Poetry Thursday, Native American Heritage Month

 Dear New Blood
~Mark Turcotte

You don’t need me, I know, here on
this podium with my poem. You
hunched in the back of the room,
tilted in your hard-earned reservation
lean. You ho-hum your gaze out the
window toward some other sky.  

Dear new blood, dear holy dear fully
mixed up mixed down mixed in and
out blood, go ahead and kick the shit,
kiss the shit from my ears. I swear I
swear I’ll listen. Stutter at stutter at me you
uptown weed you thorn you
petal, aim my old flowered face at the
sky.

I know you don’t need me, here on
this podium with my poem. You
pressed flat to the wall, shoulders
cocked, loaded for makwa, for old
growlers like me. You yawn your
glance out the window at the
tempting sky.

Wake me. Bang my dead drum drum,
clang clang my anvil my bell. Shout me
hush me your song, your shiny
impossible, your long, wounded song.
Tell me everything you know, you
don’t. Tell me, do you feel conquered
and occupied? Maybe I’ve forgotten.
Sing it plain, has America ever let you
be you in your own sky?

Sing deep Chaco, deep Minneapolis,
deep Standing Rock, deep Oakland
and LA. Sing deep Red Cliff, sing
Chicago, deep Acoma, deep Pine Ridge
and Tahlequah. Mourn. I think you,
too, were born with broken heart.
Rise. Smash your un-American throat
against the edge of the sky.

You don’t need me, I know. But don’t
go don’t look away. I need you.
(makwa: bear)

Copyright © 2020 by Mark Turcotte. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on November 23, 2020, by the Academy of American Poets.

 Black Parade

Darrel Alejandro Holnes

Coming out isn’t the same as coming to America

except for the welcome parade

put on by ghosts like your granduncle Roy

who came to New York from Panamá in the 50s

and was never heard of again

and by the beautiful gays who died of AIDS in the 80s

whose cases your mother studied

in nursing school. She sent you to the US to become

an “American” and you worry

she’ll blame this country

for making you a “marica,”

a “Mary,” like it might have made your uncle Roy.

The words “America” and “marica” are so similar!

Exchange a few vowels

and turn anyone born in this country

queer. I used to watch Queer as Folk as a kid

and dream of sashaying away

the names bullies called me in high school

for being Black but not black enough, or the kind of black they saw on TV:

black-ish, negro claro, cueco.

It was a predominately white school,

the kind of white the Spanish brought to this continent

when they cozened my ancestors from Africa.

There was no welcome parade for my ancestors back then

so, they made their own procession, called it “carnaval”

and fully loaded the streets with egungun costumes,

holy batá drum rhythms, shouting and screaming in tongues,

and booty dancing in the spirit.

I don’t want to disappear in New York City,

lost in a drag of straightness.

So instead, I proceed

to introduce my mother to my first boyfriend

after I’ve moved her to Texas

and helped make her a citizen.

Living is trafficking through ghosts in a constant march

toward a better life, welcoming the next in line.

Thriving is wining the perreo to soca on the

Noah’s Arc pride parade float, like you’re

the femme bottom in an early aughts gay TV show.

Surviving is (cross-)dressing as an American marica,

until you’re a ‘merica or a ‘murica

and your ancestors see

you’re the king-queen of Mardi Gras,

purple scepter, crown, and krewe.

Copyright © 2020 by Darrel Alejandro Holnes. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on September 25, 2020, by the Academy of American Poets.

 America is Loving Me to Death
~Michael Kleber-Diggs

acrostic golden shovel
America is loving me to death, loving me to death slowly, and I
Mainly try not to be disappeared here, knowing she won’t pledge
Even tolerance in return. Dear God, I can’t offer allegiance.
Right now, 400 years ago, far into the future―it’s difficult to
Ignore or forgive how despised I am and have been in the
Centuries I’ve been here—despised in the design of the flag
And in the fealty it demands (lest I be made an example of).
In America there’s one winning story—no adaptations. The
Story imagines a noble, grand progress where we’re all united.
Like truths are as self-evident as the Declaration states.
Or like they would be if not for detractors like me, the ranks of
Vagabonds existing to point out what’s rotten in America,
Insisting her gains come at a cost, reminding her who pays, and
Negating wild notions of exceptionalism—adding ugly facts to
God’s-favorite-nation mythology. Look, victors get spoils; I know the
Memories of the vanquished fade away. I hear the enduring republic,
Erect and proud, asking through ravenous teeth Who do you riot for?
Tamir? Sandra? Medgar? George? Breonna? Elijah? Philando? Eric? Which
One? Like it can’t be all of them. Like it can’t be the entirety of it:
Destroyed brown bodies, dismantled homes, so demolition stands
Even as my fidelity falls, as it must. She erases my reason too, allows one
Answer to her only loyalty test: yes or no, Michael, do you love this nation?
Then hates me for saying I can’t, for not burying myself under
Her fables where we’re one, indivisible, free, just, under God, her God.

Copyright © 2020 by Michael Kleber-Diggs. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on November 5, 2020, by the Academy of American Poets.

octopus or vampire

Do you ever feel like someone is always asking you for something?

You are standing in a room and octopus arms are coming at you from all sides?

This is how I feel right now. EVERY DAY. Almost all day long.

It is exhausting.

My hard drive is full - I cannot contain any more useful or useless information. I am tapped. I don't have anything else to give.

Yet, my parents want me to weigh in on every single decision they need to make. AND to reserve the right to reject absolutely everything I say in response to their demand.

The dog drops the toy on my toes whether I am cooking or talking on the phone or trying to do something else. If I ignore her, she taps my foot, my leg, anything exposed, with her wet nose and then looks up at me.

Every once in a while, I can hide in the bathroom, but it only works sometimes.

I try to get a long walk in every day. It's generally the only truly alone time I have, but it is also not unfettered. The cars rev their engines at me as I cross the street even though I definitely get across the street faster than they could walking. The dogs rush me if they are allowed to be in their front yards. I greet people as I walk because it is polite, but it is another invasion of my private time.

I am exhausted.

I have nothing more to give.

We hear about the emotional vampires. But does anyone ever tells us not to give in to the marauding octopi? 

 -----

I started the day out relentlessly cheerful.

It's been a hard week ... starting with getting back to work after 8 days off. So, you know, a pile of email, and any number of "crises" that are really just the consequence of people not handling their business, literally, because work is business.

Beyond the work re-entry, home re-entry was just as bumpy. 

I returned home to find both octogenarians not feeling well. 

Part of me felt that they were just trying to make me feel guilty for taking a few days for myself.

But, the biggest part was just worried.

My dad's health worsened over the next few days ... all seemingly inexplicable symptoms. His head hurt, and then his left side below his eye was swollen, his ear hurt, and then his whole eye was swollen. 

My mom remembered him saying something about feeling he had been bitten by a bug. He could neither remember being bitten or having said anything about it.

