To the Woman Crying Uncontrollably in the Next Stall by Kim Addonizo
If you ever woke in your dress at 4am ever closed your legs to someone you loved opened them for someone you didn’t moved against a pillow in the dark stood miserably on a beach seaweed clinging to your ankles paid good money for a bad haircut backed away from a mirror that wanted to kill you bled into the back seat for lack of a tampon if you swam across a river under rain sang using a dildo for a microphone stayed up to watch the moon eat the sun entire ripped out the stitches in your heart because why not if you think nothing & no one can / listen I love you joy is coming
The Hug, by Tess Gallagher.
A woman is reading a poem on the street
and another woman stops to listen. We stop too,
with our arms around each other. The poem
is being read and listened to out here
in the open. Behind us
no one is entering or leaving the houses.
Suddenly a hug comes over me and I'm
giving it to you, like a variable star shooting light
off to make itself comfortable, then
subsiding. I finish but keep on holding
you. A man walks up to us and we know he hasn't
come out of nowhere, but if he could, he
would have. He looks homeless because of how
he needs. "Can I have one of those?" he asks you,
and I feel you nod. I'm surprised,
surprised you don't tell him how
it is–that I'm yours, only
yours, etc., exclusive as a nose to
its face. Love–that's what we're talking about, love
that nabs you with "for me
only" and holds on.
So I walk over to him and put my
arms around him and try to
hug him like I mean it. He's got an overcoat on
so thick I can't feel
him past it. I'm starting the hug
and thinking, "How big a hug is this supposed to be?
How long shall I hold this hug?" Already
we could be eternal, his arms falling over my
shoulders, my hands not
meeting behind his back, he is so big!
I put my head into his chest and snuggle
in. I lean into him. I lean my blood and my wishes
into him. He stands for it. This is his
and he's starting to give it back so well I know he's
getting it. This hug. So truly, so tenderly
we stop having arms and I don't know if
my lover has walked away or what, or
if the woman is still reading the poem, or the houses–
what about them?–the houses.
Clearly, a little permission is a dangerous thing.
But when you hug someone you want it
to be a masterpiece of connection, the way the button
on his coat will leave the imprint of
a planet in my cheek
when I walk away. When I try to find some place
to go back to.
Fast Food, by Carolyn Miller
Sometimes after piano lessons on Capp Street
or ballet class in the Richmond,
my two young daughters and I would drive
in our red Toyota station wagon to
the Jack in the Box on Lombard, then wait
our turn in the line up to the window, where I,
the mother, would ask for what we wanted:
one grilled chicken sandwich, four tacos,
three French fries, three orange sodas, and just like that,
they were handed to me—hot, icy, salty, sweet—
and we parked in a nearby alley and opened
the crisp red-and-white paper sacks and the small
containers of ketchup and sauce, smell of food
blooming in the closed room of the car,
paper cups of soda and little squares of ice clinking,
dark outside the windows, ceiling light on inside.
Ode to a Dolly Parton Drag Queen
By Bruce Snider
She lip-syncs “Hello God,” then “9 to 5.”
She struts. Or does she fly? Like the soul,
a rhinestone, she tells us, will never die.
She’s a blush-pink Bible. Patched together,
she’s a cosmic doll. Mirror of a mirror,
she winks, her face the only face. Anchors
of abundance, her breasts are the news—
more is more is more. A baptismal font,
a witch-walk down the last dirt road,
she’s hillbilly blood on a silk bandana. Marilyn
or Medusa? Caked lipstick on a flatbed truck.
She’s Styrofoam in a cowgirl case. Starlight
on a stage. She’s all eyeliner. She will not scare.
She’s the endless tease of her acrylic hair.
Big Lesson By Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer
Today it feels so simple:
we are here to take care of each other.
How could we ever forget?
As if soil could forget
it is here to feed the trees.
As if trees could forget
they are here to feed the soil.
How could anything
ever get in the way of generosity?
How could we ever greet each other
with any words besides,
How can I help you?
As if light could forget
it is here to help illuminate.
As if dark could forget
it is here to help us heal.
Small Kindnesses by Danusha Laméris
I've been thinking about the way, when you walk
down a crowded aisle, people pull in their legs
to let you by. Or how strangers still say "bless you"
when someone sneezes, a leftover
from the Bubonic plague. "Don't die," we are saying.
And sometimes, when you spill lemons
from your grocery bag, someone else will help you
pick them up. Mostly, we don't want to harm each other.
We want to be handed our cup of coffee hot,
and to say thank you to the person handing it. To smile
at them and for them to smile back. For the waitress
to call us honey when she sets down the bowl of clam chowder,
and for the driver in the red pick-up truck to let us pass.
We have so little of each other, now. So far
from tribe and fire. Only these brief moments of exchange.
What if they are the true dwelling of the holy,
these
fleeting temples we make together when we say, "Here,
have my seat," "Go ahead —you first," "I like your hat."
This is the time to be slow - John O'Donohue
This is the time to be slow,
Lie low to the wall
Until the bitter weather passes.
Try, as best you can, not to let
The wire brush of doubt
Scrape from your heart
All sense of yourself
And your hesitant light.
If you remain generous,
Time will come good;
And you will find your feet
Again on fresh pastures of promise,
Where the air will be kind
And blushed with beginning.
