Alison McGhee

Poem of the Week, by Ada Limón

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In fifth grade a boy in my class reached out and twisted my nearly non-existent breast while all us kids were standing on the steps after recess. The physical pain was so shocking I couldn’t breathe. Terrified that anyone might see me cry, might see how shaken I was, I stood there like a statue.

That moment felt like an end to freedom. It still does. This must be why I cried at the opening scenes of that first Wonder Woman movie. All those wild, fearless women warriors. How I’d love to go back in time, to those steps outside our elementary school. Things would end differently.

How to Triumph Like a Girl, by Ada Limón

I like the lady horses best,
how they make it all look easy,
like running 40 miles per hour
is as fun as taking a nap, or grass.
I like their lady horse swagger,
after winning. Ears up, girls, ears up!
But mainly, let’s be honest, I like
that they’re ladies. As if this big
dangerous animal is also a part of me,
that somewhere inside the delicate
skin of my body, there pumps
an 8-pound female horse heart,
giant with power, heavy with blood.
Don’t you want to believe it?
Don’t you want to lift my shirt and see
the huge beating genius machine
that thinks, no, it knows,
it’s going to come in first.

Click here for more information about Ada Limón. Today’s poem is from her collection Bright Dead Things, published in 2015 by Milkweed Editions.


alisonmcghee.com
My podcast: Words by Winter

Poem of the Week, by Ross Gay

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Listen to my favorite playlist. Eat some potato chips. Snuggle with my dog. Watch TV and go to sleep. Go for a walk. Play a video game. Call my mom.

At the end of a volunteer shift on the Crisis Text Line I sometimes ask texters to tell me something nice they can do for themselves after we say goodbye. Just a small good thing, only for yourself. This question seems to make them happy, and it makes me happy too. How small and simple and ordinary the things we love are.

Sorrow Is Not My Name, by Ross Gay (for Walter Aitken)
—after Gwendolyn Brooks

No matter the pull toward brink. No
matter the florid, deep sleep awaits.
There is a time for everything. Look,
just this morning a vulture
nodded his red, grizzled head at me,
and I looked at him, admiring
the sickle of his beak.
Then the wind kicked up, and,
after arranging that good suit of feathers
he up and took off.
Just like that. And to boot,
there are, on this planet alone, something like two
million naturally occurring sweet things,
some with names so generous as to kick
the steel from my knees: agave, persimmon,
stick ball, the purple okra I bought for two bucks
at the market. Think of that. The long night,
the skeleton in the mirror, the man behind me
on the bus taking notes, yeah, yeah.
But look; my niece is running through a field
calling my name. My neighbor sings like an angel
and at the end of my block is a basketball court.
I remember. My color’s green. I’m spring.

For more information about Ross Gay, please check out his website.

Click here for more information about Ross Gay.

alisonmcghee.com
My podcast: Words by Winter

Poem of the Week, by Robert Hershon

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I wrote and rewrote a bunch of intros to today’s poem, all of them about my grown children and their grandfather, who used to stock the fridge with their favorite snacks and drinks when they visited. Happy memories, so why was my chest so tight and my throat clenched? Because you miss him, Alison. Because this post is really about the two of you.

My dad, who died a year ago, was a giant of a man with a bellow of a voice, the strongest person I’ve ever known. A hug from him would literally lift you off the ground. Both of us appreciated physical work. The winter before he died, he sat on a chair on the porch while I hauled loads of wood from the barn and passed each chunk to him so he could stack it.

He had an unusual ability to accept people as they were. (When I graduated from a chichi college and didn’t even try to find a real job because I wanted to be a writer, he never said a word.) His love language was food, and every year he sent us a big box of petits-fours. The last box of them still sits unopened on my desk.

Sentimental Moment or Why Did the Baguette Cross the Road? by Robert Hershon

Don’t fill up on bread
I say absent-mindedly
The servings here are huge

My son, whose hair may be
receding a bit, says
Did you really just
say that to me?

What he doesn’t know
is that when we’re walking
together, when we get
to the curb
I sometimes start to reach
for his hand

Click here for more information about Robert Hershon. This poem was originally published in Poetry Northwest, Volume XLI, No. 3, Autumn 2000.

alisonmcghee.com
My podcast: Words by Winter


Poem of the Week, by Deborah Garrison

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A tiny, delightful girl named Alma lives across the street from me. She loves my huge, wild garden, especially the small ceramic fox who keeps guard over it. She likes to pick up the fox, hug it, lug it to a different patch of flowers, and set it back down. Alma just became a big sister, and I imagine her teaching her little brother how to say “Alison’s house” when he begins to talk.

