april-is

[april-is]

April 25, 2024: from Moon for Aisha, Aracelis Girmay

from Moon for Aisha Aracelis Girmay

— for Kamilah Aisha Moon, with a line after Cornelius Eady’s ''Gratitude''

Dear Aisha, I mean to be writing you a birthday letter, though it’s not September, the winter already nearing, the bareness of trees, their weightlessness, their gestures — grace or grief. The windows of buildings all shining early, lit with light, & I am only ten & riding all of my horses home, still sisterless, wanting sisters.

You do not know me yet. In fact, we are years away from that life. But I am thankful for some inexplicable thing, let’s call it “freedom,” or “night,” the terror & glee of being outside late, after dark, my mother’s voice shouting for me beneath stars which, I learned in school, are suddenly not so different from the small salt of fathers, & gratitude for that, & for the red house of your mother’s blood, & then, you, all nearly grown, all long-legged laughter, already knowing all the songs & all the dances, not my friend, yet, but, somehow — Out There.

In one version of our lives, it is November. Through a window I see one of our elders is a black eye of a woman, is a thinker, & magnificent. [...] It is always her birthday. She has always lived to tell a part of the story of the world, what happened here.

If not a moon, what can we bring this woman who walks ahead? For whom you were named, & whose name has been added to by you whose language crowns the dark field of what has been hushed, of what is beautiful & black, & blue.

--

Read the full poem here.

Written to the author's friend, poet Kamilah Aisha Moon, who died in 2021. Read one of her essays: It's Not The Load That Breaks You Down; It's The Way You Carry It.

More on friendship: + Ode to Friendship, Noor Hindi + from how many of us have them?, Danez Smith

Today in:

2023: Still Life with Nursing Bra, Keetje Kuipers 2022: A Small-Sized Mystery, Jane Hirshfield 2021: Prayer for My Unborn Niece or Nephew, Ross Gay 2020: Vigil, Phillis Levin 2019: Nights in the Neighborhood, Linda Gregg 2018: I Dreamed Again, Anne Michaels 2017: wishes for sons, Lucille Clifton 2016: Told You So, Keetje Kuipers 2015: Accident, Mass. Ave., Jill McDonough 2014: This Hour and What Is Dead, Li-Young Lee 2013: To Myself, Franz Wright 2012: Manet’s Olympia, Margaret Atwood 2011: Three Rivers, Alpay Ulku 2010: Ode to Hangover, Dean Young 2009: We become new, Marge Piercy 2008: The Only Animal, Franz Wright 2007: Dream Song 385, John Berryman 2006: The Quiet World, Jeffrey McDaniel 2005: Man and Wife, Robert Lowell

#apostrophe #friendship #otherwise #poetry #poem #aracelis girmay

[april-is]

April 24, 2024: How Can Black People Write About Flowers at a Time Like This, Hanif Abdurraqib

How Can Black People Write About Flowers at a Time Like This Hanif Abdurraqib

dear reader, with our heels digging into the good mud at a swamp’s edge, you might tell me something about the dandelion & how it is not a flower itself but a plant made up of several small flowers at its crown & lord knows I have been called by what I look like more than I have been called by what I actually am & I wish to return the favor for the purpose of this exercise. which, too, is an attempt at fashioning something pretty out of seeds refusing to make anything worthwhile of their burial. size me up & skip whatever semantics arrive to the tongue first. say: that boy he look like a hollowed-out grandfather clock. he look like a million-dollar god with a two-cent heaven. like all it takes is one kiss & before morning, you could scatter his whole mind across a field.

--

From the poet:

“I was at a reading shortly after the [2016] election, and the poet (who was black) was reading gorgeous poems, which had some consistent and exciting flower imagery. A woman (who was white) behind me—who thought she was whispering to her neighbor—said ‘How can black people write about flowers at a time like this?’ I thought it was so absurd in a way that didn’t make me angry but made me curious. What is the black poet to be writing about ‘at a time like this’ if not to dissect the attractiveness of a flower—that which can arrive beautiful and then slowly die right before our eyes? I thought flowers were the exact thing to write about at a time like this, so I began this series of poems, all with the same title. I thought it was much better to grasp a handful of different flowers, put them in a glass box, and see how many angles I could find in our shared eventual demise.” —Hanif Abdurraqib

Today in:

