(61/61) “his father’s sparse crop / turns him inside out. / A pocket that aches / to be filled / Calico and honey / sell slow on the frontier” —Laura Da’, “Auction of the Bonded” (Instruments of the True Measure) The University of Arizona Press #61WomenPoets #WOC #TheSealeyChallenge #SeptWomenPoets

(60/61) “So many people / are interested in how you may multiply, even if puberty / made you cry” — @asaldrake.bsky.social, “To Someone Who’s Heard I Love You Too Many Times” (Maybe the Body) Tin House Books #61WomenPoets #WOC #61Books61Days #TheSealeyChallenge #SeptWomenPoets

(59/61) “the Black witches know that / the terror is not in the moon” —Lucille Clifton, “In Salem” (An Ordinary Woman) Random House #61WomenPoets #WOC #61Books61Days #TheSealeyChallenge #SeptWomenPoets

(58/61) “The water is trending higher these days with or without / my paper moon and the wings in my corner” —Abigail Chabitnoy, “All the Daughters” (In the Current Where Drowning is Beautiful) @weslpress.bsky.social #61WomenPoets #WOC #61Books61Days #TheSealeyChallenge #SeptWomenPoets

(57/61) “My lungs grow black lilies / while I play Bach’s Ich ruf zu dir / on the spinet in the Harlem room.” — @jmaebarizo.bsky.social l, “Sunday Women on Malcom X Boulevard” (Tender Machines) @tupelopress.bsky.social #61WomenPoets #WOC #61Books61Days #TheSealeyChallenge #SeptWomenPoets

(56/61) “a spoon to carve out the child / from rice & malaria / a bag of bones to sink the body / a scythe to kill someone with / a map of the moon to go thereafter” —Mông-Lan, “A Bamboo Knife” (One Thousand Minds Brimming) Valiant Press #61WomenPoets #WOC #TheSealeyChallenge #SeptWomenPoets

(55/61) “our new lover / in the final episode of ‘Santa Barbara’ / will lean over a scented candle / and call us a ‘bitch.’” —Marilyn Chin, “How I Got That Name” (The Phoenix Gone, the Terrace Empty) @milkweededitions.bsky.social #61WomenPoets #WOC #61Books61Days #TheSealeyChallenge #SeptWomenPoets

(54/61) “men spitting watermelon seeds / the shape of my dime-store mood ring” —Kimberly Blaeser, “Reliquary” (Copper Yearning) Holy Cow! Press #61WomenPoets #WOC #61Books61Days #TheSealeyChallenge #SeptWomenPoets

(53/61) “would grandmother’s diamonds / close their heartsparks / in the corner of the closet / yellow like the eyes of cockroaches?” —Toi Derricotte, “Poem for My Father” (Captivity) @upittpress.bsky.social #61WomenPoets #WOC #61Books61Days #TheSealeyChallenge #SeptWomenPoets

(52/61) “All night the millennial ice, all night the dread, / all night the saving eminence that won’t wake up // and the darker eminence that will.” —Quan Barry, “Galilee” (Water Puppets) @upittpress.bsky.social #61WomenPoets #WOC #61Books61Days #TheSealeyChallenge #SeptWomenPoets

(50/61) “On omma’s death day, / I forgo the forbidden: // peaches, garlic, red spice” —Bo Hee Moon, “Gijesa (기제사): November 10, 1992” (Birthstones in the Province of Mercy) @milkweededitions.bsky.social #61WomenPoets #WOC #61Books61Days #TheSealeyChallenge #SeptWomenPoets

(51/61) “She decided she would keep it— / the anger that was not yet contempt / for you—like a balloon tied to the wrist, / casting its little shadow, little stigma.” —Willie Lin, “Object Lesson” (Conversation Among Stones) @boa-editions.bsky.social #WOC #TheSealeyChallenge #SeptWomenPoets

(49/61) “My name, Camille, means witness at the sacrifice.” —Camille Dungy, “New Address” (America, A Love Story) @weslpress.bsky.social #61WomenPoets #WOC #61Books61Days #TheSealeyChallenge #SeptWomenPoets

(48/61) “You said / There’s a pack of dogs inside me / threatening to eat its leader who is wounded. / I said Let them.” —Brynn Saito, “First Incarnation” (The Palace of Contemplating Departure) @redhenpress.bsky.social #61WomenPoets #WOC #61Books61Days #TheSealeyChallenge #SeptWomenPoets

(47/61) “a mouse in / the house, her lover says / it has a very tiny heart, / you need only chase / it until it tires” —Shin Yu Pai, “This Is Not My Story” (Adamantine) White Pine Press #61WomenPoets #WOC #61Books61Days #TheSealeyChallenge #SeptWomenPoets

(46/61) “Clicks of the keyboard sound like high heels walking / nowhere in particular.” — @nezhukumatathil.bsky.social, “Firefly Ars Poetica” (Night Owl) Ecco #61WomenPoets #WOC #61Books61Days #TheSealeyChallenge #SeptWomenPoets

(45/61) “He has the receipts: / a scar on his breast / that I’ve cleaned like a smudge on a window.” —Hafizah Geter ( @hafizah.bsky.social), “Naming Ceremony” (Un-American) @weslpress.bsky.social #61WomenPoets #WOC #61Books61Days #TheSealeyChallenge #SeptWomenPoets

(44/61) “Why would this Portuguese sailor come over to me and in his broken English point to the tattoo of a geisha as if I would identify with it. And I did a little.” —Kimiko Hahn, “B-O-A-T” (The Narrow Road to the Interior) W. W. Norton & Company #WOC #TheSealeyChallenge #SeptWomenPoets

(43/61) “You film it, disaffected by the cold and the faces turning like leaves in a blue autumn.” — @aditimachado.bsky.social, “Material Witness” (Material Witness) Nightboat Books #61WomenPoets #WOC #61Books61Days #TheSealeyChallenge #SeptWomenPoets

(42/61) “You are no one’s enigma / or experiment.” —Amy M. Alvarez, “How to Date a White Boy” (Makeshift Altar)
@kentuckypress.bsky.social #61WomenPoets #WOC #61Books61Days #TheSealeyChallenge #SeptWomenPoets