to carry within us an orchard

And here is today's second poem, for April 29. The only thing I can say about this poem is that it is perfect.

From blossoms comes
this brown paper bag of peaches
we bought from the boy
at the bend in the road where we turned toward
signs painted Peaches.

From laden boughs, from hands,
from sweet fellowship in the bins,
comes nectar at the roadside, succulent
peaches we devour, dusty skin and all,
comes the familiar dust of summer, dust we eat.

O, to take what we love inside,
to carry within us an orchard, to eat
not only the skin, but the shade,
not only the sugar, but the days, to hold
the fruit in our hands, adore it, then bite into
the round jubilance of peach.

There are days we live
as if death were nowhere
in the background; from joy
to joy to joy, from wing to wing,
from blossom to blossom to
impossible blossom, to sweet impossible blossom.

—Li-Young Lee, "From Blossoms," from Rose, 1986.

a poem in this place

I'm going to post two poems today and my final poem tomorrow, on May 1st, because time is a construct. This poem was originally intended for Wednesday, April 28, and it was one of the first poems I picked out for this year, back in January when Amanda Gorman instantly became everyone's favorite young poet (with very good reason). Her new poetry collection comes out in September, and I am very excited.

There’s a poem in this place—
in the footfalls in the halls
in the quiet beat of the seats.
It is here, at the curtain of day,
where America writes a lyric
you must whisper to say.

There’s a poem in this place—
in the heavy grace,
the lined face of this noble building,
collections burned and reborn twice.

There’s a poem in Boston’s Copley Square
where protest chants
tear through the air
like sheets of rain,
where love of the many
swallows hatred of the few.

There’s a poem in Charlottesville
where tiki torches string a ring of flame
tight round the wrist of night
where men so white they gleam blue—
seem like statues
where men heap that long wax burning
ever higher
where Heather Heyer
blooms forever in a meadow of resistance.

There’s a poem in the great sleeping giant
of Lake Michigan, defiantly raising
its big blue head to Milwaukee and Chicago—
a poem begun long ago, blazed into frozen soil,
strutting upward and aglow.

There’s a poem in Florida, in East Texas
where streets swell into a nexus
of rivers, cows afloat like mottled buoys in the brown,
where courage is now so common
that 23-year-old Jesus Contreras rescues people from floodwaters.

There’s a poem in Los Angeles
yawning wide as the Pacific tide
where a single mother swelters
in a windowless classroom, teaching
black and brown students in Watts
to spell out their thoughts
so her daughter might write
this poem for you.

There's a lyric in California
where thousands of students march for blocks,
undocumented and unafraid;
where my friend Rosa finds the power to blossom
in deadlock, her spirit the bedrock of her community.
She knows hope is like a stubborn
ship gripping a dock,
a truth: that you can’t stop a dreamer
or knock down a dream.

How could this not be her city
su nación
our country
our America,
our American lyric to write—
a poem by the people, the poor,
the Protestant, the Muslim, the Jew,
the native, the immigrant,
the black, the brown, the blind, the brave,
the undocumented and undeterred,
the woman, the man, the nonbinary,
the white, the trans,
the ally to all of the above
and more?

Tyrants fear the poet.
Now that we know it
we can’t blow it.
We owe it
to show it
not slow it
although it
hurts to sew it
when the world
skirts below it.

Hope—
we must bestow it
like a wick in the poet
so it can grow, lit,
bringing with it
stories to rewrite—
the story of a Texas city depleted but not defeated
a history written that need not be repeated
a nation composed but not yet completed.

There’s a poem in this place—
a poem in America
a poet in every American
who rewrites this nation, who tells
a story worthy of being told on this minnow of an earth
to breathe hope into a palimpsest of time—
a poet in every American
who sees that our poem penned
doesn’t mean our poem’s end.

There’s a place where this poem dwells—
it is here, it is now, in the yellow song of dawn’s bell
where we write an American lyric
we are just beginning to tell.

—Amanda Gorman, "In This Place (An American Lyric)," an original poem written for the inaugural reading of Poet Laureate Tracy K. Smith at the Library of Congress, 2017. There's an audio reading of this poem at poets.org.

let the skie raine potatoes

I've been feeling fairly dreadful since Monday, and as a result—obviously—have fallen behind on the poetry. But I do have poems I want to post, so I'm going to post a few at once. I might even run over into May. Time is pretty meaningless!

