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Recent diary entries
Poetry Weekly: Alina Pleskova, Marwa Helal, June Jordan
Feb 19, 2019
Poetry Weekly: Alina Pleskova, Marwa Helal, June Jordan
Feb 19, 2019
Feb 19, 2019
20 Free and Magical Ways to Engage in Self-Care
Feb 15, 2019
20 Free and Magical Ways to Engage in Self-Care
Feb 15, 2019
Feb 15, 2019
11 Valentine's Day dates for badass witches
Feb 14, 2019
11 Valentine's Day dates for badass witches
Feb 14, 2019
Feb 14, 2019
Survival and Truth: How Tori Amos' Under The Pink Changed My Life
Feb 8, 2019
Survival and Truth: How Tori Amos' Under The Pink Changed My Life
Feb 8, 2019
Feb 8, 2019
Poetry Weekly: Monica Youn, Traci Brimhall, Rosebud Ben-Oni
Feb 6, 2019
Poetry Weekly: Monica Youn, Traci Brimhall, Rosebud Ben-Oni
Feb 6, 2019
Feb 6, 2019
How Do We Name Ourselves?
Feb 4, 2019
How Do We Name Ourselves?
Feb 4, 2019
Feb 4, 2019
Your February 2019 Horoscopes Are Here
Feb 1, 2019
Your February 2019 Horoscopes Are Here
Feb 1, 2019
Feb 1, 2019
Kristine Esser Slentz on Polyamory & Being Raised as a Jehovah's Witness
Jan 30, 2019
Kristine Esser Slentz on Polyamory & Being Raised as a Jehovah's Witness
Jan 30, 2019
Jan 30, 2019
Poetry by Brandon Amico
Jan 29, 2019
Poetry by Brandon Amico
Jan 29, 2019
Jan 29, 2019
A Grimoire For Self-Love: A Peek At Light Magic for Dark Times
Jan 28, 2019
A Grimoire For Self-Love: A Peek At Light Magic for Dark Times
Jan 28, 2019
Jan 28, 2019
5 Books I Had No Idea Existed and Must Find at Once
Jan 28, 2019
5 Books I Had No Idea Existed and Must Find at Once
Jan 28, 2019
Jan 28, 2019
Vi Khi Nao Reviews Diana Hamilton's God Was Right
Jan 25, 2019
Vi Khi Nao Reviews Diana Hamilton's God Was Right
Jan 25, 2019
Jan 25, 2019
Poetry Weekly: Omotara James, John Murillo, E. Kristin Anderson
Jan 25, 2019
Poetry Weekly: Omotara James, John Murillo, E. Kristin Anderson
Jan 25, 2019
Jan 25, 2019
Brandon Amico on Why He Doesn't Want to Be Unreachable
Jan 24, 2019
Brandon Amico on Why He Doesn't Want to Be Unreachable
Jan 24, 2019
Jan 24, 2019
How To Become A Freelance Writer: On Starting Out, Discipline & Ritual
Jan 23, 2019
How To Become A Freelance Writer: On Starting Out, Discipline & Ritual
Jan 23, 2019
Jan 23, 2019
Bewitched: When The Velvet Underground Cast an Identity Spell on Me
Jan 23, 2019
Bewitched: When The Velvet Underground Cast an Identity Spell on Me
Jan 23, 2019
Jan 23, 2019
DIY Gift Ideas for The Magical, the Dreamy, and the Crafty
Jan 22, 2019
DIY Gift Ideas for The Magical, the Dreamy, and the Crafty
Jan 22, 2019
Jan 22, 2019
Review of Christine Stoddard's 'Water for the Cactus Woman'
Jan 22, 2019
Review of Christine Stoddard's 'Water for the Cactus Woman'
Jan 22, 2019
Jan 22, 2019
Poetry Weekly: Vanessa AngΓ©lica Villarreal, Jessica Morey-Collins, Justin Karcher
Jan 18, 2019
Poetry Weekly: Vanessa AngΓ©lica Villarreal, Jessica Morey-Collins, Justin Karcher
Jan 18, 2019
Jan 18, 2019
June Gehringer Tells Us What She's Afraid Of
Jan 16, 2019
June Gehringer Tells Us What She's Afraid Of
Jan 16, 2019
Jan 16, 2019
5 Film & TV Inspired Nightgowns You Need
Jan 15, 2019
5 Film & TV Inspired Nightgowns You Need
Jan 15, 2019
Jan 15, 2019
Music Friyay: Stevie Nicks, Sun Ra, Hamilton Leithauser
Jan 11, 2019
Music Friyay: Stevie Nicks, Sun Ra, Hamilton Leithauser
Jan 11, 2019
Jan 11, 2019
Poetry by Fatima-Ayan Malika Hirsi
Jan 10, 2019
Poetry by Fatima-Ayan Malika Hirsi
Jan 10, 2019
Jan 10, 2019
Poetry Weekly: Kay Ulanday Barrett, Devin Kelly, Elizabeth Metzger
Jan 9, 2019
Poetry Weekly: Kay Ulanday Barrett, Devin Kelly, Elizabeth Metzger
Jan 9, 2019
Jan 9, 2019
Poetry by Karina Bush
Jan 8, 2019
Poetry by Karina Bush
Jan 8, 2019
Jan 8, 2019
Hillary Leftwich on Happiness & Why It's Important to Love Childhood Films
Jan 7, 2019
Hillary Leftwich on Happiness & Why It's Important to Love Childhood Films
Jan 7, 2019
Jan 7, 2019
This Moon Playlist Is Everything You Need
Jan 4, 2019
This Moon Playlist Is Everything You Need
Jan 4, 2019
Jan 4, 2019
Poetry Weekly: Chloe N. Clark, Faylita Hicks, Saretta Morgan
Jan 3, 2019
Poetry Weekly: Chloe N. Clark, Faylita Hicks, Saretta Morgan
Jan 3, 2019
Jan 3, 2019
Jordan Rothacker On the Apocalypse, Jared Kushner, and Daily Rituals
Jan 2, 2019
Jordan Rothacker On the Apocalypse, Jared Kushner, and Daily Rituals
Jan 2, 2019
Jan 2, 2019
Your January 2019 horoscopes are here
Jan 1, 2019
Your January 2019 horoscopes are here
Jan 1, 2019
Jan 1, 2019
via  Dark Skin Women

