#poetry

Born by Lee Herrick

I was born in an ocean of poor magic near a songwriter with stories

but no maps, strung out on local wine and rice.

I was born because the magic and the birds were certain they'd seen me before.

There were no gasps or hands clapping nor arias or sobs. I was there

on the grass, a full head of black hair, eyes that asked, will you say a little more

a curiosity that became desire, then death, then desire again.

— Gardening secrets of the dead by Lee Herrick (Page 57)

Runaway Child by Ada Limón

The ocean was two things once, in two places, north it was the high

icy waves of Bodega Bay, Dillon, and Limantour, and south it was the blue ease

of Oceanside and Encinitas, umbrellas in a sleepy breeze.

It took me years to realize those two blues were the same ocean.

I thought they must be separate. Must be cleaved in the center by a fault line.

On a call just now with my grandmother she mentions how all the flowers

I've sent are from my garden, so I let her believe it. Sweet lies of the mind.

She says she's surprised I like to grow things, didn't think

I was that kind of girl, she always thought I was a runaway child.

She flicks her hand away, to show me her hand becoming a bird, swerving

until it is a white gull in the wind. She repeats: a runaway child.

Mercy is not frozen in time, but flits about frantically, unsure where to land.

As children, they'd bring us to the ocean, divorce distraction and summer,

we'd drift with the tide southward until we'd almost lose sight of them,

waving dramatically for our return, shouting until we came back to the shore.

Once, when she was watching us, I tried to run away, four or five years old,

and when I got to the end of the driveway, she didn't try to stop me. Even shut the door.

And so I came back. She knew what it was to be unloved, abandoned by her mother,

riding her bike by her father's house with his other children, late afternoons,

before her grandmother would call her home for supper. Some days, I think

she would have let me leave, some days I think of her shaking on the shore.

Now, she thinks all the flowers I've sent are from my garden. Grown

from seeds and tended. She gets a kick out of it, this runaway child

so overly loved, she could dare to drift away from it all.

— Hurting Kind by Ada Limon (Page 68 - 70)

Panic Attack by Les Murray

The body had a nightmare. Awake. No need of the movie.

No need of light, to keep hips and shoulders rotating in bed on the gimbals of wet eyes.

Pounding heart, chest pains— should it be the right arm hurting?

The brain was a void or a blasted-out chamber— shreds of speech in there, shatters of lust and prayer.

No one can face their heart or turn their back on it.

Bowel stumbled to bowl, emptied, and emptied again till the gut was a train crawling in its own tunnel,

slowly dragging the nightmare down with it, below heart level. You would not have died

the fear had been too great but: to miss the ambulance moment—

Relax. In time, your hourglass will be reversed again.

— The Biplane Houses by Les Murray (Page 85 - 86)

If I Should Fail by Ada Limón

The ivy eating the fence line, each tendril multiplying by green tendril, if I should fail the seeds lifted out and devoured by bristled marauders, blame only me and the strip of sun which bade me come to lie down snakelike on my belly, low snake energy, and be tempted by the crevices between the world and not world, if I should fail know I stared long into fractures and it seemed to me a mighty system of gaps one could slither into and I was made whole in that knowledge of a sleek nothingness.

— Hurting Kind by Ada Limon (Page 72)

Testimony by Lee Herrick

I heard the American poet groan like his farmworker mother bent into California's central question like a rake or a comma or a death that was not a death but a rising fire or a shotgun in a wheat field.

I heard the father say to himself to hell with it before he wrote a seven page manifesto on the crimes of lemon trees whose leaves become little whispers in our dream like yellow flowers floating on a lake.

I heard anger come into the night I heard the night bring you down I heard the down say please madam I heard a woman say Hmong means free I heard freedom like kingdom.

— Scar and Flower by Lee Herrick (Page 32)

For Earth's Grandsons by Joy Harjo

Stand tall, no matter your height, how dark your skin Your spirit is all colors within You are made of the finest woven light From the iridescent love that formed your mothers, fathers Your grandparents all the way back on the spiral road— There is no end to this love It has formed your bodies Feeds your bright spirits And no matter what happens in these times of breaking— No matter dictators, the heartless, and liars No matter—you are born of those Who kept ceremonial embers burning in their hands All through the miles of relentless exile Those who sang the path through massacre All the way to sunrise You will make it through—

— An American Sunrise by Joy Harjo (Page 56)

Wellness Check by Andrea Gibson

In any moment, on any given day, I can measure my wellness by this question:

Is my attention on loving, or is my attention on who isn't loving me?

