Please, poetry. A stanza, a verse, a line, half the damn poem, whatever poem you want to share with us. Anything you have read over and over again and love. You can share your own poetry too, if you’re into it! The world needs poetry.
I know that line breaks get all fuck-y when you try to put poetry into threads and posts, so know that I am suffering *with* you.
It's maybe silly, but do you remember when that poem by the little 6 year old boy Nael that went viral? I think about it all the time and have it saved on my desktop. It strengthens my heart.
My dear departed mother loved this poem- she memorized it as a schoolgirl in England in the 1920s, the way all schoolgirls did back then, and recited it to me, perfectly, long into old age (she died at 95):
'Cargoes'
Quinquireme of Nineveh from distant Ophir,
Rowing home to haven in sunny Palestine,
With a cargo of ivory,
And apes and peacocks,
Sandalwood, cedarwood, and sweet white wine.
Stately Spanish galleon coming from the Isthmus,
Dipping through the Tropics by the palm-green shores,
With a cargo of diamonds,
Emeralds, amethysts,
Topazes, and cinnamon, and gold moidores.
Dirty British coaster with a salt-caked smoke stack,
Butting through the Channel in the mad March days,
after looking – how long? More than ten years – your watch
its leather band still curved
around the memory of your wrist
(This was from Seattle's Poetry on Buses series like 20 years ago but it's stuck with me all that time because it says so much with so few words. I've never forgotten the poem but have sadly forgotten the poet's name.)
"The Stepmother" by Sabrina Orah Mark, from WILD MILK
"You smell like Florida. We hate you." The Stepmother knows from the crushed handwriting this note is from The Stepchildren. At the bottom of the note is a drawing of a mouse. The Stepmother wants to know what does the mouse mean. The mouse seems lonely and afraid. Its eyes are too big. The Stepmother peels a hard-boiled egg, eats it very quietly, and thinks about the mouse, and Florida, and smelling like Florida. No one wants to smell like Florida. If The Stepmother had any guts she would go to the yard this instant and paint all the trees white, but The Stepmother has no guts. If The Stepmother had any guts her husband who is the father of The Stepchildren who believe she smells like Florida would come home and see the trees and say what in god's name have you done? Do you think we're living in a goddamn fairy tale here? The Stepmother would stand there with her large bucket of paint, and her guts, and tell her husband the trees are now white because she is not a real Mother, she will never be a real Mother, and also she is thinking of running away with the mouse. She would sob and say something strange and dramatic like how she feels as though she's three plagues short of an exodus even though she doesn't really have any plagues except for smelling like Florida. But none of this will happen because The Stepmother has no guts, and this is America not a fairy tale. This is a state in America that is not Florida even though The Stepmother is reeking of it. The Stepmother wants to know what does the mouse mean. It is a beautiful mouse. The Stepmother has no guts but she does have some scissors which she uses to cut the mouse out. No one wants to be lonely, and afraid, and live in a note about smelling like Florida. Once The Stepmother cuts the mouse out the mouse shivers. It is a very sad shiver. Sadder than all The Stepmother's sadnesses, and somehow this comforts her. The Stepmother isn't certain whether the shiver is from coldness or relief, but she cuts off a strand of her hair and wraps it around the mouse's shoulders anyway. The mouse falls asleep in the palm of The Stepmother's hand, and dreams of guts, and white trees, and the kindness of The Stepmother. The mouse is what the mouse means. It's The Stepchildren who mean something else. It's The Stepchildren who mean something far, far away, like a Mother. When The Stepchildren come home The Stepmother will hug and kiss them and wipe their dirty little hands until their hearts break in two.
My favorite part of "Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front" by Wendell Berry, of which I have a broadside hanging on my wall and read at least once a week:
My husband translated a poem for me when we first met, which has become a sort of theme for us, about meeting someone far from home with whom you now have a bond of shared experience:
You are also from my hometown;
You must have news of our native land.
Tell me, before you left its delicately wrought windows,
Since you said poetry we wrote is also welcome... here's something I've been workshopping as part of coming to understand that I'm nonbinary.
"woman" is a baggy sweatshirt:
it's been here forever, but
i couldn't tell you who gave it to me.
it goes on over my body,
which isn't to say that it fits.
it has pockets, thanks, stretched wide
from everything i crammed in it.
it has many holes, fraying
from all the time i spent picking at it.
"woman" is a baggy sweatshirt, but
maybe, for today, i'll wear something else.
Wild Geese by Mary Oliver:
You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting -
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.
"The Two-Headed Calf"
by Laura Gilpin
Tomorrow when the farm boys find this
freak of nature, they will wrap his body
in newspaper and carry him to the museum.
