Poem of the Week, by Kasey Jueds

Posted on by alisonmcghee

When the world feels too much, too scary, too overwhelming, too helpless, my dog brings me back to his world, the world of wild things who do not tax their lives with forethought of grief. The world of warm fur, small thudding heart, searching eyes I feel gazing at me until I lift my eyes to his and he thuds his tail rapidly, over and over again, shifting on his front paws and willing me to motion for him to jump up onto my lap to push his cold nose against me and butt me with his head harder than you think he’d be capable of until I pet him. Over and over and over he wants to be petted, and over and over and over I pet him until he’s ready to get on with his day, his stores of affection and attention, and mine, having been renewed.

Claim, by Kasey Jueds

Once during that year
when all I wanted
was to be anything other
than what I was, the
dog took my wrist
in her jaws. Not to hurt
or startle, but the way
a wolf might, closing her mouth
over the leg of another
from her pack. Claiming me
like anything else: the round luck
of her supper dish or the bliss
of rabbits, their infinite
grassy cities. Her lips
and teeth circled
and pressed, tireless
pressure of the world
that pushes against you
to see if you’re there,
and I could feel myself
inside myself again, muscle
to bone to the slippery
core where I knew
next to nothing
about love. She wrapped
my arm as a woman might wrap
her hand through the loop
of a leash—as if she
were the one holding me
at the edge of a busy street,
instructing me to stay.

​Click here for more information about Kasey Jueds (pronounced Judds). Today’s poem is from her book Keeper​, published in 2013 by the University of Pittsburgh Press.
alisonmcghee.com
My poetry podcast: Words by Winter

Poem of the Week, by lucille clifton

Posted on by alisonmcghee

If you’d like to treat yourself to a quiet, creative start to the new year, a few spots remain in our January 6-11 morning Write Together session. Each hour begins with a brief reading and a guided prompt, and then we all write together silently in our little Zoom boxes. 10-11 am Central Time, $100. I’d love to see you in the zoom room. Click here for all the details. 

In a tiny room at the top of my house all the memorabilia of my life are stored in boxes and on shelves: copies of all the books I’ve published and not published, dozens of syllabi, thousands of lesson plans, notes and paintings and poems by me and also by my then-tiny children, photos, signed contracts, old mortgages, the spoof newspaper I wrote for my family every year beginning at age 22, and a gigantic tub filled with hundreds and hundreds (thousands?) of cards and letters from friends and family dating back to high school. That’s right: high school.

The past week has been spent opening up the past and seeing where it led. It stuns me how many words I’ve written, how many books and essays and speeches and lectures and poems and stories have poured out of me since age six. The old years blow back like a wind and I’m sifting through endless, endless papers and oh my God, I have tried so hard. That’s almost impossible to say out loud for some reason, so with help from lucille I’ll say it again: I have tried so hard.

i am running into a new year, by lucille clifton 

i am running into a new year
and the old years blow back
like a wind
that i catch in my hair
like strong fingers like
all my old promises and
it will be hard to let go
of what i said to myself
about myself
when i was sixteen and
twenty-six and thirty-six
even thirty-six but
i am running into a new year
and i beg what i love and
i leave to forgive me

Click here for more information about lucille clifton, one of my lifelong favorite poets. Today’s poem can be found in Good Woman: Poems and a Memoir 1969-1980.
alisonmcghee.com
Words by Winter, my poetry podcast.

Poem of the Week, by Dante di Stefano

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Would you like to start the new year with an hour each morning of quiet writing in the company of others, without the pressure of sharing or feedback? Please join us January 6-11 for Write Together. 10-11 am Central Time, $100. I’d love to see you in the zoom room. Click here for all the details. 

During the Tiananmen uprising/massacre, I was the Chinese teacher at South High School. I wheeled a big bulky television on a cart into my classroom so we could watch history happening, but once it was clear what was about to go down I turned off the television.

Years go by and you live through so many things that don’t turn out as you hope, and you know this will keep on happening. The flip side of this is a kind of gratitude I could not have felt when I was younger, a combination of telescope and microscope: all the awfulness will always be there, and so will a thousand tiny beautiful moments.

We Three Kings, by Dante Di Stefano

I slide myself under our tree
like a mechanic in a body shop
& look up through the lights
& ornaments
& artificial limbs
to the tin angel tied by yarn to the top
like a drunken sailor in a crow’s nest

& I am done with similes
& I put aside the possible shutdowns
& mysterious drones
& the wars
& the horrible rape trial across the Atlantic

& I remember what it was like
to do the same thing
when I was a kid in ’89
not quite a teenager
the year the Berlin wall fell
the year of the Tiananmen Square massacre
the year my father was committed

there is so much in the world
we don’t know & block out or forget

but I am still looking up
past the delicate bric-a-brac of a life
the popsicle stick & pipe cleaner ornaments
fashioned by my two small children
the candy canes they not so secretly pluck from the boughs
the few glass ornaments that have survived the dog & kids
& I am thinking of how grateful I am

how grateful how grateful

looking past the spot where another angel should be
looking for a god in the straw
looking past the infant loneliness squalling in my heart
holding the gift of my own ever unfolding naivete
in the manger of my saying

o star of wonder.

