Alison McGhee

Poem of the Week, by Naomi Shihab Nye

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Spots are still available in the July 17-19 mini-session of our popular Write Together sessions, in which we gather on Zoom for an hour in the morning and an hour in the evening and write quietly together from a guided prompt. Cost: $100. Please click here for all the details. I’d love to see you in the Zoom room. 

People who read this Poem of the Week regularly must think, Wow, does this woman love Naomi Shihab Nye. And they would be right. Sometimes, walking down the street, I recite lines from her poems, maybe because they’re beautiful, maybe because they make me feel less alone. Once a friend said to me, “I read a poem today that I somehow think you would love. It’s by a woman named…Naomi something?”–and I said, “Naomi Shihab Nye!”

She’s a poet who begins with a thing, a real, tangible thing like the stone in the poem below (and I am a writer who loves the thingness of things) and from that thing she somehow spirals a kite of words up into the air and stitches it to feelings and experience in a fearlessly human way. She reminds me, always, that kindness is all that matters. She reminds me, always, that we’re all the same. That we each carry a tender spot, something our lives forgot to give us.

Jerusalem, by Naomi Shihab Nye

“Let’s be the same wound if we must bleed.
         Let’s fight side by side, even if the enemy
is ourselves: I am yours, you are mine.”
                                    —Tommy Olofsson, Sweden

I’m not interested in
who suffered the most.
I’m interested in
people getting over it.
Once when my father was a boy
a stone hit him on the head.
Hair would never grow there.
Our fingers found the tender spot
and its riddle: the boy who has fallen
stands up. A bucket of pears
in his mother’s doorway welcomes him home.
The pears are not crying.
Later his friend who threw the stone
says he was aiming at a bird.
And my father starts growing wings.

Each carries a tender spot:
something our lives forgot to give us.
A man builds a house and says,
“I am native now.”
A woman speaks to a tree in place
of her son. And olives come.
A child’s poem says,
“I don’t like wars,
they end up with monuments.”
He’s painting a bird with wings
wide enough to cover two roofs at once.

Why are we so monumentally slow?
Soldiers stalk a pharmacy:
big guns, little pills.
If you tilt your head just slightly
it’s ridiculous.

There’s a place in my brain
where hate won’t grow.
I touch its riddle: wind, and seeds.
Something pokes us as we sleep.

It’s late but everything comes next.

For more information on Naomi Shihab Nye, please click here.

Poem of the Week, by Franz Wright

Posted on by alisonmcghee

Spots are still available in the July 17-19 mini-version of our popular Write Together sessions, in which we gather on Zoom for an hour in the morning and an hour in the evening and write quietly together from a guided prompt. Cost: $100. Please click here for all the details. I’d love to see you in the Zoom room.

A few years ago I was deep in conversation about various religions and the dangers of religious extremism with my Somali-born Uber driver.

Me: “What I don’t get is how does the longing for purpose and passion that most of us feel turn into a belief, for some, that their god is the only god, and their god justifies murder and mayhem and terror?”

Him (31 years old, handsome, laughing, who along with his Somali-born wife works full-time on different shifts so that they can trade off taking care of their four little kids): “I will tell you something. I almost became one of them.”

“. . . You did?”

“Yes. After we fled the civil war in Somalia we lived in Nairobi for three years and I went to a new mosque. I was 18. And the leader taught hate. I began to be filled with hate and to think that others should suffer and die. I felt my heart turning hateful. And I decided to bring a notebook to the mosque with me for one week. I had one column Hate and another column Love and I kept track of what he was teaching. At the end of the week it was all hate. And I stopped going to the mosque.”

“And now? Did you find a mosque in Minneapolis that feels right to you?”

“I don’t go to any mosque anymore. If I want to pray, I pray inside my own head. My religion is two words only. You want to know what they are? Don’t hate.”

 Solution, by Franz Wright

What is the meaning of kindness?
Speak and listen to others, from now on,
as if they had recently died.
At the core the seen and unseen worlds are one.

Click here for more information on Franz Wright, the poet son of poet James Wright, both of whom won Pulitzer Prizes for their poetry. 
alisonmcghee.com
My podcast: Words by Winter

Poem of the Week, by Richard Jones

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Spots are still available in next month’s mini-session of our popular Write Together sessions, in which we gather on Zoom for an hour in the morning and evening and write quietly together from a guided prompt. July 17-19, 10 am and 6 pm Central time. Cost: $100. Please click here for all the details. I’d love to see you in the Zoom room. 