But tonight he is alive and in the north
field with his mother. It is a perfect
summer evening: the moon rising over
the orchard, the wind in the grass.
And as he stares into the sky, he sees
twice as many stars as usual.
To the Woman Crying Uncontrollably in the Next Stall, Kim Addonizio
If you ever woke in your dress at 4 A.M. ever
closed your legs to a man you loved opened
them for one you didn't moved against
a pillow in the dark stood miserably on a beach
seaweed clinging to your ankles paid
good money for a bad haircut backed away
from a mirror that wanted to kill you bled
into the back seat for lack of a tampon
if you swam across a river under rain sang
using a dildo for a microphone stayed up
to watch the moon eat the sun entire
ripped out the stitches in your heart
because why note if you think nothing &
no one can / listen I love you joy is coming
The Gladdest Thing, by Wendy Cope
At lunchtime I bought a huge orange—
The size of it made us all laugh.
I peeled it and shared it with Robert and Dave—
They got quarters and I had a half.
And that orange, it made me so happy,
As ordinary things often do
Just lately. The shopping. A walk in the park.
This is peace and contentment. It’s new.
The rest of the day was quite easy.
I did all the jobs on my list
And enjoyed them and had some time over.
I love you. I’m glad I exist.
I know
you and I
are not about poems or
other sentimental bullshit
but I have to tell you
even the way
you drink your coffee
knocks me the fuck out
- Clementine von Radics
Separation by W. S. Merwin
"Your absence has gone through me
Like thread through a needle.
Everything I do is stitched with its color."
https://poets.org/poem/raincoat
The Raincoat
Ada Limón -
When the doctor suggested surgery
and a brace for all my youngest years,
my parents scrambled to take me
to massage therapy, deep tissue work,
osteopathy, and soon my crooked spine
unspooled a bit, I could breathe again,
and move more in a body unclouded
by pain. My mom would tell me to sing
songs to her the whole forty-five minute
drive to Middle Two Rock Road and forty-
five minutes back from physical therapy.
She’d say, even my voice sounded unfettered
by my spine afterward. So I sang and sang,
because I thought she liked it. I never
asked her what she gave up to drive me,
or how her day was before this chore. Today,
at her age, I was driving myself home from yet
another spine appointment, singing along
to some maudlin but solid song on the radio,
and I saw a mom take her raincoat off
and give it to her young daughter when
a storm took over the afternoon. My god,
I thought, my whole life I’ve been under her
raincoat thinking it was somehow a marvel
that I never got wet.
Voice of God by Mary Karr (which I first read in Ella Risbridger’s wonderful poetry anthology SET ME ON FIRE: A POEM FOR EVERY FEELING)
Ninety percent of what’s wrong with you
could be cured with a hot bath,
says God from the bowels of the subway.
but we want magic, to win
the lottery we never bought a ticket for.
(Tenderly, the monks chant, embrace
the suffering.) The voice of God does not pander,
offers no five year plan, no long-term
solution, nary an edict. It is small & fond & local.
Don’t look for your initials in the geese
honking overhead or to see thru the glass even
darkly. It says the most obvious crap—
put down that gun, you need a sandwich.
What I Didn’t Know Before
was how horses simply give birth to other
horses. Not a baby by any means, not
a creature of liminal spaces, but a four-legged
beast hellbent on walking, scrambling after
the mother. A horse gives way to another
horse and then suddenly there are two horses,
just like that. That’s how I loved you. You,
off the long train from Red Bank carrying
a coffee as big as your arm, a bag with two
computers swinging in it unwieldily at your
side. I remember we broke into laughter
when we saw each other. What was between
us wasn’t a fragile thing to be coddled, cooed
over. It came out fully formed, ready to run
Thanks to the (exquisite) show, I am deep into an Emily Dickinson phase.
I am afraid to own a Body—
I am afraid to own a Soul—
Profound—precarious Property—
Possession, not optional—
Double Estate—entailed at pleasure
Upon an unsuspecting Heir—
Duke in a moment of Deathlessness
And God, for a Frontier.
My current favorite is Two-Headed Calf by Laura Gilpen: https://rolfpotts.com/two-headed-calf-by-laura-gilpin/
Tomorrow when the farm boys find this
freak of nature, they will wrap his body
in newspaper and carry him to the museum.
But tonight he is alive and in the north
field with his mother. It is a perfect
summer evening: the moon rising over
the orchard, the wind in the grass. And
as he stares into the sky, there are
twice as many stars as usual.
It's maybe silly, but do you remember when that poem by the little 6 year old boy Nael that went viral? I think about it all the time and have it saved on my desktop. It strengthens my heart.