— You Better Be Lightning by Andrea Gibson (Page 84)

Shadows by Mary Oliver

Everyone knows the great energies running amok cast terrible shadows, that each of the so-called senseless acts has its thread looping back through the world and into a human heart. And meanwhile the gold-trimmed thunder wanders the sky; the river may be filling the cellars of the sleeping town. Cyclone, fire, and their merry cousins bring us to grief—but these are the hours with the old wooden-god faces; we lift them to our shoulders like so many black coffins, we continue walking into the future. I don't mean there are no bodies in the river, or bones broken by the wind. I mean everyone who has heard the lethal train-roar of the tornado swears there was no mention ever of any person, or reason—I mean the waters rise without any plot upon history, or even geography. Whatever power of the earth rampages, we turn to it dazed but anonymous eyes; whatever the name of the catastrophe, it is never the opposite of love.

— Devotions by Mary Oliver (Page 348)

We Are Surprised by Ada Limón

Now, we take the moon into the middle of our brains

so we look like roadside stray cats with bright flashlight-white eyes

in our faces, but no real ideas of when or where to run.

We linger on the field's green edge and say, Someday, son, none of this

will be yours. Miracles are all around. We're not so much homeless

as we are home-free, penny-poor, but plenty lucky for love and leaves

that keep breaking the fall. Here it is: the new way of living with the world

inside of us so we cannot lose it, and we cannot be lost. You and me

are us and them, and it and sky. It's hard to believe we didn't

know that before; it's hard to believe we were so hollowed out, so drained,

only so we could shine a little harder when the light finally came.

— Bright Dead Things by Ada Limón (Page 42 - 43)

I want to say something but shame prevents me

yet if you had a desire for good or beautiful things and your tongue were not concocting some evil to say, shame would not hold down your eyes but rather you would speak about what is just

— If Not, Winter by Sappho (Page 279)

The Trees by Jericho Brown

In my front yard live three crape myrtles, crying trees We once called them, not the shadiest but soothing During a break from work in the heat, their cool sweat

Falling into us. I don't want to make more of it. I'd like to let these spindly things be Since my gift for transformation here proves

Useless now that I know everyone moves the same Whether moving in tears or moving To punch my face. A crape myrtle is

A crape myrtle. Three is a family. It is winter. They are bare. It's not that I love them Every day. It's that I love them anyway.

— The Tradition by Jericho Brown (Page 19)

Last Days by Mary Oliver

Things are changing; things are starting to spin, snap, fly off into the blue sleeve of the long afternoon. Oh and ooh come whistling out of the perished mouth of the grass, as things turn soft, boil black into substance and hue. As everything, forgetting its own enchantment, whispers: I too love oblivion why not it is full of second chances. Now, hiss the bright curls of the leaves. Now! booms the muscle of the wind.

— Devotions by Mary Oliver (Page 410)

bare by Danez Smith

for you i'd send my body to battle my body, let my blood sing of tearing

itself apart, hollow cords of white knights' intravenous joust.

love, i want & barely know how to do much else. don't speak to me

about raids you could loose on me the clan of rebel cells who thirst

to watch their home burn. love let me burn if it means you

& i have one night with no barrier but skin. this isn't about danger

but about faith, about being wasted on your name. if love is a room

of broken glass, leave me to dance until my feet are memory.

if love is a hole wide enough to be God's mouth, let me plunge

into that holy dark & forget the color of light. love, stay

in me until our bodies forget what divides us, until your hands

are my hands & your blood is my blood & your name

is my name & his & his

— Don't Call Us Dead: Poems by Danez Smith (Page 37)

On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong

Tell me it was for the hunger & nothing less. For hunger is to give the body what it knows

it cannot keep. That this amber light whittled down by another war is all that pins my hand to your chest.

You, drowning between my arms— stay.

You, pushing your body into the river only to be left with yourself— stay.

...

— Night Sky with Exit Wounds by Ocean Vuong

Settling In by Jenny Factor

How I loved each bare floor, each naked wall, the shadows on

newly empty halls. By day, my head humming to itself of dreams, I cleaned and

scrubbed to make life new; dislodging from the corner,

the old moths and cicadas pinned to the screen, the carcasses

of grasshoppers dangling from beams, and each windowsill's clutter of

dried beetles and dead bees. But, through each opening, each closing door,

the old life returns on six legs, or spins a musty web as it roosts over

a poison pot, or descends from above to drink blood in. This is how it

happens: the settling in—the press of wilderness returns to carved-out space, to skin.

— Queer Nature by Michael Walsh