I opened and opened

I have two Andrea Gibson poems for you today, since I couldn't pick and also missed yesterday.

try calling it hibernation.

Imagine the darkness is a cave
in which you will be nurtured
by doing absolutely nothing.
Hibernating animals don't even dream.
It's okay if you can't imagine
Spring. Sleep through the alarm
of the world. Name your hopelessness
a quiet hollow, a place you go
to heal, a den you dug,
Sweetheart, instead
of a grave.

—Andrea Gibson (1975-2025), "Instead of Depression," from You Better Be Lightning (Button Poetry, 2021). This was the first of Gibson's poems I ever read.

*

When you are trapped in a nightmare, your motivation to awaken will be so much greater than that of someone caught up in a relatively pleasant dream. —Eckhart Tolle

When I realized the storm
was inevitable, I made it
my medicine.

Took two snowflakes
on the tongue in the morning,
two snowflakes on the tongue
by noon.

There were no side effects.
Only sound effects. Reverb
added to my lifespan,
an echo that asked—

What part of your life's record is skipping?
What wound is on repeat?
Have you done everything you can
to break out of that groove?

By nighttime, I was intimate
with the difference
between tying my laces
and tuning the string section

of my shoes, made a symphony of walking
away from everything that did not
want my life to sing.

Felt a love for myself so consistent
metronomes tried to copyright
my heartbeat.

Finally understood I am the conductor
of my own life, and will be even after I die.
I, like the trees, will decide what I become:

porch swing? Church pew?
An envelope that must be licked
to be closed?
Kinky choice, but
I didn’t close.

I opened and opened
until I could imagine that the pain
was the sensation of my spirit
not breaking,

that my mind was a parachute
that could always open
in time,

that I could wear my heart
on my sleeve and never grow
out of that shirt.

That every falling leaf is a tiny kite
with a string too small to see, held
by the part of me in charge
of making beauty
out of grief.

—Andrea Gibson (1975-2025), "How the Worst Day of My Life Became the Best," from You Better Be Lightning (Button Poetry, 2021), and in this case also from poets.org. In the book, this poem as printed on the page is much more spread out, but I didn't feel like I could replicate the spacing super effectively here, so I used the poets.org version. But Gibson was a slam poet; here they are reading this poem aloud.

all this light

In Jerusalem, and I mean within the ancient walls,
I walk from one epoch to another without a memory
to guide me. The prophets over there are sharing
the history of the holy ... ascending to heaven
and returning less discouraged and melancholy, because love
and peace are holy and are coming to town.
I was walking down a slope and thinking to myself: How
do the narrators disagree over what light said about a stone?
Is it from a dimly lit stone that wars flare up?
I walk in my sleep. I stare in my sleep. I see
no one behind me. I see no one ahead of me.
All this light is for me. I walk. I become lighter. I fly
then I become another. Transfigured. Words
sprout like grass from Isaiah's messenger
mouth: "If you don't believe you won't be safe."
I walk as if I were another. And my wound a white
biblical rose. And my hands like two doves
on the cross hovering and carrying the earth.
I don't walk, I fly, I become another,
transfigured. No place and no time. So who am I?
I am no I in ascension's presence. But I
think to myself: Alone, the prophet Muhammad
spoke classical Arabic. "And then what?"
Then what? A woman soldier shouted:
Is that you again? Didn't I kill you?
I said: You killed me ... and I forgot, like you, to die.

—Mahmoud Darwish (1941-2008), "In Jerusalem," trans. by Fady Joudah, from The Butterfly's Burden (Copper Canyon Press, 2007). Originally from Mahmoud Darwish, Don't Apologize for What You've Done, 2003. I really love this poem.

burning in the open field

It is not uncommon for me to sit on a poem for years and years before posting it, because I collect poems and only have 30(ish) spots per year. I've had this one in the file for long enough that I have it saved in multiple places, but it never does get less evocative or relevant; it's also fascinating to me how different it is from both his earlier and later poetry, while also using language in such a recognizable way. Is Richard Siken in favor with the internet again? I honestly don't care, but I've always liked his poetry, including back when he was a tumblr fandom darling. This is not really a tumblr fandom poem, but it sticks with me.

