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.
Wow!!! This poem. 🤯I’m stunned. An imprint on my soul self.
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.
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."
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.
Good Bones
By Maggie Smith
Life is short, though I keep this from my children.
Life is short, and I’ve shortened mine
in a thousand delicious, ill-advised ways,
a thousand deliciously ill-advised ways
I’ll keep from my children. The world is at least
fifty percent terrible, and that’s a conservative
estimate, though I keep this from my children.
For every bird there is a stone thrown at a bird.
For every loved child, a child broken, bagged,
sunk in a lake. Life is short and the world
is at least half terrible, and for every kind
stranger, there is one who would break you,
though I keep this from my children. I am trying
to sell them the world. Any decent realtor,
walking you through a real shithole, chirps on
about good bones: This place could be beautiful,
right? You could make this place beautiful.
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
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
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.
93 percent stardust by Nikita Gill
We have calcium in our bones
iron in our veins
carbon in our souls
and nitrogen in our brains
93 percent stardust
with souls made of flames
we are all just stars
That have people names
Surrender
After Margaret Atwood
Motherhood is not
a canvas or even a scrap of paper
it is colder, much brighter;
the curve of a canyon, the tale
of a mountain
the weathered shore
drawn at dusk, where I wonder
by fire who I used to be
the swell of a thundered cloud
where solemnly and in awe
at having received this
gift
I surrender to its season
B. Maloney
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.
Everything by Mary Oliver
I want to make poems that say right out, plainly,
what I mean, that don’t go looking for the
laces of elaboration, puffed sleeves. I want to
keep close and use often words like
heavy, heart, joy, soon, and to cherish
the question mark and her bold sister
the dash. I want to write with quiet hands. I
want to write while crossing the fields that are
fresh with daisies and everlasting and the
ordinary grass. I want to make poems while thinking of
the bread of heaven and the
cup of astonishment; let them be
songs in which nothing is neglected,
not a hope, not a promise. I want to make poems
that look into the earth and the heavens
and see the unseeable. I want them to honor
both the heart of faith, and the light of the world;
the gladness that says, without any words, everything.
Ode to Those First Fifteen Minutes After the Kids Are Finally Asleep
By Clint Smith
Praise the couch that welcomes you back into its embrace
as it does every night around this time. Praise the loose
cereal that crunches beneath your weight, the whole‐grain
golden dust that now shimmers on the backside of your pants.
Praise the cushion, the one in the middle that sinks like a lifeboat
leaking air, and the ottoman covered in crayon stains that you
have now accepted as aesthetic. Praise your knees, and the evening
respite they receive from a day of choo‐choo‐training along the carpet
with two eager passengers in tow. Praise the silence, oh the silence,
how it washes over you like a warm bedsheet. Praise the walls
for the way they stand there and don’t ask for anything.
Praise the seduction of slumber that tiptoes across your eyelids,
the way it tempts you to curl up right there and drift away
even though it’s only 7:30 p.m. Praise the phone you scroll through
without even realizing that you’re scrolling, praise the video
you scroll past of the man teaching his dog how to dance merengue,
praise the way it makes you laugh the way someone laughs
when they are so tired they don’t know if they will ever stand
up again. Praise the toys scattered across the floor, and the way you
wonder if it might be okay to just leave them there for now,
since you know tomorrow they will end up there again.
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.
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.