Category: poems

This is by Darius Simpson, from the most recent issue of American Poetry Review.

 

Instead of Raising Wages the Gov’t

raised the roof clean off an entire Black section of the city
inflated gas prices to the size of a senator’s helium ego
built an unstable bridge made of worn hundred dollar bills
over the atlantic to make a plantation(democracy) of new territory
sent a blank check to a settler colony and said make a wish
sent a fleet of drones to a peaceful town and said i wish you would
sent donation emails to people who struggled to pay rent this month
disappeared into a secret castle the day after the polls closed
spun a fairytale about civic duty to euthanize the masses
printed accidentally honest election stickers that said vote and die
told protesters the best way to resist was to play a part in the circus
i say we deserve better and my peers call me an extremist
gov’t says we gotta kill entire villages and my peers call it sacrifice
or worse my peers change the channel or worse my peers bat
barely an eye and forgive the last genocide for the sake of peace
if we don’t get tired of writing beautiful poems after catastrophes
i fear soon the ink will run red and the rivers dry and the words out

I’m doing more projects at work focused on youth mental health, and wow is being a teenager with clinical anxiety still vivid in my mind. This was never me but the stats are so bleak for teens today. If you’re reading this and you’re a teen–or anyone struggling–stay here another day.  Green’s your color.

 

To the Young Who Want to Die
by Gwendolyn Brooks

Sit down. Inhale. Exhale.
The gun will wait. The lake will wait.
The tall gall in the small seductive vial
will wait will wait:
will wait a week: will wait through April.
You do not have to die this certain day.
Death will abide, will pamper your postponement.
I assure you death will wait. Death has
a lot of time. Death can
attend to you tomorrow. Or next week. Death is
just down the street; is most obliging neighbor;
can meet you any moment.

You need not die today.
Stay here–through pout or pain or peskyness.
Stay here. See what the news is going to be tomorrow.

Graves grow no green that you can use.
Remember, green’s your color. You are Spring.

I saw this at the beginning of March via the Poetry Is Not a Luxury account and wow. For a poem about grief, it’s so tender. Maybe this informed my plans to do something for Easter like my mom did; she’s with me all the way.

 

Taking Care
by Callista Buchen

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.

From Look Look Look
Black Lawrence Press, 2019

I found this from Devin Kelly’s newsletter Ordinary Plots. The last little bit, with “tiny dinosaur alarms”? Wonderful.

 

The Thing You Fear Is Not the Thing That Kills You
by Paige Lewis

oh but you knew that already. The spider
in the garage is not the secret cigarette

in the garage, the beast in the dark ocean
is not the blood clot darkening a path

to your brain. Seventy-five percent of accidents
occur in the home—invisible puddle

outside the bath, loose handrail to the basement
that you always meant to tighten.

If we acknowledged these dangers every day,
we’d never leave our beds, except to avoid the clot.

But oh how we need to leave the bed,
except when we don’t. Oh how we need Saturdays,

the early autumn sunset on the drive home,
the clerk who beckons us to their line,

a necklace of green lights, the smiling doggo,
even the stupid word doggo. These are the things

that kill us, disasters that break us open.
The birds screech and screech and finally we understand

that they too are merely startled by beauty.
Tiny dinosaur alarms, right outside your window.

All you had to do was pay attention.

from The Anxiety Workbook (Pitt Poetry Series, 2023)

Not me reading about the absolute lack of women’s sports studies and thinking of the last couple lines of this.

 

Myth
by Muriel Rukeyser

Long afterward, Oedipus, old and blinded, walked the
roads. He smelled a familiar smell. It was
the Sphinx. Oedipus said, “I want to ask one question.
Why didn’t I recognize my mother?” “You gave the
wrong answer,” said the Sphinx. “But that was what
made everything possible,” said Oedipus. “No,” she said.
“When I asked, What walks on four legs in the morning,
two at noon, and three in the evening, you answered,
Man. You didn’t say anything about woman.”
“When you say Man,” said Oedipus, “you include women
too. Everyone knows that.” She said, “That’s what
you think.”

 

Originally published in Breaking Open (1973)

I posted this a couple years ago but it feels the best and the most Doc, out of the years of blog archives and Valentine posts. “Solid as granite” is a wonderful thing to have; thank you, honey.

 

My sweetness, my desire
by Marge Piercy

Pumpkin I call you, sweet
and spicy pie. Mango
juicy. Scotch bonnet hot.
Dark chocolate. Espresso.
Fresh squeezed orange
juice thick with pulp.

You come through for
me time after time and
again. Reliable as Old
Faithful. Solid as granite.
You always give me
the gift of laughter.

Whatever I love you try
to love. What threatens me
you stand on guard. We
talk and we talk but it
never wears out. Together
we lay out a feast of love.

 

From Made in Detroit: Poems, 2015

I’ve been thinking about grief lately and found this poem. It’s three sentences including the title but wow. An obesity of grief, grief as a tropical heat.

 

The Thing Is
by Ellen Bass

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.

This was in a Hell’s Backbone Grill email–the owners certainly find excellent picks. January is a fresh start and a birthday and also when my mom died; January right now is ease and health for me and unimaginable suffering for many others.

 

For When People Ask
by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

I want a word that means
okay and not okay,
more than that: a word that means
devastated and stunned with joy.
I want the word that says
I feel it all all at once.
The heart is not like a songbird
singing only one note at a time,
more like a Tuvan throat singer
able to sing both a drone
and simultaneously
two or three harmonics high above it—
a sound, the Tuvans say,
that gives the impression
of wind swirling among rocks.
The heart understands swirl,
how the churning of opposite feelings
weaves through us like an insistent breeze
leads us wordlessly deeper into ourselves,
blesses us with paradox
so we might walk more openly
into this world so rife with devastation,
this world so ripe with joy.

I found this on The Baffler, in a 2022 feature Poems From Palestine. It’s worth a click to see the art that accompanies the poems and to read them all. This one, though–by Zakaria Mohammed, translated by Lena Tuffaha–stood out. Again, this wasn’t written recently, but “the lying ceremony of peace” sure seems current.

PS, you can use the 5 Calls app/site to call your representatives to ask for a permanent cease fire in Gaza.

IV.

He was crying, so I took his hand to steady him and to wipe away his tears.

I told him as sorrow choked me: I promise you that justice

will prevail in the end, and that peace will come soon.

I was lying to him, of course. I know that justice won’t prevail

and peace won’t come soon, but I had to stop his tears.

I had this false notion that says, if we can, by some sleight of hand, stop

the river of tears, everything would proceed in a reasonable manner.

Then, things would be accepted as they are. Cruelty and justice would graze

together in the field, god would be satan’s brother, and the victim would be

his killer’s beloved.

But there is no way to stop the tears. They constantly pour out like a flood

and ruin the lying ceremony of peace.

And for this, for tears’ bitter obstinance, let the eye be consecrated as the truest saint

on the face of the earth.

It is not poetry’s job to wipe away tears.

Poetry should dig a trench where they can overflow and drown the universe.

                                     —from A Date for the Crow