To have a thought, there must be an object—
the field is empty, sloshed with gold, a hayfield thick
with sunshine. There must be an object so land
a man there, solid on his feet, on solid ground, in
a field fully flooded, enough light to see him clearly,

the light on his skin and bouncing off his skin.
He's easy to desire since there's not much to him,
vague and smeary in his ochers, in his umbers,
burning in the open field. Forget about his insides,
his plumbing and his furnaces, put a thing in his hand

and be done with it. No one wants to know what's
in his head. It should be enough. To make something
beautiful should be enough. It isn't. It should be.
The smear of his head—I paint it out, I paint it in
again. I ask it what it wants. I want to be a cornerstone,

says the head. Let's kill something. Land a man in a
landscape and he'll try to conquer it. Make him
handsome and you're a fascist, make him ugly and
you're saying nothing new. The conqueror suits up
and takes the field, his horse already painted in

beneath him. What do you do with a man like that?
While you are deciding, more men ride in. The hand
sings weapon. The mind says tool. The body swerves
in the service of the mind, which is evidence of
the mind but not actual proof. More conquerors.

They swarm the field and their painted flags unfurl.
Crown yourself with leaves and stake your claim
before something smears up the paint. I turned away
from darkness to see daylight, to see what would
happen. What happened? What does a man want?

Power. The men spread, the thought extends. I paint
them out, I paint them in again. A blur of forces.
Why take more than we need? Because we can.
Deep footprint, it leaves a hole. You'd break your
heart to make it bigger, so why not crack your skull

when the mind swells. A thought bigger than your
own head. Try it. Seriously. Cover more ground.
I thought of myself as a city and I licked my lips.
I thought of myself as a nation and I wrung my hands,
I put a thing in your hand. Will you defend yourself?

From me, I mean. Let’s kill something. The mind
moves forward, the paint layers up: glop glop and
shellac. I shovel the color into our faces, I shovel our
faces into our faces. They look like me. I move them
around. I prefer to blame others, it's easier. King me.

—Richard Siken, "Landscape with a Blur of Conquerors," from War of the Foxes (2015), although I believe it was originally published in Poem-a-Day on August 28, 2014.

forged by the heart

I am posting this in honor of tonight's season finale of The Pitt, because I simply would not be me doing poetry month if I did not draw fandom poetry parallels. I'm a couple of episodes behind, though, so no spoilers. I also just really love the things Jack Gilbert does with language, and although I was initially going to post a different Gilbert poem this year, this one snuck up on me. I love a poem about place.

The fox pushes softly, blindly through me at night,
between the liver and the stomach. Comes to the heart
and hesitates. Considers and then goes around it.
Trying to escape the mildness of our violent world.
Goes deeper, searching for what remains of Pittsburgh
in me. The rusting mills sprawled gigantically
along three rivers. The authority of them.
The gritty alleys where we played every evening were
stained pink by the inferno always surging in the sky,
as though Christ and the Father were still fashioning the Earth.
Locomotives driving through the cold rain,
lordly and bestial in their strength. Massive water
flowing morning and night throughout a city
girded with ninety bridges. Sumptuous-shouldered,
sleek-thighed, obstinate and majestic, unquenchable.
All grip and flood, mighty sucking and deep-rooted grace.
A city of brick and tired wood. Ox and sovereign spirit.
Primitive Pittsburgh. Winter month after month telling
of death. The beauty forcing us as much as harshness.
Our spirits forged in that wilderness, our minds forged
by the heart. Making together a consequence of America.
The fox watched me build my Pittsburgh again and again.
In Paris afternoons on Buttes-Chaumont. On Greek islands
with their fields of stone. In beds with women, sometimes,
amid their gentleness. Now the fox will live in our ruined
house. My tomatoes grow ripe among weeds and the sound
of water. In this happy place my serious heart has made.

