your one wild and precious life

Today is April 30, and to close us out—on what was an absolutely stunningly gorgeous spring day—is a poem I had to check my spreadsheet and my archive four separate times to be sure I hadn't posted before. It's a classic. Thank you for reading with me, friends. See you next year. ♥

Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean—
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down—
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?

—Mary Oliver (1935-2019), "The Summer Day," from House of Light, 1990. I have closed five out of sixteen years with Mary Oliver, and I have no regrets.

where language is concealed

Getting this in just under the wire, tonight. I've never posted any Eavan Boland before—I hadn't even read her before a friend introduced me to her work last year—and she is absolutely fucking incredible.

In my last year in College
I set out
to write an essay on
the Art of Rhetoric. I had yet to find

the country already lost to me
in song and figure as I scribbled down
names for sweet euphony
and safe digression.

And when I came to the word insinuate
I saw that language could writhe and creep
and the lore of snakes
which I had learned as a child not to fear—
because the Saint had sent them out of Ireland—
came nearer.

Chiasmus. Litotes. Periphrasis. Old
indices and agents of persuasion. How
I remember them in that room where
a girl is writing at a desk with
dusk already in
the streets outside. I can see her. I could say to her–

we will live, we have lived
where language is concealed. Is perilous,
We will be—we have been—citizens
of its hiding place. But it is too late

to shut the book of satin phrases,
to refuse to enter
an evening bitter with peat smoke,
where newspaper sellers shout headlines
and friends call out their farewells in
a city of whispers
and interiors where

the dear vowels
Irish Ireland ours are
absorbed into Autumn air,
are out of earshot in the distances
we are stepping into where we never

imagine words such as hate
and territory and the like—unbanished still
as they always would be—wait
and are waiting under
beautiful speech. To strike.

—Eavan Boland (1944-2020), "Writing in a Time of Violence," from In a Time of Violence, 1994.

after every war

I bought a used copy of Poems New and Collected: 1957-1997 by Wisława Szymborska earlier this year. It's wonderful, and I love the translations in the book, but I still found myself coming back to this one, and to the translation I first read at the Poetry Foundation.

After every war
someone has to clean up.
Things won’t
straighten themselves up, after all.

Someone has to push the rubble
to the side of the road,
so the corpse-filled wagons
can pass.

Someone has to get mired
in scum and ashes,
sofa springs,
splintered glass,
and bloody rags.

Someone has to drag in a girder
to prop up a wall.
Someone has to glaze a window,
rehang a door.

Photogenic it’s not,
and takes years.
All the cameras have left
for another war.

We’ll need the bridges back,
and new railway stations.
Sleeves will go ragged
from rolling them up.

Someone, broom in hand,
still recalls the way it was.
Someone else listens
and nods with unsevered head.
But already there are those nearby
starting to mill about
who will find it dull.

From out of the bushes
sometimes someone still unearths
rusted-out arguments
and carries them to the garbage pile.

Those who knew
what was going on here
must make way for
those who know little.
And less than little.
And finally as little as nothing.

In the grass that has overgrown
causes and effects,
someone must be stretched out
blade of grass in his mouth
gazing at the clouds.

—Wisława Szymborska (1923-2012), "The End and the Beginning" from Miracle Fair: Selected poems of Wisława Szymborska, translated by Joanna Trzeciak, 2001.

perhaps spring is here

Extra poem time! This poem is for April 17, which was the other day I missed this month. I actually had this poem on my spreadsheet the whole time, but between missing a couple of days and moving some things around, it ended up getting bumped off, and I love it, so I'm posting it now. There are no rules to National Poetry Month.

Even though it’s May & the ice cream truck
parked outside my apartment is somehow certain,
I have a hard time believing winter is somehow,
all of a sudden, over — the worst one of my life,
the woman at the bank tells me. Though I’d like to be,
it’s impossible to be prepared for everything.
Even the mundane hum of my phone catches me
off guard today. Every voice that says my name
is a voice I don’t think I could possibly leave
(it’s unfair to not ask for the things you need)
even though I think about it often, even though
leaving is a train headed somewhere I’d probably hate.
Crossing Lyndale to meet a friend for coffee
I have to maneuver around a hearse that pulled too far
into the crosswalk. It’s empty. Perhaps spring is here.
Perhaps it will all be worth it. Even though I knew
even then it was worth it, staying, I mean.
Even now, there is someone, somehow, waiting for me.

—Hieu Minh Nguyen, "Uptown, Minneapolis, Minnesota," Poetry, 2018.

the closest thing to roots

Today is Yom Hashoah, and this poem fucks me up.

We forget where we came from. Our Jewish
names from the Exile give us away,
bring back the memory of flower and fruit, medieval cities,
metals, knights who turned to stone, roses,
spices whose scent drifted away, precious stones, lots of red,
handicrafts long gone from the world
(the hands are gone too).

Circumcision does it to us,
as in the Bible story of Shechem and the sons of Jacob,
so that we go on hurting all our lives.

What are we doing, coming back here with this pain?
Our longings were drained together with the swamps,
the desert blooms for us, and our children are beautiful.
Even the wrecks of ships that sank on the way
reached this shore,
even winds did. Not all the sails.

What are we doing
in this dark land with its
yellow shadows that pierce the eyes?
(Every now and then someone says, even after forty
or fifty years: "The sun is killing me.")

