welcome

Happy May 1, everyone. Here's my last poem for National Poetry Month 2021, and I'll see you next year. ♥

Come when the nights are bright with stars
Or come when the moon is mellow;
Come when the sun his golden bars
Drops on the hay-field yellow.
Come in the twilight soft and gray,
Come in the night or come in the day,
Come, O love, whene’er you may,
And you are welcome, welcome.

You are sweet, O Love, dear Love,
You are soft as the nesting dove.
Come to my heart and bring it to rest
As the bird flies home to its welcome nest.

Come when my heart is full of grief
Or when my heart is merry;
Come with the falling of the leaf
Or with the redd’ning cherry.
Come when the year’s first blossom blows,
Come when the summer gleams and glows,
Come with the winter’s drifting snows,
And you are welcome, welcome.

—Paul Laurence Dunbar (1872-1906), "Invitation to Love."

to carry within us an orchard

And here is today's second poem, for April 29. The only thing I can say about this poem is that it is perfect.

From blossoms comes
this brown paper bag of peaches
we bought from the boy
at the bend in the road where we turned toward
signs painted Peaches.

From laden boughs, from hands,
from sweet fellowship in the bins,
comes nectar at the roadside, succulent
peaches we devour, dusty skin and all,
comes the familiar dust of summer, dust we eat.

O, to take what we love inside,
to carry within us an orchard, to eat
not only the skin, but the shade,
not only the sugar, but the days, to hold
the fruit in our hands, adore it, then bite into
the round jubilance of peach.

There are days we live
as if death were nowhere
in the background; from joy
to joy to joy, from wing to wing,
from blossom to blossom to
impossible blossom, to sweet impossible blossom.

—Li-Young Lee, "From Blossoms," from Rose, 1986.

a poem in this place

I'm going to post two poems today and my final poem tomorrow, on May 1st, because time is a construct. This poem was originally intended for Wednesday, April 28, and it was one of the first poems I picked out for this year, back in January when Amanda Gorman instantly became everyone's favorite young poet (with very good reason). Her new poetry collection comes out in September, and I am very excited.

There’s a poem in this place—
in the footfalls in the halls
in the quiet beat of the seats.
It is here, at the curtain of day,
where America writes a lyric
you must whisper to say.

There’s a poem in this place—
in the heavy grace,
the lined face of this noble building,
collections burned and reborn twice.

There’s a poem in Boston’s Copley Square
where protest chants
tear through the air
like sheets of rain,
where love of the many
swallows hatred of the few.

There’s a poem in Charlottesville
where tiki torches string a ring of flame
tight round the wrist of night
where men so white they gleam blue—
seem like statues
where men heap that long wax burning
ever higher
where Heather Heyer
blooms forever in a meadow of resistance.

There’s a poem in the great sleeping giant
of Lake Michigan, defiantly raising
its big blue head to Milwaukee and Chicago—
a poem begun long ago, blazed into frozen soil,
strutting upward and aglow.

There’s a poem in Florida, in East Texas
where streets swell into a nexus
of rivers, cows afloat like mottled buoys in the brown,
where courage is now so common
that 23-year-old Jesus Contreras rescues people from floodwaters.

There’s a poem in Los Angeles
yawning wide as the Pacific tide
where a single mother swelters
in a windowless classroom, teaching
black and brown students in Watts
to spell out their thoughts
so her daughter might write
this poem for you.

There's a lyric in California
where thousands of students march for blocks,
undocumented and unafraid;
where my friend Rosa finds the power to blossom
in deadlock, her spirit the bedrock of her community.
She knows hope is like a stubborn
ship gripping a dock,
a truth: that you can’t stop a dreamer
or knock down a dream.

How could this not be her city
su nación
our country
our America,
our American lyric to write—
a poem by the people, the poor,
the Protestant, the Muslim, the Jew,
the native, the immigrant,
the black, the brown, the blind, the brave,
the undocumented and undeterred,
the woman, the man, the nonbinary,
the white, the trans,
the ally to all of the above
and more?

Tyrants fear the poet.
Now that we know it
we can’t blow it.
We owe it
to show it
not slow it
although it
hurts to sew it
when the world
skirts below it.

Hope—
we must bestow it
like a wick in the poet
so it can grow, lit,
bringing with it
stories to rewrite—
the story of a Texas city depleted but not defeated
a history written that need not be repeated
a nation composed but not yet completed.

There’s a poem in this place—
a poem in America
a poet in every American
who rewrites this nation, who tells
a story worthy of being told on this minnow of an earth
to breathe hope into a palimpsest of time—
a poet in every American
who sees that our poem penned
doesn’t mean our poem’s end.

There’s a place where this poem dwells—
it is here, it is now, in the yellow song of dawn’s bell
where we write an American lyric
we are just beginning to tell.

—Amanda Gorman, "In This Place (An American Lyric)," an original poem written for the inaugural reading of Poet Laureate Tracy K. Smith at the Library of Congress, 2017. There's an audio reading of this poem at poets.org.

let the skie raine potatoes

I've been feeling fairly dreadful since Monday, and as a result—obviously—have fallen behind on the poetry. But I do have poems I want to post, so I'm going to post a few at once. I might even run over into May. Time is pretty meaningless!

I have also been watching a lot of old seasons of Top Chef, and it's amazing how many different ways people have figured out to fuck up potatoes. Potatoes are too great to fuck up, people. Here's a poem about potatoes.