The tiger
He destroyed his cage
Yes
YES
The tiger is out
My dog Percy turned 5 (his rescue birthday) yesterday, Mary Oliver’s dog was named percy, here is a percy poem from her:
Love, love, love, says Percy.
And hurry as fast as you can
along the shining beach, or the rubble, or the dust.
Then, go to sleep.
Give up your body heat, your beating heart.
Then, trust.
“I Ask Percy How I Should Live My Life” by Mary Oliver,
This one was very important to me when I was 2 months pregnant in November of 2016.
The Risk of Birth, by Madeleine L'Engle
This is no time for a child to be born,
With the earth betrayed by war & hate
And a comet slashing the sky to warn
That time runs out & the sun burns late.
That was no time for a child to be born,
In a land in the crushing grip of Rome;
Honor & truth were trampled to scorn—
Yet here did the Savior make His home.
When is the time for love to be born?
The inn is full on the planet earth,
And by a comet the sky is torn—
Yet Love still takes the risk of birth.
“Someone will remember us, I say, even in another time” — my absolute favorite fragment of Sappho
I have found myself sleeping a lot more lately and am really feeling this poem, In Praise of My Bed by Meredith Holmes:
At last I can be with you!
The grinding hours
since I left your side!
The labor of being fully human,
working my opposable thumb,
talking, and walking upright.
Now I have unclasped
unzipped, stepped out of.
Husked, soft, a be-er only,
I do nothing, but point
my bare feet into your
clean smoothness
feel your quiet strength
the whole length of my body.
I close my eyes, hear myself
moan, so grateful to be held this way.
so many of my faves have been posted! it truly warms my heart
here's another, by Kaylin Haught
God Says Yes To Me
I asked God if it was okay to be melodramatic
and she said yes
I asked her if it was okay to be short
and she said it sure is
I asked her if I could wear nail polish
or not wear nail polish
and she said honey
she calls me that sometimes
she said you can do just exactly
what you want to
Thanks God I said
And is it even okay if I don't paragraph
my letters
Sweetcakes God said
who knows where she picked that up
what I'm telling you is
Yes Yes Yes
Antilamentation, by Dorianne Laux:
Regret nothing. Not the cruel novels you read
to the end just to find out who killed the cook.
Not the insipid movies that made you cry in the dark,
in spite of your intelligence, your sophistication.
Not the lover you left quivering in a hotel parking lot,
the one you beat to the punchline, the door, or the one
who left you in your red dress and shoes, the ones
that crimped your toes, don't regret those.
Not the nights you called god names and cursed
your mother, sunk like a dog in the livingroom couch,
chewing your nails and crushed by loneliness.
You were meant to inhale those smoky nights
over a bottle of flat beer, to sweep stuck onion rings
across the dirty restaurant floor, to wear the frayed
coat with its loose buttons, its pockets full of struck matches.
You've walked those streets a thousand times and still
you end up here. Regret none of it, not one
of the wasted days you wanted to know nothing,
when the lights from the carnival rides
were the only stars you believed in, loving them
for their uselessness, not wanting to be saved.
You've travelled this far on the back of every mistake,
ridden in dark-eyed and morose but calm as a house
after the TV set has been pitched out the upstairs
window. Harmless as a broken ax. Emptied
of expectation. Relax. Don't bother remembering any of it.
Let's stop here, under the lit sign
on the corner, and watch all the people walk by.
I would love to live
Like a river flows,
Carried by the surprise
Of its own unfolding.
~ John O'Donohue, Conamara Blues
We Are Going, by Oodgeroo Noonuccal (a wonderful Australian Aboriginal poet)
They came in to the little town
A semi-naked band subdued and silent
All that remained of their tribe.
They came here to the place of their old bora ground
Where now the many white men hurry about like ants.
Notice of the estate agent reads: 'Rubbish May Be Tipped Here'.
Now it half covers the traces of the old bora ring.
'We are as strangers here now, but the white tribe are the strangers.
We belong here, we are of the old ways.
We are the corroboree and the bora ground,
We are the old ceremonies, the laws of the elders.
We are the wonder tales of Dream Time, the tribal legends told.
We are the past, the hunts and the laughing games, the wandering camp fires.
We are the lightening bolt over Gaphembah Hill
Quick and terrible,
And the Thunderer after him, that loud fellow.
We are the quiet daybreak paling the dark lagoon.
We are the shadow-ghosts creeping back as the camp fires burn low.
We are nature and the past, all the old ways
Gone now and scattered.
The scrubs are gone, the hunting and the laughter.
The eagle is gone, the emu and the kangaroo are gone from this place.