What are we doing with these souls of mist, with these names,
with our eyes of forests, with our beautiful children,
with our quick blood?

Spilled blood is not the roots of trees
but it's the closest thing to roots
we have.

—Yehuda Amichai (1924-2000), "Jews in the Land of Israel," translated by Chana Bloch (1940-2017), from The Poetry of Yehuda Amichai (Farrar Straus and Giroux, 2015).

this place could be beautiful

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.

—Maggie Smith, "Good Bones," originally published in Waxwing magazine (Issue IX, Summer 2016)

just call it horizon

I'm posting two poems today: one for today (April 26), and one for one of the days I missed earlier in the month (this past Sunday, the 24th). My original plan was to post one poem this morning and one this evening, but obviously that didn't happen, so I'm going to post this one and then the other one. They're both really wonderful poems—the kind where I wonder how I haven't already posted them. I may sneak in one more extra poem this week, since I also missed April 17, and any excuse to post another poem, am I right? I have also somehow managed to save a lot of my heavy hitters for the end of the month, so...sorry not sorry about that, too.

        After Frank O’Hara / After Roger Reeves

Ocean, don’t be afraid.
The end of the road is so far ahead
it is already behind us.
Don't worry. Your father is only your father
until one of you forgets. Like how the spine
won't remember its wings
no matter how many times our knees
kiss the pavement. Ocean,
are you listening? The most beautiful part
of your body is wherever
your mother's shadow falls.
Here's the house with childhood
whittled down to a single red tripwire.
Don't worry. Just call it horizon
& you'll never reach it.
Here’s today. Jump. I promise it's not
a lifeboat. Here's the man
whose arms are wide enough to gather
your leaving. & here the moment,
just after the lights go out, when you can still see
the faint torch between his legs.
How you use it again & again
to find your own hands.
You asked for a second chance
& are given a mouth to empty into.
Don't be afraid, the gunfire
is only the sound of people
trying to live a little longer. Ocean. Ocean,
get up. The most beautiful part of your body
is where it's headed. & remember,
loneliness is still time spent
with the world. Here's
the room with everyone in it.
Your dead friends passing
through you like wind
through a wind chime. Here's a desk
with the gimp leg & a brick
to make it last. Yes, here's a room
so warm & blood-close,
I swear, you will wake—
& mistake these walls
for skin.

—Ocean Vuong, "Someday I'll Love Ocean Vuong," from Night Sky With Exit Wounds (2016), but originally published in The New Yorker, April 27, 2015.

monday

I missed yesterday due to general exhaustion and malaise, so there may be an extra poem (or two) sometime this week, but for today, a poem for a Monday.

I was just beginning
to wonder about my own life
and now I have to return to it
regardless of the weather
or how close I am to love.
Doesn't it bother you sometimes
what living is, what the day has turned into?
So many screens and meetings
and things to be late for.
Everyone truly deserves
a flute of champagne
for having made it this far!
Though it's such a disaster
to drink on a Monday.
To imagine who you would be
if you hadn't crossed the street
or married, if you hadn't
agreed to the job or the money
or how time just keeps going—
whoever agreed to that
has clearly not seen
the beginning of summer
or been to a party
or let themselves float
in the middle of a book
where for however briefly
it's possible to stay longer than
you should. Unfortunately
for me and you, we have
the rest of it to get to.
We must pretend
there's a blue painting
at the end of this poem.
And every time we look at it
we forget about ourselves.
And every time it looks at us
it forgives us for pain.

—Alex Dimitrov, "Monday," originally published in The New Yorker, August 23, 2021.

this angry flood

For Christmas I asked my parents for the Room of One's Own poetry subscription, which was a great gift in so many ways and something I had been wanting to do for ages, because a) Room of One's Own is the best bookstore, and b) I love poetry. I am sure neither of these things will come as a shock to anyone. I've gotten some awesome poetry collections so far this year, not all of which I have even had time to read yet, so stay tuned for more poetry from the poetry subscription in future years.

However, the first collection I got, back in January, was Susan Montez's Teaching Shakespeare, which is absolutely phenomenal, and seemed especially appropriate for today, Shakespeare's alleged birthday. This is the titular poem, and it packs an absolute punch. This poem comes with some content warnings, mainly for slurs and the fundamental inequalities of the education system in America.

I usually post one of the sonnets (in addition to a Shakespeare-related poem) on Shakespeare day, but to be honest typing up this poem took a lot out of me (ooof, the formatting), so I'm going to forego the sonnet this year. This poem is a lot already.

This semester: Julius Caesar

                Caesar. Everyone wants to be Caesar
I want Durrell (whose real name's Antonius)
to be Mark Antony.

                                    "Stand you directly in Antonius' way
                        When he doth run his course, Antonius!"

                        Directly in Antonius' way, indeed.

    (My Cantrilena: Studente/Insegnante)

Durrell:             I want an older woman
                          like you, Mrs. Nixon,
                          criminally-minded like me—
                          your mind, my body
                          I'd give you a heart attack in bed.

Me:                    Durell, this has got to stop.
                          If I wrote you up,
                          you'd be suspended
                          100 years.


    (Mezzo Sonnet)

Durell, Antonius, Mark Antony's lure
has been rebuked since I wrote him up for
throwing a gumball at me from the hall.
He sits, "I ain't being nobody." Fall
from grace. Have I? From his. There'll be no more
fresh looks, fresh talks which he's been warned against
anyway. I try to keep feelings fenced.