So, in case anyone was wondering, memory issues of octogenarians make them very unreliable narrators of most things except their childhood memories (which of course are also unreliable but in a different way). My dad is especially unreliable because he hates doctors and hates demonstrating any weakness... so it is very difficult to get him to say how he actually feels. So much so that I have to rely on his blood pressure spiking to know he is in pain.

Monday night we ended up in the ER. Even though during the day he felt fine because, of course, I asked him how he felt, several times.

You don't know me, so  you will just have to trust me that I spend most of my waking hours trying to keep my parents healthy. And I have done a good job, if I do say so myself.

But this time, the roadblocks we have faced trying to get him care and figuring out what exactly is going on have made me feel like a failure.

Worse - I feel like the universe is telling me that I am not good at caring for him. It is not an emotion based on reality. I get that. But I am exhausted. And I am my only cheerleader, so when I lose hope, it is a big deal.

I spent the bulk of the day at the edge of tears with breaks to speak sternly with many people standing between me and actual health care professionals. Let's just say they know at this point that I have zero fucks to give.

I feel like I am ending the day defeated.

This is distressing on so many levels. 

I have tried to bring my vacation vibes back into my "real" life. I have held my head high through several days of really challenging issues (I didn't even enumerate the work woes here). 

But now I feel defeated. 

I feel like I need to just say, I give in. I give up.

Why does the universe feel the need to beat me up and put me in my place all the time? That's what I need to know. It feels like there is no need to keep trying to hold my head up when I just get whacked back into submission.

 Menace to
~Taylor Johnson

after June Jordan

Nightly my enemies feast on my comrades
like maggots on money. Money being my enemy

as plastic is my enemy. My enemy everywhere
and in my home as wifi is

a money for me to reach my comrades
and kills my house plants. My enemy

is distance growing dark, distance growing
politely in my pocket as connection.

I must become something my enemies can’t eat, don’t have
a word for yet, my enemies being literate as a drone is

well-read and precise and quiet, as when I buy something
such as a new computer with which to sing against my enemies,
there is my enemy, silent and personal.

Copyright © 2020 by Taylor Johnson. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on August 18, 2020, by the Academy of American Poets.

 Along the Border
~Jasminne Mendez
                                        after Idra Novey
On a dirt road
On a drive to el campo
You found a batey
I cut the cane 
We sucked on a stalk
You gave me your arms 
I swam in the river
We locked the door 
Then the lights went out 
And the radio played 
You fingered the pesos 
I walked to the beach
We fried the fish 
You ate the mango  
I jumped in the water
We bought the flowers
Then the migrants came
And you bartered for more 
Then the sirens blared
And they were carried away
But we didn’t stop them 
Then the ocean swept
And the palm trees sagged
They were foreigners
We were foreigners  
And we lived there

Copyright © 2020 by Jasminne Mendez. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on September 15, 2020, by the Academy of American Poets.

Not Poetry Thursday, for Mother's Day

 My Nothings
 ~Ama Codjoe

You, who have bowed your head, shed
another season of antlers at my feet, for years
 
you fall asleep to the lullabies of dolls,
cotton-stuffed and frayed, ears damp with sleep
 
and saliva, scalps knotted with yarn, milk-breath,
and yawns. Birth is a torn ticket stub, a sugar
 
cone wrapped in a paper sleeve, the blackest
ice. It has been called irretrievable, a foreign
 
coin, the moon’s slip, showing, a pair
of new shoes rubbing raw your heel.
 
I lose the back of my earring and bend
the metal in such a way as to keep it
 
fastened to me. In the universe where we are
strangers, you kick with fury, impatient
 
as grass. I have eaten all your names.
In this garden you are blue ink, baseball cap
 
wishbone, pulled teeth, wet sand, hourglass.
There are locks of your hair in the robin’s nest
 
and clogging the shower drain. You, who are
covered in feathers, who have witnessed birth
 
give birth to death and watched death suck
her purple nipple. You long for a mother
 
like death’s mother, want to nurse until drunk
you dream of minnows swimming
 
through your ears—their iridescence causing
you to blink, your arms twitching.
 
Even while you sleep I feed you.

Copyright © 2018 Ama Codjoe. Used with permission of the author.

 Duplex: Black Mamas Praying

Antoinette Brim-Bell

Black Mamas stay on their knees praying. Cursing

the lies folks tell ‘bout how the world don’t need you—

“The world don’t need you” is a lie folks tell themselves

when they step over blood gelled black and slick.

Folks step over black blood gelled and slick to get

on with things—don’t bring bones to the cemetery.

Bones in the cemetery, hear the prophecy:

—together, bone to bone—tendons and flesh—skin—

bone to bone—tendons and flesh—skin—together,

four winds breathe into these slain, that they may live—

—breathe, four winds, into these slain. That they may live—

Calling forth prophecy is no light work, No—

but, for Joshua, the sun stood still—the moon stopped.

Black Mamas stay on your knees praying—praying—

Copyright © 2020 by Antoinette Brim-Bell. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on August 11, 2020, by the Academy of American Poets.

Poetry Month, Jenny Xie

 To Be a Good Buddhist Is Ensnarement
 ~Jenny Xie

The Zen priest says I am everything I am not.
 
In order to stop resisting, I must not attempt to stop resisting.
 
I must believe there is no need to believe in thoughts.
 
Oblivious to appetites that appear to be exits, and also entrances.
 
What is there to hoard when the worldly realm has no permanent
      vacancies?
 
Ten years I’ve taken to this mind fasting.
 
My shadow these days is bare.
 
It drives a stranger, a good fool.
 
Nothing can surprise.
 
Clarity is just questioning having eaten its fill.

Copyright © 2018 Jenny Xie. Used with permission of the author.

Poetry Month, Diannely Antigua

 Anniversary
~Diannely Antigua

Outside, an abandoned mattress sags with rain
and the driveway turns all sludge when I remember
I could’ve died eight years ago, in a bed
smaller than the one I share with a new lover
who just this morning found another grey hair in my afro,
and before resettling the wiry curl with the others,
kissed the freckle on my forehead.
I admit, I don’t know a love that doesn’t
destroy. Last night while we slept,
a mouse drowned in the rice pot
I left soaking in the sink. I tried
to make a metaphor out of this, the way
he took the mouse to the edge of the lake in the yard,
released it to a deeper grave. It was
an anniversary, just my lover
taking a dead thing away, taking it
somewhere I couldn’t see.

Copyright © 2020 by Diannely Antigua. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on September 28, 2020, by the Academy of American Poets.

