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.

the frontiers of our uncertain freedom

NO MORE MISTER NICE POEMS. I have to post this one, though.

Too old to carry arms and to fight like others—

they generously assigned to me the inferior role of a chronicler
I record—not knowing for whom—the history of the siege

I have to be precise but I don't know when the invasion began
two hundred years ago in December in autumn perhaps yesterday at dawn
here everybody is losing the sense of time

we were left with the place an attachment to the place
still we keep ruins of temples phantoms of gardens of houses
if we were to lose the ruins we would be left with nothing

I write as I can in the rhythm of unending weeks
monday: storehouses are empty a rat is now a unit of currency
tuesday: the mayor is killed by unknown assailants
wednesday: talks of armistice the enemy interned our envoys
we don’t know where they are being kept i.e. tortured
thursday: after a stormy meeting the majority voted down
the motion of spice merchants on unconditional surrender
friday: the onset of plague saturday: the suicide of
N.N., the most steadfast defender sunday: no water we repulsed
the attack at the eastern gate named the Gate of the Alliance

I know all this is monotonous nobody would care

I avoid comments keep emotions under control describe facts
they say facts only are valued on foreign markets
but with a certain pride I wish to convey to the world
thanks to the war we raised a new species of children
our children don’t like fairy tales they play killing
day and night they dream of soup bread bones
exactly like dogs and cats

in the evening I like to wander in the confines of the City
along the frontiers of our uncertain freedom
I look from above on the multitude of armies on their lights
I listen to the din of drums to barbaric shrieks
it’s incredible that the City is still resisting
the siege has been long the foes must replace each other
they have nothing in common except a desire to destroy us
the Goths the Tartars the Swedes the Emperor’s troops regiments of

Our Lord’s Transfiguration

who could count them
colors of banners change as does the forest on the horizon
from the bird’s delicate yellow in the spring through the green the red

to the winter black

and so in the evening freed from facts I am able to give thought
to bygone far away matters for instance to our
allies overseas I know they feel true compassion
they send us flour sacks of comfort lard and good counsel
without even realizing that we were betrayed by their fathers
our former allies from the time of the second Apocalypse
their sons are not guilty they deserve our gratitude so we are grateful
they have never lived through the eternity of a siege
those marked by misfortune are always alone
Dalai Lama’s defenders Kurds Afghan mountaineers

now as I write these words proponents of compromise
have won a slight advantage over the party of the dauntless
usual shifts of mood our fate is still in the balance

cemeteries grow larger the number of defenders shrinks
but the defense continues and will last to the end
and even if the City falls and one of us survives
he will carry the City inside him on the roads of exile
he will be the City

we look at the face of hunger the face of fire the face of death
and the worst of them all—the face of treason

and only our dreams have not been humiliated

(Warsaw 1982)

—Zbigniew Herbert (1924-1998), "Report from a Besieged City," from Report from a Besieged City, 1983, although dated 1982 in Zbigniew Herbert, The Collected Poems 1956-1998, trans. and ed. Alissa Valles (Harper Collins, 2007), which is the edition of Herbert I own and where I originally read this poem. But this is the Czesław Miłosz (1911-2004) translation, which appeared in The New York Review of Books on August 18, 1983.

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.

wild iris, duff, waterfall, dew

Take me back to the woods, please. (But actually, I took two pretty nice walks today; could be worse.)

I like my body when I'm in the woods
and I forget my body. I forget that arms,
that legs, that nose. I forget that waist,

that nerve, that skin. And I aspen. I mountain.
I river. I stone. I leaf. I path. I flower.
I like when I evergreen, current and berry.

I like when I mushroom, avalanche, cliff.
And everything is yes then, and everything
new: wild iris, duff, waterfall, dew.

—Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer, "Yes, That's When," from hush (Middle Creek Publishing, 2020).

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.

the rapture of being alive

This one goes out to loons and Shane Hollander and those middle-of-the-night moments of clarity.

