Category: Poetry

“The Poem to End All Poems” by Caitlyn Siehl

On By Christina's WordsIn Poetry1 Comment

If I had to write a poem to end all poems,
it would be the word ‘lonely’
in every language.
It would ask for nothing,
only echo, echo, cry, then sleep.
Please don’t make me write it.
Don’t make me be honest.
Not after all this time, all this
gorgeous pretending.
I have finally spun a story that doesn’t
look like a failure,
and all I want to do is stay in it.
All I want to do is keep singing.
Let me stay in this kingdom without
a name.
The one I made.
Let me sit with my tin crown on my makeshift throne.
Let me do all of it.
Let me fight.
Let me be the dragon and the
spear that kills it.
I would very much like to be both.

– Caitlyn Siehl, The Poem to End All Poems

“Gravy” by Raymond Carver

On By Christina's WordsIn Poetry1 Comment

No other word will do. For that’s what it was.
Gravy.
Gravy, these past ten years.
Alive, sober, working, loving, and
being loved by a good woman. Eleven years
ago he was told he had six months to live
at the rate he was going. And he was going
nowhere but down. So he changed his ways
somehow. He quit drinking! And the rest?
After that it was all gravy, every minute
of it, up to and including when he was told about,
well, some things that were breaking down and
building up inside his head. “Don’t weep for me,”
he said to his friends. “I’m a lucky man.
I’ve had ten years longer than I or anyone
expected. Pure Gravy. And don’t forget it.

~Raymond Carver

“Three Times My Life Has Opened” by Jane Hirshfield

On By Christina's WordsIn Poetry3 Comments

Three times my life has opened.
Once, into darkness and rain.
Once, into what the body carries at all times within it and
starts to remember each time it enters the act of love.
Once, to the fire that holds all.
These three were not different.
You will recognize what I am saying or you will not.
But outside my window all day a maple has stepped
from her leaves like a woman in love with winter, dropping
the colored silks.
Neither are we different in what we know.
There is a door. It opens. Then it is closed. But a slip of
light stays, like a scrap of unreadable paper left on the floor,
or the one red leaf the snow releases in March.

– Jane Hirshfield, from The Lives of the Heart: Poems

 

“Missed Time” by Ha Jin

On By Christina's WordsIn Poetry1 Comment

My notebook has remained blank for months
thanks to the light you shower
around me. I have no use
for my pen, which lies
languorously without grief.

Nothing is better than to live
a storyless life that needs
no writing for meaning—
when I am gone, let others say
they lost a happy man,
though no one can tell how happy I was.

”

– Ha Jin, “Missed Time,”  Poetry (July 2000).

Featured

“I Am Offering this Poem” by Jimmy Santiago Baca

On By Christina's WordsIn Poetry
I am offering this poem to you,
since I have nothing else to give.
Keep it like a warm coat
when winter comes to cover you,
or like a pair of thick socks
the cold cannot bite through,

 

                         I love you,

 

I have nothing else to give you,
so it is a pot full of yellow corn
to warm your belly in winter,
it is a scarf for your head, to wear
over your hair, to tie up around your face,

 

                         I love you,

 

Keep it, treasure this as you would
if you were lost, needing direction,
in the wilderness life becomes when mature;
and in the corner of your drawer,
tucked away like a cabin or hogan
in dense trees, come knocking,
and I will answer, give you directions,
and let you warm yourself by this fire,
rest by this fire, and make you feel safe

 

                         I love you,

 

It’s all I have to give,
and all anyone needs to live,
and to go on living inside,
when the world outside
no longer cares if you live or die;
remember,

 

                         I love you.

 

Jimmy Santiago Baca, “I Am Offering this Poem” from Immigrants in Our Own Land and Selected Early Poems. Copyright © 1990 by Jimmy Santiago Baca.