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.

inside you, open

This is the very first poem in the wonderful poetryisnotaluxury book, which came out last year and is beautiful and perfect because the person or people who run that account have impeccable taste. This poem is an old favorite, and also beautiful and perfect, but I can't lie: it inevitably reminds me of two fics that thefourthvine titled from it, back in the day. In this new era of Hockey RPF-adjacent fandoms, my Sid/Geno roots go deep, and for obvious reasons, I have recently been doing quite a bit of rereading. I also just love this poem.

Look at the birds. Even flying
is born

out of nothing. The first sky
is inside you, open

at either end of day.
The work of wings

was always freedom, fastening
one heart to every falling thing.

—Li-Young Lee, "One Heart," from Book of My Nights (BOA Editions, 2001), and in this case also from Poetry Is Not a Luxury: Poems for All Seasons (Washington Square Press, 2025).

count my hopes

This is for Earth Day, but it also now makes me think about Maybe Happy Ending, which we saw in New York last week and absolutely loved. There are some parallels, although this is not (obviously) a poem about fireflies.

so I count my hopes: the bumblebees
are making a comeback, one snug tight
in a purple flower I passed to get to you;

your favorite color is purple but Prince's
was orange & we both find this hard to believe;
today the park is green, we take grass for granted

the leaves chuckle around us; behind
your head a butterfly rests on a tree; it’s been
there our whole conversation; by my old apartment

was a butterfly sanctuary where I would read
& two little girls would sit next to me; you caught
a butterfly once but didn't know what to feed it

so you trapped it in a jar & gave it to a girl
you liked. I asked if it died. you say you like
to think it lived a long life. yes, it lived a long life.

—Fatimah Asghar, "I Don't Know What Will Kill Us First: The Race War or What We've Done to the Earth," originally published in Poem-a-Day on May 8, 2019 (where you can listen to the poet read the poem), by the Academy of American Poets.

going where I'm going

We're flying home today after a pretty great week of theatre and friends and birthdays (I am very tired but also very happy), so I'm posting this one from the airport. Too on the nose, or just on theme? Either way, Ada Limón never misses.

Every time I'm in an airport
I think I should drastically
change my life: Kill the kid stuff,
start to act my numbers, set fire
to the clutter and creep below
the radar like an escaped canine
sneaking along the fence line.
I'd be cable-knitted to the hilt,
beautiful beyond buying, believe in
the maker and fix my problems
with prayer and property.
Then, I think of you, home
with the dog, the field full
of purple pop-ups—we're small and
flawed, but I want to be
who I am, going where
I'm going, all over again.

—Ada Limón, "The Problem With Travel," from Bright Dead Things, 2015.

we'll go winging

I woke up feeling like absolute garbage and it's going to be a very long day—our flight to New York for a week of theater and seeing friends (yay!) leaves Houston at 7pm and arrives at LGA a little before midnight. On the plus side, I also woke up thinking about this poem. So here's a little aspirational James Baldwin for today. I am hoping that the migraine meds work and the weather stays gorgeous and our travel is easy and painless, and I am also hoping for good things to come for all of us.

Let this be my summertime
Of azure sky and rolling sea,
And smiling clouds, and wind-kissed laughter,
And just myself entranced with thee.
And children playing in the glory
Of a carefree, youthful day,
And sunshine shining from the heavens,
And tears and sighing fled away.
Let this be my happiness
'Midst the earth's swift-flowing woe.
Let this be my only solace—
Just to know you love me so.
Just to know that we'll go winging,
Far above this earthy clime,
Hand in hand through laughing meadows.
Let this be my summertime.

—James Baldwin (1924-1987), "Paradise," from Magpie (Winter 1941).

almost all elephant

If yesterday had not been grief poems day, I probably would have posted a poem about elephants. We went to see The Great Elephant Migration installation at Hermann Park, here in Houston, which was incredibly cool, and made me go on a little bit of a deep dive into poems about elephants. This is a little one—I seem to be posting a lot of short poems so far this year—and it's not even really about elephants, but I love it.

The room is
almost all
elephant.
Almost none
of it isn’t.
Pretty much
solid elephant.
So there’s no
room to talk
about it.