"They eat a lot of French fries here," my mother
     announces after a week in Paris, and she's right,
not only about les pommes frites but the celestial tuber
     in all its forms: rotie, purée, not to mention
au gratin or boiled and oiled in la salade niçoise.
     Batata edulis discovered by gold-mad conquistadors
in the West Indies, and only a 100 years later
     in The Merry Wives of Windsor Falstaff cries,
"Let the skie raine Potatoes," for what would we be
     without you—lost in a sea of fried turnips,
mashed beets, roasted parsnips? Mi corazón, mon coeur,
     my core is not the heart but the stomach, tuber
of the body, its hollow stem the throat and esophagus,
     leafing out to the nose and eyes and mouth. Hail
the conquering spud, all its names marvelous: Solanum
     tuberosum, Igname, Caribe, Russian Banana, Yukon Gold.
When you turned black, Ireland mourned. O Mr. Potato Head,
     how many deals can a man make before he stops being
small potatoes? How many men can a woman drop
     like a hot potato? Eat it cooked or raw like an apple
with salt of the earth, apple of the earth, pomme de terre.
     Tuber, tuber burning bright in a kingdom without light,
deep within the earth where the Incan potato gods rule,
     forging their golden orbs for the world's ravening gorge.

—Barbara Hamby, "Ode to the Potato," from Babel, 2004.

kiss the apocalypse goodbye

Three days late for April 26, a poem that makes me feel things about a lot of things, but maybe especially the wildness of the English language. I just really love poetry, is the thing.

Never fear. I know the difference between
arteries and ardor, arbor and treed,
my bower and a weak-kneed need, a harbor
where one might moor tonight and a port worth
the oars’ effort to come ashore for, a bit
part and the serpent’s gravid apple. I won’t
flatter myself first or lasting, or
presume to fast and feint a martyr, making
mockery of sacrifice, fatten
for some sweet slaughter. I must believe that I’m
not on your mind. On your body? Sure.
That said, your body has a few ideas
so bright that we might meet some night and render
a dark room light as the last day before
the world ends, that doom that was supposed to dawn
today, but by now, hours worn on and in,
we know there’s no such luxury as fine
as that finality for now. For now,
at least, I’ll have to kiss apocalypse
goodbye, resign myself to this more mundane
pain, the solace of the solstice, year’s
earliest sunset and its longest night.
I try to catch that fade of color with,
without a flash. Both tries prove terrible.
The horizon smudges up against the sky’s blur
like a child’s heavy-handed landscape
and inept erasure. They’ll have to do.
The pictures that I have of you will never
do you justice, either, neither a camera’s
snap nor some synaptic crackle long
elapsed can come remotely close to holding
you. How else would you have it? You need
never fear. I need you, but I only need you
where you are: there, never far, never near.

—Dora Malech, "To the You of Ten Years Ago, Now," from The New Yorker, April 29, 2013.

a word stranded by its language

I knew I wanted to post something by Ocean Vuong this year, but it took me a long time to decide which poem. But I just kept coming back to this one. One of the things I love about Vuong's poetry is that it is often sort of viscerally horrifying, while at the same time being an absolute triumph of language.

Because the butterfly's yellow wing
flickering in black mud
was a word
stranded by its language.
Because no one else
was coming — & I ran
out of reasons.
So I gathered fistfuls
of  ash, dark as ink,
hammered them
into marrow, into
a skull thick
enough to keep
the gentle curse
of  dreams. Yes, I aimed
for mercy — 
but came only close
as building a cage
around the heart. Shutters
over the eyes. Yes,
I gave it hands
despite knowing
that to stretch that clay slab
into five blades of light,
I would go
too far. Because I, too,
needed a place
to hold me. So I dipped
my fingers back
into the fire, pried open
the lower face
until the wound widened
into a throat,
until every leaf shook silver
with that god
-awful scream
& I was done.
& it was human.

—Ocean Vuong, "Essay on Craft," from Poetry magazine, July/August 2017.

the throat of the mountains

And lastly, today's poem, which takes my breath away each time I read it.

a woman can't survive
by her own breath
                   alone
she must know
the voices of mountains
she must recognize
the foreverness of blue sky
she must flow
with the elusive
bodies
of night winds
who will take her
into herself

look at me
i am not a separate woman
i am the continuance
of blue sky
i am the throat
of the mountains
a night wind
who burns
with every breath
she takes

—Joy Harjo, "Fire," from What Moon Drove Me to This?, 1979 (Reed Books). Joy Harjo is a poet I should have been posting for years, but I only (embarrassingly) read her for the first time this year. There are many more of her poems to come, I think.

all men are bad

Yesterday, April 23, was Shakespeare's alleged birthday and death day, and my tradition is to post a poem that is tangentially related to Shakespeare—often referencing one of the plays, as in this case—and one sonnet. Shakespeare wrote a lot of beautiful sonnets, some of which are incredible exercises in craft and poetry, and many of which are very queer and sexy. This is not really one of those.

My shoes are unpolished, my words smudged.
I come to you undressed (the lord, he whispers
Smut; that man, he whispers such). I bend
My thoughts, I submit, but a bird
Keeps flying from my mind, it slippers
My feet and sings—barren world,
I have been a little minx in it, not at all
Domestic, not at all clean, not at all blinking
At my lies. First he thought he had a wife, then
(of course) he thought he had a whore. All
I wanted (if I may speak for myself) was: more.
If only one of you had said, I hold
Your craven breaking soul, I see the pieces,
I feel them in my hands, idle silver, idle gold...
You see I cannot speak without telling what I am.
I disobey the death you gave me, love.
If you must be, then be not with me.

