Hola, it’s 3:05 PM! Time to take a cafecito break!
Welcome to Poem in the Afternoon, read by a woman-identifying writer who is attending Miami Book Fair 2023. Enjoy this taste of poetry, sponsored by Miami Book Fair, 305 Cafecito (Miami’s Official Cafecito Break), and SWWIM, with Miami's favorite beverage—a cafecito, of course! We look forward to seeing you at the Fair.
Appearance at Miami Book Fair 2023: Janine Joseph, Sunday, 11/19, 3:00 pm, Room 8303
Transcript of poem: You were bothered, I could tell, through the pomp, the vows, their kiss’s soft applause. At the late reception of fairy lights in mason jars, you were a strobe of looks and looked at while you tongued the open bar dry. I held you up in the melody because you were mine the way the country in you was mine. Two crooks hung around my shoulders in the sway. An affection, I could see, the way you let me see the wells grow damp.
Janine Joseph is a poet and librettist from the Philippines. She is the author of Decade of the Brain and Driving Without a License, winner of the Kundiman Poetry Prize, and co-editor of Undocupoetics, an anthology of poetry and poetics forthcoming from HarperCollins/Harper Perennial. Her commissioned works for the Houston Grand Opera and Washington Master Chorale include The Art of Our Healers, What Wings They Were, “On This Muddy Water”: Voices from the Houston Ship Channel, and From My Mother's Mother. A recipient of fellowships from MacDowell, Bread Loaf, and the Paul & Daisy Soros Fellowships for New Americans, Janine is a co-organizer for Undocupoets, a nonprofit literary organization that supports poets who are currently or who were formerly undocumented in the U.S.
From the book, Decade of the Brain (Alice James Books, 2023). It was also previously published by The Cortland Review. Permission granted by the author.
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