Poetry Month, Claire Meuschke

 zero in on
~Claire Meuschke

I turn on a light in a room I pace away from
take comfort behind neon signs    nested in wires
an errant mirror propped against a commercial strip
or cradled awkwardly in the elbows of a passerby
my legs become their legs
mushrooms came before us needing no light
now they clean up oil spills    rebuild biomes
ripped green awnings of my youth have become
sleek noun and noun stores like Gold and Rust where 
you can buy boutique sticks    stones    dead flowers
I’m more turned on by the defunct Mustang
its turquoise alive in the rain    nostalgia is dangerous 
turquoise that took millions of years to form   mined up
when there was one woman per one thousand men
Jin Ho threw herself into the bay when she learned
she would be sold into prostitution
threw herself not jumped so even in history she is 
an object possessing herself in an act of dispossession 
you make everything about yourself    
as if there’s another realm where I am real
if only    there was something essential    
an oil I could purchase that would reflect only you 
in my floral wrists shielding my eyes
here    take everything    my social security number
my hope that the rush of a population will crash

Copyright © 2020 by Claire Meuschke. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on October 29, 2020, by the Academy of American Poets.

Poetry Month, Khaty Xiong

 The Seven Prisms of My Blood
~Khaty Xiong

after Yvan Goll

In the absent oils of your eyes two brown ores
resting leisurely on the view of your children.

You uncoil casually. My hand slipping
to the west and what was felled fills me

until I fall forward injuring your already dead arm.
I am so sorry. Our wills in a twist. Electric.

Some pulse between the gurney and the distant coffin.
My camera shutter clicking wildly around my neck.

Back home tus rab hlau searches for your hands.
The soil to harden. Rapture on the way. Onions

sprouting passionately as neglected gardens do.
The seven prisms of my blood bursting through my ears.

Your living children still living. Your garden goddess
drying the last goods in her shrine. With spring-like

precision the sun weeps until I boil. My head cracked
in four places. The ribbed earth catching fatal drops

of your blood or mine. You beseech me but in my time
I’ve slept away the sun. The underside of distance.

But I behold you now in this cool church and for a ransom.
I photograph you again and again. Your form crystalizing.

Your parted mouth a new annex to the ancestral house.
Your bones at the table. O how fair the jaundiced skies.

You get up to close that clear brittle door.

Copyright © 2020 by Khaty Xiong. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on November 10, 2020, by the Academy of American Poets.

Poetry Month, W. S. Merwin

 The Wings of Daylight

 ~W. S. Merwin

Brightness appears showing us everything

it reveals the splendors it calls everything

but shows it to each of us alone

and only once and only to look at

not to touch or hold in our shadows

what we see is never what we touch

what we take turns out to be something else

what we see that one time departs untouched

while other shadows gather around us

the world’s shadows mingle with our own

we had forgotten them but they know us

they remember us as we always were

they were at home here before the first came

everything will leave us except the shadows

but the shadows carry the whole story

at first daybreak they open their long wings

W. S. Merwin, “The Wings of Daylight” from Garden Time. Copyright © 2016 by W. S. Merwin.

 from “Please Bury Me in This”
 ~Allison Benis White

Now my neighbor through the wall playing piano, I imagine, with her

          eyes closed.
 
When she stops playing, she disappears.
 
I am still waiting for the right words to explain myself to you.
 
When there was nothing left to smoke, I drew on my lips with a pen

            until they were black.
 
Or is this what it means to be empty: to make no sound?
 
I pressed my mouth to the wall until I’d made a small gray ring.
 
Or maybe emptiness is a form of listening.
 
Maybe I am just listening.

Copyright © 2016 Allison Benis White. Used with permission of the author.

Poetry Month, Vanessa Angelica Villarreal (it might be a repeat)

 Corpse Flower
 ~Vanessa Angélica Villarreal

Yesterday, the final petal curled its soft lure into bone.
 
The flowerhead shed clean, I gathered up your spine
 
and built you on a dark day. You are still missing
 
some parts. Each morning, I curl red psalms into the shells
 
in your chest. I have buried each slow light: cardinal’s yolk, live
          seawater,
 
my trenza, a piece of my son’s umbilical cord, and still you don’t
          return.
 
A failure fragrant as magic. Ascend the spirit into the design.
 
My particular chiron: the record that your perfect feet ever graced
 
this earth. Homing signal adrift among stars, our tender impossible
          longing.
 
What have I made of your sacrifice. This bone: it is myself.

  

Copyright © 2018 Vanessa Angélica Villarreal. Used with permission of the author.

Poetry Month, Aldo Amparan

 Aubade at the City of Change
~Aldo Amparán

In this city
each door I cross
in search of your room

grows darker
than the sky, this silver
dome of morning spread

across the urban smog.
Country dark washes the city
light off the outskirts

& beyond

where you sleep in hiding,
where your face
wrapped in gauze

shines like sequin
in the lingering moon-drizzle.
I reach for you

at the corners of the clubs,
inside motel rooms,

where rent boys tumble
perspired bed sheets,
doubling you, your maleness

discharged,
your hipbones sticking
to my thighs, hard

stubble of your legs
scratching. The night I followed
a strange road, looking

to forget all this, starlight
spooled the gravel ribbon
leading back to the city

behind me, back
to the hospital room
where I last saw you—

Tonight, I’ll rest
on this road, I’ll look back
to the city of change

where one year
two skyscrapers lifted, a park
shed trees

for new thoroughfares,
& an old cinema
erupted to rebuild itself

in its place. I’ll stay
on the pavement,
suspended in time

like the broken sign announcing
You are entering ______, (a name

changed two years ago),
& I’ll wonder
if the hot breeze

blowing the nape
of my neck
is your unchanged

breath rising like candle
smoke from the city.

Copyright © 2021 by Aldo Amparán. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on March 4, 2021, by the Academy of American Poets.

Poetry Month! Tanaya Winder

 Becoming a Ghost
~Tanaya Winder

Ask me about the time
my brother ran towards the sun
arms outstretched. His shadow chased him
from corner store to church
where he offered himself in pieces.

Ask me about the time
my brother disappeared. At 16,
tossed his heartstrings over telephone wire,
dangling for all the rez dogs to feed on.
Bit by bit. The world took chunks of
my brother’s flesh.

Ask me about the first time
we drowned in history. 8 years old
during communion we ate the body of Christ
with palms wide open, not expecting wine to be
poured into our mouths. The bitterness
buried itself in my tongue and my brother
never quite lost his thirst for blood or vanishing
for more days than a shadow could hold.

Ask me if I’ve ever had to use
bottle caps as breadcrumbs to help
my brother find his way back home.
He never could tell the taste between
a scar and its wounding, an angel or demon.

Ask me if I can still hear his
exhaled prayers: I am still waiting to be found.
To be found, tell me why there is nothing
more holy than becoming a ghost.

Copyright © 2020 by Tanaya Winder. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on November 17, 2020, by the Academy of American Poets.

