National Poetry Month Celebration from Red Hen Press

Happy National Poetry Month from Red Hen Press! Our next collaboration with Mercurius Magazine features four poems from collections published by Red Hen this April.

Practicing the Complex Yes
From Singer Come from Afar by Kim Stafford

When you disagree with a friend,
a stranger, or a foe, how do you
reply but not say simply No?
For No can stop the conversation
or turn it into argument or worse—
the conversation that must go on, as a river
must, a friendship, a troubled nation.
So may we practice the repertoire
                          of complex yes: 

Yes, and in what you say I see . . .
Yes, and at the same time . . .
Yes, and what if . . . ?
Yes, I hear you, and how . . . ?
Yes, and there’s an old story . . .
Yes, and as the old song goes . . .
Yes, and as a child told me once . . .
Yes. Yes, tell me more. I want to understand . . .
   and then I want to tell you how it is for me.

Kim Stafford is the author of a dozen books of poetry and prose, and the former poet laureate of Oregon. You can order his latest collection, Singer Come from Afar, from Red Hen Press here.

Ghost in a Black Girl’s Throat
From Ghost in a Black Girl’s Throat by Khalisa Rae

“You will be
the bended knee in their American
Dream, and they will stitch your mouth 

the color of patriarchy, call it black girl magic when you
rip
the seams. Southern Belle is just another way to say:
stayed in her place on the right side of the pedestal.” 

Khalisa Rae is a poet, queer rights activist, journalist, and educator in Durham, North Carolina, and a graduate of the Queens University MFA program. Her debut poetry collection, Ghost in a Black Girl’s Throat, can be purchased from Red Hen Press here.

Extremely Lightweight Guns
From Extremely Lightweight Guns by Nikki Moustaki 

I don’t like makin’ money, I just love sellin’ guns
—Don, of Don’s Guns

Literally no recoil, and if the steel is cold, I don’t know it. If bullets taste like gardenias, like tongues, like bathwater or greasy fingers, wine floweth-ing over in my tin field cup, I don’t know it. I don’t like makin’ money, I just love sellin’ guns. I ache all day for a smoothbore shot; I’m a hammer-cocker, trigger-friendly, barrel-ready, slide that slide and make the sight sure. I want the longest operating rod you got. I want to stare down that dark pill, find my mark, carry the pheasant home. I have an ivory two-shot in my panties drawer, a loaded revolver under my downy pillow, and at the pawnshop, a rack fuller than a pinup calendar. I’ll mail ʼem unmarked if you ask. I got a modern Howitzer out back, you can rock that cradle for a couple bucks. But it’s not the money. There’s nothing sexier than the Bill of Rights. Well, maybe an old cannon with a full wad and a wooden rammer. How do bullets taste? Some say gardenias, tongues, bathwater, greasy fingers, deep red wine flowing over in your cup. A bullet’s core snapping into point, your mother’s sweet voice. The shot recoiling into your hands, the pitch in your legs after a father’s belt. Pull it again. The real impact, again. I’ve got steel between my teeth. My dentist loves me. The neighbors hate me. I ask the guns every day, fuck me.

Nikki Moustaki is an award-winning writer and poet. Her poetry, fiction, and essays have appeared in various literary magazines, anthologies, and college textbooks. Her collection Extremely Lightweight Guns can be purchased from Red Hen Press here.

Grief: A Petition
From Lexicon by Allison Joseph

I want to limit grief to fourteen lines,
to capture it inside a rhyming box
that I can put together, then unlock
when brave enough to claim the grief that’s mine.
I want to make my sorrows small enough
that I can carry them one at a time,
assured I’ve made a space where they’re confined,
grief unrestrained too fertile, too vast and rough
to go unchecked. I need to break it down,
go bit by bit until I’ve built a space
with boundaries that wrap their way around,
like vines around a stake. I want grief bound,
hemmed in by words so I don’t have to face
its clamoring, that unrestricted sound.

Allison Joseph lives, writes, and teaches in Carbondale, Illinois, where she is on the faculty at Southern Illinois University. Her second collection with Red Hen Press, Lexicon, can be ordered from Red Hen Press here.

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 To read more excerpt-articles from Project Jupiter, Mercurius’s ever-growing anthology of indie press titles, click here.