Alison McGhee

Poem of the Week, by James Baldwin

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It’s hard to live in the world. This line has spoken itself in my head throughout my life, especially right now. Don’t let them get to you, Allie. That little mantra got me through some hard times when I was a child, and while it’s a flawed philosophy it’s still a helpful one when it comes to bullies, because bullies love reactions.

Who do you turn to in hard times? That question was asked a few weeks ago in my church, where the only creed is love, compassion, kindness, inclusion, and social justice. Those who have gone before me, was my instant answer. Those who have done the hard things. Those who have already stepped through those distant doors and did so with courage and heart. Like James Baldwin. What seems hopeless isn’t, because the earth is always shifting, the light is always changing, and nothing is fixed.

For Nothing Is Fixed, by James Baldwin

For nothing is fixed,
forever, forever, forever,
it is not fixed;
the earth is always shifting,
the light is always changing,
the sea does not cease to grind down rock.
Generations do not cease to be born,
and we are responsible to them
because we are the only witnesses they have.
The sea rises, the light fails,
lovers cling to each other,
and children cling to us.
The moment we cease to hold each other,
the moment we break faith with one another,
the sea engulfs us and the light goes out. 

Click here for more information about poet, essayist, short story writer, critic, novelist and iconic American James Baldwin.  

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My podcast: Words by Winter

Poem of the Week, by Naomi Shihab Nye

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​More than half my country’s wealth is hoarded by a few hundred billionaires. A few of them have bought their way into power and have said they’d like to take away the bare-bones security our government guarantees to ordinary hardworking people. They call it ‘disruption,’ but it’s chaos and destruction and pain. It doesn’t have to be this way. We don’t have to let it be this way.

When they were tiny and had a bad dream I held my children and sang to them and soothed them so they would feel loved and secure and safe. Isn’t that what we were born to do? Don’t we reach out instinctively to help those who are hurting? We’re not going to be able to live in this world if we can’t take care of each other.

Shoulders, by Naomi Shihab Nye

A man crosses the street in rain,
stepping gently, looking two times north and south,
because his son is asleep on his shoulder.

No car must splash him.
No car drive too near to his shadow.

This man carries the world’s most sensitive cargo
but he’s not marked.
Nowhere does his jacket say FRAGILE,
HANDLE WITH CARE.

His ear fills up with breathing.
He hears the hum of a boy’s dream
deep inside him.

We’re not going to be able
to live in this world
if we’re not willing to do what he’s doing
with one another.

The road will only be wide.
The rain will never stop falling.

 Click here for more information about the iconic Naomi Shihab Nye. Today’s poem is from her collection Red Suitcase, published in 1994 by BOA Editions. 

alisonmcghee.com
My poetry + conversations podcast: Words by Winter

Poem of the Week, by Kasey Jueds

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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

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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

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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. 

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

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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, 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

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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

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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