Author: Christina's Words

“The darkness around us is deep.” ~ William Stafford

“Calling Him Back from Layoff” by Bob Hicok

On By Christina's WordsIn Poetry, Reader Recommended2 Comments

I called a man today. After he said
hello and I said hello came a pause
during which it would have been

confusing to say hello again so I said
how are you doing and guess what, he said
fine and wondered aloud how I was

and it turns out I’m OK. He
was on the couch watching cars
painted with ads for Budweiser follow cars

painted with ads for Tide around an oval
that’s a metaphor for life because
most of us run out of gas and settle

for getting drunk in the stands
and shouting at someone in a t-shirt
we want kraut on our dog. I said

he could have his job back and during
the pause that followed his whiskers
scrubbed the mouthpiece clean

and his breath passed in and out
in the tidal fashion popular
with mammals until he broke through

with the words how soon thank you
ohmyGod which crossed his lips and drove
through the wires on the backs of ions

as one long word as one hard prayer
of relief meant to be heard
by the sky. When he began to cry I tried

with the shape of my silence to say
I understood but each confession
of fear and poverty was more awkward

than what you learn in the shower.
After he hung up I went outside and sat
with one hand in the bower of the other

and thought if I turn my head to the left
it changes the song of the oriole
and if I give a job to one stomach other

forks are naked and if tonight a steak
sizzles in his kitchen do the seven
other people staring at their phones

hear?

“Calling him back from layoff,” by Bob Hicok, from Insomnia Diary. © University of Pittsburgh Press.

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* A big thank-you to reader Clint B. for recommending this gut-wrenching poem to us. I found a video of Hicok reading his poem; it’s personal and stark and emotional and it lingers, in other words, it’s perfect. Thank you again Clint.

 

“Ramadan” by Kazim Ali

On By Christina's WordsIn Poetry

Wishing my Muslim friends and readers a happy and blessed Ramadan in these difficult days. Ramadan Mubarak. ~Christy

You wanted to be so hungry, you would break into branches,
and have to choose between the starving month’s

nineteenth, twenty-first, and twenty-third evenings.
The liturgy begins to echo itself and why does it matter?

If the ground-water is too scarce one can stretch nets
into the air and harvest the fog.

Hunger opens you to illiteracy,
thirst makes clear the starving pattern,

the thick night is so quiet, the spinning spider pauses,
the angel stops whispering for a moment—

The secret night could already be over,
you will have to listen very carefully—

You are never going to know which night’s mouth is sacredly reciting
and which night’s recitation is secretly mere wind—

Kazim Ali, “Ramadan” from The Fortieth Day. Copyright © 2008 by Kazim Ali. BOA Editions, Ltd.

Source: NPR’s post by Jennifer Hijazi, “This Ramadan poem celebrates the ‘unknowability of the divine’“

 

 

 

“I Meet My Grandmother in Italy” by Katrina Vandenberg

On By Christina's WordsIn Poetry4 Comments

I find her where I least expect her,
Santa Marguerita, with yellow roses
in her hair. She laughs, deep

in the arms of that American GI,
her hair rolled like Hepburn’s, her lipstick
red as tiled Verona roofs. Then I remember

the Saturday before she died, the way
we stopped at a greenhouse and she said,
I’ll take for my granddaughter all

the plants you have with yellow flowers,
ignoring my protests until the Pontiac
was heaped with roses and verbena,

with lemon gladiola perfume I could gather
in my hands. She said, Take them
all; you need to have a happy life.

“I Meet My Grandmother in Italy” by Katrina Vandenberg from Atlas. © Milkweed Editions, 2004.

“Passing a Truck Full of Chickens at Night on Highway Eighty” by Jane Mead

On By Christina's WordsIn Poetry

What struck me first was their panic.

Some were pulled by the wind from moving
to the ends of the stacked cages,
some had their heads blown through the bars—

and could not get them in again.
Some hung there like that—dead—
their own feathers blowing, clotting

in their faces. Then
I saw the one that made me slow some—
I lingered there beside her for five miles.

She had pushed her head through the space
between bars—to get a better view.
She had the look of a dog in the back

of a pickup, that eager look of a dog
who knows she’s being taken along.
She craned her neck.

She looked around, watched me, then
strained to see over the car—strained
to see what happened beyond.

That is the chicken I want to be.

“Passing a Truck Full of Chickens at Night on Highway Eighty,” by Jane Mead, from The Lord and the General Din of the World (Sarabande Books).

Source: American Life in Poetry

“Good Bones” by Maggie Smith (repost)

On By Christina's WordsIn Art, Poetry11 Comments
* Originally shared 08/23/16. Thanks to Hannah T. for reminding me how much I love this poem. Resharing exactly as posted before, but edited to link to Maggie’s book Good Bones. Also, Maggie has a new book–Keep Moving: Notes on Loss, Creativity, and Change–coming sooooooon!
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.

 

“Good Bones” by Maggie Smith (Website, Twitter, Books). “Good Bones” first appeared in Waxwing IX (Summer 2016) and is contained in Maggie Smith’s forthcoming book, Weep Up, Tupelo Press, 2018. (Edited to add: Title of book changed to Good Bones.)

 

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I rarely offer commentary, but this poem … yeah … this poem. I think it sums up so many of our lives, dear readers, don’t you? We are each trying to make this place beautiful though “the darkness around us is deep.” So I was beyond thrilled when multi-award winning poet Maggie Smith offered her blessing for me to share her poem with you all.

 

If you love “Good Bones” as much as I do, but can’t wait until 2018 to purchase Weep Up (changed to Good Bones), check out this beautiful broadside print by designer Josef Beery:

"Good Bones" by Maggie Smith. Designed by Josef Beery. Click photo or HERE to purchase.
“Good Bones” by Maggie Smith. Designed by Josef Beery. Click photo or HERE to purchase. A portion of the proceeds will be donated to the Orlando Youth Alliance, a nonprofit organization whose mission is to provide a safe space for GLBTQ youth in Central Florida.

“This place could be beautiful, / right? You could make this place beautiful.” Thank you again, Maggie. You and your poetry make this place beautiful indeed.