Editorial: Poetry – ULR Issue 9, Violence

At Usawa, we value every little thing we see and read in a poem. Sometimes we observe, with a child’s eye, the thematic spectrums and the universes they unfold in a grain of sand. Sometimes, the poetic words fly without boundaries, sometimes they express subtle and unexpected feelings and twisted truths experienced from the guts. Some poets persist on “a rhythmic tearing apart of rules” and they long to “To bleed sin/To drip pleasure.”. At times, they observe their gustatory entropy where “you’re hungry but your stomach is so full/you cannot eat.”
Through their taste buds, the poets speak directly to you, humble and hopeful, at times, recounting the “antness of their hurry/blind vultures of their hunger/to gulp down order/ like distorting anxieties/our lives pose”

In this section, the tongue becomes the Holy Land where the desiring, erring organ is bestowed with a spiritual significance, where the lump of flesh becomes a swathe of mindscape toting memories and loss. The poems featured here are written with an open heart, recognizing our sorrows and suffering, eventually bringing in hope and healing. In this issue, we exalt in the algorithms of hope and healing explored through the senses, obviously to whet our appetites.