This poem brought so much back to me, momentary flashes of memory swimming up. But it was little Alma I thought of when I looked out the window at the lamplit apartment where she was probably going to bed. A long time from now, when I’m no longer and she’s weeding her own garden, will the memory of the little fox she loved so much come swimming up?

The Past Is Still There, by Deborah Garrison

I’ve forgotten so much.
What it felt like back then,
what we said to each other.

But sometimes when I’m standing
at the kitchen counter after dinner
and I look out the window at the dark

thinking of nothing,
something swims up.
Tonight this:

your laughing into my mouth
as you were trying
to kiss me.

Today’s poem, The Past Is Still There is from The Second Child, by Deborah Garrison, published by Random House. 

alisonmcghee.com
My podcast: Words by Winter

Poem of the Week, by Louis Untermeyer

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Every summer in my teens I canoed with friends through the Rideau region of Ontario. At one annual camping spot an enormous rope swing tied to an overhanging tree hung over a lake. You grabbed the rope, stepped back as far as you could, swung out over the water and then plummeted. The drop was steep and the water cold, and once you committed, you had to leap – if you swung back you’d crash against the tree and the rocky bluff.

Once, as I swung out, I looked down to see a long water snake swirling in the water directly below me. My terror of snakes was lifelong and primal, but there was no going back. I plummeted with my eyes closed and struck out for shore the second I surfaced. This quiet poem, written long ago, brings that memory rushing back through me. The snake, the long plummet into the freezing water, the wild surge of life as I tore toward shore.

Faith, by Louis Untermeyer (public domain)

What are we bound for? What’s the yield
of all this energy and waste?
Why do we spend ourselves and build
with such an empty haste?

Wherefore the bravery we boast?
How can we spend one laughing breath
when at the end all things are lost
in ignorance and death? . . .

The stars have found a blazing course
in a vast curve that cuts through space;
enough for us to feel that force
swinging us through the days.

Enough that we have strength to sing
and fight and somehow scorn the grave;
That Life’s too bold and bright a thing
to question or to save.

Click here for more information on Louis Untermeyer, whose poetry is now in the public domain.
alisonmcghee.com
My podcast: Words by Winter

Poem of the Week, by Jason Allen-Paisant

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A few years ago my dog and I were in the alley a block from home when a dog came racing out of an unlocked gate barking the way dogs do when they’re going to attack. I scooped my dog up in my arms and turned my back while the other dog’s human came screaming after her dog, then swore at me. Why the f— do you have to walk this way? It had already been a tough, tough day, and whatever relief the long walk had brought was poof, gone. The incident haunted me.

Years later, that same woman came out in the alley as I was walking by, and I steeled myself. But she was crying. I want to tell you how sorry I am for the way I screamed at you that day. We talked. Her husband had been in the middle of a horrifying round of cancer treatment. I hugged her. Despite the sad understanding of our later conversation, I can still feel that huge wave of loneliness from our first encounter.

And You…, by Jason Allen-Paisant

walk in a midwinter ochre wood
to get some england sun
as it steals away—
a little poodle runs to show you love;
you like the feel of the animal’s body
on your leg; it’s something
of an acceptance so you smile
and are not the least bothered; you even hope
it’ll jump, though the lady yells
no jumping Sam! no jumping!
and when she adds ‘you know he
just loves EVERYbody!’ why should you
suddenly feel tears coming?—
it’s just that EVERYbody; how do you
explain this? there’s nobody to explain
it to: why she needed to take away
from you this one feeling of special?
how could she know it was the most
human moment of your day—
the most human moment in weeks?

Click here for more information about Jason Allen-Paisant. 

My apologies in advance if I don’t reply immediately. Thank you.
alisonmcghee.com
My podcast: Words by Winter

Poem of the Week, by Martín Espada

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At sixteen I would get up at dawn, pick bag after bag of sweet corn, load it into the back of the pickup, drive it up to Route 12 and sit there with a Sweet Corn for Sale sign. Lots of people headed to the Adirondacks would pull over. Most were nice, but a few viewed me with what now feels like disdain.