Not quite four a.m., when the rapture of being alive
strikes me from sleep, and I rise
from the comfortable bed and go
to another room, where my books are lined up
in their nest and colorful rows. How

magical they are! I choose one
and open it. Soon
I have wandered in over the waves of the words
to the temple of thought.

                                        And then I hear
outside, over the actual waves, the small,
perfect voice of the loon. He is also awake,
and with his heavy head uplifted he calls out
to the fading moon, to the pink flush
swelling in the east that, soon,
will become the long, reasonable day.

                                                            Inside the house
it is still dark, except for the pool of lamplight
in which I am sitting.

                                    I do not close the book.

Neither, for a long while, do I read on.

—Mary Oliver (1935-2019), "The Loon," from What Do We Know: Poems and Prose Poems (Da Capo Press, 2002) and in my case from Devotions: The Selected Poems of Mary Oliver (Penguin, 2017).

but yet the body is his book

It's my birthday! We went to NASA (Space Center Houston!) because I am 41 and still a space kid at heart. I was thinking about space poems to post (or moon poems, or poems about planets), and that got me to a not-super-surprising metaphysical place and then I thought, "I miss inflicting John Donne on people my birthday." So here is a deeply weird Donne poem that I have not posted before. (I posted "The Sun Rising" in 2008, otherwise you'd obviously be getting that one.) But what is this bonkers poem about, you may ask. The body? Sex? Death? Plato? Soul bonds? Being drift compatible with a possibly dead person while sharing a grave? All of the above, probably. It also has one of my favorite and most quintessentially "this is disgusting, bro, what are you doing" Donne couplets, which is the one about the eye-stalks.

Where, like a pillow on a bed
A pregnant bank swell'd up to rest
The violet's reclining head,
Sat we two, one another's best;
Our hands were firmly cemented
With a fast balm, which thence did spring,
Our eye-beams twisted, and did thread
Our eyes upon one double string;
So to'intergraft our hands, as yet
Was all the means to make us one,
And pictures in our eyes to get
Was all our propagation.
As 'twixt two equal armies, fate
Suspends uncertain victory,
Our souls (which to advance their state
Were gone out) hung 'twixt her and me.
And whilst our souls negotiate there,
We like sepulchral statues lay;
All day, the same our postures were,
And we said nothing, all the day.
If any, so by love refin'd
That he soul's language understood,
And by good love were grown all mind,
Within convenient distance stood,
He (though he knew not which soul spake,
Because both meant, both spake the same)
Might thence a new concoction take
And part far purer than he came.
This ecstasy doth unperplex,
We said, and tell us what we love;
We see by this it was not sex,
We see we saw not what did move;
But as all several souls contain
Mixture of things, they know not what,
Love these mix'd souls doth mix again
And makes both one, each this and that.
A single violet transplant,
The strength, the colour, and the size,
(All which before was poor and scant)
Redoubles still, and multiplies.
When love with one another so
Interinanimates two souls,
That abler soul, which thence doth flow,
Defects of loneliness controls.
We then, who are this new soul, know
Of what we are compos'd and made,
For th' atomies of which we grow
Are souls, whom no change can invade.
But oh alas, so long, so far,
Our bodies why do we forbear?
They are ours, though not we; we are
The intelligences, they the spheres.
We owe them thanks, because they thus
Did us, to us, at first convey,
Yielded their senses' force to us,
Nor are dross to us, but allay.
On man heaven's influence works not so,
But that it first imprints the air;
So soul into the soul may flow,
Though it to body first repair.
As our blood labors to beget
Spirits, as like souls as it can,
Because such fingers need to knit
That subtle knot which makes us man,
So must pure lovers' souls descend
T' affections, and to faculties,
Which sense may reach and apprehend,
Else a great prince in prison lies.
To'our bodies turn we then, that so
Weak men on love reveal'd may look;
Love's mysteries in souls do grow,
But yet the body is his book.
And if some lover, such as we,
Have heard this dialogue of one,
Let him still mark us, he shall see
Small change, when we'are to bodies gone.