Poetry Month, Ada Limon: she must be reading my mind

 Give Me This
~Ada Limón

I thought it was the neighbor’s cat back
to clean the clock of the fledgling robins low
in their nest stuck in the dense hedge by the house
but what came was much stranger, a liquidity
moving all muscle and bristle. A groundhog
slippery and waddle thieving my tomatoes still
green in the morning’s shade. I watched her
munch and stand on her haunches taking such
pleasure in the watery bites. Why am I not allowed
delight? A stranger writes to request my thoughts
on suffering. Barbed wire pulled out of the mouth,
as if demanding that I kneel to the trap of coiled
spikes used in warfare and fencing. Instead,
I watch the groundhog closer and a sound escapes
me, a small spasm of joy I did not imagine
when I woke. She is a funny creature and earnest,
and she is doing what she can to survive.

Copyright © 2020 by Ada Limón. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on September 16, 2020, by the Academy of American Poets.

Poetry Month, Jesus Castillo

 Untitled
 ~Jesús Castillo

          Dear Empire, I am confused each time I wake inside you.
                        You invent addictions.  
          Are you a high-end graveyard or a child?
                        I see your children dragging their brains along.
                        Why not a god who loves water and dancing
                     instead of mirrors that recite your pretty features only?
          You wear a different face to each atrocity.
          You are un-unified and tangled.
                        Are you just gluttony?
                        Are you civilization’s slow grenade?
 
           I am confused each time I’m swallowed by your doors.
 
Copyright © 2018 Jesús Castillo. Used with permission of the author.

Poetry Month, Lynn Melnick

 When Bad Things Happen to Good People
 ~Lynn Melnick

You can only hear you look like a hooker so many times
before you become one. Spandex was really big
 
the year I stopped believing.
I babysat for the rabbi’s son, Isaac. There was luxe carpet
 
in every room of the condo. Isaac liked Legos
and we made a pasture and a patriarch and lots of wives.
 
In his car in his garage the rabbi handed me a self-help book
and put my hand on his crotch, ready to go.
 
I didn’t care.
I made good money.
 
Isaac lived to be 180 according to the bible.
Isaac is the only patriarch who didn’t have concubines.
 
Isaac is 30 now. Modern scholarship tells us
 
the patriarchs never existed. Experience taught me
the patriarchs are all we’ve got.
 
 
Copyright © 2019 Lynn Melnick. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on July 8, 2019, by the Academy of American Poets.

Poetry Month, Traci Brimhall

 Fledgling
 ~Traci Brimhall

I scare away rabbits stripping the strawberries
in the garden, ripened ovaries reddening
their mouths. You take down the hanging basket
and show it to our son—a nest, secret as a heart,
throbbing between flowers. Look, but don’t touch,
you instruct our son who has already begun
to reach for the black globes of a new bird’s eyes,
wanting to touch the world. To know it.
Disappointed, you say: Common house finch,
as if even banal miracles aren’t still pink
and blind and heaving with life. When the cat
your ex-wife gave you died, I was grateful.
I’d never seen a man grieve like that
for an animal. I held you like a victory,
embarrassed and relieved that this was how
you loved. To the bone of you. To the meat.
And we want the stricken pleasure of intimacy,
so we risk it. We do. Every day we take down
the basket and prove it to our son. Just look
at its rawness, its tenderness, it’s almost flying.

Copyright © 2017 Traci Brimhall. Used with permission of the author.

Poetry Month, E E Cummings

 Crepuscule
 ~E. E. Cummings

I will wade out
                             till my thighs are steeped in burn-
ing flowers
I will take the sun in my mouth
and leap into the ripe air
                                                   Alive
                                                                 with closed eyes
to dash against darkness
                                            in the sleeping curves of my
body
Shall enter fingers of smooth mastery
with chasteness of sea-girls
                                                  Will I complete the mystery
of my flesh
I will rise
                After a thousand years
lipping
flowers
              And set my teeth in the silver of the moon

 

This poem is in the public domain.

Poetry Thursday, Poetry Month! Rafael Campo

 California
~Rafael Campo

I used to dream of living here. I hike

a trail I know that at the end opens

to glorious views of the city I did

live in once, when men my age kept dying

while I learned how to diagnose AIDS.

Some dreams don’t come true, and some dreams become

nightmares. Across a field that smells of sage,

a few horses loiter. I want to think

that they forgive me, since they’re noble creatures.

They stamp and snort, reminding me they know

nothing of forgiveness. I used to dream

that someday I’d escape to San Francisco,

when I was still in high school and I knew.

Tall and muscled, the horses are like the jocks

on the football team who beat me once, as if pain

teaches truth and they knew I had to learn.

I used to dream I was as white as them,

that I could slam my locker closed and not

think of jail. Some nightmares come true,

like when my uncle got arrested for

cocaine. My family never talked about it,

which made me realize they could also feel shame.

That’s when I started dreaming I could be

a doctor someday, that I could get away,

prescribe myself a new life. Right now, as

the city comes into view, I think of those

animals and hope they got what they deserved.

The city stretches out its arms, its two bridges

to Oakland, to Stockton, to San Rafael,

to Vallejo; places I could have been from

but wasn’t. It looks just as it did

all those years ago. Yet I know it’s changed

because so many of us died, like Rico,

who took me up here for the first time.

We kicked a soccer ball around and smoked

a joint. I think we talked about our dreams,

but who can remember dreams. I look out

and the sun like your hand on my face

is warm, and for a moment I think this is

glorious, this is what forgiveness feels like.

Copyright © 2020 by Rafael Campo. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on October 5, 2020, by the Academy of American Poets.

Poetry Month, Oliver Wendell Holmes

 Departed Days
~Oliver Wendell Holmes

Yes, dear departed, cherished days,
   Could Memory’s hand restore
Your morning light, your evening rays
   From Time’s gray urn once more,—
Then might this restless heart be still,
   This straining eye might close,
And Hope her fainting pinions fold,
   While the fair phantoms rose.
 
But, like a child in ocean’s arms,
   We strive against the stream,
Each moment farther from the shore
   Where life’s young fountains gleam;—
Each moment fainter wave the fields,
   And wider rolls the sea;
The mist grows dark,—the sun goes down,—
Day breaks,—and where are we?

This poem is in the public domain.

Poetry Month! Vijay Seshadri

 Enlightenment
 ~Vijay Seshadri

“It’s all empty, empty,”
he said to himself.
“The sex and drugs. The violence, especially.”
So he went down into the world to exercise his virtue,
 
thinking maybe that would help.
He taught a little kid to build a kite.
He found a cure,
and then he found a cure
 
for his cure.
He gave a woman at the mercy of the weather
his umbrella, even though
icy rain fell and he had pneumonia.
He settled a revolution in Spain.
 
Nothing worked.
The world happens, the world changes,
the world, it is written here,
in the next line,
is only its own membrane—
 
and, oh yes, your compassionate nature,
your compassion for our kind.