via Dark Skin Women

Poetry by Jasmine L. Combs

August 24, 2017

Black Girl Magic

Maybe Black girl magic is a farce.
Maybe Black girl magic is
just a hashtag for my best selfie
for the pic of me and my Black girl squad
and we all smiling
sun bouncing off our brown skin and infinite hair
beautiful enough to make a white girl burst
in a fit of thunderous envy.

Maybe Black girl magic is a mask
a suit of armor I put on every day
to protect myself from the truth
a lie I say in hopes that one day I'll believe it.
One day I'll believe there are magical powers
somewhere in the intersection of my oppressions
something superhuman in me
that'll make all of this strife worth it.

Maybe Black girl magic can freeze bullets midair
with the blink of an eye,
heal the unjustly dying with the wave of a hand
Maybe Black girl magic can transcend time
save her ancestors from getting on those ships
then Black girl magic would cease to exist.
Cause Black girl wouldn't need to be magical anymore
and finally Black girl can just be Black girl
and call herself enough.

Β 

52nd Street after Death

After my father dies
my mother drives his truck down 52nd Street.
The truck is red and all of West Philly is gray
but no one sees it except us.
My mother drives his truck down 52nd Street
and people from around the way
honk and yell my father’s name
like they always do
like they’ve always done.
They do not know yet that my father is still,
and gray as all of these mourning storefronts.

After my father dies
every man at the 52 bus stop
with dark skin and a beard
and coarse hands
and a thick silhouette
and a voice, more laughter than loving,
is him,
is an apparition that don’t know it.
And I can’t tell if the nightmare is
my father’s ghost,
or the thought that he might actually still be
alive.

After my father dies
every bus ride is filled with faces
that might have known him.
When the lady does a double take
I wonder if she recognizes me
from way back when.
Will she tell me she remembers me
much smaller and much shyer,
clinging to the pulse
in my father’s wrist.

Β 

Revival

Last summer I stopped breathing
and almost died.
All the air turned water
and most days, I was dead weight
floating.
All the air was thick with living
and I choked and suffocated in protest.
I try not to write about last summer.
Instead, I say the tiles on the bathroom floor
were drained of color.
I say even the doctor’s voice
was sterile and white.
I pull the covers over my head
and call it a closed lid casket,
but I’m never ready to say why she died.
Why I kept trying to drown myself
when the sleeping pills
were just another thing
to wake up from,
when the parties soaked in poison ended.
The high always came down,
the drunkenness
always gave way to sobriety
so I found myself submerged in a bathtub.
Silence, like a stone
tied around my chest.

But, sometimes, the weight of
silence is just figurative.
And metaphors mean nothing to
the body and it’s damned will
to keep on living despite you.
Eventually the lungs start to convulsive,
the muscles revolt
and push and push and push
you up from out that water.

