Hollie Hardy Features Feb. 20th

2/20/2017 Hollie Hardy hosted by Bruce
(Need a prompt? Look at Hollie's poem and riff off it)

Hollie Hardy is the author of How to Take a Bullet, And Other Survival Poems (Punk Hostage Press, 2014), winner of the 2016 Annual Poetry Center Book Award. She teaches writing classes at the SF Creative Writing Institute, SFSU, and Berkeley City College. She hosts Saturday Night Special, An East Bay Open Mic, curates Litquake’s Flight of Poets, and is a founder and core producer of Oakland’s Beast Crawl Literary Festival. Her website is www.holliehardy.com

HOW TO FEND OFF A SHARK

Wet fists in your eyes. The thump of undrumming

A figure in your peripheral vision

Here is the rind of night. Facing off on a rock of ice

Nightgown whipping, ragged around your thighs

Because silence is an expression of fear

Unwave that flag, unsmoke that cigarette

Unfuck that friend

These desperate little fistfuls of defiance

This jazz song does not belong to you

Warm, the sensation of sleep. Threadbare

The quality of wishing

Because police are at the door again

This wrecking ball in your bedroom

This fresh fountain of silver in your hair

Blue, the function of smoke. Rumpled

The flavor of resistance

There are things that vanish unexpectedly

The stone talisman you carried for luck

Photographs burned in a fire

Bewildered, the pillow of regret

Because our experiences overlap. Bodies at rest

Hoarding dreams like stolen rainwater

HOW TO SURVIVE IF YOU ARE BURIED ALIVE

Sit down by the window’s heartbeat

to listen for rain

fingertips brush the body as Braille

seeking cracks in the façade

or an egress

from this book of wind

breath recurs often

brazen as the north star

a test of endurance

through layers of weather

how many stones are required

to collapse a lung

or a desire