—Jack Gilbert (1925-2012), "Searching for Pittsburgh," from The Great Fires: Poems 1982-1992 (Alfred A. Knopf, 1994), although I have the 2012 edition. I can't find an original publication date for this poem, but it was published in Poetry East before it appeared in The Great Fires.

planet trouble

I post a lot of queer poetry, which should really come as no surprise to anyone. I also buy a lot of poetry books, especially in and around the month of April; when we were in New York last year, I bought Stephanie Burt's 2025 anthology Super Gay Poems, which is really fantastic and highly recommended for both the brilliant essays about each poem and the poems themselves. It also gives me a lot of personal joy because it doesn't have a single poem in it that I've already posted (in 19 years!!), which is so cool and exciting—although there are a handful of poems I've read in the anthology, and several poets I've heard of (or posted other work by), I really love the part of doing this each year where I get to learn and discover new-to-me poems and poets.

Since I skipped yesterday, I am going to indulgently post two poems from the anthology which are completely unrelated, except that they both haunt me (and also both have great enjambment).

Having caught me, neither fish nor flesh,
you slip me back into the sea.
But I, with the feel of your hands fresh
on my wet skin, follow you under
water. Slowly, I learn to breathe in
the alien air of your being, to walk
on glass, to swallow my words and sing
unheard. Your kindness is everything.
I am the slave of the lamp you light.
You wish me to stand on my feet.
I forget to swim,
choose, free as the wave that brought me
ashore, to abandon home,
to become foam.

—Ruth Vanita, "Mermaid," from A Play of Light: Selected Poems, first published by Penguin New Delhi (1994) and reprinted in an updated edition by QueerInk (2021), and Stephanie Burt, Super Gay Poems: LGBTQIA+ Poetry after Stonewall (Harvard University Press, 2025). In the essay following this poem, Burt writes, "This sonnet appears here instead, because it belongs among the strongest, most elegant poems ever written in English about mermaids, and mermaids are queer through and through" (86). Abso-fucking-lutely.

*

I don't want to hurt a man, but I like to hear one beg.
Two people touch twice a month in ten hotels, and
We call it long distance. He holds down one coast.
I wander the other like any African American, Africa
With its condition and America with its condition
And black folk born in this nation content to carry
Half of each. I shoulder my share. My man flies
To touch me. Sky on our side. Sky above his world
I wish to write. Which is where I go wrong. Words
Are a sense of sound. I get smart. My mother shakes
Her head. My grandmother sighs: He ain't got no
Sense. My grandmother is dead. She lives with me.
I hear my mother shake her head over the phone.
Somebody cut the cord. We have a long distance
Relationship. I lost half of her to a stroke. God gives
To each a body. God gives every body its pains.
When pain mounts in my body, I try thinking
Of my white forefathers who hurt their black bastards
Quite legally. I hate to say it, but one pain can ease
Another. Doctors rather I take pills. My man wants me
To see a doctor. What are you when you leave your man
Wanting? What am I now that I think so fondly
Of airplanes? What's my name, whose is it, while we
Make love. My lover leaves me with words I wish
To write. Flies from one side of a nation to the outside
Of our world. I don't want the world. I only want
African sense of American sound. Him. Touching.
This body. Aware of its pains. Greetings, Earthlings.
My name is Slow And Stumbling. I come from planet
Trouble. I am here to love you uncomfortable.