I have also been watching a lot of old seasons of Top Chef, and it's amazing how many different ways people have figured out to fuck up potatoes. Potatoes are too great to fuck up, people. Here's a poem about potatoes.

"They eat a lot of French fries here," my mother
     announces after a week in Paris, and she's right,
not only about les pommes frites but the celestial tuber
     in all its forms: rotie, purée, not to mention
au gratin or boiled and oiled in la salade niçoise.
     Batata edulis discovered by gold-mad conquistadors
in the West Indies, and only a 100 years later
     in The Merry Wives of Windsor Falstaff cries,
"Let the skie raine Potatoes," for what would we be
     without you—lost in a sea of fried turnips,
mashed beets, roasted parsnips? Mi corazón, mon coeur,
     my core is not the heart but the stomach, tuber
of the body, its hollow stem the throat and esophagus,
     leafing out to the nose and eyes and mouth. Hail
the conquering spud, all its names marvelous: Solanum
     tuberosum, Igname, Caribe, Russian Banana, Yukon Gold.
When you turned black, Ireland mourned. O Mr. Potato Head,
     how many deals can a man make before he stops being
small potatoes? How many men can a woman drop
     like a hot potato? Eat it cooked or raw like an apple
with salt of the earth, apple of the earth, pomme de terre.
     Tuber, tuber burning bright in a kingdom without light,
deep within the earth where the Incan potato gods rule,
     forging their golden orbs for the world's ravening gorge.

—Barbara Hamby, "Ode to the Potato," from Babel, 2004.

kiss the apocalypse goodbye

Three days late for April 26, a poem that makes me feel things about a lot of things, but maybe especially the wildness of the English language. I just really love poetry, is the thing.

Never fear. I know the difference between
arteries and ardor, arbor and treed,
my bower and a weak-kneed need, a harbor
where one might moor tonight and a port worth
the oars’ effort to come ashore for, a bit
part and the serpent’s gravid apple. I won’t
flatter myself first or lasting, or
presume to fast and feint a martyr, making
mockery of sacrifice, fatten
for some sweet slaughter. I must believe that I’m
not on your mind. On your body? Sure.
That said, your body has a few ideas
so bright that we might meet some night and render
a dark room light as the last day before
the world ends, that doom that was supposed to dawn
today, but by now, hours worn on and in,
we know there’s no such luxury as fine
as that finality for now. For now,
at least, I’ll have to kiss apocalypse
goodbye, resign myself to this more mundane
pain, the solace of the solstice, year’s
earliest sunset and its longest night.
I try to catch that fade of color with,
without a flash. Both tries prove terrible.
The horizon smudges up against the sky’s blur
like a child’s heavy-handed landscape
and inept erasure. They’ll have to do.
The pictures that I have of you will never
do you justice, either, neither a camera’s
snap nor some synaptic crackle long
elapsed can come remotely close to holding
you. How else would you have it? You need
never fear. I need you, but I only need you
where you are: there, never far, never near.

—Dora Malech, "To the You of Ten Years Ago, Now," from The New Yorker, April 29, 2013.

a word stranded by its language

I knew I wanted to post something by Ocean Vuong this year, but it took me a long time to decide which poem. But I just kept coming back to this one. One of the things I love about Vuong's poetry is that it is often sort of viscerally horrifying, while at the same time being an absolute triumph of language.

Because the butterfly's yellow wing
flickering in black mud
was a word
stranded by its language.
Because no one else
was coming — & I ran
out of reasons.
So I gathered fistfuls
of  ash, dark as ink,
hammered them
into marrow, into
a skull thick
enough to keep
the gentle curse
of  dreams. Yes, I aimed
for mercy — 
but came only close
as building a cage
around the heart. Shutters
over the eyes. Yes,
I gave it hands
despite knowing
that to stretch that clay slab
into five blades of light,
I would go
too far. Because I, too,
needed a place
to hold me. So I dipped
my fingers back
into the fire, pried open
the lower face
until the wound widened
into a throat,
until every leaf shook silver
with that god
-awful scream
& I was done.
& it was human.

