Category: Poetry

“Absolute September” by Mary Jo Salter

On By Christina's WordsIn Poetry

How hard it is to take September
straight—not as a harbinger
of something harder.

Merely like suds in the air, cool scent
scrubbed clean of meaning—or innocent
of the cold thing coldly meant.

How hard the heart tugs at the end
of summer, and longs to haul it in
when it flies out of hand

at the prompting of the first mild breeze.
It leaves us by degrees
only, but for one who sees

summer as an absolute,
Pure State of Light and Heat, the height
to which one cannot raise a doubt,

as soon as one leaf’s off the tree
no day following can fall free
of the drift of melancholy.

“Absolute September” by Mary Jo Salter, from A Kiss in Space. © Knopf, 1999.

“A Short Testament” by Anne Porter

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Whatever harm I may have done
In all my life in all your wide creation
If I cannot repair it
I beg you to repair it,

And then there are all the wounded
The poor the deaf the lonely and the old
Whom I have roughly dismissed
As if I were not one of them.
Where I have wronged them by it
And cannot make amends
I ask you
To comfort them to overflowing,

And where there are lives I may have withered around me,
Or lives of strangers far or near
That I’ve destroyed in blind complicity,
And if I cannot find them
Or have no way to serve them,

Remember them. I beg you to remember them

When winter is over
And all your unimaginable promises
Burst into song on death’s bare branches.

“A Short Testament” by Anne Porter from Living Things. © Zoland Books, 2006

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Interesting note (via PoetryFoundation.org):

When (Porter’s) husband died in 1975, she began to write poetry much more seriously. As she told the Wall Street Journal: “I remember realizing that I was alone, and I’d have to be more organized. I had these poems, and I thought that it would be worthwhile working on them. I started to write.” Her first collection, An Altogether Different Language (1994), published when she was 83, was named a finalist for the National Book Award.

#It’sNeverTooLate

“Kissing Coco” by Liz Queeney

On By Christina's WordsIn Poetry

It was March. I’d just turned twelve
two weeks before, so I was finally
old enough to think about having
sex with somebody outside
my family. Somebody not male,
and not too much older. Somebody
like Coco from Nasella Park.
She was everything I wanted
to be (smart & strong & very tough).
She smoked Lucky Strike nonfilters
and could spit as far as any guy.
Already thirteen, so I told her I was
too, pressing my biceps tight
against my sides, trying to make
my breasts appear bigger. Hers were
stretching out her too-tight sweater
(the sweater soft and blue
like her eyes). Catching me staring,
she boldly stared back. She grinned,
and then she winked at me.
I was afraid maybe she was
teasing me, afraid maybe she wasn’t.
My heart swelled up till it almost
hurt. In the past, wanting touch
had only brought pain, but I knew that
I could trust someone who purred
with stray cats. Late at night,
on the swing set in Nasella Park,
she opened up two Michelobs,
and asked, “Have you ever
gotten drunk?” “Of course! A lot
of times,” I lied. I wanted her
to think I was cool. She was
so hot. My mouth was dry.
I sucked down the beer, then
following her lead, I threw the empty
into the bushes. My mouth still dry,
I pulled a Certs from the pocket
of my Levi’s, then popped
it into my mouth with relief.
Coco asked, “Ya got any more?” then
seemed all disappointed to hear it was
my last. Without thinking, I offered
her the one in my mouth. “Sure,”
she said as she jumped off the swing.
Instantly her hands were on mine,
the chains of the swing digging into
my palms. I was sweating,
though the night air was crisp.
My heat beat so wild
I could hardly hear.
Coco commanded, “Give it up,”
opening her mouth before mine.
The swing no longer moving, still
everything was swirling
as our lips caressed and our tongues shared
the Certs and our first kiss.

Source: Queeney, Liz 1996, ‘Kissing Coco’, in L Elder (ed.), Early Embraces, Alyson publications.

“I Was Always Leaving” by Jean Nordhaus

On By Christina's WordsIn Poetry

I was always leaving, I was
about to get up and go, I was
on my way, not sure where.
Somewhere else. Not here.
Nothing here was good enough.
It would be better there, where I
was going. Not sure how or why.
The dome I cowered under
would be raised, and I would be released
into my true life. I would meet there
the ones I was destined to meet.
They would make an opening for me
among the flutes and boulders,
and I would be taken up. That this
might be a form of death
did not occur to me. I only know
that something held me back,
a doubt, a debt, a face I could not
leave behind. When the door
fell open, I did not go through.

Jean Nordhaus, via Poetry Magazine. Originally published in The Gettysburg Review, Vol. 21, no. 4, Winter, 2008

“Ashes, Ashes, We All Fall Down” by Chris Bursk

On By Christina's WordsIn Poetry, Reader Recommended2 Comments

If I’m going to be ashes in a decade or so,
why stay up past midnight staring at the television
as if it might have a change of heart
and put a third-party candidate in office for once
or end the war, and, while it was at it, clear up my grandson’s acne?
Maybe I should just enjoy the dog’s howling next door.
All night it’s been tugging at its chain
as if the links might finally get bored with being metal and snap.

If I’m going to be incinerated — burnt to a crisp —
in roughly 3,650 days, why am I sulking
because this morning of all mornings my car tired of doing
the same thing it had done the morning before,
and because half my class chose not to show up for a lecture that
I, their professor, a year from retirement, had hoped
would change their entire outlook
on comma splices? Once I’m ashes drifting away on the water,

what will it matter that years ago I threw up on my senior-prom date,
or last week forgot my wife’s sixty-first birthday,
or this morning embarrassed my grandson in front of his friends?
How do any of us prepare for the future
when we’re so busy making a mess
of the present? Perhaps this is time’s truest revenge:
to make us aware of its passing, every minute
of every day. Approximately 5,256,000 minutes

from now — give or take a month or year or two —
my son is going to stand on a bridge
with his children and do something he never thought
he’d have to do: let his quirky,
annoying, yet lovable (I’d hoped!) father slip through his fingers.
That’s my only comfort: I will be ashes
so fine they won’t even question the rocks
they fall on, the creek that sweeps them away.

For once I’ll not embarrass anyone.
For once I’ll not have to worry
about whether I’m doing something right.
I’ll perform the one miracle of my life.

by CHRIS BURSK, via The Sun Magazine. (Read more of Chris’s work; and Learn more about Chris.)

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* Many thanks to Ruby Pipes who recommended this poem for us. ❤