—Jericho Brown, "Heart Condition," from The New Testament (Copper Canyon Press, 2014) and, of course, Stephanie Burt, Super Gay Poems: LGBTQIA+ Poetry after Stonewall (Harvard University Press, 2025). I somehow had never read any Jericho Brown before? I am now obsessed.

how we survive

I had a pretty bad migraine yesterday and spent the day in bed without once opening my computer. But I did have a poem selected for April 29, and I'm going to post that poem today, alongside my poem for April 30. My last poem this year is a short one, and I think these two go very well together. I also think they're exactly the right way to close out National Poetry Month this year. Thanks for reading, friends. I hope to see you next year. ♥

The world begins at a kitchen table. No matter what, we must eat to live.

The gifts of earth are brought and prepared, set on the table. So it has been since creation, and it will go on.

We chase chickens or dogs away from it. Babies teethe at the corners. They scrape their knees under it.

It is here that children are given instructions on what it means to be human. We make men at it, we make women.

At this table we gossip, recall enemies and the ghosts of lovers.

Our dreams drink coffee with us as they put their arms around our children. They laugh with us at our poor falling-down selves and as we put ourselves back together once again at the table.

This table has been a house in the rain, an umbrella in the sun.

Wars have begun and ended at this table. It is a place to hide in the shadow of terror. A place to celebrate the terrible victory.

We have given birth on this table, and have prepared our parents for burial here.

At this table we sing with joy, with sorrow. We pray of suffering and remorse. We give thanks.

Perhaps the world will end at the kitchen table, while we are laughing and crying, eating of the last sweet bite.

—Joy Harjo, "Perhaps the World Ends Here," from The Woman Who Fell From the Sky (W. W. Norton and Company Inc., 1994), but in my case also from Weaving Sundown in a Scarlet Light: 50 Poems for 50 Years (W. W. Norton and Company Inc., 2023).

*

Don't ever be surprised
to see a rose shoulder up
among the ruins of the house:
This is how we survived.

—Mosab Abu Toha, "A Rose Shoulders Up," from Things You May Find Hidden In My Ear: Poems from Gaza (City Lights Books, 2022).

anti poetica

there is no poem greater than feeding someone
there is no poem wiser than kindness
there is no poem more important than being good to children
there is no poem outside love's violent potential for cruelty
there is no poem that ends grief but nurses it toward light
there is no poem that isn't jealous of song or murals or wings
there is no poem free from money's ruin
no poem in the capital nor the court
most policy rewords a devil's script
there is no poem in the law
there is no poem in the west
there is no poem in the north
poems only live south of something
meaning beneath & darkened & hot
there is no poem in the winter nor in whiteness
nor are there poems in the landlord's name
no poem to admonish the state
no poem with a key to the locks
no poem to free you

—Danez Smith, "anti poetica" from Bluff (Graywolf Press, 2024). This collection is amazing—no surprise, Danez Smith consistently fucks me up—but I read this poem on its own before reading the collection, and it's even better in context. It's worth knowing, I think, that this is the first of three poems in the collection called "anti poetica" and that there's also an "ars poetica." Other than that, no spoilers. Go read the book.

every ocean is the same ocean

I am not one of nature's collectors, except when it comes to books, and especially when it comes to poetry books in the month of April. Whoops. I'm not mad about it, though! Books are great! Yesterday and today, Lucy and I went to a bunch of different local Houston bookstores and bought more books than we really should have (so many good things, though) in the name of Indie Bookstore Day and the Houston Book Crawl, which is on through the end of the month. They gave us a bingo card and everything! How were we supposed to resist? Anyway, this poem is not from any of the books I bought today, but it is from one of the poetry books we picked up when we were at the Strand in New York last week.