—Meghan O'Rourke, "Ophelia to the Court," 2010.

*

Tis better to be vile than vile esteemed
When not to be receives reproach of being,
And the just pleasures lost, which is so deemed
Not by our feeling, but by others' seeing.
For why should others' false adulterate eyes
Give salutation to my sportive blood?
Or on my frailties why are frailer spies,
Which in their wills count bad what I think good?
No, I am that I am, and they that level
At my abuses reckon up their own;
I may be straight though they themselves be bevel.
By their rank thoughts my deeds must not be shown,
Unless this general evil they maintain:
All men are bad and in their badness reign.

—William Shakespeare (1564-1616), Sonnet 121. All men are bad, thank you, Will.

insnared with flowers

I am, as some of you may have noticed, a few days behind on poems. I often hit a fatigue point in late April, and this year I also have the post-vacation blues; it's been hard to concentrate on much this week. But it's the weekend, the weather is glorious, and it's time to catch up on poetry! I'm going to post a few separate poems today, starting with one for April 22, which was Earth Day. This poem is also a little bit for my mood today—I took a long walk through the park this morning and saw many flowers and flowering trees—because I get hit with the metaphysicals in spring and start thinking about tree sex. And it's been a few years since I posted anything by my bro Andrew Marvell.

How vainly men themselves amaze
To win the palm, the oak, or bays;
And their uncessant labours see
Crowned from some single herb or tree,
Whose short and narrow vergèd shade
Does prudently their toils upbraid;
While all flow’rs and all trees do close
To weave the garlands of repose.

Fair Quiet, have I found thee here,
And Innocence, thy sister dear!
Mistaken long, I sought you then
In busy companies of men;
Your sacred plants, if here below,
Only among the plants will grow.
Society is all but rude,
To this delicious solitude.

No white nor red was ever seen
So am’rous as this lovely green.
Fond lovers, cruel as their flame,
Cut in these trees their mistress’ name;
Little, alas, they know or heed
How far these beauties hers exceed!
Fair trees! wheres’e’er your barks I wound,
No name shall but your own be found.

When we have run our passions' heat,
Love hither makes his best retreat.
The gods, that mortal beauty chase,
Still in a tree did end their race:
Apollo hunted Daphne so,
Only that she might laurel grow;
And Pan did after Syrinx speed,
Not as a nymph, but for a reed.

What wondrous life in this I lead!
Ripe apples drop about my head;
The luscious clusters of the vine
Upon my mouth do crush their wine;
The nectarine and curious peach,
Into my hands themselves do reach;
Stumbling on melons, as I pass,
Insnared with flow’rs, I fall on grass.

Meanwhile the mind, from pleasure less,
Withdraws into its happiness;
The mind, that ocean where each kind
Does straight its own resemblance find,
Yet it creates, transcending these,
Far other worlds, and other seas;
Annihilating all that’s made
To a green thought in a green shade.

Here at the fountain’s sliding foot,
Or at some fruit tree’s mossy root,
Casting the body’s vest aside,
My soul into the boughs does glide;
There like a bird it sits and sings,
Then whets, and combs its silver wings;
And, till prepared for longer flight,
Waves in its plumes the various light.

Such was that happy garden-state,
While man there walked without a mate;
After a place so pure and sweet,
What other help could yet be meet!
But ’twas beyond a mortal’s share
To wander solitary there:
Two Paradises ’twere in one
To live in Paradise alone.

How well the skillful gard’ner drew
Of flow’rs and herbs this dial new,
Where from above the milder sun
Does through a fragrant zodiac run;
And as it works, th’industrious bee
Computes its time as well as we.
How could such sweet and wholesome hours
Be reckoned but with herbs and flow’rs!

—Andrew Marvell (1621-1678), "The Garden," around 1668 or earlier. First published in print in 1681. Traditionally, this poem is seen as a product of Marvell's "period of retirement" from 1650-1652 at Nun Appleton in Yorkshire, where he wrote "Upon Appleton House," as well as other poems in which characters walk around in gardens and have metaphysical sex with trees. But according to the notes in my edition of Marvell, a strong case has been made to date the poem during the Restoration because of the influence of Katherine Philips, which I personally like as an argument because Philips was pretty baller. My favorite piece of my own marginalia on this poem is not "(tree sex)" written under the line about the nectarine and the curious peach, but the note at the very end of the poem where I wrote, somewhat inexplicably, "well, but, BEES," underlined twice.

in love as in tourism

I spend a lot of time on Poetry Foundation during National Poetry Month, and this poem kept showing up on the front page, highlighted as one of the new poems in the most recent issue of Poetry magazine. I've been coming back to it all month, and I like it more each time.

cartography seems the strangest science today
as morning alters the fittings of the hour to form
shapes wholly new. wishing I did not know that, to leave,
it is down and right past the neighbor’s potted palm,
across the street to meet the river, then ahead until
the train station crowds into view—I search the infinity
enclosed here, for any time that the future could spare.
between the words lost and losing entire worlds change
hands. where the latter informs negation the other is
duplicitous with potentialities—becoming something
even desired. suddenly one is alert to all the colors
returned to sight by merely looking, a lack of familiarity
striking the common into curiosity, just as in the folktales
in which death plays detective, the wanderer is the one
who evades the blade. it is so wonderful to not be found
but to be finding, as I discover in tokyo—whose streets
resemble labyrinth, pierced with rhododendron in spring
and thundering gingko in autumn—and remember again
when you laugh and I do not ask why. and I do not want
to know either, to whom this room belonged to before us,
or where that smell of fruit is coming from, or why a fog
rises to challenge the knowledge of places once intimately
kept. I am grateful that within you only the unknown lives,
that even as what passes between us is frail and limited
and human, we still dream of things resembling the eternal.

