Three spots still available in our January 8-13, 2024, Write Together session, which begins on Monday. I’d love to see you in this one hour, twice-daily workshop in which we all quietly write together from a guided prompt. $200, payable however you want. 

Whatever brain function places memory within the context of time is lacking in me, which means that something that happened twenty years ago could have happened last year. That is why every Saturday, when I find the right poem to send out, I check my Sent files to make sure I didn’t send it out just a few weeks ago. When I came to this one, which I’ve loved for many years because it feels like a tiny prayer of redemption, I was sure I’d sent it recently. But the only Richard Jones reference in any of my 200K+ emails was a note from my poetry-loving son in 2012, telling me about one of his professors in Chicago, a guy named Richard Jones, who was a poet whose work he thought I would like. Which goes to prove that the world is small, my son is awesome, and a beautiful poem transcends time.

After Work, by Richard Jones

Coming up from the subway
into the cool Manhattan evening,
I feel rough hands on my heart –
women in the market yelling
over rows of tomatoes and peppers,
old men sitting on a stoop playing cards,
cabbies cursing each other with fists
while the music of church bells
sails over the street,
and the father, angry and tired
after working all day,
embracing his little girl,
kissing her,
mi vida, mi corazon,
brushing the hair out of her eyes
so she can see.

Click here for more information about poet Richard Jones. After Work is from his collection The Blessing, from Copper Canyon Press. 

alisonmcghee.com
My podcast: Words by Winter

*Note: this post is adapted from one that originally appeared in 2015.