Copyright © 2018 Vijay Seshadri. Used with permission of the author.

Poetry Month, Jason Reynolds

 Match
~Jason Reynolds

on the days the dark is vanta vicious

enough to swallow whole every holy

thing like my mother and the stigmata

she bleeds from a totem of raising black

on the days the cold is cold as all get out but

there’s no place to get in when even breath is

blade and hurts to think of thinking of breathing

let alone laughing

on the days I feel frayed and ‘fraid ripped

and torn from the lot plucked from family

and ‘nem and even myself sometimes my

name is the name of a stranger

my face still the face in the hole of a

hoodie just snatched out my own world

never mine and dragged and scraped

across the rough textured parts of this

being alive thing

i’m reminded of what it feels

like to have my head alight to

have it catch fire and blaze-lick

high above me and all this

i’m reminded to return to the truth that oh

yeah me my little self a match my little

self a cardboard cutout might could burn

this whole so-called kingdom down

Copyright © 2020 by Jason Reynolds. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on July 28, 2020 by the Academy of American Poets.

Poetry Month, Sandburg

 Monotone
~Carl Sandburg

    The monotone of the rain is beautiful, 
And the sudden rise and slow relapse 
Of the long multitudinous rain. 

    The sun on the hills is beautiful, 
Or a captured sunset sea-flung, 
Bannered with fire and gold. 

    A face I know is beautiful—
With fire and gold of sky and sea, 
And the peace of long warm rain.

This poem is in the public domain. Published in Poem-a-Day on April 12, 2020 by the Academy of American Poets. 

Poetry Thursday, Poetry Month! Louise Gluck

 The Red Poppy
~Louise Glück

The great thing
is not having
a mind. Feelings:
oh, I have those; they
govern me. I have
a lord in heaven
called the sun, and open
for him, showing him
the fire of my own heart, fire
like his presence.
What could such glory be
if not a heart? Oh my brothers and sisters,
were you like me once, long ago,
before you were human? Did you
permit yourselves
to open once, who would never
open again? Because in truth
I am speaking now
the way you do. I speak
because I am shattered.

From The Wild Iris, published by The Ecco Press, 1992. Copyright © 1992 by Louise Glück. All Rights reserved. Used with permission. This poem appeared in Poem-a-Day on October 10, 2020.

Poetry Month, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

 Song
 ~Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Stay, stay at home, my heart, and rest;
Home-keeping hearts are happiest,
For those that wander they know not where
Are full of trouble and full of care;
       To stay at home is best.
 
Weary and homesick and distressed,
They wander east, they wander west,
And are baffled and beaten and blown about
By the winds of the wilderness of doubt;
       To stay at home is best.
 
Then stay at home, my heart, and rest;
The bird is safest in its nest;
O’er all that flutter their wings and fly
A hawk is hovering in the sky;
       To stay at home is best.
 

This poem is in the public domain.

Poetry Month, Trumbull Stickney

 Six O'Clock
 ~Trumbull Stickney

Now burst above the city’s cold twilight
The piercing whistles and the tower-clocks:
For day is done. Along the frozen docks
The workmen set their ragged shirts aright.
Thro’ factory doors a stream of dingy light
Follows the scrimmage as it quickly flocks
To hut and home among the snow’s gray blocks.—
I love you, human labourers. Good-night!
Good-night to all the blackened arms that ache!
Good-night to every sick and sweated brow,
To the poor girl that strength and love forsake,
To the poor boy who can no more! I vow
The victim soon shall shudder at the stake
And fall in blood: we bring him even now.

This poem is in the public domain.

Poetry Month, Robert Frost

 Good Hours
~Robert Frost

I had for my winter evening walk—
No one at all with whom to talk,
But I had the cottages in a row
Up to their shining eyes in snow.
 
And I thought I had the folk within:
I had the sound of a violin;
I had a glimpse through curtain laces
Of youthful forms and youthful faces.
 
I had such company outward bound.
I went till there were no cottages found.
I turned and repented, but coming back
I saw no window but that was black.
 
Over the snow my creaking feet
Disturbed the slumbering village street
Like profanation, by your leave,
At ten o’clock of a winter eve.

This poem is in the public domain.

For Poetry Month

 1918, Iva Describes Her Deathbed
~LeAnne Howe
No, it wasn’t like that—you didn’t see
He was lying quietly, mouth shut, one hand on his chest,
The other frozen mid-stir

We were be side one another
When they found us
                          Be side, what a wonderful word
Be side is the scent I carry
Be side the first man I touched
And his touching me.
Be side him when I woke.
Fully awake,
                          I hear something,
                          Our baby perhaps or
A kitten crying for a saucer of milk
A kitten crying because she is lost
Because she is forsaken
Because she is left alive.
No, not the cat,
Me

Give me your hand, John Hoggatt
Remember our fishing hole at Byng?
A cold underground stream feeds it,
Gorgeous switch canes at the blue water’s edge 
Make sturdy Cherokee baskets
Remember?

Give me your hand, John
Together we’ll catch a mess of perch,
Cut the canes and load the wagon
We’ll have the folks over for supper
Just a half day’s wagon ride away,
Not far.

Give me your hand, dearest
Just last fall we helped build the Byng P.O.
Named in honor of Sir Julian Byng,
A British World War I hero.
Your father had a conniption.
You an Irishman, putting an Englishman forward!

Give me your hand, Johnny boy
I call you home now and I call you home tomorrow,
A thousand times as our bodies flake into stars,
Mad or sane, Get up John Hoggatt!
You can’t stay in this death bed
You—
Walk on Iva, says John, softly.
Walk on my girl,
My girl,
My

Copyright © 2020 by LeAnne Howe. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on November 11, 2020, by the Academy of American Poets.

Poetry Month! (back posting)

 Disclosure
~Camisha L. Jones

I’m sorry, could you repeat that. I’m hard of hearing.
To the cashier
To the receptionist
To the insistent man asking directions on the street

I’m sorry, I’m hard of hearing. Could you repeat that?
At the business meeting
In the writing workshop
On the phone to make a doctor’s appointment

I’m-sorry-I’m-sorry-I’m-so-sorry-I’m-hard-for-the-hearing

Repeat.

            Repeat.

Hello, my name is Sorry
To full rooms of strangers
I’m hard to hear

I vomit apologies everywhere
They fly on bat wings
towards whatever sound beckons

I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I am so, so sorry
             and repeating
                          and not hearing

Dear (again)
I regret to inform you

I       am

here
 
 
Copyright © 2020 by Camisha L. Jones. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on January 3, 2020, by the Academy of American Poets

Poetry Month! (back posting)

 Polycystic Study of Intimacy
~Aricka Foreman

But where do the breasts go first is my question.
I understand their fantasies of fleeing south. 

