yes

And to close out National Poetry Month, 2026:

It could happen any time, tornado,
earthquake, Armageddon. It could happen.
Or sunshine, love, salvation.

It could, you know. That's why we wake
and look out—no guarantees
in this life.

But some bonuses, like morning,
like right now, like noon,
like evening.

—William Stafford (1914-1993), "Yes," from The Way It Is: New and Selected Poems (Graywolf, 1999).

As always, thanks for reading with me. See you next year. ♥

in this long season

This is my April 29 poem, because yesterday was a bad migraine day and I'm a day behind. That means two poems on this, the last day of April and poetry month (A SAD DAY), but I am posting one now and one later instead of posting them together. So here, per request of K, is Wendell Berry.

Shall we do without hope? Some days
there will be none. But now
to the dry and dead woods floor
they come again, the first
flowers of the year, the assembly
of the faithful, the beautiful,
wholly given to being.
And in this long season
of machines and mechanical will
there have been small human acts
of compassion, acts of care, work
flowerlike in selfless loveliness.
Leaving hope to the dark
and to a better day,
receive these beauties freely
given, and give thanks.

—Wendell Berry, "Shall we do without hope?" 2007. I got this poem from poetryisnotaluxury, but it's actually an excerpt from poem II in 2007 of "Sabbaths: 2005-2008" in Wendell Berry, Leavings (Counterpoint, 2010). Berry is highly excerptible, in my opinion, and this very much stands on its own. Also I love it, obviously.

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.

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).

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).

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).

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.

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.

come out of your houses drumming

We gotta get some protest poems up in here. Here's Rita Dove, who I adore and haven't posted in a few years.

Listen, no one signed up for this lullaby.
No bleeped sheep or rosebuds or twitching stars
will diminish the fear or save you from waking

into the same day you dreamed of leaving—
mockingbird on back order, morning bells
stuck on snooze—so you might as well

get up and at it, pestilence be damned.
Peril and risk having become relative,
I’ll try to couch this in positive terms:

Never! is the word of last resorts,
Always! the fanatic’s rallying cry.
To those inclined toward kindness, I say

Come out of your houses drumming. All others,
beware: I have discarded my smile but not my teeth.

—Rita Dove, "Incantation of the First Order," originally published in Poem-a-Day by the Academy of American Poets on October 18, 2021.

one big shadow and one small

I used to be very against prose poems, but in my more relaxed and slightly less pretentious old age (lol), I've read enough good ones that I've come around. Today is April 5, which isn't exactly my brother's yahrzeit, but is the anniversary of his memorial service, and the day—or one of the days, anyway—when I post a poem that has something to do with grief. So here is a really wonderful prose poem about grief.

I sit with my grief. I mother it. I hold its small, hot hand. I don't say, shhh. I don't say, it is okay. I wait until it is done having feelings. Then we stand and we go wash the dishes. We crack open bedroom doors, step over the creaks, and kiss the children. We are sore from this grief, like we've returned from a run, like we are training for a marathon. I'm with you all the way, says my grief, whispering, and then we splash our face with water and stretch, one big shadow and one small.

—Callista Buchen, "Taking Care," from Look Look Look (Black Lawrence Press, 2019)

allowables

I've been rereading Nikki Giovanni, who died in December. Her writing—her poetry, of course, but also prose—is so wonderful, but one of my favorite things is how spare and simple some of her poems are, and how she can just absolutely punch you in the stomach with like five words. This one, from her 2013 hybrid collection Chasing Utopia (here's the title essay of the book at Poetry Foundation), absolutely haunts me.

I killed a spider
Not a murderous brown recluse
Nor even a black widow
And if the truth were told this
Was only a small
Sort of papery spider
Who should have run
When I picked up the book
But she didn't
And she scared me
And I smashed her

I don't think
I'm allowed

To kill something

Because I am

Frightened

—Nikki Giovanni (1943-2024), "Allowables," from Chasing Utopia: A Hybrid (William Morrow, 2013)

curl your toes into the grass

Happy May 1! In keeping with a year of poetry month that has been pretty off-kilter in terms of my posting schedule, I am posting my closing poem for April 30 today. It's been a weird month—and, frankly, a weird year so far—with travel and health stuff and being in a new place. I hope that by this time next year, I'll be a lot more settled in Houston (and also, like, not having daily migraines). But it's still been a good April in many ways, and the poems have certainly helped. Thanks for reading, and I'll see you next year. ♥

If you find yourself half naked
and barefoot in the frosty grass, hearing,
again, the earth's great, sonorous moan that says
you are the air of the now and gone, that says
all you love will turn to dust,
and will meet you there, do not
raise your fist. Do not raise
your small voice against it. And do not
take cover. Instead, curl your toes
into the grass, watch the cloud
ascending from your lips. Walk
through the garden's dormant splendor.
Say only, thank you.
Thank you.