—John Donne (1572-1631), "The Ecstasy" (or "The Extasie"), from Songs and Sonnets, originally published in print in 1633, although it certainly circulated in manuscript before then. This is obviously neither a song nor a sonnet.

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.

o moon

Just a little late-night one, tonight, but it sings.

The way I must enter
leads through darkness to darkness—
O moon above the mountains' rim,
please shine a little farther
on my path.

—Izumi Shikibu (b. approx. 976), translated by Jane Hirshfield and Mariko Aratani, from The Ink Dark Moon: Love Poems by Ono no Komachi and Izumi Shikibu, Women of the Ancient Count of Japan (Vintage, 1990). This is believed to have been her last poem, written on her deathbed, and it makes me feel things.

the narrative burden of events

Fady Joudah is a Houston-based poet (and doctor) who I first learned about through his translations of Mahmoud Darwish—one of which I may post later in the month—and then because Brazos Bookstore, one of our favorite independent bookstores in town, always tries to highlight local authors. I picked up a copy of Joudah's 2024 poetry collection last year and was thinking about posting a couple of different poems, but then I read this earlier one on Poetry Foundation and couldn't stop thinking about it, so here we are. Still on the subject of the moon, sort of.

1.
Here, shooting stars linger
They give out
A sparkling trail like a cauterized incision

Silver, or amber
If the moon is low and rising red


2.
And the rain melts the roads
And the roads
Can rupture a spleen
Or oust a kidney stone

As for the heart
It needs a beginning
The narrative
Burden of events


3.
“Mize, zey eat mize”
The Frenchman exclaimed with a smile
“Rraized and shipped from za States”

We raise rats! I thought
That’s a lot of protein!

“Maize maize!” it was, after our chickens
Have had their fill


4.
She was the only nurse in town before the war
She spoke seven languages and died suddenly
He was a merchant
He’s a doorman now and buys us cigarettes


5.
Here we are with love pouring out of every orifice
Here they are dancing
Around the funeral pyre, the corpse in absentia


6.
One of the drivers ran over the neighbor’s ducks
The neighbor demanded compensation
For the post-traumatic stress disorder he accurately anticipates

Do you know what it’s like
To drive on roads occupied
By animal farms: you cannot tell
Who killed who or how
Many ducks were there to begin with


7.
In the morning, elephant grass moves the way
Mist is visible in the breeze but doesn’t dampen the skin


8.
Today, I yelled at three old women
Who wouldn’t stop bargaining for pills they didn’t need
One wanted extra
For her grandson who came along for the ride


9.
Like lip sores
The asphalt blisters in the rain

And the boys
Fill the holes with dirt and gravel
And broken green branches
Then wait:

No windex. No flowers or newspapers
And gratuity is appreciated


10.
“I have ants in my leg”
And “My leg went to sleep”
Are not the same thing!

The French argue
There is no sleep in a tingling numbness
The symptom of sluggish blood:

I agree. Me too my leg has been anted
And we are learning to reconcile
The dark with the electric


11.
Four days the river runs to the border
Nine days to learn it wasn’t the shape
Of your nose that gave you away
And debts are paid off in a-shelter-for-a-day

A pile of wood plus change in your pocket
Is a sack of potatoes and change in another’s


12.
No more running long or short distance
The old women
Snicker at me when I pass them by


13.
She was comatose post-partum
And the beekeeper
Bathed her in love everyday

When she recovered I gave up
What he’d promised me for the woman
Who took up nursing their newborn
Since as coincidence would have it
Her name was Om Assel — Mother of Honey


14.
The translation of a medical interview
Is not a poem to be written

Come recite a verse from childhood with me
I see you’re unable to weep, does love
Have no command over you?