The winters are loud and long and white 
and by March, well. I wonder why I’m still 

in it too. Now the round pits thumb up 

beneath the skin, tender and hot to the touch, 

crushed by my new weight. This island I’ve 
had to make of myself brought a bevy, 

angered by easy pleasures: sugar, soy sauce, 
potatoes, ice cream. My love’s language 

is to make a meal, ask what I can take in, 
ask what maladies to avoid. As for my house:

touch is far and few between. Desire wanes 
between compresses of cloves cinnamon turmeric 

and honey. But in the mornings, a gulf between us, 
my hands are kissed. The blinds drawn to keep

the sun from disturbing my sleep while we wait 
patiently for my body’s quiet prayer of thanks.

Copyright © 2020 by Aricka Foreman. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on November 20, 2020, by the Academy of American Poets.

Not Poetry Thursday, preparing for April

 A Gate
 ~Donna Masini

I have oared and grieved,
grieved and oared,
treading a religion
of fear. A frayed nerve.
A train wreck tied to the train
of an old idea.
Now, Lord, reeling in violent
times, I drag these tidal
griefs to this gate.
I am tired. Deliver
me, whatever you are.
Help me, you who are never
near, hold what I love
and grieve, reveal this green
evening, myself, rain,
drone, evil, greed,
as temporary. Granted
then gone. Let me rail,
revolt, edge out, glove
to the grate. I am done
waiting like some invalid
begging in the nave.
Help me divine
myself, beside me no Virgil
urging me to shift gear,
change lane, sing my dirge
for the rent, torn world, and love
your silence without veering
into rage.

 

Copyright © 2018 Donna Masini. Used with permission of the author.

Not Poetry Thursday

 A Louder Thing
 ~Tiana Clark
             for Kenneka Jenkins and her mother
 
What is it about my mother’s face, a bright burn
when I think back, her teeth, her immaculate teeth
 
that I seldom saw or knew, her hair like braided
black liquorice. I am thinking of my mother’s face,
 
because she is like the mother in the news whose
daughter was found dead, frozen inside a hotel freezer.
 
My mother is this mourning mother who begged
the staff to search for her daughter, but was denied.
 
Black mothers are often seen pleading for their children,
shown stern and wailing, held back somehow by police
 
or caution tape—
 
a black mother just wants to see her baby’s body.
a black mother just wants to cover her baby’s body
 
with a sheet on the street. A black mother
leaves the coffin open for all the world to see,
 
and my mother is no different. She is worried
about seeing the last minutes of me: pre-ghost,
 
stumbling alone through empty hotel hallways
failing to find balance, searching for a friend,
 
a center, anyone, to help me home. Yes.
I’ve gotten into a van with strangers.
 
I’ve taken drugs with people that did not care
how hard or fast I smoked or blew.
 
But what did I know of Hayden? What did I know
of that poem besides my mother’s hands, her fist,
 
her prayers and premonitions? What did I know
of her disembodied voice hovering over the seams
 
of my life like the vatic song the whip-poor-will
makes when it can sense a soul dispersing?
 
Still. My mother wants to know where I am,
who I am with, and when will I land.
 
I get frustrated by her insistence on my safety
and survival. What a shame I am. I’m sorry, mom.
 
Some say Black love is different. Once,
I asked my mother why she always yelled
 
at me when I was little. She said I never listened
to her when she spoke to me in hushed tones
 
like a white mother would, meaning soft volume
is a privilege. Yeah, that’s right. I am using a stereotype
 
to say a louder thing. I am saying my mother
was screaming when she lost me in the mall once.
 
I keep hearing that voice everywhere I go.
I follow my name. The music of her rage sustains me.

Copyright © 2019 by Tiana Clark. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on March 25, 2019, by the Academy of American Poets. An excerpt from this poem originally appeared in an essay for Oxford American.

Not Poetry Thursday

 After He’s Decided to Leave
 ~Elizabeth Acevedo

When the bottle of hot sauce shattered in the kitchen
he stood in the doorframe, shook his head at the mess.

Not worried if I was injured,
mostly curious at what else it was I’d broken.

You are so clumsy with the things you hold,
he never said.

The red stain on my chest bloomed pungent,
soaked any apology.

I used his shirt, the one I slept in,
to wipe the counter and pale-colored kitchen floor.

That night and the next for a straight week
as he prepared boxes to leave

I hunched and scrubbed the tiles. Couldn’t rid myself
of the things that I’d sullied, of the look he left behind.

Copyright © 2019 Elizabeth Acevedo. Used with permission of the author.

Not Poetry Thursday, powerful way to enter the weekend

 My Eyes Have Seen What My Heart Has Felt
 ~Cheleta Tuckson

Guilty Guilty Guilty for actions that took my sympathy
Shackles around my wrist shackles at my feet
Prom and high school graduation these eyes will never see
My heart said, Oh well
At least you will no longer have to endure your daily home abuse
I grew into a woman unbalanced behind those wire fences
Recall (3xs) that’s all I knew
Always committing some illegal offenses straight to the SHU
These eyes have seen the bottom of boots,
Mace in the face,
The heavy blue dress while people watch you 24hrs a day,
A lock in a sock,
Shall I go on?
My heart was always heavy
when I constantly placed myself back in the same abuse
I thought I would escape
I knew I had something in me worth showing the world, but what?
Fighting my demons was real tuff
A peaceful life didn’t feel so ruff
I opened my mouth and people was shocked
That I could read, count, think, understand, listen, play chess, learn a
     trade
They started to see my worth
My eyes have seen a life the majority would have failed surviving
Rape, abuse, homelessness, parent-less, drugs, prison, mental health,
     failure
My heart became strong enough to finally love myself
And I finally looked up to the woman in the mirror
 

Copyright © 2019 Cheleta Tuckson. Used with permission of the author.

About This Poem

 I am part of an organization called The W.I.R.E (Women Involved in Reentry Efforts) and as a group we wrote poems about our experience being incarcerated and how it impacted us. My poem is based on real experiences I had to overcome during my prison sentence. I served eight years in federal prison as a first time offender at the age of 18. So I went into the system young, wild, and rebellious. I spent five years on and off in solitary confinement, but I still was able to complete all of the programs that were offered to me and ended up at the top of my classes. I believe writing is a major outlet for incarcerated women and men. “The pen is mightier than the sword.” So instead of us lashing our pain out on those around us, expressing ourselves with words can be a tool to receive closure, help, and to assist someone else who may have experienced something similar. People relate more, and really listen, when you have experienced the same thing they have and have overcome it

Poetry Thursday

 Seattle Sun
 ~Prageeta Sharma

There is a quick sharp pull that one might feel, with it a weighted turn to finding brightness where there is none. I have Seattle to thank for this, but the home of ours must be built anew. And yet I am not in my method and have no sense of worship for the work or to erupt into a broken sense, but I am appreciating the copious sunlight with a startled turf-forming consciousness. You must take the fear of normalcy and the aerodynamics of emotions that fuel the sense of the present and jerk it to a gluttonous love. The wood pulp, the paper, the feeling of how-to ache of these conditions and do not permit the imagination to fold into its chamber. How do I turn this summer around? Is there still an I and no You in this problemed space? Can I sort through our shared moments without your orange pants, your color-blinded syllogisms, and hull of near-end turbulence? I reckon with these days and the practice of finding the sun to its glory so that whatever score I have to settle with sorrow does not affect germination thus far.