—Ocean Vuong, "Essay on Craft," from Poetry magazine, July/August 2017.

the throat of the mountains

And lastly, today's poem, which takes my breath away each time I read it.

a woman can't survive
by her own breath
                   alone
she must know
the voices of mountains
she must recognize
the foreverness of blue sky
she must flow
with the elusive
bodies
of night winds
who will take her
into herself

look at me
i am not a separate woman
i am the continuance
of blue sky
i am the throat
of the mountains
a night wind
who burns
with every breath
she takes

—Joy Harjo, "Fire," from What Moon Drove Me to This?, 1979 (Reed Books). Joy Harjo is a poet I should have been posting for years, but I only (embarrassingly) read her for the first time this year. There are many more of her poems to come, I think.

all men are bad

Yesterday, April 23, was Shakespeare's alleged birthday and death day, and my tradition is to post a poem that is tangentially related to Shakespeare—often referencing one of the plays, as in this case—and one sonnet. Shakespeare wrote a lot of beautiful sonnets, some of which are incredible exercises in craft and poetry, and many of which are very queer and sexy. This is not really one of those.

My shoes are unpolished, my words smudged.
I come to you undressed (the lord, he whispers
Smut; that man, he whispers such). I bend
My thoughts, I submit, but a bird
Keeps flying from my mind, it slippers
My feet and sings—barren world,
I have been a little minx in it, not at all
Domestic, not at all clean, not at all blinking
At my lies. First he thought he had a wife, then
(of course) he thought he had a whore. All
I wanted (if I may speak for myself) was: more.
If only one of you had said, I hold
Your craven breaking soul, I see the pieces,
I feel them in my hands, idle silver, idle gold...
You see I cannot speak without telling what I am.
I disobey the death you gave me, love.
If you must be, then be not with me.

—Meghan O'Rourke, "Ophelia to the Court," 2010.

*

Tis better to be vile than vile esteemed
When not to be receives reproach of being,
And the just pleasures lost, which is so deemed
Not by our feeling, but by others' seeing.
For why should others' false adulterate eyes
Give salutation to my sportive blood?
Or on my frailties why are frailer spies,
Which in their wills count bad what I think good?
No, I am that I am, and they that level
At my abuses reckon up their own;
I may be straight though they themselves be bevel.
By their rank thoughts my deeds must not be shown,
Unless this general evil they maintain:
All men are bad and in their badness reign.

—William Shakespeare (1564-1616), Sonnet 121. All men are bad, thank you, Will.

insnared with flowers

I am, as some of you may have noticed, a few days behind on poems. I often hit a fatigue point in late April, and this year I also have the post-vacation blues; it's been hard to concentrate on much this week. But it's the weekend, the weather is glorious, and it's time to catch up on poetry! I'm going to post a few separate poems today, starting with one for April 22, which was Earth Day. This poem is also a little bit for my mood today—I took a long walk through the park this morning and saw many flowers and flowering trees—because I get hit with the metaphysicals in spring and start thinking about tree sex. And it's been a few years since I posted anything by my bro Andrew Marvell.

How vainly men themselves amaze
To win the palm, the oak, or bays;
And their uncessant labours see
Crowned from some single herb or tree,
Whose short and narrow vergèd shade
Does prudently their toils upbraid;
While all flow’rs and all trees do close
To weave the garlands of repose.

Fair Quiet, have I found thee here,
And Innocence, thy sister dear!
Mistaken long, I sought you then
In busy companies of men;
Your sacred plants, if here below,
Only among the plants will grow.
Society is all but rude,
To this delicious solitude.

No white nor red was ever seen
So am’rous as this lovely green.
Fond lovers, cruel as their flame,
Cut in these trees their mistress’ name;
Little, alas, they know or heed
How far these beauties hers exceed!
Fair trees! wheres’e’er your barks I wound,
No name shall but your own be found.

When we have run our passions' heat,
Love hither makes his best retreat.
The gods, that mortal beauty chase,
Still in a tree did end their race:
Apollo hunted Daphne so,
Only that she might laurel grow;
And Pan did after Syrinx speed,
Not as a nymph, but for a reed.

What wondrous life in this I lead!
Ripe apples drop about my head;
The luscious clusters of the vine
Upon my mouth do crush their wine;
The nectarine and curious peach,
Into my hands themselves do reach;
Stumbling on melons, as I pass,
Insnared with flow’rs, I fall on grass.

Meanwhile the mind, from pleasure less,
Withdraws into its happiness;
The mind, that ocean where each kind
Does straight its own resemblance find,
Yet it creates, transcending these,
Far other worlds, and other seas;
Annihilating all that’s made
To a green thought in a green shade.