                            Durrell comes around before class
                            looking for gum. He's told people
                            (I think) we've got something
                            going that isn't going

                            In class I read, "Darest thou, Cassius, now
                                        Leap in with me into this angry flood,
                                        And swim to yonder point?"

                            Durell looks me in the eye, "Leap in with me
                                    into this angry flood,
                                    and swim to yonder point."


    (Sicilian Octave)

to yonder point, Durrell, I've been to yon-
der point. It's sea, it's stone, it's everywhere
this flotsam jetsam tide. It's just a con
for everyone to get them in floods. Tear
up their hearts, and minds, and hearths, still a pond
would be very nice, green water, and a pair
of lily pads and frogs. We could be fond,
live on dry land. Alas, I'm too old to dare.


    (A Change of Heart)

Hark, Durrell wants to do, "Friends, Romans, Countrymen,"
after assurance Antony's no fag.
Durrell, lend me your ear.

                                    I say, no, his downfall Cleopatra,
                                    Queen of Egypt, enemy to Rome, was
                                    what got him in the end. Duties Roma
                                    neglected while he floated the Nile, fuzz
                                    minded by wine and grapes and love engulfed
                                    by rich flesh, jewels, black hair, he forgot his
                                    Roman armies, Octavius, Octavia,
                                    to be with Cleopatra. Career dis-
                                    solved by love. Durrell likes this, "Can we do
                                    that play next?"


    (Lo Sogno)

Durrell and I together drifting down
the Nile but not by barge, by yellow float—
the water still, we barely move. Against
my wish, we're out the float, the water
shallow, we walk the Nile towards white lights
of Alexandria. I say, "There's parasites.
The problem: Children swim the river,
get infected, die—Alexandria's
no good—thieves, disease, and poverty," Lights
ahead, Lawrence Durrell is dead this year.
                      Durrell says, "You crazy, come on."


    (Spezzato Paradiso)

                                    All roads don't lead to Rome.
                                    Some lead to Chase City,
                                    but you can always make connections
when there aren't any
between Durrell, Rome, Cairo, Chase City
barges on the Nile, Julius Caesar.
When Pindarus stabs Cassius,
                                    Durrell grabs the podium.
                                    "Why aren't there Black folks in Shakespeare?"

Black folks, Black folks! There are! Othello! Palm-leaved
            Ethiopians fanning Cleopatra!

Durrell says:               The problem with Shakespeare
                                    and this whole school is racism!
                                    They ought to fire all the old and young
                                    white ugly teachers!

Durrell says:                Let me tell you who's a racist in this school
                                    Coach Kreigfield's a racist
                                    I hear what he calls us
                                    Ms. Jones in the office's a racist
                                    Ms. Lalley is a racist
                                    she teaches them white kids up front
                                    and leaves the rest of us
                                    in the back ignorant
                                    and her husband don't pay her no attention
                                    that's her problem and she's a redneck, cracker
                                    anyway
                                    Ms. Smythe the geography teacher's a racist
                                    Mr. Collin's a racist
                                    no one in the parliamentary procedures
                                    competition was black—all white
                                    and Mr. Wolfe is a racist
                                    and Ms. Block is a racist and she's also
                                    fat and that other fat Spanish teacher, Mullins,
                                    is a racist and her husband's a racist
                                    and Pat Trumpet in the back row's a racist
                                    and I ain't saying nothing about Ms. Nixon
                                    but she's married to a redneck
                                    from Buckingham where they're all racists
                                    and Shakespeare's a racist.

                                    And that's what's wrong with this school.
                                    Racism.


    (Durrell is failing English)

Despite his Antonius prowess
and 100% participation grade,
                    Durrell refuses to write essays other than

                            WHY I HATE TO WRITE ESSAYS
                                    One reason I hate to write essays
                                    is because I don't really know
                                    how to write an essay
                                    and the teacher
                                    won't help me any on
                                    how to write one and
                                    besides essays are boring if
                                    I wanted to write all the
                                    time I would have made
                                    a book and one more thing
                                    you give too many essays.


    (End of Cantrilena)

Why are you failing English?
You know why.
You won't write essays.
That's not why.
Then why?
You know why.

—Susan Montez (d. 2016), "Teaching Shakespeare," from Teaching Shakespeare (Astoria Press: 2020).

The collection was published posthumously, and the poems were written significantly before her death in 2016. In the introduction to the collection, Binnie Kirshenbaum writes: "After Susan completed Teaching Shakespeare, and she declared herself done, I'd assumed she meant the book was finished. But I was wrong. She meant she was done with poetry. She refused to give the manuscript to her editor despite his asking for it several times. She wrote no more poems, either." Then, only a few days before her death, Kirshenbaum writes, "she said to me, 'When I get out of [the hospital], I'm going to get back to poetry. I'm going to send the manuscript out and start writing again.'" I never did write my dissertation about literary executors in the 17th century, but I sure do think about them a lot—almost as often as I think about teaching Shakespeare.

the fire we gather between us

Okay, look. The thing is, I absolutely cannot go through the whole month of April here in 2022, year of the gay pirates (although if I had my way, every year would be the year of the gay pirates), without posting a poem with the literal title, "Love Pirates." Had I read this poem before I searched the Poetry Foundation archive for "pirates"? I had not. Am I into it anyway? I am. Love pirates, love love pirates.