—Xiao Yue Shan, "in love as in tourism," originally published in Poetry, April 2021.

we can walk together

After the birthing of bombs of forks and fear
the frantic automatic weapons unleashed,

the spray of bullets into a crowd holding hands,
that brute sky opening in a slate metal maw
that swallows only the unsayable in each of us, what’s
left? Even the hidden nowhere river is poisoned
orange and acidic by a coal mine. How canaaaa
you not fear humanity, want to lick the creek
bottom dry, to suck the deadly water up into
your own lungs, like venom? Reader, I want to
say: Don’t die. Even when silvery fish after fish
comes back belly up, and the country plummets
into a crepitating crater of hatred, isn’t there still
something singing? The truth is: I don’t know.
But sometimes, I swear I hear it, the wound closing
like a rusted-over garage door, and I can still move
my living limbs into the world without too much
pain, can still marvel at how the dog runs straight
toward the pickup trucks break-necking down
the road, because she thinks she loves them,
because she’s sure, without a doubt, that the loud
roaring things will love her back, her soft small self
alive with desire to share her goddamn enthusiasm,
until I yank the leash back to save her because
I want her to survive forever. Don’t die, I say,
and we decide to walk for a bit longer, starlings
high and fevered above us, winter coming to lay
her cold corpse down upon this little plot of earth.
Perhaps we are always hurtling our body towards
the thing that will obliterate us, begging for love
from the speeding passage of time, and so maybe,
like the dog obedient at my heels, we can walk together
peacefully, at least until the next truck comes.

—Ada Limón, "The Leash" from The Carrying, 2018.

a source of water

Yesterday was my last full day of vacation, and it ended up being very busy—very fun, but also busy—and by the end I was so tired that I went straight to bed. We're going out to breakfast in a little bit, and then I head back to the airport. So here is one last love sonnet in Spanish, for the road.

para este amor nunca ha habido sol,
como loca flor, en lo oscuro brota,
es, a la vez, corona de espinas y
guirnalda de primavera en la sien

fuego, herida y amarguísimo fruto,
pero también brisa y manantial,
una mordida al alma: tu aliento,
un tronco en la corriente: tu pecho

hazme caminar sobre el agua turbia,
sé el hacha que rompa este candado,
el rocío que haga llorar los árboles

si mudo quedo al besar tus muslos
es que mi corazón con afán busca
entre tu carne un nuevo amanecer


there has never been sunlight for this love,
like a crazed flower it buds in the dark,
is at once a crown of thorns and
a spring garland around the temples

a fire, a wound, the bitterest of fruit,
but a breeze as well, a source of water,
your breath—a bite to the soul,
your chest—a tree trunk in the current

make me walk on the turbid waters,
be the ax that breaks this lock,
the dew that weeps from trees

if I become mute kissing your thighs,
it’s that my heart eagerly
searches your flesh for a new dawn

—Francisco X. Alarcón (1954-2016), I from "Of Dark Love," from From the Other Side of Night/Del otro lado de la noche, translated by Francisco Aragón, 2002. Not only is this gorgeous, it is also very queer.

rendido el corazón

Is it love sonnet time yet? Okay, let's be honest, it's always love sonnet time. I like a sonnet in the very classical tradition of "love fucks me up but I'm into it."

Con el dolor de la mortal herida,
de un agravio de amor me lamentaba;
y por ver si la muerte se llegaba,
procuraba que fuese más crecida.

Toda en el mal el alma divertida,
pena por pena su dolor sumaba,
y en cada circunstancia ponderaba
quesobrabanmil muertes a una vida.

Y cuando, al golpe de uno y otro tiro,
rendido el corazón daba penoso
señas de dar el último suspiro,

no sé con qué destino prodigioso
volví en mi acuerdo y dije:—¿Qué me admiro?
¿Quién en amor ha sido más dichoso?


Love opened a mortal wound.
In agony, I worked the blade
to make it deeper. Please,
I begged, let death come quick.

Wild, distracted, sick,
I counted, counted
all the ways love hurt me.
One life, I thought—a thousand deaths.

Blow after blow, my heart
couldn't survive this beating.
Then—how can I explain it?

I came to my senses. I said,
Why do I suffer? What lover
ever had so much pleasure?

—Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz (1651-1695), "Love Opened a Mortal Wound," or "Con el Dolor de la Mortal Herida," translated by Joan Larkin and Jaime Manrique. Sor Juana kicks ass.

a few days longer

Today's Academy of American Poets poem-of-the-day—which I get in my inbox every morning whether or not it is poetry month—absolutely fucked me up, so of course I am posting it so that all of you can feel equally fucked up. Like basically every Dorianne Laux poem I have ever read, it is gorgeous and does not pull its punches.

It’s the best part of the day, morning light sliding
down rooftops, treetops, the birds pulling themselves
up out of whatever stupor darkened their wings,
night still in their throats.

