hungry today

for poems that land in my gut like a thunderstorm. Words that spill mercury over me, sing in my fingertips, hum behind my eyes for days after.

It feels like a long long time since I've read a poem that took my breath away. Since I watched someone ignite a mic and burn to pure incandescence before it.

Today, I'm fiercely homesick for the spaces and times where I've heard poetry split the world open. For Team Kalamazoo at the National Poetry Slam in Seattle, 2001, chanting a hypnotic group piece about American capitalism that I wanted everyone in the world to hear. For Lucy Anderton spinning words out of her body so you could see them rise into space, settle into arcs and curlicues of stanzas.

For the rage and beauty and grief and joy of poets I've been lucky enough to see, to hear, to share the stage with at hundreds of slams - for the energy of those spaces where everyone goes for broke to make their work the best, tightest, sharpest, most wrenchingly unforgettable rendition possible in language. Where every single poem is absolutely, indisputably, necessary.