I follow with my mouth the small wing of muscle
under your shoulder, lean over your back, breathing
into your hair and thinking of nothing. I want
to lie down with you under the sails of a wooden sloop
and drift away from all of it, our two cars rusting
in the parking lot, our families whining like tame geese
at feeding time, and all the bosses of the earth
cursing the traffic in the morning haze.

They will telephone each other from their sofas
and glass desks, with no idea where we could be,
unable to picture the dark throat
of the saxophone playing upriver, or the fire
we gather between us on this fantail of dusty light,
having stolen a truckload of roses
and thrown them into the sea.

—Joseph Millar, "Love Pirates," from Overtime, 2001. Who is more likely to throw a truckload of roses into the sea, do you think, Ed or Stede?

my good knife

Sometimes I read incredible poems and think, "this poem is too heavy-hitting for me today, I need to save it for later," and then later comes along and I'm like, "you know what? Yeah." Warnings for themes of abuse and violence, and also this poem fucking slays.

I know better than to leave the house
            without my good dress, my good knife

like Excalibur between my stone breasts.
            Mother would have me whipped,

would have me kneeling on rice until
            I shrilled so loud I rang the church

bells. Didn’t I tell you that elegance is our revenge,
            that there are neither victims nor victors

but the bitch we envy in the end? I am that bitch.
            I am dogged. I am so damned

not even Death wanted me. He sent me back
            after you sacked my body

the way your armies sacked my village, stacked
            our headless idols in the river

where our children impaled themselves
            on rocks. I exit night and enter your tent

gilded in a bolt of stubborn sunlight. My sleeves
            already rolled up. I know they will say

I am a slut for showing this much skin, this
            irreverence for what is seen

when I ask to be seen. Look at me now: my thighs
            lift from your thighs, my mouth

spits poison into your mouth. You nasty beauty.
            I am no beast, but my blade

sliding clean through your thick neck
            while my maid keeps your blood off

me and my good dress will be a song
        the parish sings for centuries. Tell Mary.

Tell Eve. Tell Salome and David about me.
        Watch their faces, like yours, turn green.

—Paul Tran, "Like Judith Slaying Holofernes," Poetry, 2018.

flow from me like a river

I am very tired and very cranky; here is some Rilke.

I believe in all that has never yet been spoken.
I want to free what waits within me
so that what no one has dared to wish for
may for once spring clear
without my contriving.

If this is arrogant, God, forgive me,
but this is what I need to say.
May what I do flow from me like a river,
no forcing and no holding back,
the way it is with children.

Then in these swelling and ebbing currents,
these deepening tides moving out, returning,
I will sing you as no one ever has,
streaming through the widening channels
into the open sea.

—Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926), I, 12 from Book of Hours: Love Poems to God, translated from the German by Anita Barrows and Joanna Macy (1996, 2005). I am too tired and cranky to type up the original German, but I do feel I should acknowledge that I stole my copy of Rilke's Book of Hours from my BFF K and should probably give it back to her at some point, except I love it too much. I am an absolute sucker for devotional poetry and I'm not sorry.

love wide open

All I have to say about this poem is that it is a fucking incredible poem for so, so many OTPs. (I actually went to Marge Piercy thinking about Passover poems, but then I got sidetracked because, like, yeah. Yeah.)

Learning to love differently is hard,
love with the hands wide open, love
with the doors banging on their hinges,
the cupboard unlocked, the wind
roaring and whimpering in the rooms
rustling the sheets and snapping the blinds
that thwack like rubber bands
in an open palm.

It hurts to love wide open
stretching the muscles that feel
as if they are made of wet plaster,
then of blunt knives, then
of sharp knives.

It hurts to thwart the reflexes
of grab, of clutch; to love and let
go again and again. It pesters to remember
the lover who is not in the bed,
to hold back what is owed to the work
that gutters like a candle in a cave
without air, to love consciously,
conscientiously, concretely, constructively.

I can't do it, you say it's killing
me, but you thrive, you glow
on the street like a neon raspberry,
You float and sail, a helium balloon
bright bachelor's button blue and bobbing
on the cold and hot winds of our breath,
as we make and unmake in passionate
diastole and systole the rhythm
of our unbound bonding, to have
and not to hold, to love
with minimized malice, hunger
and anger moment by moment balanced.

—Marge Piercy, "To have without holding" from The Moon is Always Female, 1980.

suddenly all at once

Yesterday was a 12-hour travel day and I was way too tired to post a poem, and in fact today I am still too tired to post a poem, except that helcinda dropped this poem into our group chat and was like, "...Wei Wuxian?!" and yes, it may be about literal Easter, but also resurrections make great poetry. So here is a poem for Easter a day late, and for my favorite resurrected necromancer, Wei Wuxian.

Two of the fingers on his right hand
had been broken

so when he poured back into that hand it surprised
him—it hurt him at first.

And the whole body was too small. Imagine
the sky trying to fit into a tunnel carved into a hill.

He came into it two ways:
From the outside, as we step into a pair of pants.

And from the center—suddenly all at once.
Then he felt himself awake in the dark alone.