        for the occasion of a dear friends' wedding

Perhaps you've noticed
the way someone yawning
blooms a yawn in your own mouth
as though it were your idea
& not a hand me down,
the way an ocean wave
is not invented out of nothing, but
arrives from somewhere else,
sent from one shoreline of the lopsided planet
to another, so that every ocean
is the same ocean, no matter
what edge of it you are dipping your toes in.
You can stand on a cliff & watch a storm roll towards you,
passed around the globe like wet gossip,
one storm begetting another,
just as my middle school science teacher taught me
that matter cannot be created nor destroyed,
just shifted from one state to the next,
which is comforting on days you miss the dinosaurs
or need to be reminded that many people had to fall in love
with a face at least a little bit like yours
in order for yours to get here.
Maybe God had a good idea one time
& the rest has all been dominoes:
a thunderclap begets a hiccup begets an undertow begets
your certainty that a face was made for you to love it,
but ask the coral reef, who knows we are not good ideas
& definitely not new ones,
more like galactic putty smushed into human form,
who spend so much of our brief time here
losing sight of the storms we came from,
the weather that moves through us,
that we unleash on everyone else.
& who can blame us?
There is no shame in forgetting
that our atoms
once held together some other jellyfish,
when her cheek on your pillow makes your skin
too electric to be called anything but New.
When my grandmother was
nearing the end of her time in the body I knew her in,
she started to lose herself
memory first, but language close behind.
She misused words, mixed up phrases, said things incorrectly.
When she met someone,
instead of saying, it is a pleasure to meet you,
she would say,
it is a pleasure to love you.
She understood
that what feels unknown
is an opportunity for remembering.
In which case, in some future,
when two red-shouldered hawks
see each other for what they think is the first time,
they might suddenly recall
that there was once a day
when we traveled many miles,
some of us whole lifetimes,
so that we could meet you,
here, in love,
& what more evidence will they need
(what more evidence do you need?) to see
that it is
a sincere pleasure to love you
again & again.

—Sarah Kay, "Epithalamion," from A Little Daylight Left (The Dial Press, 2025). Sarah Kay is a slam poet, so I do recommend the video of this poem. For Lucy, obviously.

define life

Every single one of Terrance Hayes' American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin is absolutely fucking stellar. I posted one last year, and I'm posting another one this year, but I really recommend the whole book. I like posting sonnets with other sonnets because I love looking at all the things the form can do. Sonnets are magic!! Hayes' sonnet (which I'm posting for today) also directly references the Rilke sonnet I'm posting as a make-up poem for April 16. And if you've been around here at basically any point in the past 18 (?!?!) years of poetry posts, you know I love poetry in conversation with other poetry.

Rilke ends his sonnet "Archaic Torso of Apollo" saying
"You must change your life." James Wright ends "Lying
In a Hammock at William Duffy's Farm in Pine Island,
Minnesota" saying "I have wasted my life." Ruth Stone ends
"A Moment" saying "You do not want to repeat my life."
A minute seed with a giant soul kicking inside it at the end
And beginning of life. After the opening scene where
A car bomb destroys the black detective's family, there are
Several scenes of our hero at the edge of life. A shootout
In an African American Folk Museum, a shootout
In the middle of an interstate rest stop parking lot,
A barn shootout endangering the farm life. I live a life
That burns a hole through life, that leaves a scar for life,
That makes me weep for another life. Define life.

—Terrance Hayes, "American Sonnet for My Past and Future Assassin" ["Rilke ends his sonnet"] from American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin (Penguin, 2018).

*

We cannot know his legendary head
with eyes like ripening fruit. And yet his torso
is still suffused with brilliance from inside,
like a lamp, in which his gaze, now turned to low,

gleams in all its power. Otherwise
the curved breast could not dazzle you so, nor could
a smile run through the placid hips and thighs
to that dark center where procreation flared.

Otherwise this stone would seem defaced
beneath the translucent cascade of the shoulders
and would not glisten like a wild beast's fur:

would not, from all the borders of itself,
burst like a star: for here there is no place
that does not see you. You must change your life.

—Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926), "Archaic Torso of Apollo," in this case from Ahead of All Parting: Selected Poetry and Prose of Rainer Maria Rilke, translated by Stephen Mitchell and published by Modern Library (1995).

a thousand windows and a thousand doors

I was thinking about going back to Auden for today, my 40th birthday, even though I changed the birthday rules in 2020. It's my 40th birthday! Also, I make the rules and can do what I want! I haven't posted any Auden in a couple of years, but I've been thinking about him—and, honestly, he was so prolific that I could just post Auden poems for a few hundred years—and then we went to the New York Public Library today and spent a while walking through the New Yorker Exhibit. And look, I really tried not to post this poem, because it's fucking depressing; it's also incredibly relevant, and also they have a draft manuscript that Auden sent to Benjamin Britten in 1939 in the exhibit at NYPL, so like. Here we are. Warnings for Nazis, etc.

Say this city has ten million souls;
Some are living in mansions, some are living in holes,
Yet there's no place for us, my dear, yet there's no place for us.

Once we had a country and we thought it fair;
Look in the atlas and you'll find it there.
We cannot go there now, my dear, we cannot go there now.

In the village churchyard there grows an old yew;
Every spring it flowers anew.
Old passports can't do that, my dear, old passports can't do that.

The Consul banged the table and said,
"If you've got no passport, you're officially dead."
But we are still alive, my dear, but we are still alive.

Went to a Committee; they offered me a chair,
Asked me politely to return next year.
But where shall we go today, my dear, where shall we go today?

Came to a public meeting; the speaker stood up and said,
"If we let them in, they will steal our daily bread."
He was talking of you and me, my dear, he was talking of you and me.

Thought I heard the thunder, rumbling in the sky.
It was Hitler over Europe, saying, "They must die."
O we were in his mind, my dear, O we were in his mind.

Saw a poodle wearing a jacket, fastened with a pin;
Saw a door open and a cat let in.
But they weren't German Jews, my dear, but they weren't German Jews.

Went down to the harbor and stood upon the quay;
Saw the fish swimming as if they were free,
Only ten feet away, my dear, only ten feet away.

Walked into a wood; saw the birds in the trees,
They had no politicians and sang at their ease.
They weren't the human race, my dear, they weren't the human race.

Dreamt I saw a building with a thousand floors,
A thousand windows, and a thousand doors.
Not one of them was ours, my dear, not one of them was ours.

Ran down to the station to catch the express;
Asked for two tickets to Happiness,
But every coach was full, my dear, but every coach was full.

Stood on a great plain in the falling snow;
Ten thousand soldiers marched to and fro
Looking for you and me, my dear, looking for you and me.

—W. H. Auden (1907-1973). This is the poem as it was originally published, as "Song," in the April 15, 1939 issue of The New Yorker, but it's more widely known as "Refugee Blues." In the manuscript draft that Auden sent to Britten in March of 1939, it's just called "Blues"—and as the exhibit notes, the poem is set in a meter borrowed from blues music. The poem often appears with some alterations when it's published as "Refugee Blues" (as it is in my edition of Auden); Auden frequently edited after publication, and sometimes went on editing basically forever, so textual consistency with his poems is always very fun. Anyway, thanks for this one, Wystan. I sure do not love that it still hits so hard 86 years later, but I am very grateful that we had poetry then, and still have poetry now.

cathedrals

And for today, a poem I've been thinking about, quite possibly constantly, since the first time I read it:

There's this cathedral in my head I keep
making from cricket song and
dying but rogue-in-spirit, still,
bamboo. Not making. I keep
imagining it, as if that were the same
thing as making, and as if making might
bring it back, somehow, the real
cathedral. In anger, as in desire, it was
everything, that cathedral. As if my body
itself cathedral. I conduct my body
with a cathedral's steadiness, I
try to. I cathedral. In desire. In anger.
Light enters a cathedral the way persuasion fills a body.
Light enters a cathedral, the way persuasion fills a body.