The bora ring is gone.
The corroboree is gone.
And we are going.'
My dear departed mother loved this poem- she memorized it as a schoolgirl in England in the 1920s, the way all schoolgirls did back then, and recited it to me, perfectly, long into old age (she died at 95):
'Cargoes'
Quinquireme of Nineveh from distant Ophir,
Rowing home to haven in sunny Palestine,
With a cargo of ivory,
And apes and peacocks,
Sandalwood, cedarwood, and sweet white wine.
Stately Spanish galleon coming from the Isthmus,
Dipping through the Tropics by the palm-green shores,
With a cargo of diamonds,
Emeralds, amethysts,
Topazes, and cinnamon, and gold moidores.
Dirty British coaster with a salt-caked smoke stack,
Butting through the Channel in the mad March days,
With a cargo of Tyne coal,
Road-rails, pig-lead,
Firewood, iron-ware, and cheap tin trays.
John Masefield
Framboise
It’s a raspberry-red lip gloss made special with a French name.
You like it, think it tastes like summer
when all that mattered was moving between smiles.
You don’t like goodbyes,
so we keep them silent,
but your mouth has become fancy with me,
deeply red now, like pomegranate fingertips.
Kiss me again.
Take more fruit of me.
It means you have to come back.
... from the book LILITH, BUT DARK by Nichole Perkins (me. *shameless plug*)
Rummaging through the drawer
for that little parcel of spare buttons, I found
after looking – how long? More than ten years – your watch
its leather band still curved
around the memory of your wrist
(This was from Seattle's Poetry on Buses series like 20 years ago but it's stuck with me all that time because it says so much with so few words. I've never forgotten the poem but have sadly forgotten the poet's name.)
"The Stepmother" by Sabrina Orah Mark, from WILD MILK
"You smell like Florida. We hate you." The Stepmother knows from the crushed handwriting this note is from The Stepchildren. At the bottom of the note is a drawing of a mouse. The Stepmother wants to know what does the mouse mean. The mouse seems lonely and afraid. Its eyes are too big. The Stepmother peels a hard-boiled egg, eats it very quietly, and thinks about the mouse, and Florida, and smelling like Florida. No one wants to smell like Florida. If The Stepmother had any guts she would go to the yard this instant and paint all the trees white, but The Stepmother has no guts. If The Stepmother had any guts her husband who is the father of The Stepchildren who believe she smells like Florida would come home and see the trees and say what in god's name have you done? Do you think we're living in a goddamn fairy tale here? The Stepmother would stand there with her large bucket of paint, and her guts, and tell her husband the trees are now white because she is not a real Mother, she will never be a real Mother, and also she is thinking of running away with the mouse. She would sob and say something strange and dramatic like how she feels as though she's three plagues short of an exodus even though she doesn't really have any plagues except for smelling like Florida. But none of this will happen because The Stepmother has no guts, and this is America not a fairy tale. This is a state in America that is not Florida even though The Stepmother is reeking of it. The Stepmother wants to know what does the mouse mean. It is a beautiful mouse. The Stepmother has no guts but she does have some scissors which she uses to cut the mouse out. No one wants to be lonely, and afraid, and live in a note about smelling like Florida. Once The Stepmother cuts the mouse out the mouse shivers. It is a very sad shiver. Sadder than all The Stepmother's sadnesses, and somehow this comforts her. The Stepmother isn't certain whether the shiver is from coldness or relief, but she cuts off a strand of her hair and wraps it around the mouse's shoulders anyway. The mouse falls asleep in the palm of The Stepmother's hand, and dreams of guts, and white trees, and the kindness of The Stepmother. The mouse is what the mouse means. It's The Stepchildren who mean something else. It's The Stepchildren who mean something far, far away, like a Mother. When The Stepchildren come home The Stepmother will hug and kiss them and wipe their dirty little hands until their hearts break in two.
Carnegie Hall Rush Seats
-Mary Karr
Whatever else the orchestra says,
the cello insists, You’re dying.
It speaks from the core
of the tree’s hacked-out heart,
shaped and smoothed like a woman.
Be glad you are not hard wood
yourself and can hear it.
Every day the cello is taken
into someone’s arms, taken between
spread legs and lured into
its shivering. The arm saws and
saws and all the sacred cries of saints
and demons issue from the carved cleft holes.
Like all of us, it aches, sending up moans
from the pit we balance on the edge of.
"Life is short, though I keep this from my children.
Life is short, and I’ve shortened mine
in a thousand delicious, ill-advised ways,
a thousand deliciously ill-advised ways
I’ll keep from my children. The world is at least
fifty percent terrible, and that’s a conservative
estimate, though I keep this from my children.