Click here for more information about Dante di Stefano. Today’s poem first appeared in the December 2024 issue of the daily poetry magazine Rattle.

alisonmcghee.com
My podcast: Words by Winter

Poem of the Week, by Andrea Gibson

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Would you like to start the new year with an hour each morning of quiet writing in the company of others, without the pressure of sharing or feedback? Please join us January 6-11 for Write Together. 10-11 am Central Time, $100. I’d love to see you in the zoom room. Click here for all the details. 

Every December I write myself a letter addressed to a secret name I made up for myself a long time ago. There are a few of these names, each for a different purpose, like when I have to be brave, or when I have to do something I don’t want to do. These names are a kind of invisible refuge. Maybe you have one too.

Instead of Depression, by Andrea Gibson

try calling it hibernation.
Imagine the darkness is a cave
in which you will be nurtured
by doing absolutely nothing.
Hibernating animals don’t even dream.
It’s okay if you can’t imagine
Spring. Sleep through the alarm
of the world. Name your hopelessness
a quiet hollow, a place you go
to heal, a den you dug,
Sweetheart, instead
of a grave.

Click here for more information about the wondrous Andrea Gibson. Today’s poem is included in their collection You Better Be Lightning, published by Button Poetry in 2021. 

alisonmcghee.com
My podcast: Words by Winter

Poem of the Week, by Piyassili of Assyria

Posted on by alisonmcghee

Would you like to start the new year with an hour each morning of quiet writing in the company of others, without the pressure of sharing or feedback? Please join us January 6-11 for Write Together. 10-11 am Central Time, $100. I’d love to see you in the zoom room. Click here for all the details. 

Sometimes I feel bowed down by the shame I witness around me. Heavy friends ashamed of their weight. Writers apologizing in advance for their words. Older friends ashamed of their aging looks. People ashamed of their jobs, incomes, homes, education or lack of it. The thing is that shame is a growth industry and it makes a lot of people a lot of money. All you profiteers out there feeling better from making others feel lesser: shame on you.

Injustice, by Piyassili, Assyria, 1218 BC

The people who are made to feel ashamed every day
are not the people who should feel ashamed.
The people who should feel ashamed
are the people unable to feel ashamed
yet heap shame by the bundle every day
on the troubled, the poor and despised.

​Click here for more information about Piyassili of Assyria. I’m unable to find out more information about this poem. 

alisonmcghee.com
My podcast: Words by Winter

Poem of the Week, by Jo McDougall

Posted on by alisonmcghee

​Would you like to start the new year with an hour each morning of quiet writing in the company of others, but without the pressure of sharing or feedback? Please join us January 6-11 for Write Together. 10-11 am Central Time, $100. I’d love to see you in the zoom room. Click here for all the details. 

There are a thousand people and places and things I’m grateful for and most of the time it’s easy to conjure them up. But on days when the world is gray and I am gray and the horrors feel as if they outweigh the goodness, I trick myself by imagining the phone call or test result or text that will come someday. Today could be the last best day of your life, Alison, I think, and boom, light and love come flooding back in.

Mammogram, by Jo McDougall

“They’re benign,” the radiologist says,
pointing to specks on the x ray
that look like dust motes
stopped cold in their dance.
His words take my spine like flame.
I suddenly love
the radiologist, the nurse, my paper gown,
the vapid print on the dressing room wall.
I pull on my radiant clothes.
I step out into the Hanging Gardens, the Taj Mahal,
the Niagara Falls of the parking lot.

Click here for more information about poet Jo McDougall. Today’s poem is from her collection Satisfied with Havoc, published in 2024 by Autumn House Press. 

alisonmcghee.com
My poetry podcast: Words by Winter

Poem of the Week, by Jay Hulme

Posted on by alisonmcghee

Our January 6-11, 2025, Write Together session is now open for registration! I’d love to see you in the Zoom room. Click here for more information.

 When Joan Osborne’s One of Us came out, these lines arrowed into my heart: What if God was one of us? Just a slob like one of us? Just a stranger on the bus, tryna make his way home? Those lines still sing their way through me all these years later. So much in this world needs healing. And so much doesn’t.

Jesus at the Gay Bar, by Jay Hulme

He’s here in the midst of it –
right at the centre of the dance floor,
robes hitched up to His knees
to make it easy to spin.

At some point in the evening
a boy will touch the hem of His robe
and beg to be healed, beg to be
anything other than this;

and He will reach His arms out,
sweat-damped, and weary from dance.
He’ll cup the boy’s face in His hand
and say,

      my beautiful child
there is nothing in this heart of yours
that ever needs to be healed.

​Click here for more information about poet, performer, and educator Jay Hulme. Today’s poem is from his collection The Backwater Sermon, published by Canterbury Press in October 2021. 

alisonmcghee.com
My podcast: Words by Winter

Poem of the Week, by Evie Shockley

Posted on by alisonmcghee

Our January 6-11, 2025, Write Together session is now open for registration! I’d love to see you in the Zoom room. Click here for more information.

