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.
Yesenia Montilla - “To Cast”
“we are for eternity torn between a face & a tail —
& we fall into one of two categories
those who cast spells & those that cast things aside
love may not be discarded but shipwrecked yes
& so on —”
Martín Espada - “The Republic of Poetry”
“In the republic of poetry,
poets rent a helicopter
to bombard the national palace
with poems on bookmarks,
and everyone in the courtyard
rushes to grab a poem
fluttering from the sky,
blinded by weeping.”
Denise Jarrott - “in which our bodies formed a crossroad, an x”
“a pattern emerges, a process:
(is it that I am at home in my own loneliness, or that I am not yet
complete?) (that I could easily be torn in two) (that I wanted
to be rent asunder)”
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