The sea’s like the desert
Neither quenches the thirst


15.
Here, dry grass burns the moon
Here, a clearing of grass is a clearing of snakes


16.
And the rain has already been cleansed from the sky
The clinic is empty, soon
The earth will unseal like a jar
Harvest is the season that fills the belly


17.
Here, I ride my bicycle invisible
Except for a crescent shadow and the Milky Way
Is already past


18.
And a mirror gives the moon back to the moon
Home is an epilogue:

Which came first
Memory or words?

—Fady Joudah, "Moon Grass Rain" from The Earth in the Attic (Yale University Press, 2008).

hot as molten silver

Here is another poem about the moon. Also, cats.

The white cat is curled up in the sky
its cloudy tail drawn round its flanks.
Waking, it struts over the roofs singing
down chimneys, its claws clicking

on the roof tiles that loosen and fall.
Now it runs along the bare boughs of the oak.
Now it leaps to the beech and sharpens
its long yellow claws. Sparks fly out.

The moon is hungry and calls to be fed,
cries to come into the bedroom through
the skylight and crawl under the covers,
to curl up at your breast and purr.

The moon caterwauls on the back fence
saying I burn, I am hot as molten silver.
I am the dancer on the roof who wakes you.
Rise to me and I will melt you to silk dust.

I am the passion you have forgotten
in your long sleep, but now your bones glow
through your flesh, your eyes see in the dark.
On owl wings you will hunt through the night.

—Marge Piercy, "How the full moon wakes you," from Mars and Her Children (Alfred A. Knopf, 1992), although my version is from The Hunger Moon: New and Selected Poems, 1980-2010 (Knopf, 2012).

ask the moon

I asked my wife how many poems about the moon I was allowed to post this week, and she said "all of them?" So we may have a week or so of moon poems, for obvious reasons. Since I missed yesterday, here are two.

Isn't the moon dark too,
most of the time?

And doesn't the white page
seem unfinished

without the dark stain
of alphabets?

When God demanded light,
he didn't banish darkness.

Instead he invented
ebony and crows

and that small mole
on your left cheekbone.

Or did you mean to ask
"Why are you sad so often?"

Ask the moon.
Ask what it has witnessed.

—Linda Pastan (1932-2023), "Why Are Your Poems So Dark?" originally published in Poetry (August 2003).

*

Forgive us, we blamed you
for floods, for the flush of blood,
for men who are also wolves, even
though you could pull the tide in
by her hair, we tell everyone
we walked all over you. We
blame you for the dark, as if you had
a choice, performing just beyond
the glass, distant and adored,
near but alone, cold and unimaginable
following us home. We use you
to see our blue bodies beneath
your damp light, we let you watch,
swollen against the glass as we move
against one another like fish.

—Warsan Shire, "Bless the Moon," from Bless the Daughter Raised by a Voice in Her Head: Poems (Penguin Canada, 2022).

swept our hearts clean

A little devotional-ish poetry for Easter Monday. I love Joy Harjo.

To pray you open your whole self
To sky, to earth, to sun, to moon
To one whole voice that is you.
And know there is more
That you can't see, can't hear;
Can't know except in moments
Steadily growing, and in languages
That aren’t always sound but other
Circles of motion.
Like eagle that Sunday morning
Over Salt River. Circled in blue sky
In wind, swept our hearts clean
With sacred wings.
We see you, see ourselves and know
That we must take the utmost care
And kindness in all things.
Breathe in, knowing we are made of
All this, and breathe, knowing
We are truly blessed because we
Were born, and die soon within a
True circle of motion,
Like eagle rounding out the morning
Inside us.
We pray that it will be done
In beauty.
In beauty.

