Month: January 2018

“What The Dead Don’t Need” by Faith Shearin

On By Christina's WordsIn Poetry13 Comments

No need for shoes, of course, or closets full of empty
dresses. No need for the shade of trees or the approval
of parents and friends. They don’t care about the objects
of this world: a new computer, a house overlooking
the sea. The place they occupy may or may not contain
a window to all they’ve left behind. We, the living, think
of them without knowing who or what they have become.
Ghosts? Dust? Butterflies? Wind? Other mysteries —
puberty, sex, childbirth — are the business of life, and
anyone can tell their story. On the matter of death: only
a closed box and the silence of earth or ashes. When my
daughter was small, my disappearance behind a blanket
or curtain seemed permanent. How could I exist if
I was not visible? When I returned, she was grateful:
laughter and kisses, her hand on the roots of my hair.

“What The Dead Don’t Need” by Faith Shearin, published in The Sun magazine, March 2008.

“They’re Taking Chocolate Milk Off the Menu” by Kim Dower

On By Christina's WordsIn Poetry

and that’s only the beginning.
I hear other junk food is at risk:
brownies, pastries, name it,
they’re removing it, the only chance
fifth graders have at happiness.
The only thing I looked forward to
was chocolate milk, especially after
getting yelled at by Miss Paniotoo.
I once poured a carton over her “in”
box, watched the ink bleed down
the equation-filled pages, blurring
the names of my classmates,
never told anyone, not even Donna Nagy,
and now they’re taking it off the menu.
What will our kids be forced to do?
Will they devour each other?
Eat one another’s faces, run across
the handball court sword fighting
with dry straws, wasted with desire?
Word just in they’re even removing
strawberry milk. We never had that.
I’m sure it didn’t smell like the chocolate:
a little sour like yesterday’s dessert.
We had to drink it before it turned,
when it was still cold enough
that even our mittens couldn’t protect us.

“They’re Taking Chocolate Milk Off the Menu,” by Kim Dower, from Slice of Moon. © Red Hen Press, 2013.

“Tennessee June” by Jorie Graham

On By Christina's WordsIn Poetry3 Comments

This is the heat that seeks the flaw in everything
and loves the flaw.
Nothing is heavier than its spirit,
nothing more landlocked than the body within it.
Its daylilies grow overnight, our lawns
bare, then falsely gay, then bare again. Imagine
your mind wandering without its logic,
your body the sides of a riverbed giving in . . .
In it, no world can survive
having more than its neighbors;
in it, the pressure to become forever less is the pressure
to take forevermore
to get there. Oh

let it touch you . . .
The porch is sharply lit — little box of the body —
and the hammock swings out easily over its edge.
Beyond, the hot ferns bed, and fireflies gauze
the fat tobacco slums,
the crickets boring holes into the heat the crickets fill.
Rock out into that dark and back to where
the blind moths circle, circle,
back and forth from the bone-white house to the creepers unbraiding.
Nothing will catch you.
Nothing will let you go.
We call it blossoming —
the spirit breaks from you and you remain.

Jorie Graham, from Hybrids of Plants and of Ghosts (Princeton Series of Contemporary Poets)

Many thanks to my curious cat who seemed particularly taken with Jorie’s work, shared today on my Zen page-a-day calendar.

“One Boy Told Me” by Naomi Shihab Nye

On By Christina's WordsIn Poetry, Video9 Comments

Music lives inside my legs.
It’s coming out when I talk.

I’m going to send my valentines
to people you don’t even know.

Oatmeal cookies make my throat gallop.

Grown-ups keep their feet on the ground
when they swing. I hate that.

Look at those 2 o’s with a smash in the middle—
that spells good-bye.

Don’t ever say “purpose” again,
let’s throw the word out.

Don’t talk big to me.
I’m carrying my box of faces.
If I want to change faces I will.

Yesterday faded
but tomorrow’s in BOLDFACE.

When I grow up my old names
will live in the house
where we live now.
I’ll come and visit them.

Only one of my eyes is tired.
The other eye and my body aren’t.

Is it true all metal was liquid first?
Does that mean if we bought our car earlier
they could have served it
in a cup?

There’s a stopper in my arm
that’s not going to let me grow any bigger.
I’ll be like this always, small.

And I will be deep water too.
Wait. Just wait. How deep is the river?
Would it cover the tallest man with his hands in the air?

Your head is a souvenir.

When you were in New York I could see you
in real life walking in my mind.

I’ll invite a bee to live in your shoe.
What if you found your shoe
full of honey?

What if the clock said 6:92
instead of 6:30? Would you be scared?

My tongue is the car wash
for the spoon.

Can noodles swim?

My toes are dictionaries.
Do you need any words?

From now on I’ll only drink white milk
on January 26.

What does minus mean?
I never want to minus you.

Just think—no one has ever seen
inside this peanut before!

It is hard being a person.

I do and don’t love you—
isn’t that happiness?

Naomi Shihab Nye, “One Boy Told Me” from Fuel. Copyright © 1998 by Naomi  Shihab Nye. (BOA Editions, Ltd., 1998).

 

“There Will Be Things You Do” by Kim Dower

On By Christina's WordsIn Poetry, Reader Recommended5 Comments

you won’t know why.
Maybe waiting to tie
your shoelaces

until everything else
is in place.
Could be you’ll slide

your egg yolks aside
eat every bit of bacon,
toast, whites while the forsaken

yellow orbs stare at you
from the side pocket
of your empty plate.

People will ask
why do you save
your yolks for last

and you won’t know—
won’t recall
the cousin from the south

came to visit one summer
ate his eggs so odd
your family said

stuck with you
like the way
you love to be kissed

on the back of your neck
can vaguely recollect
your mother’s kisses

after your bath
too gentle for memory.
There will be things you do

you won’t know why
like the way you look
up at the sky

when anxious or blue
it’s what your father
used to do

every family trip
when nothing else
was right

except those clouds
moving north by northwest
through the night

he showed you
what pilots knew:
factors for safe flying

are visibility
and how low
and mean the clouds are.

“There Will Be Things You Do” by Kim Dower from Last Train to the Missing Planet. © Red Hen Press, 2016.

* Thank you, Michelle T., for the recommendation. ❤