2023: Lit, Andrea Cohen 2022: Meditations in an Emergency, Cameron Awkward-Rich 2021: How the Trees on Summer Nights Turn into a Dark River, Barbara Crooker 2020: Ash, Tracy K. Smith 2019: Under Stars, Dorianne Laux 2018: Afterlife, Natalie Eilbert 2017: There Are Birds Here, Jamaal May 2016: Poetry, Richard Kenney 2015: Dreaming at the Ballet, Jack Gilbert 2014: Vocation, Sandra Beasley 2013: Near the Race Track, Brigit Pegeen Kelly 2012: from Ask Him, Raymond Carver 2011: Sweet Star Chisel, Dearest Flaming Crumbs in Your Beard Lord, John Rybicki 2010: Rain Travel, W.S. Merwin 2009: Goodnight, Li-Young Lee 2008: Bearhug, Michael Ondaatje 2007: Meditation at Lagunitas, Robert Hass 2006: Autumn, Rainer Maria Rilke 2005: On Turning Ten, Billy Collins

#nature #poetry #poem #race #bipoc poet #hanif abdurraqib

[april-is]

April 23, 2024: Available Now: Archaic Torsos of Both Sexes

Available Now: Archaic Torsos of Both Sexes Gregory Orr

Though I'm modest as most, I couldn't help noticing certain parts of the statues have been polished to a high sheen by passing hands as the centuries passed. If it's a form of worship it's not much odder or more perverse than the saint's stone toe kissed to a stub by fervent lips.

And even though Plato suspected art almost as much as he suspected the body's curves, he did assert Desire could lead to the True and Beautiful. Therefore I choose to believe that mortals pausing here to cup a marble breast or buttock were doing their best to grasp the Ideal— and their foolish gestures made it shine more brightly.

--

Today in:

2023: Search Patrols, Ilya Kaminsky 2022: The Problem with Travel, Ada Limón 2021: When I Say That Loving Me Is Kind Of Like Being A Chicago Bulls Fan, Hanif Abdurraqib 2020:from Children Walk on Chairs to Cross a Flooded Schoolyard, Patrick Rosal 2019: If Life Is As Short As Our Ancestors Insist It Is, Why Isn’t Everything I Want Already At My Feet, Hanif Abdurraqib 2018: Bliss and Grief, Marie Ponsot 2017: Verge, Mark Doty 2016: Ever, Meghan O’Rourke 2015: The Two Times I Loved You the Most In a Car, Dorothea Grossman2014: May Day, Phillis Levin 2013: The Triumph of the Infinite, Mark Strand 2012: Mermaid Song, Kim Addonizio 2011: the laughing heart, Charles Bukowski 2010: from Jenny, Genya Turovskaya 2009: A Step Away From Them, Frank O’Hara 2008: Entry, Lisa Sewell 2007: Meanwhile, Richard Siken 2006: Preface to a Twenty Volume Suicide Note, Amiri Baraka 2005: Holy Sonnet XIV, John Donne

#gregory orr #history #art #the body #desire

[april-is]

April 22, 2024: Kinder Than Man, Althea Davis

Kinder Than Man Althea Davis

And God please let the deer on the highway get some kind of heaven. Something with tall soft grass and sweet reunion. Let the moths in porch lights go someplace with a thousand suns, that taste like sugar and get swallowed whole. May the mice in oil and glue have forever dry, warm fur and full bellies. If I am killed for simply living, let death be kinder than man.

--

Also: + The Mower, Philip Larkin + Good People, W.S. Merwin + A Blessing, James Wright + In the Nursing Home, Jane Kenyon

Today in:

2023: Dearest,, Jean Valentine 2022: Birth, Louise Erdrich 2021: Cicada, Hosho McCreesh 2020: Future Memories, Mario Meléndez 2019: Little Girl, My Stringbean, My Lovely Woman, Anne Sexton 2018: First Night, D. Nurkse 2017: Einstein’s Happiest Moment, Richard M. Berlin 2016: Yiddishland, Erika Meitner 2015: July, Kazim Ali 2014: This Morning in a Morning Voice, Todd Boss 2013: Paralysis, Peter Boyle 2012: from Mayakovsky, Frank O’Hara 2011: Northern Pike, James Wright 2010: Humpbacks, Mary Oliver 2009: Alone, Jack Gilbert 2008: From Blossoms, Li-Young Lee 2007: For Grace, After A Party, Frank O’Hara 2006: Wild Geese, Mary Oliver 2005: A Brief for the Defense, Jack Gilbert

#animals #death #poetry #poem #national poetry month #althea davis

[april-is]

April 21, 2024: April Morning, Jonathan Wells

April Morning Jonathan Wells You are living the life you wanted as if you'd known what that was but of course you didn't so you'd groped toward it feeling for what you couldn't imagine, what your hands couldn't tell you, for what that shape could be.