For every bird there is a stone thrown at a bird.
For every loved child, a child broken, bagged,
sunk in a lake. Life is short and the world
is at least half terrible, and for every kind
stranger, there is one who would break you,
though I keep this from my children. I am trying
to sell them the world. Any decent realtor,
walking you through a real shithole, chirps on
about good bones: This place could be beautiful,
right? You could make this place beautiful."
-"Good Bones" by Maggie Smith [not that one]
Good Bones, by Maggie Smith, makes me cry without fail
Life is short, though I keep this from my children.
Life is short, and I’ve shortened mine
in a thousand delicious, ill-advised ways,
a thousand deliciously ill-advised ways
I’ll keep from my children. The world is at least
fifty percent terrible, and that’s a conservative
estimate, though I keep this from my children.
For every bird there is a stone thrown at a bird.
For every loved child, a child broken, bagged,
sunk in a lake. Life is short and the world
is at least half terrible, and for every kind
stranger, there is one who would break you,
though I keep this from my children. I am trying
to sell them the world. Any decent realtor,
walking you through a real shithole, chirps on
about good bones: This place could be beautiful,
right? You could make this place beautiful.
"The Denunciation Of Ricky Skaggs From On High"
No more light strumming of your mandolin
and the whispered tone and the sap-
happy featherweight songs in my honor.
Ricky, no more treacly bullshit. I actually
rose up from the dead. Do you understand
what that means exactly? A God. A mother-
trucking god is who you are singing to. Did
Zeus get tickled with a zither and prance
on his tippy-toes like a little girl from outer
space? No. Did my Father get weepy little
valentines and thank-you notes for nothing
but pain and suffering for a thousand years?
He got hollering and screams and fists raised
at the sky. He got rockabilly eventually and
heavy metal and thrash. Listen to Bill Monroe.
He won't just kiss my ass. Ricky you have
suffered in your life enough to know better
than to sing that stuff. It pains me to hear it.
Stick to what hurts most and mean it. Cut open
something valuable and bleed it. Hang it
upside down in your yard and let it drain.
into the grass. My god Ricky I might have to
come down there and show you what I mean.
Don't make me. I got eyes like laser beams
and a voice like Ralph Stanley but deeper
down darker. No more sweetness Ricky.
You are not a bee. There is a broken down
burning house inside the soul and someone
in the window waves. It is me. Dammit
Ricky, do something. Sing something true
the way you used to. Heaven is not a given.
Make a ladder of what happens to actually
matter to you -- blood, strings, and the ear.
-- Steve Scafidi
From “instead of a preface”, the opening of Requiem by Anna Akhmatova —
During the frightening years of the Yezhov terror, I
spent seventeen months waiting in prison queues in
Leningrad. One day, somehow, someone 'picked me out'.
On that occasion there was a woman standing behind me,
her lips blue with cold, who, of course, had never in
her life heard my name. Jolted out of the torpor
characteristic of all of us, she said into my ear
(everyone whispered there) - 'Could one ever describe
this?' And I answered - 'I can.' It was then that
something like a smile slid across what had previously
been just a face.
https://m.poemhunter.com/poem/requiem/
“my
mother
was
my first country;
the first place i ever lived.”
— Nayyirah Waheed
The Beautiful Striped Sparrow by Mary Oliver
In the afternoons,
in the almost empty fields,
I hum the hymns
I used to sing
in church.
They could not tame me,
so they would not keep me,
alas,
and how that feels,
the weight of it,
I will not tell
any of you,
not ever.
Still, as they promised,
God, once he is in your heart,
is everywhere –
so even here
among the weeds
and the brisk trees.
How long does it take
to hum a hymn? Strolling
one or two acres
of the sweetness
of the world,
not counting
a lapse, now and again,
of sheer emptiness.
Once a deer
stood quietly at my side.
And sometimes the wind
has touched my cheek
like a spirit.
Am i lonely?
The beautiful, striped sparrow,
serenely, on the tallest weed in his kingdom,
also sings without words.
I read "Hammond B3 Organ Cistern" by Gabrielle Calvocoressi when someone re-tweeted the New Yorker and I loved it. Here's an excerpt:
The days I don’t want to kill myself
are extraordinary. Deep bass. All the people
in the streets waiting for their high fives
and leaping, I mean leaping,
when they see me. I am the sun-filled
god of love. Or at least an optimistic
under-secretary.
About suffering they were never wrong,
The old Masters: how well they understood
Its human position: how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along;
How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting
For the miraculous birth, there always must be
Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating
On a pond at the edge of the wood:
They never forgot
That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course
Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot
Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer's horse
Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.