—Marie Howe, "Easter," from The Kingdom of Ordinary Time, 2008.

like the garden

A poem for the last night of vacation, and also, because it is Amy Lowell, for lesbians everywhere.

A black cat among roses,
Phlox, lilac-misted under a first-quarter moon,
The sweet smells of heliotrope and night-scented stock.
The garden is very still,
It is dazed with moonlight,
Contented with perfume,
Dreaming the opium dreams of its folded poppies.
Firefly lights open and vanish
High as the tip buds of the golden glow
Low as the sweet alyssum flowers at my feet.
Moon-shimmer on leaves and trellises,
Moon-spikes shafting through the snow ball bush.
Only the little faces of the ladies’ delight are alert and staring,
Only the cat, padding between the roses,
Shakes a branch and breaks the chequered pattern
As water is broken by the falling of a leaf.
Then you come,
And you are quiet like the garden,
And white like the alyssum flowers,
And beautiful as the silent sparks of the fireflies.
Ah, Beloved, do you see those orange lilies?
They knew my mother,
But who belonging to me will they know
When I am gone.

—Amy Lowell (1874-1925), "The Garden by Moonlight," from Pictures of the Floating World, 1919. (Also, I miss my black cats.) 

a land of kisses and volcanoes

The thing about Pablo Neruda, who remains one of my favorite poets in any language, is that he wrote a lot of really exceptional poetry, but with a couple of exceptions I almost never post anything that isn't from Cien sonetos de amor. This is because I believe strongly that Cien sonetos de amor is one of the greatest sonnet cycles ever written. National Poetry Month isn't something I do only to have an excuse to post one Neruda sonnet per year, but it's not...not that, either.

For Lucy, of course.

No te toque la noche ni el aire ni la aurora,
sólo la tierra, la virtud de los racimos,
las manzanas que crecen oyendo el agua pura,
el barro y las resinas du tu país fragante.

Desde Quinchamalí donde hicieron tus ojos
hasta tus pies creados para mí en la Frontera
eres la greda oscura que conozco:
en tus caderas tuco de nuevo todo el trigo.

Tal vez tú no sabías, araucana,
que cuando antes de amarte me olvidé de tus besos
mi corazón quedó recordando tu boca

y fui como un herido por las calles
hasta que comprendí que había encontrado,
amor, mi territorio de besos y volcanes.


I did not hold your night, or your air, or the dawn:
only the earth, the truth of the fruit in clusters,
the apples that swell as they drink the sweet water,
the clay and the resins of your sweet-smelling land.

From Quinchamalí where your eyes began
to the Frontera where your feet were made for me,
you are my dark familiar clay:
holding your hips, I hold the wheat in its fields again.

Woman from Arauco, maybe you didn't know
how before I loved you I forgot your kisses.
But my heart went on, remembering your mouth—and I went on

and on through the streets like a man wounded,
until I understood, Love: I had found
my place, a land of kisses and volcanoes.

—Pablo Neruda (1904-1973), V from Cien sonetos de amor, or One Hundred Love Sonnets, translated by Stephen Tapscott (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1986).

reach your heart and stay

I am not usually a prose poetry person, but I read this one this morning looking for the right poem for my birthday and it's basically perfect, so here we are. I have had an absolutely lovely birthday, with great friends and great food and a beach, and really being on vacation on your birthday is an A+ life choice.

I’d like to be a shrine, so I can learn from peoples’ prayers the story of hearts. I’d like to be a scarf so I can place it over my hair and understand other worlds. I’d like to be the voice of a soprano singer so I can move through all borders and see them vanish with every spell-binding note. I’d like to be light so I illuminate the dark. I’d like to be water to fill bodies so we can gently float together indefinitely. I’d like to be a lemon, to be zest all the time, or an olive tree to shimmer silver on the earth. Most of all, I’d like to be a poem, to reach your heart and stay.

—Nathalie Handal, "Love Letter," Poetry, March 2021.

each of us is a prodigal

This poem is actually for yesterday—I'll post another one later today for my birthday—but I had an exhausting day of lying by the pool and getting a massage yesterday, and fell asleep early. Vacation is just so much work! Seriously, though, I have thus far been very circumspect in terms of posting poems that make me think of our gay pirates, and part of that is because I have a long history of posting poems that have to do with the sea and love and boats and lighthouses and so on, and have already posted many of my favorites. But on the other hand, I'm never, ever gonna be done with those particular themes.

For Derek Walcott

An island is one great eye
    gazing out, a beckoning lighthouse,
searchlight, a wishbone compass,
    or counterweight to the stars.
When it comes to outlook & point
    of view, a figure stands on a rocky ledge
peering out toward an archipelago
    of glass on the mainland, a seagull’s
wings touching the tip of a high wave,
    out to where the brain may stumble.

But when a mind climbs down
    from its high craggy lookout
we know it is truly a stubborn thing,
    & has to leaf through pages of dust
& light, through pre-memory & folklore,
    remembering fires roared down there
till they pushed up through the seafloor
    & plumes of ash covered the dead
shaken awake worlds away, & silence
    filled up with centuries of waiting.

Sea urchin, turtle, & crab
    came with earthly know-how,
& one bird arrived with a sprig in its beak,
    before everything clouded with cries,
a millennium of small deaths now topsoil
    & seasons of blossoms in a single seed.
Light edged along salt-crusted stones,
    across a cataract of blue water,
& lost sailors’ parrots spoke of sirens,
    the last words of men buried at sea.