Here at the fountain’s sliding foot,
Or at some fruit tree’s mossy root,
Casting the body’s vest aside,
My soul into the boughs does glide;
There like a bird it sits and sings,
Then whets, and combs its silver wings;
And, till prepared for longer flight,
Waves in its plumes the various light.

Such was that happy garden-state,
While man there walked without a mate;
After a place so pure and sweet,
What other help could yet be meet!
But ’twas beyond a mortal’s share
To wander solitary there:
Two Paradises ’twere in one
To live in Paradise alone.

How well the skillful gard’ner drew
Of flow’rs and herbs this dial new,
Where from above the milder sun
Does through a fragrant zodiac run;
And as it works, th’industrious bee
Computes its time as well as we.
How could such sweet and wholesome hours
Be reckoned but with herbs and flow’rs!

—Andrew Marvell (1621-1678), "The Garden," around 1668 or earlier. First published in print in 1681. Traditionally, this poem is seen as a product of Marvell's "period of retirement" from 1650-1652 at Nun Appleton in Yorkshire, where he wrote "Upon Appleton House," as well as other poems in which characters walk around in gardens and have metaphysical sex with trees. But according to the notes in my edition of Marvell, a strong case has been made to date the poem during the Restoration because of the influence of Katherine Philips, which I personally like as an argument because Philips was pretty baller. My favorite piece of my own marginalia on this poem is not "(tree sex)" written under the line about the nectarine and the curious peach, but the note at the very end of the poem where I wrote, somewhat inexplicably, "well, but, BEES," underlined twice.

in love as in tourism

I spend a lot of time on Poetry Foundation during National Poetry Month, and this poem kept showing up on the front page, highlighted as one of the new poems in the most recent issue of Poetry magazine. I've been coming back to it all month, and I like it more each time.

cartography seems the strangest science today
as morning alters the fittings of the hour to form
shapes wholly new. wishing I did not know that, to leave,
it is down and right past the neighbor’s potted palm,
across the street to meet the river, then ahead until
the train station crowds into view—I search the infinity
enclosed here, for any time that the future could spare.
between the words lost and losing entire worlds change
hands. where the latter informs negation the other is
duplicitous with potentialities—becoming something
even desired. suddenly one is alert to all the colors
returned to sight by merely looking, a lack of familiarity
striking the common into curiosity, just as in the folktales
in which death plays detective, the wanderer is the one
who evades the blade. it is so wonderful to not be found
but to be finding, as I discover in tokyo—whose streets
resemble labyrinth, pierced with rhododendron in spring
and thundering gingko in autumn—and remember again
when you laugh and I do not ask why. and I do not want
to know either, to whom this room belonged to before us,
or where that smell of fruit is coming from, or why a fog
rises to challenge the knowledge of places once intimately
kept. I am grateful that within you only the unknown lives,
that even as what passes between us is frail and limited
and human, we still dream of things resembling the eternal.

—Xiao Yue Shan, "in love as in tourism," originally published in Poetry, April 2021.

we can walk together

After the birthing of bombs of forks and fear
the frantic automatic weapons unleashed,

the spray of bullets into a crowd holding hands,
that brute sky opening in a slate metal maw
that swallows only the unsayable in each of us, what’s
left? Even the hidden nowhere river is poisoned
orange and acidic by a coal mine. How canaaaa
you not fear humanity, want to lick the creek
bottom dry, to suck the deadly water up into
your own lungs, like venom? Reader, I want to
say: Don’t die. Even when silvery fish after fish
comes back belly up, and the country plummets
into a crepitating crater of hatred, isn’t there still
something singing? The truth is: I don’t know.
But sometimes, I swear I hear it, the wound closing
like a rusted-over garage door, and I can still move
my living limbs into the world without too much
pain, can still marvel at how the dog runs straight
toward the pickup trucks break-necking down
the road, because she thinks she loves them,
because she’s sure, without a doubt, that the loud
roaring things will love her back, her soft small self
alive with desire to share her goddamn enthusiasm,
until I yank the leash back to save her because
I want her to survive forever. Don’t die, I say,
and we decide to walk for a bit longer, starlings
high and fevered above us, winter coming to lay
her cold corpse down upon this little plot of earth.
Perhaps we are always hurtling our body towards
the thing that will obliterate us, begging for love
from the speeding passage of time, and so maybe,
like the dog obedient at my heels, we can walk together
peacefully, at least until the next truck comes.

—Ada Limón, "The Leash" from The Carrying, 2018.