—Kay Ryan, "The Elephant In The Room." This poem may or may not have originally been published in 2005, but I got it from poetryisnotaluxury, and they got it from Resistance, Rebellion, Life: 50 Poems Now, edited by Amit Majmudar (Knopf, 2017). It's also possible that Kay Ryan has more than one poem with this title? Google is so fucking useless in the AI era. LET'S TALK ABOUT ELEPHANTS.

home

This year in particular, I can't wrap up poetry month without Mahmoud Darwish. At the beginning of the month, I think there was a part of me that hoped that by the time we got here, he might not feel quite so immediately and desperately relevant—but that's not where we are, and frankly it's not where we've been for all eighteen years that I've been posting poems (and longer). I could have done an entire month of Mahmoud Darwish at basically any point in those eighteen years, even if it feels more acute and immediate right now.

It was also a challenge to decide on a poem, but earlier in the month I committed to this one, and I stand by it—I love this one. That said, you should also (at the least) go read Think of Others and In Jerusalem.

I belong there. I have many memories. I was born as everyone is born.
I have a mother, a house with many windows, brothers, friends, and a prison cell
with a chilly window! I have a wave snatched by seagulls, a panorama of my own.
I have a saturated meadow. In the deep horizon of my word, I have a moon,
a bird’s sustenance, and an immortal olive tree.
I have lived on the land long before swords turned man into prey.
I belong there. When heaven mourns for her mother, I return heaven to her mother.
And I cry so that a returning cloud might carry my tears.
To break the rules, I have learned all the words needed for a trial by blood.
I have learned and dismantled all the words in order to draw from them a
single word: Home.

—Mahmoud Darwish (1941-2008), "I Belong There," from Unfortunately, It Was Paradise, translated and edited by Munir Akash and Carolyn Forché with Sinan Antoon and Amira El-Zein (2003).

forget the epitaph

When we were in New York, I went to see Suffs on Broadway with my mom. It was great—I have notes, of course, but overall I really enjoyed it, and I'm really glad I got to see it—and when I got home (or rather, back to the hotel) I obviously ended up reading up on the historical figures I didn't know as much about. This is how I learned that after Inez Milholland died, her husband married Edna St. Vincent Millay, who then WROTE A POEM about her husband's dead wife. Because, like, obviously. So this is the poem I would have posted on April 19, if I hadn't already been in bed and half-asleep when I learned of its existence.

                        Read in Washington, November eighteenth, 1923, at the unveiling of a statue
                        of three leaders in the cause of Equal Rights for Women

Upon this marble bust that is not I
Lay the round, formal wreath that is not fame;
But in the forum of my silenced cry
Root ye the living tree whose sap is flame.
I, that was proud and valiant, am no more;—
Save as a dream that wanders wide and late,
Save as a wind that rattles the stout door,
Troubling the ashes in the sheltered grate.
The stone will perish; I shall be twice dust.
Only my standard on a taken hill
Can cheat the mildew and the red-brown rust
And make immortal my adventurous will.
Even now the silk is tugging at the staff:
Take up the song; forget the epitaph.

—Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892-1950), "To Inez Milholland," 1923. I wouldn't say it's Edna's best work, but there's still something about it that really does land.

spring arrives regardless

Happy April, even if I do not really feel like it is April—2024 has already been kind of a year. But we're still here, so, as always, there will be one poem per day (ish) between now and April 30. 

Every time I feel close
to understanding the world
the white kettle on my stove sounds
and I rise, attending to it
with annoyance and the pleasure
of the unmade cup of tea.
This is what it's like to live in March
or perhaps always, an unconvincing word
in any context. Blue-gold on night's branches
what part do we take in the play?
Whose turn is it to perform competence
and knowledge in the absence of both?
Unable to feel anything against the wind
I know it is spring. Time tells me so.
Never (equally as unconvincing)
have I been someone with faith in order
and human law. Love is unpredictable.
Spring arrives regardless.

—Alex Dimitrov, "March," from Love and Other Poems (2021), and brought to me via the wonderful folks at the poetryisnotaluxury instagram. Yes, I do recognize that this is the second year in a row I have posted a March poem on April 1.

awake as a rumor of war

This poem is for yesterday, posted a little late because I went to see Fat Ham last night and got back late enough that I just went straight to bed instead of posting a poem. The play is fucking amazing—mistresscurvy and I saw it at the Public last fall and wanted to see it again on Broadway, and it really just absolutely fucking slays. Go see it if you can!