This Sunday the rain turns cold again and steady but the window is slightly open and there is the vaguest sense of bird song somewhere in the gaps between the buildings because it's spring the calendar says and the room where you are reading is empty yet full of what loves you and this is the day that you were born.

--

Today in:

2023: What I Did Wrong, Marie Howe 2022: This Morning, Jay Wright 2021: Kiss of the Sun, Mary Ruefle 2020: Teaching English from an Old Composition Book, Gary Soto 2019: Easter, Jill Alexander Essbaum 2018: Annunciation, Marie Howe 2017: The Promise, Marie Howe 2016: In the Woods, Kathryn Simmonds 2015: Heat, Jane Hirshfield 2014: What Remains, Ellery Akers 2013: 30th Birthday, Alice Notley 2012: Untitled [I closed the book and changed my life], Bruce Smith 2011: The Forties, Franz Wright 2010: Prayer of the Backhanded, Jericho Brown 2009: A Primer, Bob Hicok 2008: Because You Asked about the Line between Prose and Poetry, Howard Nemerov 2007: Open Letter to the Muse, Kristy Bowen 2006: A Sad Child, Margaret Atwood 2005: The Crunch, Charles Bukowski

#feast on your life #spring #poem #poetry #napomo #jonathan wells

[april-is]

April 20, 2024: blessing the boats, 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

--

Also by Lucille Clifton: + Jackie Robinson + wishes for sons

Today in:

2023: Wound is the Origin of Wonder, Maya C. Popa 2022: When the Fox Comes to the City, Patricia Fargnoli 2021: aubade for the whole hood, Nate Marshall 2020: Keeping Things Whole, Mark Strand 2019: New Year’s Day, Kim Addonizio 2018: I Know You Think I’ve Forgotten, Jane Hirshfield 2017: The Writer, Richard Wilbur 2016: from Seven Skins, Adrienne Rich 2015: I Ask Percy How I Should Live My Life, Mary Oliver 2014: In the Park, Maxine Kumin 2013: To A Sad Daughter, Michael Ondaatje 2012: My Dead Friends, Marie Howe 2011: Staying After, Linda Gregg 2010: Dream Song 14, John Berryman 2009: What We Kept, Megan Alpert 2008: Please Take Back the Sparrows, Suzanne Buffam 2007: It Happens Like This, James Tate 2006: Tantalus in May, Reginald Shepherd 2005: September Song, Geoffrey Hill

#poetry #poem #national poetry month #poems #hope #lucille clifton

[april-is]

April 19, 2024: Dear Proofreader, David Hernandez

Dear Proofreader David Hernandez You’re right. I meant “midst,” not “mist.” I don’t know what I was stinking, I mean thinking, soap speaks intimately to my skin every day. Most days. Depending if darkness has risen to my skull like smoke up a chimney floe. Flue. Then no stepping nude into the shower, no mist turning the bathroom mirror into frosted glass where my face would float coldly in the oval. Picture a caveman encased in ice. Good. I like how your mind works, how your eyes inside your mind works, and your actual eyes reading this, their icy precision, nothing slips by them. Even now I can feel you hovering silently above these lines, hawkish, Godlike, each period a lone figure kneeling in the snow. That’s too solemn. I would like to send search parties and rescue choppers to every period ever printed. I would like to apologize to my wife for not showering on Monday and Tuesday. I was stinking. I was simultaneously numb and needled with anxiety, in the midst of a depressive episode. Although “mist” would work too, metaphorically speaking, in the mist of, in the fog of, this gray haze that followed me relentlessly from room to room until every red bell inside my head was wrong. Rung.

--

Today in:

2023: The Socks, Jane Kenyon 2022: Ode to Friendship, Noor Hindi 2021: Heartbeats, Melvin Dixon 2020: Sunday Night, Raymond Carver 2019: Virginia Street, Jennifer Hayashida 2018: What Seems Like Joy, Kaveh Akbar 2017: Aunties, Kevin Young 2016: For the Union Dead, Robert Lowell 2015: The Cambridge Afternoon Was Gray, Alicia Ostriker 2014: Spirit of the Bat, Peggy Shumaker 2013: Thanks, W. S. Merwin 2012: Sweetness, Stephen Dunn 2011: I Remember, Anne Sexton 2010: Letter, Franz Wright 2009: 23rd Street Runs Into Heaven, Kenneth Patchen 2008: HOUSEHOLD ACTIVITY NO. 26, J.R. Quackenbush 2007: from Briggflatts, Basil Bunting 2006: The Chores, Frannie Lindsay 2005: Direct Address, Joan Larkin

#writing #language #anxiety and depression #bipoc poet #poetry #david hernandez

[april-is]

April 18, 2024: Fourteen, Marie Howe

Fourteen Marie Howe

She is still mine—for another year or so— but she’s already looking past me through the funeral-home door to where the boys have gathered in their dark suits.