To the Woman Crying Uncontrollably in the Next Stall by Kim Addonizo
If you ever woke in your dress at 4am ever closed your legs to someone you loved opened them for someone you didn’t moved against a pillow in the dark stood miserably on a beach seaweed clinging to your ankles paid good money for a bad haircut backed away from a mirror that wanted to kill you bled into the back seat for lack of a tampon if you swam across a river under rain sang using a dildo for a microphone stayed up to watch the moon eat the sun entire ripped out the stitches in your heart because why not if you think nothing & no one can / listen I love you joy is coming
Welcome to Hope
Here's your map, she says
This is where you always are
See here, the mountains of vivid life
Make a boat of books, read them all
Sail down this mighty dream river
Through forests of wonder
Look how the trees grow ever good
How the sky holds its own
Nature is so loud in her gardening
Your soul is your compass
Kindness isn't at the border
Caring is not the city
But change is in the wind
And wild is the weather
Home is a feeling
And now is where we are
She nudges me awake
Welcome to Hope
She sings, welcome to Hope
Get up! Get up! Get up!
Hope is here and love knows
We have so much to do.
Selina Godden
Germination, by Ilisha Thiru Purcell
My shadow strikes out from my body/
as if I am announcing that now is the time the time is now/
I have been kept in time and now I am the keeper of it/
Meeting my own gaze/
I expand like the lungs of the city I rest my feet upon/
I smile a wry smile/
a “you can’t even imagine” smile/
A man on a child’s bike asked me where I got it from/
this crescent of grapefruit flesh/
and I replied my mother/
My mum/
who shines brightest in a sea of saris/
who circles my thumb with her forefinger/
like a planet in orbit/
My mum/
dressed in black, absorbing everything, is everything/
A river running to and from everything/
If these images could talk they would tell you there is more than one way to pray/
more than one way to bless a journey/
Death Song, by John Webster
Hark, now everything is still;
The screech-owl and the whistler shrill
Call upon our dame aloud,
And bid her quickly don her shroud;
Much you had of land and rent,
Your length in clay's now competent.
A long war disturbed your mind;
Here your perfect peace is signed.
Of what is't fools make such vain keeping?
Sin their conception, their birth weeping,
Their life a general mist of error,
Their death a hideous storm of terror.
Strew your hair with powders sweet,
Don clean linen, bathe your feet,
And (the foul fiend more to check)
A crucifix let bless your neck;
'Tis now full tide 'tween night and day,
End your groan and come away.
How to Triumph Like a Girl
By Ada Limón
I like the lady horses best,
how they make it all look easy,
like running 40 miles per hour
is as fun as taking a nap, or grass.
I like their lady horse swagger,
after winning. Ears up, girls, ears up!
But mainly, let’s be honest, I like
that they’re ladies. As if this big
dangerous animal is also a part of me,
that somewhere inside the delicate
skin of my body, there pumps
an 8-pound female horse heart,
giant with power, heavy with blood.
Don’t you want to believe it?
Don’t you want to lift my shirt and see
the huge beating genius machine
that thinks, no, it knows,
it’s going to come in first.
Caged Bird, By Maya Angelou
A free bird leaps
on the back of the wind
and floats downstream
till the current ends
and dips his wing
in the orange sun rays
and dares to claim the sky.
But a bird that stalks
down his narrow cage
can seldom see through
his bars of rage
his wings are clipped and
his feet are tied
so he opens his throat to sing.
The caged bird sings
with a fearful trill
of things unknown
but longed for still
and his tune is heard
on the distant hill
for the caged bird
sings of freedom.
The free bird thinks of another breeze
and the trade winds soft through the sighing trees
and the fat worms waiting on a dawn bright lawn
and he names the sky his own.
But a caged bird stands on the grave of dreams
his shadow shouts on a nightmare scream
his wings are clipped and his feet are tied
so he opens his throat to sing.
The caged bird sings
with a fearful trill
of things unknown
but longed for still
and his tune is heard
on the distant hill
for the caged bird
sings of freedom.
From Blossoms
Li-Young Lee
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.
On Days When
you feel like a wilting garden,
gather yourself, roll up your lawn,
bouquet your flowers,
embrace your weeds.
You are a wild thing playing
at being tame.
You are rich with life beneath
the surface.
You don't have to show leaf
and petal to be living.
You are soil and insect and root.
Dean Atta
Winter, by Lizzy Co
What is your winter? Where does it call home?
Does it live in a house, or in a car?
Can you sometimes feel it redden your nose
At night, outside, as you look at the stars?
.
A season doesn't ever last all year:
Not even deep-blue, frozen quietude.
Keep licking at the melting edges, dear:
Spring is running so hard, and straight to you.
.
The winter doesn't want your enmity,
But, then again, conquerors never will.
Cold reaches for your wrist: "Love, come with me."
(Do not be fooled. It goes in for the kill.)
.
A skyward oak was once an acorn, furled.
I will not let the winter have this girl.
New Year's Poem (Margaret Avison)
The Christmas twigs crispen and needles rattle
Along the window-ledge.
A solitary pearl
Shed from the necklace spilled at last week’s party
Lies in the suety, snow-luminous plainness
Of morning, on the window-ledge beside them.
And all the furniture that circled stately
And hospitable when these rooms were brimmed
With perfumes, furs, and black-and-silver
Crisscross of seasonal conversation, lapses
Into its previous largeness.
I remember
Anne’s rose-sweet gravity, and the stiff grave
Where cold so little can contain;
I mark the queer delightful skull and crossbones
Starlings and sparrows left, taking the crust,
And the long loop of winter wind
Smoothing its arc from dark Arcturus down
To the bricked corner of the drifted courtyard,
And the still window-ledge.
Gentle and just pleasure
It is, being human, to have won from space
This unchill, habitable interior
Which mirrors quietly the light
Of the snow, and the new year.
Copyright Credit: "New Year’s Poem" by Margaret Avison.
Source: Always Now: The Collected Poems (The Porcupine's Quill, 2003)