—Ross Gay, "Thank You" from Against Which, 2006.

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 kiss or a bullet

So, obviously, I haven't posted a poem in a week. I did have some of the last week already planned out on my spreadsheet, but I haven't had the wherewithal to do the posting itself—this trip has been really wonderful in a lot of ways (leaving aside the couple of days last week when I was super sick), but it's also been absolutely packed, and when I haven't been actively doing something, I have mostly been lying on my hotel bed trying to recoup my energy. We fly home tomorrow, and I might spend the last few days of the month doubling up on poems, but I may also come in a little short, this year. It happens! Sometimes life is a lot!

With all that being said, here is a poem for yesterday, April 22 (which is when I started writing this post). Later today, if I can get the internet to work a little better than it's working right now, I might post a poem in honor of Shakespeare's birth/day day; but for now, this one. Warnings for references to gun violence.

Say Stop.

Keep your lips pressed together
after you say the p:

(soon they'll try
and pry

your breath out—)

―

Whisper it
three times in a row:

Stop Stop Stop

In a hospital bed
like a curled up fish, someone's

gulping at air—

How should you apply
your breath?

—

List all of the people
you would like
to stop.

Who offers love,
who terror—

Write Stop.
Put a period at the end.

Decide if it's a kiss
or a bullet.

—Dana Levin, "Instructions for Stopping," 2017. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on March 6, 2017, and in Bullets into Bells: Poets and Citizens Respond to Gun Violence in the U.S. (Beacon, 2017). In the notes on the poem, Levin says, "To write this poem, I sat in a room, saying 'stop' over and over in order to hear how it sounded, to feel how it felt in my mouth. Then I wrote it down. Then I added a period, which posed the deciding question."

the thing is

Since 2011, when my brother died, I've been posting poems that relate in some way to grief on April 5, which is the anniversary of his memorial service. I really love this one, which is like a punch in the gut in the absolute best way. Ellen Bass is just so, so good.

to love life, to love it even
when you have no stomach for it
and everything you've held dear
crumbles like burnt paper in your hands,
your throat filled with the silt of it.
When grief sits with you, its tropical heat
thickening the air, heavy as water
more fit for gills than lungs;
when grief weights you down like your own flesh
only more of it, an obesity of grief,
you think, How can a body withstand this?
Then you hold life like a face
between your palms, a plain face,
no charming smile, no violet eyes,
and you say, yes, I will take you
I will love you, again.

—Ellen Bass, "The Thing Is" from Mules of Love, 2002.

one small hand

Is it perhaps a little early in the month to be throwing down Naomi Shihab Nye? Maybe. On the other hand, I sure am feeling some type of way about the world, these days, and she's an incredible poet for those feelings—including that time I accidentally went viral on tumblr with Gate A-4. So here's another Nye poem that fucks me up.

        We forget that we are all dead men conversing with dead men.
                                                                                —Jorge Luis Borges

For the first time, on the road north of Tampico,
I felt the life sliding out of me,
a drum in the desert, harder and harder to hear.
I was seven, I lay in the car
watching palm trees swirl a sickening pattern past the glass.
My stomach was a melon split wide inside my skin.

"How do you know if you are going to die?"
I begged my mother.
We had been traveling for days.
With strange confidence she answered,
"When you can no longer make a fist."

Years later I smile to think of that journey,
the borders we must cross separately,
stamped with our unanswerable woes.
I who did not die, who am still living,
still lying in the backseat behind all my questions,
clenching and opening one small hand.

—Naomi Shihab Nye, "Making a Fist" from Grape Leaves: A Century of Arab American Poetry (University of Utah Press, 1988).