In Breughel's Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away
Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may
Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,
But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone
As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green
Water, and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen
Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,
Had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.
My favorite part of "Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front" by Wendell Berry, of which I have a broadside hanging on my wall and read at least once a week:
Ask the questions that have no answers.
Invest in the millennium. Plant sequoias.
Say that your main crop is the forest
that you did not plant,
that you will not live to harvest.
Say that the leaves are harvested,
when they have rotted into the mold.
Call that profit. Prophesy such returns.
Put your faith in the two inches of humus
that will build under the trees
every thousand years.
Listen to carrion — put your ear
close, and hear the faint chattering
of the songs that are to come.
Expect the end of the world. Laugh.
Laughter is immeasurable. Be joyful
though you have considered all the facts.
The Lanyard, by Billy Collins
The other day I was ricocheting slowly
off the blue walls of this room,
moving as if underwater from typewriter to piano,
from bookshelf to an envelope lying on the floor,
when I found myself in the L section of the dictionary
where my eyes fell upon the word lanyard.
No cookie nibbled by a French novelist
could send one into the past more suddenly-
a past where I sat at a workbench at a camp
by a deep Adirondack lake
learning how to braid long thin plastic strips
into a lanyard, a gift for my mother.
I had never seen anyone use a lanyard
or wear one, if that's what you did with them,
but that did not keep me from crossing
strand over strand again and again
until I had made a boxy
red and white lanyard for my mother.
She gave me life and milk from her breasts,
and I gave her a lanyard.
She nursed me in many a sick room,
lifted spoons of medicine to my lips,
laid cold face-clothes on my forehead,
and then led me out into the air light
and taught me to walk and swim,
and I, in turn, presented her with a lanyard.
Here are thousands of meals, she said,
and here is clothing and a good education.
And here is your lanyard, I replied,
which I made with a little help from a counselor.
Here is a breathing body and a beating heart,
strong legs, bones and teeth,
and two clear eyes to read the world, she whispered,
and here, I said, is the lanyard I made at camp.
And here, I wish to say to her now,
is a smaller gift - not the worn truth
that you can never repay your mother,
but the rueful admission that when she took
the two-toned lanyard from my hand,
I was as sure as a boy could be
that this useless, worthless thing I wove
out of boredom would be enough to make us even.
Ada Limon, The Conditional
Say tomorrow doesn't come.
Say the moon becomes an icy pit.
Say the sweet-gum tree is petrified.
Say the sun's a foul black tire fire.
Say the owl's eyes are pinpricks.
Say the raccoon's a hot tar stain.
Say the shirt's plastic ditch-litter.
Say the kitchen's a cow's corpse.
Say we never get to see it: bright
future, stuck like a bum star, never
coming close, never dazzling.
Say we never meet her. Never him.
Say we spend our last moments staring
at each other, hands knotted together,
clutching the dog, watching the sky burn.
Say, It doesn't matter. Say, That would be
enough. Say you'd still want this: us alive,
right here, feeling lucky.
“the kind of grief that says the world /
is so beautiful, that it will give you no peace.” ❤️
- David Kirby
https://www.rattle.com/more-than-this-by-david-kirby/
Philip Loparte’s We Who Are Your Closest Friends is, as the kids say, a real banger -
we who are
your closest friends
feel the time
has come to tell you
that every Thursday
we have been meeting
as a group
to devise ways
to keep you
in perpetual uncertainty
frustration
discontent and
torture
by neither loving you
as much as you want
nor cutting you adrift
your analyst is
in on it
plus your boyfriend
and your ex-husband
and we have pledged
to disappoint you
as long as you need us
in announcing our
association
we realize we have
placed in your hands
a possible antidote
against uncertainty
indeed against ourselves
but since our Thursday nights
have brought us
to a community of purpose
rare in itself
with you as
the natural center
we feel hopeful you
will continue to make
unreasonable
demands for affection
if not as a consequence
of your
disastrous personality
then for the good of the collective
"You Who Never Arrived" by Rilke:
You who never arrived
in my arms, Beloved, who were lost
from the start,
I don't even know what songs
would please you. I have given up trying
to recognize you in the surging wave of the next
moment. All the immense
images in me—the far-off, deeply-felt landscape,
cities, towers, and bridges, and un-
suspected turns in the path,
and those powerful lands that were once
pulsing with the life of the gods—
all rise within me to mean
you, who forever elude me.
You, Beloved, who are all
the gardens I have ever gazed at,
longing. An open window
in a country house—, and you almost
stepped out, pensive, to meet me. Streets that I chanced upon,—
you had just walked down them and vanished.