Someone could stand here
    contemplating the future, leafing
through torn pages of St. Augustine
    or the prophecies by fishermen,
translating spore & folly down to taproot.
    The dreamy-eyed boy still in the man,
the girl in the woman, a sunny forecast
    behind today, but tomorrow’s beyond
words. To behold a body of water
    is to know pig iron & mother wit.

Whoever this figure is,
    he will soon return to dancing
through the aroma of dagger’s log,
    ginger lily, & bougainvillea,
between chants & strings struck
    till gourds rally the healing air,
& till the church-steeple birds
    fly sweet darkness home.
Whoever this friend or lover is,
    he intones redemptive harmonies.

To lie down in remembrance
    is to know each of us is a prodigal
son or daughter, looking out beyond land
    & sky, the chemical & metaphysical
beyond falling & turning waterwheels
    in the colossal brain of damnable gods,
a Eureka held up to the sun’s blinding eye,
    born to gaze into fire. After conquering
frontiers, the mind comes back to rest,
    stretching out over the white sand.

—Yusef Komunyakaa, "Islands," Poetry, 2012.

nothing says revenge like the stillness of snow

I have had an absolutely lovely day in the sun by the pool and on the beach, so it only seems appropriate to post a poem about snow, right? Right. This was an Academy of American Poets poem-a-day in January, and I loved it so much that I actually tweeted about it at the time, but I also saved it for April. Not all April poems are spring poems.

This morning the snow
lowered so slowly, I was able
to lift my son—still in pajamas—
and show him each delicate
tendril of frost, the arctic structure
of a solitary flake. I was able
to make coffee and think only
of making coffee, a sensation
so sudden and dangerous
in its delight, I had to dilute it
by burning the toast. This morning
I breathed deeply, clicked on
the television and watched—
for a moment—a Boeing VC-25 fade
over our capital and dwindle
from sight. Nothing says revenge
like dwindle from sight. Later,
I’ll hear the new president pledge
to be better, try a bit harder.
I will try to believe him
the way a child believes a father
in an overcoat, by the door.
But for now, all is quiet.
My coffee tastes delicious,
and nothing says revenge like
the stillness of snow.

—Jared Harél, "January 20, 2021," originally published as the poem-a-day on January 20, 2022.

climb ribs of desire

It's been a pretty good first full day of vacation, all things considered. Here's some Joy Harjo.

This is my heart. It is a good heart.
Bones and a membrane of mist and fire
are the woven cover.
When we make love in the flower world
my heart is close enough to sing
to yours in a language that has no use
for clumsy human words.

My head, is a good head, but it is a hard head
and it whirrs inside with a swarm of worries.
What is the source of this singing, it asks
and if there is a source why can't I see it
right here, right now
as real as these hands hammering
the world together
with nails and sinew?

This is my soul. It is a good soul.
It tells me, "Come here forgetful one."
And we sit together with lilt of small winds
who rattle the scrub oak.
We cook a little something
to eat, then a sip of something
sweet, for memory.

This is my song. It is a good song.
It walked forever the border of fire and water
climbed ribs of desire to my lips to sing to you.
Its new wings quiver with vulnerability.
Come lie next to me, says my heart.
Put your head here.
It is a good thing, says my soul.

—Joy Harjo, "This Is My Heart," from A Map to the Next World: Poems and Tales (W.W. Norton, 2000). I love heart poems so much.

clear water

In her splendor islanded
This woman burning like a charm of jewels
An army terrifying and asleep
This woman lying within the night
Like clear water lying on closed eyes
In a tree's shadow
A waterfall halted halfway in its flight
A rapid narrow river suddenly frozen
At the foot of a great and seamless rock
At the foot of a mountain
She is lake-water in April as she lies
In her depth binding poplar and eucalyptus
Fishes or stars burning between her thighs
Shadow of birds scarcely hiding her sex
Her breasts two still villages under a peaceful sky
This woman lying here like a white stone
Like water in the moon in a dead crater
Not a sound in the night not moss nor sand
Only the slow budding of my words
At the ear of water at the ear of flesh
Unhurried running
And clear memorial
Here is the moment burning and returned
Drowning itself in itself and never consumed

—Octavio Paz (1914-1998), "In Her Splendor Islanded," translated by Muriel Rukeyser (1913-1980); translation published in Poetry, June 1958.

dolphins leaping into commas

I am leaving for vacation very early tomorrow morning, which is exciting! Admittedly this is the third time I have been on vacation to Mexico in a year (lol), but I am still really looking forward to it, because honestly there is nothing like a beach vacation with friends and fruity drinks.

Give me a church
made entirely of salt.
Let the walls hiss
and smoke when
I return to shore.

I ask for the grace
of a new freckle
on my cheek, the lift
of blue and my mother’s
soapy skin to greet me.

Hide me in a room
with no windows.
Never let me see
the dolphins leaping
into commas

for this water-prayer
rising like a host
of sky lanterns into
the inky evening.
Let them hang

in the sky until
they vanish at the edge
of the constellations — 
the heroes and animals
too busy and bright to notice.