“Is it fresh?”

“I just picked it.”

They’d grab a few ears and yank down the top, inspecting for…what? Those people never bought the ears they stripped. All these years later I think of them when I contemplate our country’s vast political divide. I grew up in a deeply rural place where liberals are often ridiculed, and now I live in a place where liberals often ridicule the people I came from. Either way, it’s wrong.

Who Burns for the Perfection of Paper, by Martin Espada

At sixteen, I worked after high school hours
at a printing plant
that manufactured legal pads:
Yellow paper
stacked seven feet high
and leaning
as I slipped cardboard
between the pages,
then brushed red glue
up and down the stack.
No gloves: fingertips required
for the perfection of paper,
smoothing the exact rectangle.
Sluggish by 9 PM, the hands
would slide along suddenly sharp paper,
and gather slits thinner than the crevices
of the skin, hidden.
The glue would sting,
hands oozing
till both palms burned
at the punch clock.

Ten years later, in law school,
I knew that every legal pad
was glued with the sting of hidden cuts,
that every open law book
was a pair of hands
upturned and burning. 

Click here to learn more about Martín Espada. “Who Burns for the Perfection of Paper” is from City of Coughing and Dead Radiators, W. W. Norton, 1993

alisonmcghee.com
My podcast: Words by Winter

Poem of the Week, by Richard Jones*

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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.

Poem of the Week, by Maggie Smith

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Are you looking for an “experience” gift for yourself or someone you love? Spots still available in our January 8-13, 2024, Write Together session. I’d love to see you in this one hour, twice-daily workshop in which we all quietly write together from a guided prompt. It’s a beautiful way to usher in the new year. $200, with one $100 no-questions-asked scholarship available. 

People keep telling me I have to pick a side, pick a side. Here’s the side I pick: The world is a mess, and the world is beautiful, and people are awful, and people are wonderful. Let me love the world, and its humans, like a mother.

Rain, New Year’s Eve, by Maggie Smith 

The rain is a broken piano,
playing the same note over and over.

My five-year-old said that.
Already she knows loving the world

means loving the wobbles
you can’t shim, the creaks you can’t

oil silent—the jerry-rigged parts,
MacGyvered with twine and chewing gum.

Let me love the cold rain’s plinking.
Let me love the world the way I love

my young son, not only when
he cups my face in his sticky hands,

but when, roughhousing,
he accidentally splits my lip.

Let me love the world like a mother.
Let me be tender when it lets me down.

Let me listen to the rain’s one note
and hear a beginner’s song.

Click here for more information about writer Maggie Smith.
alisonmcghee.com
My podcast: Words by Winter

Poem of the Week, by Naomi Shihab Nye

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Are you looking for an “experience” gift for someone you love? Registration for our January 8-13, 2024, Write Together session is open. I’d love to see you or your loved one in this one hour, twice-daily workshop in which we all quietly write together from a guided prompt. It’s a beautiful way to usher in the new year. Fee: $200, with two $100 no-questions-asked scholarships available. 

This poem, lettered on handmade paper and framed, hangs on a wall in my house, a collective gift from friends a few years ago. Sometimes, when I feel hopeless in the face of it all, I recite lines from it to help un-paralyze myself. A small act of goodness is still a way to help the world.

Famous, by Naomi Shihab Nye

The river is famous to the fish.

The loud voice is famous to silence,   
which knew it would inherit the earth   
before anybody said so.   

The cat sleeping on the fence is famous to the birds   
watching him from the birdhouse.   

The tear is famous, briefly, to the cheek.   

The idea you carry close to your bosom   
is famous to your bosom.   

The boot is famous to the earth,   
more famous than the dress shoe,   
which is famous only to floors.

The bent photograph is famous to the one who carries it   
and not at all famous to the one who is pictured.   

I want to be famous to shuffling men   
who smile while crossing streets,   
sticky children in grocery lines,   
famous as the one who smiled back.

I want to be famous in the way a pulley is famous,   
or a buttonhole, not because it did anything spectacular,   
but because it never forgot what it could do.

Click here for more information about the wondrous Naomi Shihab Nye. Famous is included in Words Under the Words: Selected Poems by Naomi Shihab Nye.

alisonmcghee.com
My podcast: Words by Winter