Copyright © 2017 Prageeta Sharma. Used with permission of the author.

Not Poetry Thursday, Lucille Clifton!

 blessing the boats
 ~Lucille Clifton
(at St. Mary’s)
 
may the tide
that is entering even now
the lip of our understanding
carry you out
beyond the face of fear
may you kiss
the wind then turn from it
certain that it will
love your back    may you
open your eyes to water
water waving forever
and may you in your innocence
sail through this to that

From Quilting: Poems 1987–1990 by Lucille Clifton. Copyright © 2001 by Lucille Clifton. Reprinted with permission of BOA Editions Ltd. All rights reserved.

Not Poetry Thursday

 from Little Runaway
 ~Krystal Languell

(the passports curled up) (it was so humid in our rented room)
           
            (travel to forget the criminal element) (in my bad blood)

(Nothing very significant at the cemetery)            (an unremarkable
      lunch salad)

                        (The thrift shop closed six months ago)

((We lit candles for a man who died) (rusted cellar grate)) (near to
      home)

            (I was afraid (and I made my friend afraid too))

                        (another woman altogether said they may be (murderers))

((I'm more worried about) being backed over by construction vehicles)

            (in other places)            (I do pray for my family's safety)

                                    (mother says it isn't working)
 
Copyright © 2018 Krystal Languell. Used with permission of the author.

Not Poetry Thursday

 Lies I Tell
 ~Sara Borjas

A woman has a window in her face: that is the truth. I look like my mother: that is the truth. I want to tell you I am not like her: that is the truth. I am ashamed walking in a woman’s body: that is the truth. I wish to take back everything I say: that is the truth. A window can be a mirror. It can also be a door: that is the truth. As a girl, my mother slept in a shack with no windows and one door: that is the truth. My grandma would slam windows: truth. A mother’s hands are stronger than God: truth. We often use fruit to describe a bruise, like plum or blackberry: truth. My mother’s window blackberried: truth. My mother’s door peached: truth. She loves peaches: that is the truth. My father could not stand them in our house: that is the truth. We had three doors and nine windows in our house: that is the truth. A woman has a face in her window: truth. A father has a window but I don’t know where it is: truth. What burrows is the peach fuzz, he said: that is the truth. I have never been close enough to a peach to eat one: truth. The worst things last on the skin: truth. I don’t like not having things: truth. My father has one door but I can’t find it: truth. Not all windows open: that is the truth. One night I see my father crying in the yard, head in his hands: that is the truth. I make things up that I want for myself: that is the truth.

 

Copyright © 2018 Sara Borjas. Used with permission of the author.

Not Poetry Thursday

 19th Birthday in Paris
 ~Gabrielle Civil

The crown of it was fire:
a stolen wish, this city
of bridges valving the heart,
ancient and scarred, tongues
of stone, this haughty sister,
matronly and jeweled, who
straightened her skirts,
looked me down in the eye.
Girl, are you sure
you’re ready to rise?
Question mark of candles,
waiting for breath.

This vision, a pistil
of wavery bloom, a man
before me, the first refused:
a bite off our plates,
an outdoor café, the
privilege to witness
him, fierce and poor,
thrust forth his heart,
douse his body with oil,
purse his lips and blow out
tongues of flame. Utterance
of desire and gasoline,
a presage of future, some of it
mine. In the distance,
iron stippled with light.

Copyright © 2018 Gabrielle Civil. Used with permission of the author.

Poetry Thursday, from the Poet Laureate!

 Remember
 ~Joy Harjo

Remember the sky that you were born under,
know each of the star’s stories.
Remember the moon, know who she is.
Remember the sun’s birth at dawn, that is the
strongest point of time. Remember sundown
and the giving away to night.
Remember your birth, how your mother struggled
to give you form and breath. You are evidence of
her life, and her mother’s, and hers.
Remember your father. He is your life, also.
Remember the earth whose skin you are:
red earth, black earth, yellow earth, white earth
brown earth, we are earth.
Remember the plants, trees, animal life who all have their
tribes, their families, their histories, too. Talk to them,
listen to them. They are alive poems.
Remember the wind. Remember her voice. She knows the
origin of this universe.
Remember you are all people and all people
are you.
Remember you are this universe and this
universe is you.
Remember all is in motion, is growing, is you.
Remember language comes from this.
Remember the dance language is, that life is.
Remember.

“Remember.” Copyright ©1983 by Joy Harjo from She Had Some Horses by Joy Harjo. Used by permission of W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.

Not Poetry Thursday

 The Exercise of Forgiving
 ~Felicia Zamora

Six months ago, the measuring of whiskey
left in the jug, urine on the mattress, couch
cushions, the crotch of pants in wear. You watch
how breath lifts a chest, how a person breathes—
sick hobbies of when we must. You watch
how you become illiterate at counting.
Six or seven broken breathalyzers; a joke
formulates in your throat & you
choke back your windpipe as punchline.
How many sobs in parking lots before sun
lugged above horizon? The heart hammers
all too familiar songs behind your ribs
& these notes cut away at you. You read online
how television, internet, starving children
in numbers greater than three, polar bears,
rain forests, light from an off direction
all desensitize the human brain’s ability
to empathize. You wonder how
you chew the word panic in your jaws,
let meaning burrow into molars
seep in crevasses between root & bone.
How rot tends to the insides. You wonder
now with the inpatient tags, the cafeteria visits,
the doctors, the psychiatrists, the when do you
get to come home, the hesitation of our bodies
sharing space again, the words I have not
drank today & your brain in flinch, how you
excavate organs for what’s left, for salvage.

Copyright © 2019 Felicia Zamora. Used with permission of the author.

Not Poetry Thursday

 First Forty Days
 ~Michelle Gil-Montero

1

Muddled stillness
All summer
Sun

Punched the yellow jacket nest

Cavernous paper
Valved like a parched heart

Over and over
I let it

Beat outside
My body

No dark to cradle
The living part

2

The glare sears seeing 
                       Something moves out of the corner
                                                                    Often it is more           nothing 
Tumbling
From its silk sack.             

This stillness

                          Shifts. Streak 

Of tiny particulars
Pained in relation: the experience still

So still
It is invisible?

It will settle, I will tell you
Where the edges belong

3

River
That bare aspiring edge
That killing arrow
             Feathered from its
Own wing

Then the third
River forms

When pain’s lit

Taper
Drips

Soft lip
Of my vision

Effacing, radiates
A late, silty light
My life

Slowly bottoming
Into thought

Copyright © 2018 Michelle Gil-Montero. Used with permission of the author.