And sometimes, in a shop, the mirrors
were still dizzy with your presence and, startled, gave back
my too-sudden image. Who knows? perhaps the same
bird echoed through both of us
yesterday, separate, in the evening...
My husband translated a poem for me when we first met, which has become a sort of theme for us, about meeting someone far from home with whom you now have a bond of shared experience:
You are also from my hometown;
You must have news of our native land.
Tell me, before you left its delicately wrought windows,
Had the winter plum blossomed?
Wang Wei
And here is a funny one I have printed out and decorating my cubicle at work until I "make it":
Untitled by Daniel Piper
to everybody who ever doubted me,
to everybody who didn't believe in me,
to everybody who said i'd never make it,
no updated as of yet.
Little Red Riding Hood Addresses the Next Wolf
You hear the story
of the horrors done to my body,
and you say,
“We aren’t all like that, you know.
Let me show you how gentle my hands are.”
It’s not your fault, you say,
that your teeth
are the same shape
as his teeth.
But I was swallowed whole
and they asked what I was wearing.
I was swallowed whole
and they said,
“That’s what happens
to little girls who climb in bed with monsters.”
There are mornings
when my own bedroom
looks exactly like the middle of the woods.
I’m not calling you dangerous.
I’m just making sure you understand the moral of the story.
This has nothing to do with the threat of strangers in the forest.
The moral of the story is,
I will gut you if I need to.
I will carve my way out
with only my teeth.
- brenna twohy
Perfect timing because I JUST saw this and my breath was taken away
https://twitter.com/alexanderchee/status/1222139504913518594?s=12
Danez Smif, Homies
& how many times have you loved me without my asking?
how often have i loved a thing because you loved it?
including me
The poem "We Shake with Joy" by Mary Oliver got me through the holidays this year:
We shake with joy, we shake with grief.
What a time they have, these two
housed as they are in the same body.
My all-time favorite poem is "Ode to the Women of Long Island" by Olivia Gatwood. Listening to her read is such a joy. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kqpip0H1QTE
My favorite verse:
"The women on Long Island won’t put it past any man to be guilty
even their kin
who after all have their husbands’ hands and blood
And last week when a girl was murdered while jogging in Queens
the women on Long Island were unstartled and furious
They did not call to warn their daughters
They called their sons
sat them at the kitchen table and said
“If you ever
and I mean ever so much as make a woman feel uncomfortable
I will take you to the deli and put your hand in the meat slicer
you think I won’t?
You hear me?
I will make a hero out of you
with mayonnaise and tomatoes and dill and onions”
"for women who are 'difficult' to love" - Warsan Shire
you are a horse running alone
and he tries to tame you
compares you to an impossible highway
to a burning house
says you are blinding him
that he could never leave you
forget you
want anything but you
you dizzy him, you are unbearable
every woman before or after you
is doused in your name
you fill his mouth
his teeth ache with memory of taste
his body just a long shadow seeking yours
but you are always too intense
frightening in the way you want him
unashamed and sacrificial
he tells you that no man can live up to the one who
lives in your head
and you tried to change didn't you?
closed your mouth more
tried to be softer
prettier
less volatile, less awake
but even when sleeping you could feel
him travelling away from you in his dreams
so what did you want to do, love
split his head open?
you can't make homes out of human beings
someone should have already told you that
and if he wants to leave
then let him leave
you are terrifying
and strange and beautiful
something not everyone knows how to love.
Daughter
by Nicole Blackman
One day I’ll give birth to a tiny baby girl
and when she’s born she’ll scream and I’ll make sure
she never stops.
I will kiss her before I lay her down
and will tell her a story so she knows
how it is and how it must be for her to survive.
I’ll tell her about the power of water
the seduction of paper
the promise of gasoline
and the hope of blood.
I’ll teach her to shave her eyebrows and
mark her skin.
I’ll teach her that her body is
her greatest work of art.
I’ll tell her to light things on fire
and keep them burning.
I’ll teach her that the fire will not consume her,
that she must take it and use it.
I’ll tell her to be tri-sexual, to try anything
to sleep with, fight with, pray with anyone,
just as long as she feels something.
I’ll help her do her best work when it rains.
I’ll tell her to reinvent herself every 28 days.
I’ll teach her to develop all her selves,
the courageous ones,
the smart ones,
the dreaming ones
the fast ones.
I’ll teach her that she has an army inside her
that can save her life.
I’ll tell her to say Fuck like other people say The
and when people are shocked
to ask them why they so fear a small quartet
of letters.
I’ll make sure she always carries a pen
so she can take down the evidence.
If she has no paper, I’ll teach her to
write everything down on her tongue
write it on her thighs.