--

Also: Hurry, Marie Howe Walking Home, Marie Howe A Little Tooth, Thomas Lux

Today in:

2023: I wanted to be surprised., Jane Hirshfield 2022: Short Talk on Waterproofing, Anne Carson 2021: Cindy Comes To Hear Me Read, Jill McDonough 2020: from This Magic Moment, David Kirby 2019: Poem In Which I Become Wolverine, José Olivarez 2018: In the Beginning God Said Light, Mary Szybist 2017: from Contradictions: Tracking Poems, Adrienne Rich 2016: I Said Yes but I Meant No, Dean Young 2015: Cardinal Cardinal, Stephen Dunn 2014: Ezra Pound’s Proposition, Robert Hass 2013: Wistful sounds like a brand of air freshener, Bob Hicok 2012: Not Getting Closer, Jack Gilbert 2011: Written in Pencil in the Sealed Railway-Car, Dan Pagis 2010: The Moss of His Skin, Anne Sexton 2009: It’s This Way, Nazim Hikmet 2008: The Problem With Skin, Aimee Nezhukumatathil 2007: Serenade, Terrance Hayes 2006: The Old Liberators, Robert Hedin 2005: Morning Song, Sylvia Plath

#parenthood #the art of losing #daughters #poetry #national poetry month #marie howe

[april-is]

April 17, 2024: You Belong to the World, Carrie Fountain

You Belong to the World Carrie Fountain

as do your children, as does your husband. It’s strange even now to understand that you are a mother and a wife, that these gifts were given to you and that you received them, fond as you’ve always been of declining invitations. You belong to the world. The hands that put a peach tree into the earth exactly where the last one died in the freeze belong to the world and will someday feed it again, differently, your body will become food again for something, just as it did so humorously when you became a mother, hungry beings clamoring at your breast, born as they’d been with the bodily passion for survival that is our kind’s one common feature. You belong to the world, animal. Deal with it. Even as the great abstractions come to take you away, the regrets, the distractions, you can at any second come back to the world to which you belong, the world you never left, won’t ever leave, cells forever, forever going through their changes, as they have been since you were less than anything, simple information born inside your own mother’s newborn body, itself made from the stuff your grandmother carried within hers when at twelve she packed her belongings and left the Scottish island she’d known—all she’d ever known—on a ship bound for Ellis Island, carrying within her your mother, you, the great human future that dwells now inside the bodies of your children, the young, who, like you, belong to the world.

--

Also by Carrie Fountain: Will You?

More like this: -> The World Has Need of You, Ellen Bass -> Why I’m Here, Jacqueline Berger -> from Burial, Ross Gay -> Poem to My Child, If Ever You Shall Be, Ross Gay

Today in:

2023: Mammogram Call Back with Ultra Sound, Ellen Bass 2022: Catastrophe Is Next to Godliness, Franny Choi 2021: Weather, Claudia Rankine 2020: The Understudy, Bridget Lowe 2019: Against Dying, Kaveh Akbar 2018: Close Out Sale, Cristin O’Keefe Aptowicz 2017: Things That Have Changed Since You Died, Laura Kasischke 2016: Percy, Waiting for Ricky, Mary Oliver 2015: My Heart, Kim Addonizio 2014: My Skeleton, Jane Hirshfield 2013: Catch a Body, Oliver Bendorf 2012: No, Mark Doty 2011: from Narrative: Ali, Elizabeth Alexander 2010: Baseball Canto, Lawrence Ferlinghetti 2009: Nothing but winter in my cup, Alice George 2008: Poppies in October, Sylvia Plath 2007: I Imagine The Gods, Jack Gilbert 2006: An Offer Received In This Morning’s Mail, Amy Gerstler 2005: The Last Poem In The World, Hayden Carruth

#how strange it is to be anything at all #motherhood #breastfeeding #poetry #poem #carrie fountain

[april-is]

April 16, 2024: Love Comes Quietly, Robert Creeley

Love Comes Quietly Robert Creeley

Love comes quietly, finally, drops about me, on me, in the old ways.