—Joy Harjo, "Eagle Poem," from In Mad Love and War (Wesleyan University Press, 1990), but in my case from a very lovely signed copy of Weaving Sundown in a Scarlet Light: 50 Poems for 50 Years (Norton, 2023).

keep singing

My brother Pete died fifteen years ago in March, which is kind of crazy to think about. How can it have been fifteen years? How has it only been fifteen years? (Maybe less the second one, but later this month I turn 41, which is the age he was when he died, and that sure makes me feel some type of way.) Grief is a very strange thing, and sometimes poetry helps me understand it better, or at least feel less alone in something that is often isolating, even while being completely universal. Since 2012—or 2011, I guess, if you count the original day—I've been posting grief poems on April 5, the anniversary of the day we held his memorial.

This poem is from Gregory Orr's How Beautiful the Beloved, which is a whole book of perfect little gems like this one.

Grief will come to you.
Grip and cling all you want,
It makes no difference.

Catastrophe? It's just waiting to happen.
Loss? You can be certain of it.

Flow and swirl of the world.
Carried along as if by a dark current.

All you can do is keep swimming;
All you can do is keep singing.

—Gregory Orr, "Grief will come to you," from How Beautiful the Beloved (Copper Canyon Press, 2008).

give me fire

A little Audre Lorde for a gloomy Saturday, and for my wife.

Give me fire and I will sing you morning
Finding you heart
And a birth of fruit
For you, a flame that will stay beauty
Song will take us by by the hand
And lead us back to light.

Give me fire and I will sing you evening
Asking you water
And quick breath
No farewell winds like a willow switch
Against my body
But a voice to speak
In a dark room.

—Audre Lorde (1934-1992), "A Lover's Song," from The First Cities (1968), and in this case from The Collected Poems of Audre Lorde (Norton, 1997).

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).

the same atoms

It's been a hard day, so here is a poem for that. Clint Smith simply never fails.

Some evenings, after days when the world feels
like it has poured all of its despair onto me,
when I am awash with burdens that rests atop
my body like a burlap of jostling shadows,

I find a place to watch the sun set. I dig
my feet into a soil that has rebirthed itself
a millions times over. I listen to the sound
of leaves as they decide whether or not

it is time to descend from their branches.
It is hard to describe the comfort one feels
in sitting with something you trust will always be
there, something you can count on to remain

familiar when all else seems awry. How remarkable
it is to know that so many have watched the same
sun set before you. How the wind can carry
pollen and drop it somewhere it has never been.
How the leaves have always become the soil

that then become the leaves again. How maybe
we are not so different from the leaves.
How maybe we are also always being reborn
to be something more than we once were.

How maybe that's what waking up each morning is.
A reminder that we are born
of the same atoms as every plant and bird
and mountain and ocean around us.

—Clint Smith, "For the Hardest Days," from Counting Descent (Write Bloody Publishing, 2016).

ready to start again

Hi everyone, did you know that it is somehow already April?! Yeah, I don't know where the hell this year has gone. 2026 has not been super kind to us, so far, but there have been some lights in the darkness, and poetry is always one of them for me. If you're new here (who is new here in 2026, lol), I will be posting a poem every day (more or less) from now until April 30 in celebration of National Poetry Month. This year is the 30th anniversary of NPM, which started in 1996; I started posting poems in 2007, so next year will be my 20th anniversary. Time sure does keep happening.

As I always say, I'm never exactly sure, going in, what any year's April will bring, but I hope you'll enjoy the journey with me. ♥

I saw this poem on Instagram in the middle of the month last April and immediately put it on my spreadsheet to open this year. Sometimes I can stick to a plan!

Maybe January was never meant
to be the beginning.
Maybe the year starts slowly
on purpose—
a quiet stretch,
a deep inhale,
the soft ache of waking up.

Maybe February was shaking off,
and March was the gathering
of strength—
a slow return to ourselves.

And maybe April
is when it really begins.
When the light lingers,
when our hearts beat louder,
when we are truly ready
to start again—
not because we should,
but because we're finally
warm enough to want to.

—Kaylin Weir, "April Theory," posted to Instagram on April 13, 2025.