Ars Poetica
After Amiri Baraka and Stefania Gomez
Poems are bullshit unless they are broken
like a horse, like a dog kicked in the ribs,
Like your favorite toy that’s missing an arm.
Love can make you feel used.
I want the poem that limps back to me.
Poems should hurt like love,
like ice water on your teeth
like a massage to smooth out a cramped muscle.
Give me the poem that’s like leather.
Give me the poem that smells like gasoline.
I want a poem that is a warning,
a poem that makes me check to see
if I left the shotgun by the door,
a poem that’s a runny nose, a sneeze, a poem
that’s the moment the sky turns green.
Copyright © 2024 by Kenyatta Rogers. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on November 20, 2024, by the Academy of American Poets.
“Poet Stefania Gomez came to do a teaching demo at my school and gave the students a prompt to write an ars poetica after reading an excerpt of ‘Black Art’ by Amiri Baraka. I wrote along with them as we were asked, ‘What can a poem do? What can a poem be in the world?’ And I have been writing a lot this past summer, and in some ways, rediscovering poetry, and those questions really resonated with me. I guess for me, poetry is a love that never leaves and is always there when I’ve needed it. It’s a wild, crazy, unhinged fever dream of a love language, it can be.”
—Kenyatta Rogers
Kenyatta Rogers
Kenyatta Rogers teaches at The Chicago High School for the Arts and is the co-host of the Sunday Reading Series with Simone Muench. He lives in Chicago.