by Holly Jahangiri | Apr 28, 2025
Flesh
We have a running argument—he says
the English language has too many words
for the same thing. Not nearly enough,
I say, with an indignant huff. He wants
clarity in an eight-color box of crayons. I
want one hundred twenty-eight
with sixteen shades of “Flesh.” Who decided
“Flesh” was skin like Silly Putty, pinkish
beige, not summergold, or cherry wood,
or native jory soil. Not the blushed clotted cream
of bridal rose or grandmother-gray with silver -
flecks. Not pulsing deep, copper-scented,
iron-oxide red of a bull’s heartblood
spilling from its corded neck as its knees buckle.
Not kalamata, not sun-ripened fig. Just
Silly Putty-pink.
by Holly Jahangiri | Apr 28, 2025
Help Build a Garden of Wildwords and Inclusive Beauty
Celebrating the Banned & Challenged: First They Came for the Books…
And I was not a book. Then, they went after the words. And I said, “Hah! No you don’t.“
The list of banned words has grown as fast as the list of banned and challenged books. Those loud proponents of free speech – the ones who vociferously accuse “lefties” and “liberals” of trying to take away their First Amendment rights, simply because not everyone is interested in what they have to say, have done their level best to truly squelch free speech. But us “educated elites” (read: folks who can spell and decipher the big words in the US Constitution) have our own solutions – we will enshrine these words in poetry and share them with everyone who wants to read and listen. No, Tommy Tuberville, we poets are not destroying the military by reciting poems aircraft carriers and turning soldiers “woke.” These dudes aren’t exactly shrinking violets. Roosevelt could’ve taken you, Tommy.
You kind of have to laugh when the “Enola Gay” was flagged for removal from governmental websites by the very people who wouldn’t bat an eye at genocide, because it contains the word “gay.” But writers, it turns out, are unafraid of words. We just hone our nibs to a sharper edge – dip them in gall – and refuse to be silenced on the page.
Join in, if you will – see how many of the following words you can work into a poem or a short story. The list has grown since I posted my first challenge to you all – Poetry from Banned Words. Be as subtle, or as bitingly humorous, or as dark and angry as you want to be, while it is still your right to write.
Nearly 200 Naughty Words to Get Your Writing Banned by the Feds (a New York Times article – a gift from me to you).
After you’ve written your own poem, you can submit it here: Winning Writers Submission Manager – Live and Let DEI Anthology (no fee) (the deadline is Thursday, May 1, 2025 5:00 AM) or post your poem or short story link in a comment on my blog, if you would like to!
by Holly Jahangiri | Apr 16, 2025
The following poem is a Dorsimbra, inspired by our recent drive from Omaha, Nebraska, to Cedar Rapids, Iowa, and back to Des Moines, Iowa and by Grant Wood’s famous painting, “Young Corn.” Iowa, by the way, was the 50th state my husband and I visited.
Heralding the Feast
So gently sloped, the glacial drift, now green
and yellow, charred, and plowed, awaiting spring
when hungry migratory deer are keen
to taste the offerings the farmer brings.
They follow red-winged blackbirds,
soaring high in search of borers, aphids,
rootworms, corn sap beetles—
heralding the feast.
Eternal is the battle, push-and-pull
of rocks and soil, animal and man.
Our history's but a scratch etched on the Earth;
so gently sloped, the glacial drift, now green.
by Holly Jahangiri | Apr 7, 2025
My mother’s portrait used to hang at the top of the stairs at my grandparents’ house. I loved that house; I picked it out when I was just a toddler. But for some reason, I always sensed a hostile presence between the first and second floors. Not malevolent or evil, just angry. Something that didn’t want me crossing from downstairs to upstairs. But only at night, and only between the floors. Nevertheless, I felt sure that my mother’s portrait, overlooking the stairs, would protect me. Not my parents, not my grandparents – though I know they would have. There was just something reassuring about the portrait being there. I called it “Little Mommy.”
My mother died in 2002, and her portrait – “Little Mommy” – now hangs at the top of my own stairs. Feels right.
Ghost Story
Goosebumps and a shudder
coursing down our spines, their
backstories haunt us,
chill us. We imagine agonal moaning,
clanking chains, clattering bones
devoid of flesh. Why are the ghosts
who live in our heads all suffering
torments of the damned? Why
shouldn't they guide the tired
mother's hands as she shapes dough
kneads it, sets it aside to rise?
And why shouldn't ghosts rise, too,
summoned by faint echoes of sense
memory, the scent of baking bread?
Why shouldn't they linger
to amuse the only child
in the guise of an imaginary friend?
Have they merely slipped through time,
one warped dimension to the next?
Perhaps the end we fear is just a bug —
a glitch, reboot, while version
1.0 continues, processed on a parallel
thread of infinite second chances.
Maybe now and then - or maybe not
(and then again) -
the wires cross, enjamb.
That future fate, that death
or worse we fear could simply be
another haunting verse.
by Holly Jahangiri | Apr 6, 2025
I asked my mother, once, why some of us found circus clowns disturbing or scary. Objectively, I know that they are there to make the audience laugh and to bring joy. But count me among those who see Pennywise in every clown. Well, except maybe the beloved Buttons (played by James Stewart) in The Greatest Show on Earth. Ironically, the only clown that ever felt kind and safe to me was a fugitive accused of killing his wife. An act of kindness, in his case, but still – a fugitive. My mother thought long and hard, admitting that clowns made her uncomfortable, as well. Her theory was that we were just too empathetic to enjoy an act designed to make us laugh at “freaks,” even if the clowns were just wearing makeup and costumes.
For a while, when I was about 8, I had a recurring dream about an evil clown at a desert motel. Later, when Stephen King introduced us to Pennywise, I could hardly breathe. It was as if he had somehow tapped into a childhood nightmare and brought it to life. When my parents first told me about Circus-Circus in Las Vegas, I refused to go – it sounded just like the place from my dream. It wasn’t – we visited the hotel, many years ago, and it was not the place. In my 30s, I found the place – on the internet. I had never heard of it, have never visited, and I have no intention – ever – of doing so. If you ever go to the Tonopah Clown Motel in Nevada, don’t say I didn’t warn you. Honestly? The motel just looks colorful and kitschy. But the cemetery is another matter entirely and looks exactly the way I dreamed it 55 years ago.
Fun House
Which is normal: to recoil in horror at the sight
of circus clowns, or laugh? They work so hard;
our laughter is hard-won and smells of cotton
candy, peanuts, popcorn - elephant farts -
masking the faint scent of terror, sweat,
denim damp with urine. Is it the bulbous red
whiskey nose, the clown-white, death-pale zinc,
or the red-rimmed mouth, hinting blood
beneath the big top, full of grinning cannibals,
that makes the tiger kitties with their razor
claws and teeth look tame
that makes the flaming hoop a portal
where an us-sized box is neither coffin,
crematorium, nor abbatoir...
but the illusion of escape