What did I know thinking myself able to go alone all the way.

--

Also by Robert Creeley: Oh

Today in:

2023: After Touching You, I Think of Narcissus Drowning, Leila Chatti 2022: Will You?, Carrie Fountain 2021: After Graduate School, Valencia Robin 2020: in lieu of a poem, i’d like to say, Danez Smith 2019: from The Invention of Streetlights 2018: Returning, Tami Haaland 2017: An Ordinary Composure, James L. White 2016: Verge, Mark Doty 2015: Reasons to Survive November, Tony Hoagland 2014: Unhappy Hour, Richard Siken 2013: Just Once, Anne Sexton 2012: Talk, Noelle Kocot 2011: Why They Went, Elizabeth Bradfield 2010: Anxiety, Frank O’Hara 2009: The Continuous Life, Mark Strand 2008: An old story, Bob Hicok 2007: you can’t be a star in the sky without holy fire, Frank X. Gaspar 2006: For the Sisters of the Hotel Dieu, A.M. Klein 2005: Other Lives And Dimensions And Finally A Love Poem, Bob Hicok

#love #short poems #robert creeley #poetry #poem

[april-is]

April 15, 2024: Abecedarian Requiring Further Examination of Anglikan Seraphym Subjugation of a Wild Indian Rezervation, Natalie Diaz

Abecedarian Requiring Further Examination of Anglikan Seraphym Subjugation of a Wild Indian Rezervation Natalie Diaz Angels don’t come to the reservation. Bats, maybe, or owls, boxy mottled things. Coyotes, too. They all mean the same thing— death. And death eats angels, I guess, because I haven’t seen an angel fly through this valley ever. Gabriel? Never heard of him. Know a guy named Gabe though— he came through here one powwow and stayed, typical Indian. Sure he had wings, jailbird that he was. He flies around in stolen cars. Wherever he stops, kids grow like gourds from women’s bellies. Like I said, no Indian I’ve ever heard of has ever been or seen an angel. Maybe in a Christmas pageant or something— Nazarene church holds one every December, organized by Pastor John’s wife. It’s no wonder Pastor John’s son is the angel—everyone knows angels are white. Quit bothering with angels, I say. They’re no good for Indians. Remember what happened last time some white god came floating across the ocean? Truth is, there may be angels, but if there are angels up there, living on clouds or sitting on thrones across the sea wearing velvet robes and golden rings, drinking whiskey from silver cups, we’re better off if they stay rich and fat and ugly and ’xactly where they are—in their own distant heavens. You better hope you never see angels on the rez. If you do, they’ll be marching you off to Zion or Oklahoma, or some other hell they’ve mapped out for us.

--

Another abecedarian!

Also: + The Terrible Beauty of the Reserve, Billy-Ray Belcourt + Anchorage, Joy Harjo + At the Trial of Hamlet, Chicago, 1994, Sherman Alexie

Today in:

2023: Dutch Elm Disease, Valencia Robin 2022: More Bang for Your Buck Running Scared, Brennan Bestwick 2021: Rain, Peter Everwine 2020: Things to Do in the Belly of the Whale, Dan Albergotti 2019: Prayer, Galway Kinnell 2018: Egg, C.G. Hanzlicek 2017: Well Water, Randall Jarrell 2016: For Desire, Kim Addonizio 2015: The Coming of Light, Mark Strand 2014: Flying Low, Stephen Dunn 2013: The Envoy, Jane Hirshfield 2012: Red Wand, Sandra Simonds 2011: Trying to Raise the Dead, Dorianne Laux 2010: Asking for Directions, Linda Gregg 2009: A Blessing, James Wright 2008: New York, New York, David Berman 2007: Waste Land Limericks, Wendy Cope 2006: There Are Two Worlds, Larry Levis 2005: America, Allen Ginsberg

#abecedarian #indigenous / first nations #history #race #poetry #natalie diaz

[april-is]

April 14, 2024: The Wordsworth Effect, Joyce Sutphen

The Wordsworth Effect Joyce Sutphen

Is when you return to a place and it's not nearly as amazing as you once thought it was,

or when you remember how you felt about something (or someone) but you know you'll never feel that way again.

It's when you notice someone has turned down the volume, and you realize it was you; when you have the

suspicion that you've met the enemy and you are it, or when you get your best ideas from your sister's journal.