—Carl Phillips, "And If I Fall," from Star Map with Action Figures, 2018. Between "I cathedral" and the work that comma does in the last line, I am just—this poem, my god. I guess the thing these two poems have in common is that they are both masterpieces of enjambment.

a little room in a house set aflame

The sonnet is my favorite poetic form. I can make a pretty good case for the villanelle, and in general poems that fuck with formalism often speak to me. But there's just nothing like a sonnet, and despite being a very tight form in many ways, it's so adaptable and can do so much. Here are (for April 7 and April 9) two very different sonnets.

I lock you in an American sonnet that is part prison,
Part panic closet, a little room in a house set aflame.
I lock you in a form that is part music box, part meat
Grinder to separate the song of the bird from the bone.
I lock your persona in a dream-inducing sleeper hold
While your better selves watch from the bleachers.
I make you both gym & crow here. As the crow
You undergo a beautiful catharsis trapped one night
In the shadows of the gym. As the gym, the feel of crow-
Shit dropping to your floors is not unlike the stars
Falling from the pep rally posters on your walls.
I make you a box of darkness with a bird in its heart.
Voltas of acoustics, instinct & metaphor. It is not enough
To love you. It is not enough to want you destroyed.

—Terrance Hayes, "American Sonnet for My Past and Future Assassin ["I lock you in an American sonnet that is part prison"]" from American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin, 2018, and originally published in Poetry magazine, 2017.

*

Amor, de grano a grano, de planeta a planeta,
la red del viento con sus países sombríos,
la guerra con sus zapatos de sangre,
o bien el día y la noche de la espiga.

Por donde fuimos, islas o puentes o banderas,
violines del fugaz otoño acribillado,
repitió la alegría los labios de la copa,
el dolor nos detuvo con su lección de llanto.

En todas las repúblicas desarrollaba el viento
su pabellón impune, su glacial cabellera,
y luego regresaba la flor a sus trabajos.

Pero en nosotros nunca se calcinó el otoño.
Y en nuestra patria inmóvil germinaba y crecía
el amor con los derechos del rocío.


Love, from seed to seed, from planet to planet,
the wind with its net through the darkening nations,
war with its bloody shoes,
or even the day, with a thorny night.

Wherever we went, islands or bridges or flags,
there were the violins of the fleeting autumn, bullet-laced;
happiness echoing at the rim of the wineglass;
sorrow detaining us, with its lesson of tears.

Through all those republics the wind whipped—
its arrogant pavillions, its glacial hair;
it would return the flowers, later, to their work.

But no withering autumn ever touched us.
In our stable place a love sprouted, grew:
as rightfully empowered as the dew.

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

as we

It's been kind of a hell of a couple of days, which has included things like the power going out at 3am during a huge storm last night (we got it back eventually), my computer dying, shelling out for a new computer, not getting nearly enough sleep, several migraines, and a whole bunch of meetings with wedding vendors. I need to catch up on poetry, but I'm posting this from the new computer, which is still a work in progress (although also very shiny and beautiful), and I am very tired, so I am making my job a little easier tonight.

For a lot of reasons—including the fact that it's time-consuming and annoying to re-code in html—I don't post a lot of poetry that relies on on-the-page formatting. But every once in a while I read one that's so fucking good that I can't resist. And in this case, I am just going to link it instead of reposting it: Obligations 2 by Layli Long Soldier, from New Poets of Native Nations, 2018. It's extraordinary.

splendid body

This was today's Academy of American Poets' Poem-a-Day, which I get delivered to my inbox daily and which sometimes punches me in the gut and makes me revise my whole plan for the last few days of the month. I was going to post a completely different poem today, but here we are. No regrets.