I never wanted to die. Even when those I loved
died around me, away from me, beyond me.
My life was never in question, if for no other reason
than I wanted to wake up and see what happened next.

And I continue to want to open like that, like the flowers
who lift their heavy heads as the hills outside the window
flare gold for a moment before they turn
on their sides and bare their creased backs.

Even the cut flowers in a jar of water lift
their soon to be dead heads and open
their eyes, even they want a few more sips,
to dwell here, in paradise, a few days longer.

—Dorianne Laux, "I Never Wanted to Die," originally published in Poem-a-Day on April 16, 2021, by the Academy of American Poets.

though this might take me a little time

I will always be grateful to my dearly beloved Auden for being so prolific that I will never, ever run out of poems to post. This one was requested, and it is a forever favorite.

Looking up at the stars, I know quite well
That, for all they care, I can go to hell,
But on earth indifference is the least
We have to dread from man or beast.

How should we like it were stars to burn
With a passion for us we could not return?
If equal affection cannot be,
Let the more loving one be me.

Admirer as I think I am
Of stars that do not give a damn,
I cannot, now I see them, say
I missed one terribly all day.

Were all stars to disappear or die,
I should learn to look at an empty sky
And feel its total dark sublime,
Though this might take me a little time.

—W. H. Auden (1907-1973), "The More Loving One," from Homage to Clio, 1960.

the tiniest dessert spoon

It's my birthday, and it's been pretty exceptional—between the pool, the mimosas, the beach, the food, the surprise balloon-decorated golf cart that came to pick us up from dinner, the decorative cake make out of towels. (By repeatedly saying I didn't want a fuss, I managed to evade the singing waiters.) But it's hard not to have a good birthday when you're on vacation at a beautiful resort after a year stuck at home.

Last year, I decided to start a new tradition with my birthday poems, and post poets who are new to me (or at least poets I've never posted before). I owe a lot to Poetry Foundation, where I frequently jump from poem to poem until I find the one that makes me go, "oh, yes, this one," which is exactly what happened here.

In a new translator’s version of Genesis, there’s no Adam.
No serpent. In paradise, I don’t bleed. Fig leaf-free girl,
dear God, I say as we converse fluently without tongues,
joined as two spice-drenched beloveds in a song of songs,
could we please ask the gardener to plant a pomegranate grove
by a stand of non-fruiting olive cultivars, which don’t bloom
and aren’t so messy? Honey, I am the gardener, says God,
whose anthropomorphic footfalls caress the afternoon cool.
Wolves in our botanical garden ask nothing of any human,
eyes the hue of clementines plucked green off a young tree,
one of five in my orchard, per telltale ringless left finger:
fig, clementine, kumquat, oroblanco, and lemon. If I reside
in paradise, then I get to eat all the fruit I want, all day long.
No problem, says God, who calls me a little pouch of myrrh.
An eagle locks eyes with mine. A dove by the pool adores
the wolves as she coos, gold-amber, one stone’s throw away.
Each one carries a scent: snowy owls of shuttered skies, elk,
bobcats, melanin-rich skin of a feckless human. In paradise,
wolves and doves coexist. Once, a clementine sat forgotten
in my purse until it acquired the spots of a leopard. A world
in a lion’s eye is kohl-lined gold. Aloes and sage carve a path
through a brushy stand of Joshua trees, one which God made
after lightning struck the agave and scrub oak. Joshua trees
are chuppah arches double-wreathed with burrs, scales, fur.
Joshuas aren’t guys, so yucca moths activate their ovaries.
Wolves do not question why a male is missing in paradise.
Yes, yucca moths take care of it. Coyotes do not question
the human. Why I’m not married, why childless, howling,
and whether we’ve reached the century when God invents
a gossamer mousse garnished with absinthe-laced cherries
served in hand-fired ceramic espresso cups, a dessert to taste
together for the first time after we invent a miniature spoon
no larger than a bee hummingbird, tiniest in all creation.

—Karen An-hwei Lee, "Ode to the Tiniest Dessert Spoon in All Creation," originally published in Poetry Magazine, December 2018.

busy with whales

I did not see any whales today, but I did sit in a palapa on the beach for the whole morning, and I certainly considered the possibility of whales (we're on the Caribbean, so whales are pretty unlikely, but I suppose you never know). It's the first full day of vacation, and I woke up feeling pretty great—well-rested, relaxed, ready to lie by the pool and drink cold beverages and read. It's really nice to be here.

One of my favorite things about Billy Collins is the way his poems are so straightforward and simple—even, dare I say, prosaic—in some ways, and then just gently and lovingly punch you right in the face.

Today I was awakened by strong coffee
and the awareness that the earth is busy with whales
even though we can't see any
unless we have embarked on a whale watch,
which would be disappointing if we still couldn't see any.

I can see the steam rising from my yellow cup,
the usual furniture scattered about,
and even some early light filtering through the palms.

Meanwhile, thousands of whales are cruising
along at various speeds under the seas,

crisscrossing one another, slaloming in and out
of the Gulf Stream, some with their calves
traveling alongside—such big blunt heads they have!

So is it too much to ask that one day a year
be set aside for keeping in mind
while we step onto a bus, consume a ham sandwich,
or stoop to pick up a coin from a sidewalk
the multitude of these mammoth creatures
coasting between the continents,
some for the fun of it, others purposeful in their journeys,

all concealed under the sea, unless somewhere
one breaks the surface
with an astonishing upheaval of water
and all the people in yellow slickers
rush to one side of the boat to point and shout
and wonder how to tell their friends about the day they saw a whale?