I’ll help her to see that she will not find God
or salvation in a dark brick building
built by dead men.
I’ll explain to her that it’s better to regret the things
she has done than the things she hasn’t.
I’ll teach her to write her manifestos
on cocktail napkins.
I’ll say she should make men lick her enterprise.
I’ll teach her to talk hard.
I’ll tell her that her skin is the
most beautiful dress she will ever wear.
I’ll tell her that people must earn the right
to use her nickname,
that forced intimacy is an ugly thing.
I’ll make her understand that she is worth more
with her clothes on.
I’ll tell her that when the words finally flow too fast
and she has no use for a pen
that she must quit her job
run out of the house in her bathrobe,
leaving the door open.
I’ll teach her to follow the words.
I’ll tell her to stand up
and head for the door
after she makes love.
When he asks her to
stay she’ll say
she’s got to
go.
I’ll tell her that when she first bleeds
when she is a woman,
to go up to the roof at midnight,
reach her hands up to the sky and scream.
I’ll teach her to be whole, to be holy,
to be so much that she doesn’t even
need me anymore.
I’ll tell her to go quickly and never come back.
I will make her stronger than me.
I’ll say to her never forget what they did to you
and never let them know you remember.
Never forget what they did to you
and never let them know you remember.
I swear to every heaven ever imagined,
if I hear one more dead-eyed hipster
tell me that art is dead, I will personally summon Shakespeare
from the grave so he can tell them every reason
why he wishes he were born in a time where
he could have a damn Gmail account.
The day after I taught my mother
how to send pictures over iPhone she texted
me a blurry image of our cocker spaniel ten times in a row.
Don’t you dare try to tell me that that is not beautiful.
But whatever, go ahead and choose to stay in
your backwards-hoping-all-inclusive club
while the rest of us fall in love over Skype.
Send angry letters to state representatives,
as we record the year's first sunrise so
we can remember what beginning feels like when
we are inches away from the trigger.
Lock yourself away in your Antoinette castle
while we eat cake and tweet to the whole universe that we did.
Hashtag you’re a pretentious asshole.
Van Gogh would have taken 20 selfies a day.
Sylvia Plath would have texted her lovers
nothing but heart-eyed emojis when she ran out of words.
Andy Warhol would have had the world's weirdest Vine account,
and we all would have checked it every morning while we
Snapchat our coffee orders to the people
we wish were pressed against our lips instead of lattes.
This life is spilling over with 85-year-olds
rewatching JFK’s assassination and
7-year-olds teaching themselves guitar over YouTube videos.
Never again do I have to be afraid of forgetting
what my father's voice sounds like.
No longer must we sneak into our family's phonebook
to look up an eating disorder hotline for our best friend.
No more must I wonder what people in Australia sound like
or how grasshoppers procreate.
I will gleefully continue to take pictures of tulips
in public parks on my cellphone
and you will continue to scoff and that is okay.
But I hope, I pray, that one day you will realize how blessed
you are to be alive in a moment where you can Google search
how to say "I love you" in 164 different languages.
// b.e.fitzgerald, "Art is a Facebook status about your winter break"
I always think of this one as an incantation--my favorite poems always are.
Louis MacNeice - Prayer Before Birth
I am not yet born; O hear me.
Let not the bloodsucking bat or the rat or the stoat or
the
club-footed ghoul come near me.
I am not yet born, console me.
I fear that the human race may with tall walls wall me,
With strong drugs dope me, with wise lies lure me,
on black racks rack me, in blood-baths roll me.
I am not yet born; Provide me
With water to dandle me, grass to grow for me, tree to
talk
to me, sky to sing to me, birds and a white light
in the back of my mind guide me.
I am not yet born; Forgive me
For the sins that in me the world shall commit, my
words
when they speak me, my thoughts when they think me,
my treason engendered by traitors beyond me,
my life when they murder by means of my
hands, my death when they live me.
I am not yet born; rehearse me
In the parts I must play and the cues I must take when
old men lecture me, bureaucrats hector me, mountains
frown at me, lovers laugh at me, the white
waves call me to folly and the desert calls
me to doom and the beggar refuses
my gift and my children curse me.
I am not yet born; O hear me,
Let not the man who is beast or who thinks he is God
come near me.
I am not yet born; O fill me
With strength against those who would freeze my
humanity, would dragoon me into a lethal automaton,
would make me a cog in the machine, a thing with
one face, a thing, and against all those
who would dissipate my entirety, would
blow me like thistledown hither and
thither or hither and thither
like water held in the
hands would spill me.
Let them not make me a stone and let them not spill
me.
Otherwise kill me.