Not Poetry Thursday, on patriotism

 For the Republic
 ~Magdalena Zurawski

The way I’m strapped into myself
I can’t escape. Wake up and be a better person! Clip your toenails,
and by sun-rise make sure
                        you’re sitting at the table reading Arendt.

With a little focus

I could become
everything I ever wished
to be: level-headed and
buoyed,
            a real (wo)man of conviction. But no, at night,
I’m like an old towel on the line, tossing and
turning in the wind of the dear leader’s
words. What does
                                      it matter, if I grind
                         my teeth for the old ladies of
                         Puerto Rico? Or take a knee
                         in the front yard every time I hear
                         the national anthem
                         in my head? The neighbor just thinks
                         I’m weeding and waves.

Copyright © 2018 Magdalena Zurawski. Used with permission of the author.

Not Poetry Thursday, on beauty

 Beauty
~Elinor Wylie

Say not of Beauty she is good,
Or aught but beautiful,
Or sleek to doves’ wings of the wood
Her wild wings of a gull.

Call her not wicked; that word’s touch
Consumes her like a curse;
But love her not too much, too much,
For that is even worse.
 
O, she is neither good nor bad,
But innocent and wild!
Enshrine her and she dies, who had
The hard heart of a child.
 
This poem is in the public domain.

Poetry Thursday

 Change of Address

 ~Deborah Paredez

Rate your pain the physical

therapist instructs and I am trying

not to do what they say

women do lowballing the number

trying hard not to try so hard

to be the good patient scattered

assurances lining the aisles like

dead petals and me left

holding nothing but what’s been

emptied out obviously I am over-

thinking it when I settle on someplace

in the middle six or seven

times a week I walk past the street

vendor on Broadway and say

nothing while eyeing the same

pom-topped hat the physical

therapist asking me now

for the name of that Chinese place

where I sometimes go asking

for the patient just before me

a street vendor in need

of a cheap massage as I lay

the plain wreckage of my shoulders

in the shallow hollows

the street vendor’s body has left

on the padded table in the center

of the story I sometimes read

to my girl a cap seller sleeps

under a tree’s shade waking

to find the monkeys in the

branches above have plundered

his wares he waves his hands shakes

his fists until his rage makes him

throw his cap to the ground and the

monkeys mimic him and down

float his caps his fury finally

fulsome enough to restore

what he’s lost you’ve got to find

another way to move the physical

therapist modeling for me the poses

to mimic assuring her I won’t move

what’s left of the heavy boxes later

unpacking the last of them I learn

about the woman who once lived

here Charlotte who twisted the cap and shook

out the pills Charlotte who swallowed

and slipped into sleep in her last act

of volition here in this bedroom where

the westward windows go on longing

for dawn and I am trying to move in

a new way to pull the mess of sloughed

hair from the bathtub drain to move

in the space of another’s suffering

scrub the caked toothpaste

from the sink make a home

in the space where suffering

may meet its end.

Copyright © 2017 Deborah Paredez. Used with permission of the author.

Not Poetry Thursday, on destiny or fate

 Tarot Readings Daily
 ~Joy Ladin

They’re reading Tarot cards right now,
in the little pink house with the sign in the yard.
Shadows spider across still-green lawn
whose fate, so far, defies the frosts.

Someone asks the right question,
draws the right card.
Many cups in the immediate future;
radiance pouring down.

They know the future,
the creatures in the yard:
night, thirst, frost.
Only the sapiens in the house believe

fire, water, air, and earth
would bother to reveal
when to fear and love.
The one who’s paying

draws another card.
Outside, in the yard,
a squirrel noses seed that fell
like radiance, from above.

Copyright © 2017 Joy Ladin. Used with permission of the author.

trauma

   "It is one thing to process memories of trauma, but it is an entirely different matter to confront the inner void -- the holes in the soul that result from not having been wanted, not having been seen, and not having been allowed to speak the truth. If your parents' faces never lit up when they looked at you, it's hard to know what it feels like to be loved and cherished. If you come from an incomprehensible world filled with secrecy and fear, it's almost impossible to find the words to express what you have endured. If you grew up unwanted and ignored, it is a major challenge to develop a visceral sense of agency and self-worth."

   [Our] research ... show[s] that people who have felt unwanted as children, and those who did not remember feeling safe with anyone while growing up, did not fully benefit from conventional psychotherapy, presumably because they could not activate old traces of feeling cared for." 

Bessel van der Kolk, MD from The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, mind, and body in the healing of trauma

I cannot begin to express how I felt reading words that encapsulated and validated my life experience. It brings tears to my eyes every time I reread it.

I honestly don't know where I go from here, but, even though only in text, feeling seen matters.

Not Poetry Thursday

 Your Own Palm
 ~Tarfia Faizullah

O, my daughter, once I was a poor boy
folding peppers into my sarong
to walk three miles to sell, but what
can you tell me of sorrow,
or of the courage it takes to buy
a clock instead of a palmful
of rice to go with the goat
we can’t afford to slaughter?
Look at the lines Allah etched
on your own palm: you have
a big brain and a good heart,
still, you don’t use either enough!
Once, I walked through a war
beside my brother parallel
to a gray river. Why do you care
about the few damp bills
I didn’t give to our mother?
Or the clock I bought to take apart? Well,
I left that country with a palmful
of seeds I’ve thrown across
this dry, hard Texas. Allah
has blessed me with this vine
that coils upward. I care
so little for what others say, ask
your mother. That nose ring
doesn’t suit you, by the way.
Once, you were small enough
to cradle. There was a coil
in that clock made of metal . . . O,
that something so small can matter . . .
                            No daughter, I
don’t need a glass of water. Look,
this will grow into maatir neeche aloo.
In the spring, you see, its purple leaves
will be the size of your own palm.
In the village, there is a saying:
“Dhuniya dhari, kochu pathar paani.”
I don’t know where the clock is
or how much it’s worth! There was
not enough for kerosene . . . why
do you always ask what can’t be answered?

Copyright © 2017 Tarfia Faizullah. Used with permission of the author.

Not Poetry Thursday, on secrets

 Secrets
 ~Lola Ridge
Secrets
infesting my half-sleep…
did you enter my wound from another wound
brushing mine in a crowd…
or did I snare you on my sharper edges
as a bird flying through cobwebbed trees at sun-up
carries off spiders on its wings?
 
Secrets,
running over my soul without sound,
only when dawn comes tip-toeing
ushered by a suave wind,
and dreams disintegrate
like breath shapes in frosty air,
I shall overhear you, bare-foot,
scatting off into the darkness….
I shall know you, secrets
by the litter you have left
and by your bloody foot-prints.

This poem is in the public domain.