Unterberg Poetry Center of The 92nd Street Y, New York

09/07/2023

We're back! Happy September to all. Tomorrow, we start our season off with something really special.

ANNOUNCING: Daughters of Latin America: An Anthology Reading
Hosted by Rosie Perez
With Carmen Boullosa, Giannina Braschi, Sonia Guiñansaca, Sandra Guzmán, Jamaica Kincaid, Quiara Alegría Hudes, Yvette Modestin, Yolanda Arroyo Pizarro, Esmeralda Santiago, Elisabet Velasquez and more.

We're in-person and online. TICKETS:

Online and in-person. Rosie Perez hosts a historic, multilingual gathering of major and emerging Caribbean and Latine writers from the new anthology Daughters of Latin America.

06/16/2023

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/12/books/review/lorrie-moore-i-am-homeless-if-this-is-not-my-home.html

THIS TUESDAY, June 20--Lorrie Moore reads from I AM HOMELESS IF THIS IS NOT MY HOME. In-person and online: https://www.92ny.org/event/lorrie-moore

Online and in-person. Lorrie Moore’s new novel is I Am Homeless If This Is Not My Home.

05/18/2023

New poems out by the winners of the 2023 Discovery Poetry Contest, up in Literary Hub!

For over 60 years 92NY’s Discovery Contest has launched the careers of major poets like John Ashbery, Lucille Clifton, Mark Strand, Larry Levis, Mary Jo Bang, Solmaz Sharif and Diana Khoi Nguyen, t…

05/15/2023

he got lost humming & then went over his body
by jj pena, 2023 Discovery Poetry Contest Winner

when we were still kids, my brother jose found an abandoned baby bird & we tried to make it a nest in our backyard. he made me find the materials—twigs & rocks & earth—while he got lost humming to it, pressed the baby bird tight to his chest, comforting it with his palm’s heat. he didn’t let me hold the baby bird because i didn’t know how to be careful. but i could pet it—& the baby bird was soft, its feathers felt like touching warm summer grass. after looking at my sad nest, jose told me we needed to convince our dad to let the baby bird sleep inside, in a real bed. i agreed & we plotted: plotted to crash into our dad as soon as he got home from work, beg & promise we’d take care of it, that if he let us keep the baby bird, it would make up for him taking our dog far out into the desert & leaving it out there, all alone. we plotted until our sister let the boys from next door into our backyard, who wanted to play with us, who got bummed when we told them no, who crowded my brother when they saw the baby bird, let us see! let us see! they pat the baby bird’s head rough & asked, why is it not flying? is it broken? i shrugged & jose didn’t say anything. he didn’t like talking a lot around them because they made fun of the way he spoke. sometimes jose had a hard time with his r’s & s’s, he was born like that, tongue-tied. birds are supposed to fly, the taller one said. you just have to make it. look! he snatched the baby bird out of jose’s hand & cannoned it into the air—the baby bird went high, high, high, disappeared over our backyard wall, falling somewhere into the desert nothingness behind our house. we listened & heard nada—not a small chirp, not even a flutter—& i think my brother went above his body then: his fists wouldn’t stop swinging, not even when both of the boys’ noses erupted in red springs, not even when he knuckled craters into the walls of our room, & not even the next day, when we broke into their house & thrashed about, destroying anything we thought they loved. ’cause that’s the only way we know how to get revenge, by hurting.

http://www.southernhumanitiesreview.com/543-jj-pena-he-got-lost-humming.html

05/14/2023

Self-Portrait as the Crab Nebula
by Jenna Lanzaro, 2023 Discovery Poetry Contest Winner

https://nightheronbarks.com/spring-2022/jenna-lanzaro/

05/13/2023

Pumpkin Seeds
by Lucas Jorgensen, 2023 Discovery Poetry Contest Winner

Online, I see a story about a little boy who grew
pumpkins in his bathroom sink—his teeth
in the picture as small & white as tic tacs. A friend
tells me she misses innocence. & I miss
it too. I miss smiles like the boy’s. Smiles that say
tomorrow is another pear to juice.
At some point, I passed through a filter. No matter
how wide I open the aperture of my eyes, new pictures
develop grey. I never grew anything myself,
but my mother once dressed me as a jack-o’-lantern
& carried me from house to house on Halloween.
The boy tried to show his mother the first sprout—
small & waxen when it rose from the sink. I don’t
remember being a pumpkin, but I have pictures,
& pictures remember the light. As a child,
every stomachache was the worst pain I’d ever felt,
then I forgot it. I haven’t felt the worst pain
I’ll feel yet. The worst things are unavoidable.
My mother & father will die. My friends. Me.
When the flow of water stopped, then reversed,
crept up & over the porcelain brim, the boy’s mother
found his seedlings, their green grown deep
into the drain. The boy & I looked like them
until we breached the loam. When I stopped
growing, I collapsed under my own weight.

Pumpkin SeedsLucas Jorgensen Pumpkin SeedsOnline, I see a story about a little boy who grew pumpkins in his bathroom sink—his teethin the picture as small & white as tic tacs. A friend tells me she misses innocence. & I miss it too. I miss smiles like the boy’s. Smiles that say tomorrow is anoth...

05/12/2023

Questions for the Outward Curve of My Stomach, Where I Sometimes Rest My Hand and Pretend to be Pregnant
by Saba Keramati, 2023 Discovery Poetry Contest Winner

What have I inherited?

Is it salt?

Why does it sit so heavy in my stomach?

Aunties: why are our words for stomach and soul the same?

I am a woman: I was born with all my future children inside of me.

Is there a DNA test for this?

For salt?

Where does it all go, if I don’t have a daughter?

Will it be the salt people sprinkle on their plums?

A lavender scrub to massage a woman’s legs?

Returned to the earth, to feed a small cucumber garden?

Whose turn will it be to hold these glassy splinters?

Who can I assure the hurt will pass?

Whose hand to hold?

Whose belly to clutch when the jagged edges cut deep inside?

My aunties once scrubbed a chair for two hours after I bled on it.

https://barrenmagazine.com/questions-for-the-outward-curve-of-my-stomach/