—Billy Collins, "Whale Day," from Whale Day: And Other Poems (New York: Random House, 2020).

pirouette and flourish

I AM ON VACATION. I got on an airplane?! And went to a PLACE?! It is pretty magical. I am very happy and very exhausted. Earlier tonight my mom and I ate popsicles on the beach in the dark. Here's a little Rita Dove.

Back when the earth was new
and heaven just a whisper,
back when the names of things
hadn't had time to stick;

back when the smallest breezes
melted summer into autumn,
when all the poplars quivered
sweetly in rank and file...

the world called, and I answered.
Each glance ignited to a gaze.
I caught my breath and called that life,
swooned between spoonfuls of lemon sorbet.

I was pirouette and flourish,
I was filigree and flame.
How could I count my blessings
when I didn't know their names?

Back when everything was still to come,
luck leaked out everywhere.
I gave my promise to the world,
and the world followed me here.

—Rita Dove, "Testimonial" from On the Bus With Rosa Parks, 1999.

in devotion

Sometimes it's a day for a monsoon poem.

Because this is a monsoon poem
expect to find the words jasmine,
palmyra, Kuruntokai, red; mangoes
in reference to trees or breasts; paddy
fields, peacocks, Kurinji flowers,
flutes; lotus buds guarding love’s
furtive routes. Expect to hear a lot
about erotic consummation inferred
by laburnum gyrations and bamboo
syncopations. Listen to the racket
of wide-mouthed frogs and bent-
legged prawns going about their
business of mating while rain falls
and falls on tiled roofs and verandas,
courtyards, pagodas. Because such
a big part of you seeks to understand
this kind of rain — so unlike your cold
rain, austere rain, get-me-the-hell-
out-of-here rain. Rain that can’t fathom
how to liberate camphor from the vaults
of the earth. Let me tell you how little
is written of mud, how it sneaks up
like a sleek-gilled vandal to catch hold
of your ankles. Or about the restorative
properties of mosquito blood, dappled
and fried against the wires of a bug-zapping
paddle. So much of monsoon is to do
with being overcome — not from longing
as you might think, but from the sky’s
steady bludgeoning, until every leaf
on every unremembered tree gleams
in the abyss of postcoital bliss.
Come. Now sip on your masala tea,
put your lips to the sweet, spicy skin
of it. There’s more to see — notice
the dogs who’ve been fucking on the beach,
locked in embrace like an elongated Anubis,
the crabs scavenging the flesh of a dopey-
eyed ponyfish, the entire delirious coast
with its philtra of beach and saturnine
clouds arched backwards in disbelief.
And the mayflies who swarm in November
with all their ephemeral grandeur to die
in millions at the behest of light, the geckos
stationed on living room walls, cramming
fistfuls of wings in their maws. Notice
how hardly anyone mentions the word
death, even though the fridge leaks
and the sheets have been damp for weeks.
And in this helter-skelter multitude
of gray-greenness, notice how even the rain
begins to feel fatigued. The roads and sewers
have nowhere to go, and like old-fashioned pursuers
they wander and spill their babbling hearts
to electrical poles and creatures with ears.
And what happens later, you might ask,
after we’ve moved to a place of shelter,
when the cracks in the earth have reappeared?
We dream of wet, of course, of being submerged
in millet stalks, of webbed toes and stalled
clocks and eels in the mouth of a heron.
We forget how unforgivably those old poems
led us to believe that men were mountains,
that the beautiful could never remain
heartbroken, that when the rains arrive
we should be delighted to be taken
in drowning, in devotion.

—Tishani Doshi, "Monsoon Poem," originally published in Poetry Magazine, July/August 2017.

my color's green

I had a really lovely day today, even though I also did like four loads of laundry and had to run several stupid errands. I also drank coffee and ate croissants outside, and went the farmers' market, and watched a couple of episodes of a new show with my drama-watching buddies, and got to hug and spend time with two different friends in person, which was pretty much the best thing I've gotten to do in months. Tomorrow I have to clean and pack and get organized, and on Monday I leave for vacation, the first trip involving an airplane I've taken in over a year. I can't wait.

     —after Gwendolyn Brooks

No matter the pull toward brink. No
matter the florid, deep sleep awaits.
There is a time for everything. Look,
just this morning a vulture
nodded his red, grizzled head at me,
and I looked at him, admiring
the sickle of his beak.
Then the wind kicked up, and,
after arranging that good suit of feathers
he up and took off.
Just like that. And to boot,
there are, on this planet alone, something like two
million naturally occurring sweet things,
some with names so generous as to kick
the steel from my knees: agave, persimmon,
stick ball, the purple okra I bought for two bucks
at the market. Think of that. The long night,
the skeleton in the mirror, the man behind me
on the bus taking notes, yeah, yeah.
But look; my niece is running through a field
calling my name. My neighbor sings like an angel
and at the end of my block is a basketball court.
I remember. My color's green. I'm spring.

     —for Walter Aikens

—Ross Gay, "Sorrow Is Not My Name" from Bringing the Shovel Down (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2011).

till then my windows ache

Lucy requested this one, and it's hard to argue with Neruda (or with my wife). Neruda is always fairly miraculous, in both gorgeous whole poems and truly incredible single lines, and this one is no exception.