Is also-to be fair-the thing that enables you to walk for miles and miles chanting to yourself in iambic pentameter

and to travel through Europe with only a clean shirt, a change of underwear, a notebook and a pen.

And yes: is when you stretch out on your couch and summon up ten thousand daffodils, all dancing in the breeze.

--

Also: Dorothy Wordsworth, Jennifer Chang

Another by Joyce Sutphen: Living in the Body

Today in:

2023: Spring Poem, Colleen O’Connor 2022: Red, Mary Ruefle 2021: Bathing, Allison Seay 2020: A Small Moment, Cornelius Eady 2019: You Meet Someone and Later You Meet Their Dancing and You Have to Start Again, David Welch 2018: Henry Clay’s Mouth, Thomas Lux 2017: When Your Small Form Tumbled into Me, Tracy K. Smith 2016: Eve Recollecting the Garden, Grace Bauer 2015: from I Love A Broad Margin To My Life, Maxine Hong Kingston 2014: Gift, Czeslaw Milosz 2013: This Be The Verse, Philip Larkin 2012: We Did Not Make Ourselves, Michael Dickman 2011: Happiness (3), Jean Valentine 2010: When I Think, Jeanne Marie Beaumont 2009: The Poem, Franz Wright 2008: Morning Poem, Robin Becker 2007: Supple Cord, Naomi Shihab Nye 2006: Wish For a Young Wife, Theodore Roethke 2005: The Benjamin Franklin of Monogamy, Jeffrey McDaniel

#re: wordsworth #memory #writing #travel #poetry #joyce sutphen

[april-is]

April 13, 2024: Broken Periodic, Maya C. Popa

Broken Periodic Maya C. Popa

No one who has ever had a childhood wants what’s happening. No one who has ever wondered anything: where the rain’s headed in her steel hooves. Questions wrongly put swell like moths under a light. On the streets, everything looks human. You forget certain animals are bloodless injured. You must imagine some other color that means hurt. At night, you sleep with something like your gifts: to anguish and ascribe a language, music. To slice a fig the long way and linger. To grieve for a country. To grieve without a country to grieve.

--

Also by Maya C. Popa: Wound is the Origin of Wonder

Today in:

2023: Speech to the Young: Speech to the Progress-Toward (Among them Nora and Henry III), Gwendolyn Brooks 2022: We Lived Happily During the War, Ilya Kaminsky 2021: Hurry, Marie Howe 2020: Oh, Robert Creeley 2019: It Was Summer Now and the Colored People Came Out Into the Sunshine, Morgan Parker 2018: In Two Seconds, Mark Doty 2017: Aubade, Louis MacNeice 2016: Before, Ada Limón 2015: Sign for My Father, Who Stressed the Bunt, David Bottoms 2014: Ullapool Bike Ride, Chris Powici 2013: Clothespins, Stuart Dybek 2012: Ghost Story, Matthew Dickman 2011: Graves We Filled Before the Fire, Gabrielle Calvocoressi 2010: On Being Asked To Write A Poem Against The War In Vietnam, Hayden Carruth 2009: The Bear-Boy of Lithuania, Amy Gerstler 2008: Today’s News, David Tucker 2007: All There is to Know About Adolph Eichmann, Leonard Cohen 2006: Gamin, Frank O’Hara 2005: [this is what you love: more people. you remember], D.A. Powell

#who put this brain inside of me? #poetry #poem #national poetry month #grief #maya c. popa

[april-is]

April 12, 2024: A Small Psalm, Catherine Wing

A Small Psalm Catherine Wing

Sorrow be gone, be a goner, be forsooth un-sooth, make like a suit and beat it, vamoose from the heavy heavy, be out from under the night's crawlspace, call not for another stone, more weight more weight, be extinguished, extinguish, the dark, that which is deep and hollow, that which presses from all sides, that which squeezes your heart into an artichoke-heart jar and forbids it breathe, that which is measured by an unbalanced scale, banish the broken, the unfixable, the shattered, the cried-over, the cursed, the cursers, the curses— curse them, the stone from the stone fruit, let it be fruit, the pit from the pitted, the pock from the pocked, the rot from the rotten, tarry not at the door, jam not the door's jamb, don't look back, throw nothing over your shoulder, not a word, not a word's edge, vowel, consonant, but run out, run out like the end of a cold wind, end of season, and in me be replaced with a breath of light, a jack-o'-lantern, a flood lamp or fuse box, a simple match or I would even take a turn signal, traffic light, if it would beat beat and flash flood like the moon at high tide, let it, let it, let it flare like the firefly, let it spark and flash, kindle and smoke, let it twilight and sunlight, and sunlight and moonlight, and when it is done with its lighting let it fly, will'-o-the-wisp, to heaven.