—Aimee Nezhukumatathil, "Sea Church," Poetry (July/August 2017)

blessed ground

I don't think there has been enough queer poetry yet this month, but obviously I am going to change that. I first encountered Danez Smith through an entirely different poem—"Tonight, in Oakland," which is wonderful—and then I tracked down some more of their poetry, as one does, and totally fell for this one.

this gin-heavy heaven, blessed ground to think gay & mean we.
bless the fake id & the bouncer who knew
this need to be needed, to belong, to know how
a man taste full on vodka & free of sin. i know not which god to pray to.
i look to christ, i look to every mouth on the dance floor, i order
a whiskey coke, name it the blood of my new savior. he is just.
he begs me to dance, to marvel men with the
                                                                                    dash
of hips i brought, he deems my mouth in some stranger’s mouth necessary.
bless that man’s mouth, the song we sway sloppy to, the beat, the bridge, the length
of his hand on my thigh & back & i know not which country i am of.
i want to live on his tongue, build a home of gospel & gayety
i want to raise a city behind his teeth for all boys of choirs & closets to refuge in.
i want my new god to look at the mecca i built him & call it damn good
or maybe i’m just tipsy & free for the first time, willing to worship anything i can taste.

—Danez Smith, "The 17-Year-Old & the Gay Bar," Poetry magazine, 2017.

what stories

The thing about war poetry is that sometimes it's just kind of emotionally necessary. This poem is definitely a punch in the gut, and I love it—it also seems like the right kind of poem to post on a night like tonight, when the rain is pounding against my windows (as it has been on and off all day), and I mainly want to crawl into bed and stay there forever.

When my older brother
came back from war
he had on his forehead a little silver star
and under the star
an abyss

a splinter of shrapnel
hit him at Verdun
or perhaps at Grünwald
(he’d forgotten the details)

he used to talk much
in many languages
but he liked most of all
the language of history

until losing breath
he commanded his dead pals to run
Roland Kowaski Hannibal

he shouted
that this was the last crusade
that Carthage soon would fall
and then sobbing confessed
that Napoleon did not like him

we looked at him
getting paler and paler
abandoned by his senses
he turned slowly into a monument

into musical shells of ears
entered a stone forest
and the skin of his face
was secured
with the blind dry
buttons of eyes

nothing was left him
but touch

what stories
he told with his hands
in the right he had romances
in the left soldier’s memories

they took my brother
and carried him out of town
he returns every fall
slim and very quiet
he does not want to come in
he knocks at the window for me

we walk together in the streets
and he recites to me
improbable tales
touching my face
with blind fingers of rain

—Zbigniew Herbert (1924–1998), "The Rain," translated by Czeslow Milosz (1911-2004), from Selected Poems of Zbigniew Herbert, edited and translated by Czeslaw Milosz and Peter Dale Scott (1968).

like the wind the rains ride in on

I've had a migraine all day, but here is a poem that made me feel a little better when I read it tonight, in among all my many disorganized folders of "poems to post someday."

Like a wide wake, rippling
Infinitely into the distance, everything

That ever was still is, somewhere,
Floating near the surface, nursing
Its hunger for you and me

And the now we’ve named
And made a place of.

Like groundswell sometimes
It surges up, claiming a little piece
Of where we stand.

Like the wind the rains ride in on,
It sweeps across the leaves,

Pushing in past the windows
We didn’t slam quickly enough.
Dark water it will take days to drain.

It surprised us last night in my sleep.
Brought food, a gift. Stood squarely

There between us, while your eyes
Danced toward mine, and my hands
Sat working a thread in my lap.

Up close, it was so thin. And when finally
You reached for me, it backed away,

Bereft, but not vanquished, Today,
Whatever it was seems slight, a trail
Of cloud rising up like smoke.

And the trees that watch as I write
Sway in the breeze, as if all that stirs

Under the soil is a little tickle of knowledge
The great blind roots will tease through
And push eventually past.

—Tracy K. Smith, "Everything That Ever Was," from Life on Mars (Minneapolis: Graywolf Press, 2011).

hushed

My brother died in 2011. On April 5, about 10 days after he died, we held a memorial service—some of you were there, in fact—and because it was the fifth year I'd posted poems for National Poetry Month, I posted a poem about loss. (I posted several poems about loss, that year.) Then I started posting poems that had something to do with death or grief or loss on April 5 each year, as a kind of continued memorial. The poetry helped, that first year (and later), although I had other anchors, too: friends and family and My Chemical Romance, which I mention now because I am ostensibly supposed to see them again this fall for the first time since the week my brother died. What a world we live in.

Being past the decade mark since my brother died is a weird feeling, not because grief goes away—it doesn't—but because the way you feel it changes. Most often, now, I see something or read something or watch something and think, "God, Pete would love this," or "I wish I could talk to Pete about this," and it hits me with sadness but also a bittersweet sort of happiness when things remind me of him. I miss him, but it's less devastating now (mostly), and even when it hurts, I like to be reminded that I carry him with me.

All of which is to say that Pete did not give one single shit about poetry, so the poems I post are for me, not him. But I love him, and I miss him, and I think the fact that poetry offers so many different ways to look at grief and loss and life and death and love is pretty awesome. Here is a poem about a tree.

...and a decrepit handful of trees.
—Aleksandr Pushkin

And I matured in peace born of command,
in the nursery of the infant century,
and the voice of man was never dear to me,
but the breeze’s voice—that I could understand.
The burdock and the nettle I preferred,
but best of all the silver willow tree.
Its weeping limbs fanned my unrest with dreams;
it lived here all my life, obligingly.
I have outlived it now, and with surprise.
There stands the stump; with foreign voices other
willows converse, beneath our, beneath those skies,
and I am hushed, as if I’d lost a brother.