Matilde, dónde estás? Noté, hacia abajo,
entre corbata y corazón, arriba,
cierta melancolía intercostal:
era que tú de pronto eras ausente.

Me hizo falta la luz de tu energía
y miré devorando la esperanza,
miré el vacío que es sin ti una casa,
no quedan sino trágicas ventanas.

De puro taciturno el techo escucha
caer antiguas lluvias deshojadas,
plumas, lo que la noche aprisionó:

y así te espero como casa sola
y volverás a verme y habitarme.
De otro modo me duelen las ventanas.


Matilde, where are you? Down there I noticed,
under my necktie and just above the heart,
a certain pang of grief between the ribs,
you were gone that quickly.

I needed the light of your energy,
I looked around, devouring hope.
I watched the void without you that is like a house,
nothing left but tragic windows.

Out of sheer taciturnity the ceiling listens
to the fall of the ancient leafless rain,
to feathers, to whatever the night imprisoned:

so I wait for you like a lonely house
till you will see me again and live in me.
Till then my windows ache.

—Pablo Neruda (1904-1973), LXV from Cien sonetos de amor, or One Hundred Love Sonnets, translated by Stephen Tapscott (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1986). I am grateful to Neruda that there are 100 sonnets, so I can never stop doing National Poetry Month.

counter, original, spare, strange

Sometimes, when I'm not sure what poem I'm in the mood for and don't have a plan for the day, I go back through my spreadsheet in search of inspiration and realize that, although I have posted almost all of my favorite Gerard Manley Hopkins poems, there are some I have missed.

Glory be to God for dappled things –
     For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;
          For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;
Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings;
     Landscape plotted and pieced – fold, fallow, and plough;

          And áll trádes, their gear and tackle and trim.

All things counter, original, spare, strange;
     Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)
          With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;
He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:
                                   Praise him.

—Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1889), "Pied Beauty," Summer 1877. The note on this poem in my edition of Selected Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins (Dover, 2011, ed. Bob Blaisdell) says, "Curtal Sonnet: sprung paeonic rhythm," because Hopkins is, as always, baller.

my immortality box

I go whole years of poetry without thinking about Anne Sexton, and then I read any single poem of hers and am instantly overcome by how fucking good she is and how many feelings she gives me. Really I should be posting this poem at 3:15am, but late on a Wednesday evening seems appropriate, too.

So it has come to this –
insomnia at 3:15 A.M.,
the clock tolling its engine

like a frog following
a sundial yet having an electric
seizure at the quarter hour.

The business of words keeps me awake.
I am drinking cocoa,
the warm brown mama.

I would like a simple life
yet all night I am laying
poems away in a long box.

It is my immortality box,
my lay-away plan,
my coffin.

All night dark wings
flopping in my heart.
Each an ambition bird.

The bird wants to be dropped
from a high place like Tallahatchie Bridge.

He wants to light a kitchen match
and immolate himself.

He wants to fly into the hand of Michelangelo
and come out painted on a ceiling.

He wants to pierce the hornet’s nest
and come out with a long godhead.

He wants to take bread and wine
and bring forth a man happily floating in the Caribbean.

He wants to be pressed out like a key
so he can unlock the Magi.

He wants to take leave among strangers
passing out bits of his heart like hors d’oeuvres.

He wants to die changing his clothes
and bolt for the sun like a diamond.

He wants, I want.
Dear God, wouldn’t it be
good enough just to drink cocoa?

I must get a new bird
and a new immortality box.
There is folly enough inside this one.

—Anne Sexton (1928-1974), "The Ambition Bird," in this case from Anne Sexton: The Complete Poems (1981), and read by me at the Poetry Foundation.

put your lips to the world

Sometimes I try to be strategic about when during the month I post Mary Oliver—at the end? early? right in the middle?—and then sometimes you just have to post some Mary Oliver.

For years, every morning, I drank
from Blackwater Pond.
It was flavored with oak leaves and also, no doubt,
the feet of ducks.

And always it assuaged me
from the dry bowl of the very far past.

What I want to say is
that the past is the past,
and the present is what your life is,
and you are capable
of choosing what that will be,
darling citizen.

So come to the pond,
or the river of your imagination,
or the harbor of your longing,

and put your lips to the world.
And live
your life.

—Mary Oliver (1935-2019), "Mornings at Blackwater," from Red Bird, 2008.

fragrant is the blossom

Ten years ago today, we held the memorial service for my brother, Pete, who died on March 26, 2011. 2011 was my fifth year doing National Poetry Month, and the poems helped. As is often the case, in difficult years, they gave me a kind of lifeline, a rhythm: even when I felt awful, I tried to post poems. Since 2012, I've posted a poem about death, or grief, or both—some more tangential than others—on April 5, as an anniversary. This one is a classic.

I am not resigned to the shutting away of loving hearts in the hard ground.
So it is, and so it will be, for so it has been, time out of mind:
Into the darkness they go, the wise and the lovely. Crowned
With lilies and with laurel they go; but I am not resigned.

Lovers and thinkers, into the earth with you.
Be one with the dull, the indiscriminate dust.
A fragment of what you felt, of what you knew,
A formula, a phrase remains,—but the best is lost.

The answers quick and keen, the honest look, the laughter, the love,—
They are gone. They are gone to feed the roses. Elegant and curled
Is the blossom. Fragrant is the blossom. I know. But I do not approve.
More precious was the light in your eyes than all the roses in the world.