--

Also: + you can’t be a star in the sky without holy fire, Frank X. Gaspar + Untitled [I closed the book and changed my life], Bruce Smith

Today in:

2023: How to Do Absolutely Nothing, Barbara Kingsolver 2022: Miss you. Would like to take a walk with you., Gabrielle Calvocoressi 2021: I saw Emmett Till this week at the grocery store, Eve L. Ewing 2020: Day Beginning with Seeing the International Space Station And a Full Moon Over the Gulf of Mexico and All its Invisible Fishes, Jane Hirshfield 2019: Flores Woman, Tracy K. Smith 2018: The Universe as Primal Scream, Tracy K. Smith 2017: Soul, David Ferry 2016: Turkeys, Galway Kinnell 2015: He Said Turn Here, Dean Young 2014: I Don’t Miss It, Tracy K. Smith 2013: Hotel Orpheus, Jason Myers 2012: Emily Dickinson’s To-Do List, Andrea Carlisle 2011: Now That I Am in Madrid and Can Think, Frank O’Hara 2010: The Impossible Marriage, Donald Hall 2009: The Rider, Naomi Shihab Nye 2008: from Homage to Mistress Bradstreet, John Berryman 2007: This Heavy Craft, P.K. Page 2006: Late Ripeness, Czeslaw Milosz 2005: A Martian Sends A Postcard Home, Craig Raine

#feast on your life #the way it’s night for many miles and then suddenly it's not #sorrow #joy #poem #catherine wing

[april-is]

April 11, 2024: The Coffin Maker Speaks, Lisa Suhair Majaj

The Coffin Maker Speaks Lisa Suhair Majaj

At first it was shocking—orders flooding in faster than I could meet. I worked through the nights, tried to ignore the sound of planes overhead, reverberations shaking my bones, acid fear, the jagged weeping of those who came to plead my services. I focused on the saw in my hand, burn of blisters, sweet smell of sawdust; hoped that fatigue would push aside my labor's purpose.

Wood fell scarce as the pile of coffins grew. I sent my oldest son to scavenge more but there was scant passage on the bombed out roads And those who could make it through brought food for the living, not planks for the dead. So I economized, cut more carefully than ever, reworked the extra scraps. It helped that so many coffins were child-sized.

I built the boxes well, nailed them strong, loaded them on the waiting trucks, did my job but could do no more. When they urged me to the gravesite— that long grieving gash in earth echoing the sky's torn warplane wound— I turned away, busied myself with my tools. Let others lay the shrouded forms in new-cut wood, lower the lidded boxes one by one: stilled row of toppled dominoes, long line of broken teeth. Let those who can bear it read the Fatiha over the crushed and broken dead. If I am to go on making coffins, Let me sleep without knowledge.

But what sleep have we in this flattened city? My neighbors hung white flags on their cars as they fled. Now they lie still and cold, waiting to occupy my boxes. Tonight I'll pull the white sheet from my window. Better to save it for my shroud.

One day, insha'allah, I'll return to woodwork for the living. I'll build door for every home in town, smooth and strong and solid, that will open quickly in times of danger, let the desperate in for shelter. I'll use oak, cherry, anything but pine.

For now, I do my work. Come to me and I'll build you what you need. Tell me the dimensions, the height or weight, and I'll meet your specifications. But keep the names and ages to yourself. Already my dreams are jagged Let me not wake splintered from my sleep crying for Fatima, Rafik, Soha, Hassan, Dalia, or smoothing a newborn newdead infant's face. Later I too will weep. But if you wish me to house the homeless dead, let me keep my nightmares nameless.