As some of you know, I am moving to Houston at the end of the year, which means this is probably my last year of posting poetry month poems from New York City (after thirteen! years!). Pending being back in New York during April(s) in the future, which seems reasonably likely. But it's definitely a change. I thought I was going to post a lot more NYC poems this year, actually, but there have only been a few; we'll see how the nostalgia treats me next year. In the meantime, though, a little New York poem for April 28. I'm pretty sure I read this one for the first time on the subway.

Curtains forcing their will
against the wind,
children sleep,
exchanging dreams with
seraphim. The city
drags itself awake on
subway straps; and
I, an alarm, awake as a
rumor of war,
lie stretching into dawn,
unasked and unheeded.

—Maya Angelou (1928-2014), "Awaking in New York," from Shaker, Why Don't You Sing?, 1983.

ponytails

I stand corrected: there are good poems about soccer. eccentric_hat (who has exceptional taste in poetry) shared this one with me and it is so good that I need to post it today! But since it is quite short, and because I feel like it, I am posting a second poem, which is also short (and gay) and packs a punch.

girls' soccer practice:
they are running so hard
and shouting so strong with
ponytails ponytails ponytails
backlit and leaping
they are not afraid of you

—Jenna Jaco, "11/8/16," published in the Sweet Tree Review (Summer 2017, Volume 2, Issue III).

*

And if I cannot speak of my love—
if I do not speak about your hair, your lips, your eyes;
yet your face that I keep within my soul,
the sound of your voice that I keep within my brain,
the days of September that dawn in my dreams,
mold and color my words and phrases,
in whatever theme I get into, whatever idea I utter.

—C. P. Cavafy (1863-1933), "December 1903," translated by Rae Dalven; this is one of Cavafy's unpublished poems.

what belongs to the day

Hey so how about that episode of Ted Lasso, like, holy shit, am I right? WHEW. Unfortunately there are no good poems about soccer, but here is some Walt Whitman.

I hear America singing, the varied carols I hear,
Those of mechanics, each one singing his as it should be blithe and strong,
The carpenter singing his as he measures his plank or beam,
The mason singing his as he makes ready for work, or leaves off work,
The boatman singing what belongs to him in his boat, the deckhand singing on the steamboat deck,
The shoemaker singing as he sits on his bench, the hatter singing as he stands,
The wood-cutter’s song, the ploughboy's on his way in the morning, or at noon intermission or at sundown,
The delicious singing of the mother, or of the young wife at work, or of the girl sewing or washing,
Each singing what belongs to him or her and to none else,
The day what belongs to the day—at night the party of young fellows, robust, friendly,
Singing with open mouths their strong melodious songs.

—Walt Whitman (1819-1892), "I Hear America Singing" from the 1867 edition of Leaves of Grass; the original version appeared as number 20 in the section titled "Chants Democratic" in the 1860 edition of Leaves of Grass.

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?

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.

when day is gone and night is come

My quarantine Dorothy Dunnett book club finished reading A Game of Kings yesterday and started Queens' Play today, so here's some good old classic Robbie Burns, in honor of Scotland (and the OT3 I believe in most strongly in the Lymond Chronicles: Francis/Scotland/Naps).

It was a' for our rightful king
       That we left fair Scotland's strand;
It was a' for our rightful king
       We e'er saw Irish land,
              My dear,
       We e'er saw Irish land.

Now a' is done that men can do,
       And a' is done in vain!
My love, and native land, fareweel!
       For I maun cross the main,
              My dear,
       For I maun cross the main.

He turn'd him right and round about,
       Upon the Irish shore,
He gave his bridle-reins a shake,
       With, Adieu for evermore,
              My dear!
       And adieu for evermore!

The soldier frae the war returns,
       And the merchant frae the main.
But I hae parted frae my love,
       Never to meet again,
              My dear,
       Never to meet again.

When day is gone and night is come,
       And a' folk bound to sleep,
I think on him that's far awa
       The lee-lang night, and weep,
              My dear,
       The lee-lang night, and weep.

—Robert Burns (1759–1796), "It was a' for our Rightful King." According to a very small amount of Googling, likely originally published in 1796 anonymously, and "supposed to be spoken by a Jacobite" (I mean, yes). This poem reportedly provides "an interesting example of the use which Burns often made of earlier Scottish songs and ballads and is based on the ballad of Mallie Stewart." I am not a Burns expert in any way, but this seems plausible.

only your savage heart

This poem is also for Lan Wangji, and for Wei Wuxian, and for my extraordinarily talented friend helcinda, who just posted her phenomenal vid album, The Black Parade: an Untamed Vid Album. It's a masterpiece, and I honestly don't have words for how good it is, or for how many times it has made me cry and clutch my heart with feelings. So, in honor of those feelings, here's some Pablo Neruda. I post a lot of Neruda, but let's be honest: he wrote some of the very best love poetry in any language, and I always spend at least a couple of hours narrowing down my choices. This seemed like the right one, today. ♥

De las estrellas que admiré, mojadas
por ríos y rocíos diferentes,
yo no escogí sino la que yo amaba
y desde entonces duermo con la noche.