Down, down, down into the darkness of the grave
Gently they go, the beautiful, the tender, the kind;
Quietly they go, the intelligent, the witty, the brave.
I know. But I do not approve. And I am not resigned.

—Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892-1950), "Dirge Without Music," from Collected Poems, 1928.

our enemies' spectacular deaths

Happy Easter, especially to all my witch wives.

I’ll conjure the perfect Easter
& we’ll plant mini spruces in the yard—
my pink gloves & your green gloves

like parrots from an opera over the earth—
We’ll chatter about our enemies’ spectacular deaths.
I’ll conjure the perfect Easter

dark pesto sauce sealed with lemon
long cords of fusilli to remind you of my hair
& my pink gloves. Your gloves are green

& transparent like the skin of Christ
when He returned, filmed over with moss roses—
I’ll conjure as perfect an Easter:

provolone cut from the whole ball
woody herbs burning our tongues—it’s a holiday
I conjure with my pink-and-green gloves

wrangling life from the dirt. It all turns out
as I’d hoped. The warlocks of winter are dead
& it’s Easter. I dig up body after body after body
with my pink gloves, my green gloves.

—Kiki Petrosino, "Witch Wife" from Witch Wife, 2017.

in return for one word

I spent most of the day writing to an upcoming deadline, and it felt pretty great to get words on the page for the first time in a while. But I am definitely not as good at words as Zbigniew Herbert.

I would like to describe the simplest emotion
joy or sadness
but not as others do
reaching for shafts of rain or sun

I would like to describe a light
which is being born in me
but I know it does not resemble
any star
for it is not so bright
not so pure
and is uncertain

I would like to describe courage
without dragging behind me a dusty lion
and also anxiety
without shaking a glass full of water

to put it another way
I would give all metaphors
in return for one word
drawn out of my breast like a rib
for one word
contained within the boundaries
of my skin

but apparently this is not possible

and just to say - I love
I run around like mad
picking up handfuls of birds
and my tenderness
which after all is not made of water
asks the water for a face
and anger
different from fire
borrows from it
a loquacious tongue

so is blurred
so is blurred
in me
what white-haired gentlemen
separated once and for all
and said
this is the subject
and this is the object

we fall asleep
with one hand under our head
and with the other in a mound of planets

our feet abandon us
and taste the earth
with their tiny roots
which next morning
we tear out painfully

—Zbigniew Herbert (1956-1998), "I Would Like to Describe," in this case from The Collected Poems 1956-1998, and read by me at poets.org.

when people say

This one has been in my spreadsheet since I first read it last year. It's very, very good, and it hurts.

all I hear is the wind slapping against the gravestones
of those who did not make it, those who did not
survive to see the confetti fall from the sky, those who

did not live to watch the parade roll down the street.
I have grown accustomed to a lifetime of aphorisms
meant to assuage my fears, pithy sayings meant to

convey that everything ends up fine in the end. There is no
solace in rearranging language to make a different word
tell the same lie. Sometimes the moral arc of the universe

does not bend in a direction that will comfort us.
Sometimes it bends in ways we don’t expect & there are
people who fall off in the process. Please, dear reader,

do not say I am hopeless, I believe there is a better future
to fight for, I simply accept the possibility that I may not
live to see it. I have grown weary of telling myself lies

that I might one day begin to believe. We are not all left
standing after the war has ended. Some of us have
become ghosts by the time the dust has settled.

—Clint Smith, "When people say, 'we have made it through worse before,'" originally published in Issue 19 of wildness, Platypus Press, May 2019.

how terrifying spring is

It definitely does not feel like April to me, but here we are again: April 1, rainy and cold in New York City and honestly still feeling kind of like March, emotionally. (Has it ever not been March?) But I want to see poetry month this year as looking forward to bright things. I'm vaccinated; I'll be traveling for the first time in over a year; I'm going to get to see some family, and some friends. Hugs are on the horizon.

For anyone new, or anyone who would like a refresher: April is National Poetry Month—this year is actually the 25th anniversary, which is pretty cool, and also means I've been posting poems for more than half the time that National Poetry Month has existed, since 2021 will be my 15th year. I try to post a poem a day for the month of April. I almost never manage all thirty days, but I do my best; I also try not to repeat poems I've posted before, except in special circumstances, or to repeat authors during the course of the month. Here we go! 

Watching that frenzy of insects above the bush of white flowers,
bush I see everywhere on hill after hill, all I can think of
is how terrifying spring is, in its tireless, mindless replications.
Everywhere emergence: seed case, chrysalis, uterus, endless manufacturing.
And the wrapped stacks of Styrofoam cups in the grocery, lately
I can't stand them, the shelves of canned beans and soups, freezers
of identical dinners; then the snowflake-diamond-snowflake of the rug
beneath my chair, rows of books turning their backs,
even my two feet, how they mirror each other oppresses me,
the way they fit so perfectly together, how I can nestle one big toe into the other
like little continents that have drifted; my God the unity of everything,
my hands and eyes, yours; doesn't that frighten you sometimes, remembering
the pleasure of nakedness in fresh sheets, all the lovers there before you,
beside you, crowding you out? And the scouring griefs,
don't look at them all or they'll kill you, you can barely encompass your own;
I'm saying I know all about you, whoever you are, it’s spring
and it’s starting again, the longing that begins, and begins, and begins.

—Kim Addonizio (b. 1954), "Onset," from Tell Me (BOA Editions Ltd., 2000).