--

Today in:

2023: Running Orders, Lena Khalaf Tuffaha 2022: April, Alex Dimitrov 2021: Dust, Dorianne Laux 2020: VI. Wisdom: The Voice of God, Mary Karr 2019: What I Didn’t Know Before, Ada Limón 2018: History, Jennifer Michael Hecht 2017: from Correspondences, Anne Michaels 2016: Mesilla, Carrie Fountain 2015: Dolores Park, Keetje Kuipers 2014: Finally April and the Birds Are Falling Out of the Air with Joy, Anne Carson 2013: The Flames, Kate Llewellyn 2012: To See My Mother, Sharon Olds 2011: Across a Great Wilderness without You, Keetje Kuipers 2010: Poem About Morning, William Meredith 2009: Death, The Last Visit, Marie Howe 2008: Animals, Frank O’Hara 2007: Johnny Cash in the Afterlife, Bronwen Densmore 2006: Anne Hathaway, Carol Ann Duffy 2005: Sleep Positions, Lola Haskins

#war #death #grief #poetry of witness #lisa suhair majaj

[april-is]

April 10, 2024: The Winter Palace, Philip Larkin

The Winter Palace Philip Larkin

Most people know more as they get older: I give all that the cold shoulder.

I spent my second quarter-century Losing what I had learnt at university.

And refusing to take in what had happened since. Now I know none of the names in the public prints,

And am starting to give offence by forgetting faces And swearing I’ve never been in certain places.

It will be worth it, if in the end I manage To blank out whatever it is that is doing the damage.

Then there will be nothing I know. My mind will fold into itself, like fields, like snow.

--

Also by Philip Larkin: + This Be The Verse + The Trees, Philip Larkin + Aubade, Philip Larkin

Today in:

2023: On Keeping Pluto a Planet, Greg Beatty 2022: The Terrible Beauty of the Reserve, Billy-Ray Belcourt 2021: Puerto Rico Goes Dark, Juan J. Morales 2020: Winter Psalm, Richard Hoffman 2019: King Kreations, Angel Nafis 2018: Letter to Larry Levis, Matthew Olzmann 2017: Only she who has breast-fed, Vera Pavlova 2016: First Love, Jan Owen 2015: At Navajo Monument Valley Tribal School, Sherman Alexie 2014: Boogaloo, Kevin Young 2013: The Fist, Derek Walcott 2012: Turning, W.S. Merwin 2011: Consolation for Tamar, A.E. Stallings 2010: Frida Kahlo to Marty McConnell, Marty McConnell 2009: Bike Ride with Older Boys, Laura Kasischke 2008: Let’s Move All Things (September), Denver Butson 2007: The Day Flies Off Without Me, John Stammers 2006: A Supermarket in California, Allen Ginsberg 2005: Tortures, Wislawa Szymborska

#age #memory #rhyme #funny #poem #philip larkin

[april-is]

April 9, 2024: Physical Therapy, Franny Choi

Physical Therapy Franny Choi   Ask, first, what your smallest body parts require to sing again: coconut oil for your hair’s dry ends, camphor for the earlobes, rosehip kneaded into fingertips with fingertips. Grapeseed will feed most hungers of the skin. But if even your bones cry January, dip your sharpest knife in a jar of raw honey. Lather it on your thighs, making circles, making certain not to confuse this ache for that other, the one that keeps pulling you to the earth, the one question you still can’t say out loud. Recite instead the names of trees: sumac, sweet birch, slippery elm. Take your palm to the wild place under your chin and count: vein, artery, chokecherry, weeping willow, until your xacto knife pulse slows, holds. Let your mouth fill with gold, almonds, zinneas. Then: soften.

--

In an abecedarian poem, each line begins with successive letters of the alphabet.

Also: + VI. Wisdom: The Voice of God, Mary Karr + Frida Kahlo to Marty McConnell, Marty McConnell + Heartbeats, Melvin Dixon

More by Franny Choi: + Catastrophe Is Next to Godliness + The World Keeps Ending, and the World Goes On

Today in:

2023: Come Quickly, Izumi Shikibu 2022: Heretic That I Am, Tomás Q. Morín 2021: The World Has Need of You, Ellen Bass 2020: Annus Mirabilis, R. A. Villanueva 2019: This Page Ripped Out and Rolled into a Ball, Brendan Constantine 2018: Winter Stars, Larry Levis 2017: In That Other Fantasy Where We Live Forever, Wanda Coleman 2016: The cat’s song, Marge Piercy 2015: The Embrace, Mark Doty 2014: No. 6, Charles Bukowski 2013: A Schoolroom in Haiti, Kenneth Koch 2012: Track 5: Summertime, Jericho Brown 2011: Death, Is All, Ana Božičević 2010: Heaven, William Heyen 2009: April in Maine, May Sarton 2008: Making Love to Myself, James L. White 2007: Publication Date, Franz Wright 2006: Living in the Body, Joyce Sutphen 2005: Aberration (The Hubble Space Telescope before repair), Rebecca Elson

#self care #abecedarian #the body #trees #poetry #franny choi