And you start to breathe again.
Find your sins a murky pool beneath you,
that maybe this drowning was
a baptism in disguise all along,
that almost dying
makes you a prime candidate
for a revival.

And the body was a lesson on resilience,
how it absorbs all the trauma
you put it through
and still, it keeps on
fighting to stay alive.
The body has no interest in dying.
And who are you to say otherwise?
Who am I to say otherwise?
I was designed to survive this.
I emerge from all this water
revived, renewed.


Jasmine L. Combs is a poet, performer, educator and event organizer from Philadelphia, PA. She received her BA in English from Temple University and is a Babel Poetry Collective alum.

Jasmine is the 2015 Grand Slam Champion of The Philly Pigeon Poetry Slam, a 2015 National Poetry Slam semifinalist, and a winner of the 2016 College Union Poetry Slam Invitational. She also won the 2015 Apiary Magazine STUNG Writing Contest and her winning piece "Night Child" was turned into an animation.

Currently, Jasmine is an organizer for The Philly Pigeon Poetry Slam and Spoken Word Editor for The Fem Lit Magazine. Her work has been published in Apiary Magazine, Vagabond City Lit, and her performances have been featured on Button Poetry, Slamfind, Blavity, and The Huffington Post. In 2014 she published her first chapbook Universal Themes.

In Poetry & Prose Tags Poetry, Jasmine L. Combs
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Featured
Letters to the Dead: Shadow Writing for Grief & Release
Feb 8, 2019
Letters to the Dead: Shadow Writing for Grief & Release
Feb 8, 2019
Feb 8, 2019
How to Add Magic to Your Every Day Wellness Routine
Feb 5, 2019
How to Add Magic to Your Every Day Wellness Routine
Feb 5, 2019
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Ritual: Writing Letters To Your Self β€” On Anais Nin, Journaling, and Healing
Jan 31, 2019
Ritual: Writing Letters To Your Self β€” On Anais Nin, Journaling, and Healing
Jan 31, 2019
Jan 31, 2019
How Rituals Can Help You Gain Confidence
Jan 17, 2019
How Rituals Can Help You Gain Confidence
Jan 17, 2019
Jan 17, 2019
SEXTING GHOSTS
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TONIGHT, Feb. 13, Brooklyn/NYC: join @attheinkwell + Luna Luna for a reading on Self-Love.
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Readings by @lisamariebasile @joannacvalente  @stephanie.athena  @erinkhar cbwilhelm @lifestudies + hosted by @anditalarico!
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When: 7-9 p.m. WORD Bookstore, 126 Franklin Street, Brooklyn A sampling of a few of the poets who will be reading at the FEB. 13 event at @wordbookstores for @attheinkwell: @lifestudies + @joannacvalente + @lisamariebasile + @anditalarico (our lovely host) πŸ–€Mark your calendars! February 13, 7pm, Word in Brooklyn Want to get into the writing life? @lisamariebasile wrote a guide to starting your freelance life. All about working from home, money & logistics, ritual and mindfulness, finding clients, developing a portfolio, and negotiating your rates. πŸ™ŒπŸ½ Visit lunalunamagazine.com to read! Our very own @joannacvalente has some images up over at @yespoetry from their #Survivor photo series. (There are more at Luna Luna, too!). πŸ–€ We’re about 200 followers away from 10,000 (!!!!) over on twitter πŸ™ŒπŸΎ Pop over and follow us if you haven’t yet (we’re VERY active there, always having conversations and sharing work and engaging with all of you!) β€” were going to do a giveaway at 10,000. Thank you for the love, it means the world to us πŸŽ‰ LINK IN BIO! WANT TO CONJURE LIZZIE BORDEN? Of course you do. Preorder Lizzie, Speak by our phenom editor & poet @kaileytedesco via the lovely @whitestagpublishing. πŸ‘» The Luna Luna crew! Stay tuned for a reading announcement in February here in NYC. πŸ’œπŸ–€πŸ˜ˆ HAPPY NEW YEARS, friends and readers! πŸ™ŒπŸ½ The lovely @joannacvalente posted your January 2019 horoscopes today. Head over to lunalunamagazine.com to check it out. We have good vibes about this year + we hope you had a beautiful celebration!
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PS, as Joanna says: β€œA lunar eclipse will occur on January 20 during a full Leo moon is going to be emotionally intense. It will stir up feelings about belonging, identity, and love. It might not be an easy moon, but it will  help you shed any unnecessary habits and relationships. Get rid of what doesn’t serve you.” Start thinking about ways you can release those things or people β€” and what you’d like to focus on instead. πŸ’œπŸ™ŒπŸ½πŸŽ‰

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