

Amending an Inheritance by Beth Spencer is like a prayer of confession and repentance, embodying a desire for people to overcome past and repeated failings, to be and do better. You may notice the second stanza of this poem has fewer lines than the first, perhaps alluding to the universal belief that human transformation involves pruning. Also pay attention to the way she uses traditionally “religious” language to challenge patriarchal and intergenerational violence. The title tells us this poem does not disown its inheritance. Instead it redeems, insisting the heir deserved and will pass on something better.

Read More »
July 18, 2021

Cocoon by Hedy Tripp

Cocoon by Hedy Tripp is a poem of lament, similar to a prayer in its expression of sorrow, springs from a hope for a future healing when today’s loss turns into “love and peace.” If you wonder what makes a poem different from an individual’s memory of an event, notice this poet’s use of repetition and the poem’s emotional sequence from love to loss to restoration. Combined, these devices allow a reader to experience the consoling back and forth momentum of a rocking cradle.
The time you invest in reading a poem is important to a poet, but more than that, it is important to our communities. To listen to a poem with the ear of your heart creates space for radical empathy to dwell among us. Thank you for paying attention to Minnesota poets and their poems.

Read More »
July 11, 2021

Prayer Flags by Wendy Brown-Baéz

To compose a poem is an act of faith as bold as prayer. “Prayer Flags” illustrates that a poet will often “wonder if anyone hears my heart speaking…”

The time you invest in reading a poem is important to a poet, but more than that, it is important to our communities. To listen to a poem with the ear of your heart creates space for radical empathy to dwell among us. Thank you for paying attention to Minnesota poets and their poems.

Read More »
July 4, 2021

Mo Cheol Thú (You are My Music) by Katrina Pierson

The music of love is sung so delicately in Katrina Pierson’s poem, Mo Cheol Thú. As the piece progresses, we see how the song sweetens – is strengthened – as love matures. The music exists even in mundane tasks and Katrina reminds us of this – that small things carry weight.

Read More »
June 27, 2021

Crevice by Emerson Sloane

Guest editor Lane Henson writes, “I love Emerson Sloane’s poem, CREVICE, for its intense passion and imagery. The poet does not waste any words here – the power comes from the concise language, tight rhythm, and evocative sounds. Emerson’s razor-sharp focus carries us skillfully into this world she has created, that she is stirring awake, in three short stanzas.”

Read More »
June 20, 2021

You did it, Frank by Bob Monahan

Bob Monahan’s You did it, Frank is a poem filled with sharp metaphors spoken softly. The contemplative nature of this piece invites the reader into the poet’s process as they struggle with the “quivering quill” of fierce inspiration and the sometimes inevitable one-that-gets-away.

Read More »
June 13, 2021

Notre Dame de Paris, 1971 by Deborah Rasmussen

Deborah Rasmussen’s poem, Notre Dame de Paris, 1971, beautifully follows the ghost of young love through the cathedral’s looming architecture. This poem asks us to consider those things that are left behind – that so quickly fall apart – in the presence of what feels ancient, infallible.

Read More »
June 6, 2021

Tula by Chris Santiago

May is Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) Heritage Month. Our guest editor is Su Hwang, author of Lyricality’s Read Poetry 2020 selection Bodega. Chris Santiago is the author of Tula,

Read More »
May 30, 2021

Authenticity by Jennifer Kwon Dobbs

Jennifer Kwon Dobbs is the author of two poetry collections and two chapbooks, most recently Interrogation Room (White Pine Press, 2018) mentioned in The New York Times and the recipient of the 2020 Association of Asian American Studies Book Award for Outstanding Achievement in Creative Writing: Poetry. Su Hwang selects “Authenticity” by Jennifer Kwon Dobbs.

Read More »
May 23, 2021

Azaleas by Merle Geode

Merle Geode is a queer, non-binary poet, writer, multidisciplinary artist, and shamanic practitioner living with metastatic breast cancer and a hot mess of other human conditions. They often use ritual and trance as generative—and healing—processes to give stories containers in many forms. Their work explores grief, chaos/disruption, and messy embodiment. In fall 2019, they began their MFA in Poetry at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities. They are a former food writer, dog groomer, and Loft Literary Center Mirrors & Windows Fellow. They are currently working on a picture book about anticipatory grief and death.

Read More »
May 16, 2021

Nomad by Halima Hagi-Mohamed

In responding to the implied question, “Where are you from?” This poem reaches out to connect strangers heart-to-heart and ends with an implied invitation to all of us, about all of our experiences: “give it a name.”

Read More »
May 13, 2021

essential worker by aegor ray

Sunday Morning Lyricality Guest Editor, Su Hwang, author of Lyricality’s Read Poetry 2020 selection, Bodega, presents aegor ray’s poem “essential worker” in honor of asian american and pacific islander heritage month.

Read More »
May 9, 2021

Careful What You Wish For by Bao Phi

Seriously! Last night I had a dream that I was a white man. Unlike in my
youth, when I fantasized about such things, this time I did not ask for it––
and yet there I was in the mirror; high, sharp cheekbones; sensible but not-
too-fussy hair; striking eyes; good facial hair. I decided to see how it went.

Read More »
May 2, 2021