BY JOANNA C. VALENTE
As the senior managing editor at Luna Luna and the founding editor at Yes Poetry, you could say writing is important to me, especially poetry. For me, it’s vital to highlight poetic voices in order to support literature, activism, and expression.
Here are three of my favorite poems I read recently.
Chloe N. Clark - “We imagined their fossils to be thunderbolts”
“I can love what
I don’t want, can tell
my nephews stories
about magic and spiders
and trees whose roots
crack down through
history and even sometimes
into other lives”
Faylita Hicks - “Whoever.”
“the ticking of my ass against the ruddy counter.
like a resonant slap against the faces of our christian mothers & all their bible stories
about ruth & boaz. i was waiting for you. that I remember.
even though i knew that this was not a love story.
not a making of. a killing.”
Saretta Morgan - “from ‘Plan Upon Arrival’”
“There were moments we were incapable of decision. An opening through which to register an image pungent through its own material law. A body pulled inward, door unlocked. Irresponsible to. That this moment would return. Return us. That this, and only this, would be the day.”
Joanna C. Valente is a human who lives in Brooklyn, New York. They are the author of Sirs & Madams, The Gods Are Dead, Marys of the Sea, Sexting Ghosts, Xenos, No(body) (forthcoming, Madhouse Press, 2019), and is the editor of A Shadow Map: Writing by Survivors of Sexual Assault. They received their MFA in writing at Sarah Lawrence College. Joanna is the founder of Yes Poetry and the senior managing editor for Luna Luna Magazine. Some of their writing has appeared in The Rumpus, Them, Brooklyn Magazine, BUST, and elsewhere. Joanna also leads workshops at Brooklyn Poets. joannavalente.com / Twitter: @joannasaid / IG: joannacvalente / FB: joannacvalente