If I tell someone I’m working at Turtle Bread Bakery this morning, they often assume I have a part-time job there. Even though I’ve been writing novels in coffeeshops forever. Even though long ago I trained myself to say “working” instead of “writing.”

An artist’s next release, the new season of a favorite series, an actor’s next movie, a painter’s next exhibition, a writer’s new book. Next to food, clothing, and shelter, isn’t art –in all its forms– the one thing everyone craves?

Job Prescription, by Evie Shockley

will poetry change the world? no one asks
this about football, the thrill of watching or
playing. we get that nurses & doctors are
healers. no question that rabbis, priests, &

imams guide individuals & groups through
spiritual thickets. we don’t tell cooks to put
down their wooden spoons & go make a real
difference instead of a real soufflé. teachers

are honored for the learning they impart. so
let poets keep on exciting passion in them-
selves & others. don’t discourage us from our
efforts to diagnose the human heart or create

trail markers for those coming behind us on
this journey. trust me when i say that poetry
heals, guides, feeds, & enlivens. poetry may
not change the world, but might change you.

Click here for more information on Evie Shockley. Click here to listen to the audio version, read by the poet herself. This poem appeared on the American Academy of Poets website in 2024. 
alisonmcghee.com
My poetry podcast: Words by Winter

January 6-11, 2025 Write Together session

Posted on by alisonmcghee

Hello friends,

Are you a writer in need of an energy boost and a fresh start? Or someone who’s always wanted to write but aren’t sure how to begin? Is there a story or poem or essay within you that wants to be written? Maybe ideas and an urge to write them out come to you at work, while walking the dog, cooking dinner, folding laundry, and in dreams, but then life takes over and those ideas submerge themselves. If you’d like to set aside an hour a day for dedicated writing time in the company of others doing the same, our January 2025 Write Together session is now open for registration!

Write Together: January 6-11, 2025, 10-11 am CT every day (note time zone), via Zoom

In our popular Write Together sessions, we convene each morning in our Zoom Room for a one-hour session. Each hour includes a brief reading and continues with a 40- to 50-minute guided prompt (or two to choose one from), and all are designed to wake up the magical writer who lives within us all. Write Together is for writers of any and all experience in any and all genres.

The Write Together sessions were inspired by my regular January solo practice of a week devoted solely to generating new ideas, having fun, and playing around with cool new prompts. There’s something so comforting and freeing about knowing that we’re all writing together at the same time, each of us in our little Zoom boxes, with no expectation of sharing or feedback. I’ll also record the readings and prompts separately, so if you miss a day and want to catch up, you’ll be able to do so on your own time.

You won’t have to take time off work or your daily routine –unless of course you want to–but you will have six hour-long opportunities to write in a focused, intensive, exhilarating way in a room full of others doing exactly the same thing. Come have fun and see what you come up with! Our last day will extend another hour for open mic, in case you’d like to share something you wrote during the week for applause and appreciation.

Registration and payment for the January 2025 session: $100. To register, email me at alisonmcghee@gmail.com or simply send payment via personal check, Venmo to @Alison-McGhee-1, or PayPal to alison_mcghee@hotmail.com. Please email me with any questions. Note: Both $50 half-price scholarships have been claimed, but I added one more – just let me know if you need it and it’s yours, no questions asked.

Now, more than ever, we need the kindness and solace and laughter and strength of each other’s company. I’d love to see you in the Zoom room.

Poem of the Week, by George Bilgere

Posted on by alisonmcghee

Our January 6-11, 2025, Write Together session is now open for registration! I’d love to see you in the Zoom room. Click here for more information.

Faint white crescent scar on my right knee: bit by a dog. Blue-black graphite in my hand: the pencil I caught in second grade that broke off in my palm. Ache in my right tibia when the weather changes: twice-broken bone. Straight white line on my palm: surgery to remove the long wooden splinter I hid as a child until the infection spread up my wrist. Tiny silver lightning bolt below my right hipbone: second-baby stretch mark.

Fake front teeth: racing to room draw in college. I vaulted over a cement wall except didn’t, because suddenly there were broken teeth and blood everywhere. (The friend I was with missed room draw to help me out and ended up in a dank fly-infested basement room our sophomore year. Did I ever thank you for that, Stephen? Thank you.)

Every time I read this poem I think about all the hidden stories we carry in our bodies as our bodies carry us through our lives.

Basal Cell, by George Bilgere

The sun is still burning in my skin
even though it set half-an-hour ago,
and Cindy and Bob and Bev and John
are pulling on their sweatshirts
and gathering around the fire pit.

John hands me a cold one
and now Bev comes into my arms
and I can feel the sun’s heat,
and taste the Pacific on her cheek.

I am not in Vietnam
nor is John or Bob, because
our deferments came through,
and we get to remain boys
for at least another summer
like this one in Santa Cruz,
surfing the afternoons in a sweet
blue dream I’m remembering now,

as the nurse puts my cheek to sleep,
and the doctor begins to burn
those summers away.

Click here for more information about poet George Bilgere. Today’s poem is from his collection The White Museum, published in
2010 by Autumn House Press.  

alisonmcghee.com
My podcast: Words by Winter