—Anna Akhmatova (1889-1966), "Willow," translated by Jennifer Reeser and published in Poetry magazine in December, 2005. Translations of Akhmatova vary pretty widely and I often really dislike them, but I love this one.

in her heart january

It's a beautiful day today, but every other day this week is supposed to rain. Also, it is just really, really a Monday. Here is a spring poem for a Monday.

Now that the winter's gone, the earth hath lost
Her snow-white robes, and now no more the frost
Candies the grass, or casts an icy cream
Upon the silver lake or crystal stream;
But the warm sun thaws the benumbed earth,
And makes it tender; gives a sacred birth
To the dead swallow; wakes in hollow tree
The drowsy cuckoo, and the humble-bee.
Now do a choir of chirping minstrels bring
In triumph to the world the youthful Spring.
The valleys, hills, and woods in rich array
Welcome the coming of the long'd-for May.
Now all things smile, only my love doth lour;
Nor hath the scalding noonday sun the power
To melt that marble ice, which still doth hold
Her heart congeal'd, and makes her pity cold.
The ox, which lately did for shelter fly
Into the stall, doth now securely lie
In open fields; and love no more is made
By the fireside, but in the cooler shade
Amyntas now doth with his Chloris sleep
Under a sycamore, and all things keep
Time with the season; only she doth carry
June in her eyes, in her heart January.

—Thomas Carew (1595-1640), "The Spring." Spelling obviously modernized. Carew is not, like, my favorite of the Cavalier poets, but he sure does know his tropes. Sorry she didn't want to sleep with you, Tom, but given the syphilis you can't really blame her.

think of the storm

I thought we might have a little Elizabeth Bishop, tonight.

for Thomas Edwards Wanning

Think of the storm roaming the sky uneasily
like a dog looking for a place to sleep in,
listen to it growling.

Think how they must look now, the mangrove keys
lying out there unresponsive to the lightning
in dark, coarse-fibred families,

where occasionally a heron may undo his head,
shake up his feathers, make an uncertain comment
when the surrounding water shines.

Think of the boulevard and the little palm trees
all stuck in rows, suddenly revealed
as fistfuls of limp fish-skeletons.

It is raining there. The boulevard
and its broken sidewalks with weeds in every crack
are relieved to be wet, the sea to be freshened.

Now the storm goes away again in a series
of small, badly lit battle-scenes,
each in "Another part of the field."

Think of someone sleeping in the bottom of a row-boat
tied to a mangrove root or the pile of a bridge;
think of him as uninjured, barely disturbed.

—Elizabeth Bishop (1911-1979), "Little Exercise," in this case from Elizabeth Bishop: The Collected Poems 1927-1979 (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1989).

face to face with the sun

It's an absolutely gorgeous (cold) spring day in New York, and I went to the farmers market and got coffee and walked around a little and felt deeply in charity with the world. I had some other poems up my sleeve this morning, but then my girlfriend sent me this one, and you know, yeah. This is a good one. (Among other things, I like that it has a little of the spirit of a sonnet without being anything like a sonnet, and a tiny shout-out to Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird.)

Above a pond, I sit on a wooden bench
and throw pebbles into the willows.

A rush of sunlight and wind creates a path in a channel of water, dances
between the melting ice and brown islands of bulrush.

The resident osprey, its eyes the color of yellow grass,
follows my tossing hand.

Love is a diorama of inner life in an outer world.

I look down and find a chunk of fossilized rock
with an entire Paleozoic shell sticking out.

I am not afraid of love, but terrified of how it is my steady guide.

Once, when tired, I wandered off the trail and crawled under a tree to rest.

I woke to a young brown bear licking my boot.
Nothing had ever felt that good.

When I say I love you, what I mean is I wouldn’t leave you.

Even if love is not loved back it doesn’t go away,
although it may become a black hole.

Could this be what it’s like for trees to lose the green from their leaves?

At noon the light shifts and the pond turns
into a mosaic of opaque green ice.

Orange carp rise in these cold watery chambers to breathe at the surface.

Always I am in love. Face to face with the sun. Face to face with the moon.

—Elizabeth Jacobson, "14 Love Songs" from Not into the Blossoms and Not into the Air (Parlor Press, 2019).

whatever winter did to us

I thought I would kick us off this year with Ada Limón on spring.

More than the fuchsia funnels breaking out
of the crabapple tree, more than the neighbor’s
almost obscene display of cherry limbs shoving
their cotton candy-colored blossoms to the slate
sky of Spring rains, it’s the greening of the trees
that really gets to me. When all the shock of white
and taffy, the world’s baubles and trinkets, leave
the pavement strewn with the confetti of aftermath,
the leaves come. Patient, plodding, a green skin
growing over whatever winter did to us, a return
to the strange idea of continuous living despite
the mess of us, the hurt, the empty. Fine then,
I’ll take it, the tree seems to say, a new slick leaf
unfurling like a fist to an open palm, I’ll take it all.

—Ada Limón, "Instructions on Not Giving Up," originally published as part of the Academy of American Poets Poem-a-Day series, May 15, 2017.