De la ola, una ola y otra ola,
verde mar, verde frío, rama verde,
yo no escogí sino una sola ola:
la ola indivisible de tu cuerpo.

Todos las gotas, todas las raíces,
todos los hilos de la luz vinieron,
me vinieron a ver tarde o temprano.

Yo quise para mí tu cabellera.
Y de todos los dones de mi patria
sólo escogí tu corazón salvaje.


Of all the stars I admired, drenched
in various rivers and mists,
I chose only the one I love.
Since then I sleep with the night.

Of all the waves, one wave and another wave,
green sea, green chill, branchings of green,
I chose only the one wave,
the indivisible wave of your body.

All the waterdrops, all the roots,
all the threads of light gathered to me here;
they came to me sooner or later.

I wanted your hair, all for myself.
From all the graces my homeland offered
I chose only your savage heart.

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

in the yearning

This poem is for Lan Wangji.

He is watching the music with his eyes closed.
Hearing the piano like a man moving
through the woods thinking by feeling.
The orchestra up in the trees, the heart below,
step by step. The music hurrying sometimes,
but always returning to quiet, like the man
remembering and hoping. It is a thing in us,
mostly unnoticed. There is somehow a pleasure
in the loss. In the yearning. The pain
going this way and that. Never again.
Never bodied again. Again the never.
Slowly. No undergrowth. Almost leaving.
A humming beauty in the silence.
The having been. Having had. And the man
knowing all of him will come to the end.

—Jack Gilbert (1925-2012), "After Love" from The Dance Most of All, 2009. This poem was also—I believe originally, although I couldn't swear to it—published in The New Yorker on June 30, 2008.

like sky-written letters on a windy day

I'm counting this poem for yesterday (there will be another poem later today), but it's also sort of a first: this is the first year in poetry month history where I don't have a John Donne poem on my schedule. But I do have this one, which isn't exactly not a John Donne poem. 

Every reader loves the way he tells off

the sun, shouting busy old fool

into the English skies even though they

were likely cloudy on that seventeenth-century morning. 

And it's a pleasure to spend this sunny day

pacing the carpet and repeating the words, 

feeling the syllables lock into rows

until I can stand and declare, 

the book held closed by my side, 

that hours, days, and months are but the rags of time. 

But after a few steps into stanza number two, 

wherein the sun is blinded by his mistress's eyes, 

I can feel the first one begin to fade

like sky-written letters on a windy day. 

And by the time I have taken in the third, 

the second is likewise gone, a blown-out candle now, 

a wavering line of acrid smoke. 

So it's not until I leave the house

and walk three times around this hidden lake

that the poem begins to show

any interest in walking by my side. 

Then, after my circling, 

better than the courteous dominion

of her being all states and him all princes, 

better than love's power to shrink 

the wide world to the size of a bedchamber, 

and better even than the compression 

of all that into the rooms of these three stanzas

is how, after hours stepping up and down the poem, 

testing the plank of every line, 

it goes with me now, contracted into a little spot within. 

—Billy Collins, "Memorizing 'The Sun Rising' by John Donne," from Horoscopes for the Dead, 2011. I posted "The Sun Rising" back in 2008.

a new knowledge of reality

A little bit of Wallace Stevens, on this Tuesday night:

At the earliest ending of winter,
In March, a scrawny cry from outside
Seemed like a sound in his mind.

He knew that he heard it,
A bird’s cry, at daylight or before,
In the early March wind.

The sun was rising at six,
No longer a battered panache above snow . . .
It would have been outside.

It was not from the vast ventriloquism
Of sleep’s faded papier-mâché . . .
The sun was coming from outside.

That scrawny cry—it was
A chorister whose c preceded the choir.
It was part of the colossal sun,

Surrounded by its choral rings,
Still far away. It was like
A new knowledge of reality.

—Wallace Stevens (1879-1955), "Not Ideas About the Thing but the Thing Itself" in this case from The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens, 1954.