The splendid body is meat, flexor
and flesh pumping, pulling, anti-
gravity maverick just standing
upright all over museums and
in line for the bus and in the laundry
aisle where it's just standing there
smelling all the detergent like
it's no big deal. So what if a couple
of its squishy parts are suspended
within, like beach-bungled jellyfish
in a shelved jar, not doing anything?
Nothing on this side of the quantum
tunnel is perfect. The splendid body,
though, is splendid in the way
it keeps its steamy blood in, no matter
how bad it blushes. And splendid
in how it opens its mouth and
these invisible vibrations come
rippling out—if you put your wrist
right up to it when that happens
it feels somewhat like the feet
of many bees. The splendid body
loves the juniper smell of gin, loves
the warmth of printer-fresh paper,
and the sound fallen leaves make
under the wheel of a turning car.
If you touch it between the legs,
the splendid body will quicken
like bubbles in a just-on teakettle.
It knows it can't exist forever, so
it's collecting as many flavors as it can—
saffron, rainwater, fish-skin, chive.
Do not distract it from its purpose,
which is to feel everything it can find.

—Rebecca Lindenberg, "The Splendid Body," originally published in Poem-a-Day on April 27, 2023, by the Academy of American Poets.

look at the time

One of the poetry collections I got from my wonderful Room of One's Own poetry subscription last year was Kiki Petrosino's Witch Wife (2017), which I actually posted the title poem from a couple of years ago. There are poems in the collection that aren't villanelles, but also I fucking love villanelles. Villanelles!

We'll have to hurry if we want to get started.
It's high time to consider beginning at all.
Time, at least, to think about starting

to start. After all, we've only just gotten up
& running, but now? We're almost too late.
We'll have to hurry. If we want to get started

we'll have to start now. We'll have to work
round the clock, round the clock, round the—
Well. Let's think about starting, at least. Though

it's tougher than ever. We can't even begin
to explain what it's like. To start with, we know
we should want to hurry. At least, we're starting

to want to. That's almost too tough to say
at the start. Still, we're sure we'll begin any moment.
It's time to get started we think. Let's consider

getting up & running. By then, it'll just sort of start
& we'll have begun. Zut alors! It's a plan & a party!
It's just—we should hurry. If we want to get started
we better begin. But it's tough. Just look at the time.

—Kiki Petrosino, "Ought" from Witch Wife, 2017. Huge mood, am I right?

hand on my stupid heart

I'm not making a habit of posting prose poetry on my birthday (two years in a row does not make a tradition, probably), but it is my birthday, and I love this poem so, so much.

I wake up & it breaks my heart. I draw the blinds & the thrill of rain breaks my heart. I go outside. I ride the train, walk among the buildings, men in Monday suits. The flight of doves, the city of tents beneath the underpass, the huddled mass, old women hawking roses, & children all of them, break my heart. There's a dream I have in which I love the world. I run from end to end like fingers through her hair. There are no borders, only wind. Like you, I was born. Like you, I was raised in the institution of dreaming. Hand on my heart. Hand on my stupid heart.

—Cameron Awkward-Rich, "Meditations in an Emergency" from Dispatch, 2019. Shoutout to my guy Frank O'Hara.

some trees make it look so easy

One of the best things about doing National Poetry Month for as long as I have been—which is like, an absurd amount of time at this point—is that I spend the rest of the year collecting poetry. I'm not that organized about it, though, which is how I have ended up with a bunch of random screenshots on my phone that I finally put in a folder, and stacks of poetry books in both ebook and hardcopy (only some of which I have actually read), and a "poetry" bookmarks folder and a "poetry" dropbox folder and, you know, maybe I should stop talking about this before I dig myself any deeper. The point is, I save stuff I like and hope that someday (usually in April) I will find it again. I got this one from the poetryisnotaluxury instagram, which is an absolute gift.

Can we talk about the moon
tonight? Low & full
in the baby-blue sky. A friend
at my door, the sound
of her laugh & well-loved
heart. I want to be held
up like that. I need a poem
about happiness I haven't
written yet, an ode
to the ducks in my neighbours'
pool, another for the pink
magnolias of spring—some trees
make it look so easy: Yes,
I can hold all this beauty up.

—Kyla Jamieson, "I Need a Poem," from Body Count, 2020.

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.

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.

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.