Last week I was walking with someone I love when we saw an old man trip and nearly fall. He dusted himself off, made sure his hat was on straight, and kept going, cane in hand.

My friend and I were both quiet. We didn’t look at each other. Let it go, Alison, I told myself. He’s fine. I imagined the old man on his way to his daughter’s house, his whole family waiting there, full of love. A story conjured up to keep the sadness at bay, to turn it into something else, to transcend it.

But it didn’t surprise me when my friend turned to me and said quietly, “If I keep thinking about that old man I’ll be sad for the rest of the week,” and I nodded, because we are alike. “It’s a curse to feel so much,” she said.

A curse, and a blessing.

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.

​For more information on Richard Jones, please click here.

alisonmcghee.com
My podcast: Words by Winter

Poem of the Week, by Benjamin Cutler

Posted on by alisonmcghee

This summer, July 17-19, I’m offering a mini-session of our popular Write Together sessions, in which we gather on Zoom for an hour in the morning and an hour in the evening and write quietly together from a guided prompt. Cost: $100. Please click here for all the details. I’d love to see you in the Zoom room. 

At the diner

Once, a father called his daughter on her 33rd birthday and left a message on the answering machine.

“Happy 33rd!” he said. “Happy 33rd.”

Pause. Pause. Pause.

His daughter stood by, wondering if that was the end of it. Then came a clearing of the throat and a mumbled I love you.The daughter opened the answering machine and snatched out the tape on which her father’s message was recorded. It was the first time she’d ever heard him say that.

I am that daughter. All these years later I still have that tape, an old Radio Shack cassette.

Blessings on the fathers, all the fathers, and all the men who stand in as fathers. The fathers who are able to say “I love you” easily and often, and the fathers who aren’t. The father who pushes his child on the swing, higher and higher, and the father who lets his child hitch a ride on his wheelchair.

The father who scratches out a budget in pencil on lined yellow paper, the better to show his daughter where it all goes when she says in teenage superiority, But where could it all go? How can there be none left at the end of the month? The father who comes stumbling out of his baby’s bedroom late at night and throws himself into a chair, saying, I spend half my life in a dark room, singing. The father who untangles his child’s bobber from the weeds where she has cast it yet again, and the father who stands  his child on his feet to dance her around the room.

Blessings on the father who wore blue coveralls for the barn and washed up in Lava soap. On the father who grew old and forgot where he left the car. On the father who let his child twirl on the stool at the diner, who pulled her up the hill on the toboggan, who taught her how to make scrambled eggs. Blessings on the father who cried on the plane home from visiting his first grandchild and told his wife I wish I could do it all over. I wish I could do a better job.

Dressing My Father-in-Law for Burial, by Benjamin Cutler

I would have tied the tie differently:
full Windsor, centered and snug
against the white, pressed collar.

But his oldest son wanted the job—
and who could deny him this right?

So I watched—half Windsor,
knot too tight, loop overly loose
around the unbuttoned neck

as though the man were ready
for his after-work commute.

See him now, this grieving son—
hands atremble and earnest—tying 
Dad’s final tie: inexpertly, imperfectly.

But isn’t this how any of us love?—
the only way we know how.

Click here for more information about poet Benjamin Cutler. Today’s poem can be found in his brand-new collection, Wild Silence.

alisonmcghee.com
My podcast: Words by Winter

Poem of the Week, by Chen Chen

Posted on by alisonmcghee

This summer, July 17-19, I’m offering a mini-session of our popular Write Together sessions, in which we gather on Zoom for an hour in the morning and an hour in the evening and write quietly together from a guided prompt. Cost: $100. Please click here for all the details. I’d love to see you in the Zoom room.

At some point in their early teens, my daughters and I began playing a game I thought of as the Sure game, in which the answer to every question was Sure. Can we go on a road trip this summer? Sure. Can we have ice cream every day? Sure. Can we drive a car that flies? Sure. Can I fly the car? Sure. Can we float around the sky as long as we want? Sure.

The Sure game was the most soothing game in the world. It had a calming effect on all of us. Sure was the answer to everything, and nothing was hard and everything was easy.

i love you to the moon &
– by Chen Chen

not back, let’s not come back, let’s go by the speed of 
queer zest & stay up 
there & get ourselves a little 
moon cottage (so pretty), then start a moon garden 

with lots of moon veggies (so healthy), i mean 
i was already moonlighting 
as an online moonologist 
most weekends, so this is the immensely 

logical next step, are you 
packing your bags yet, don’t forget your 
sailor moon jean jacket, let’s wear 
our sailor moon jean jackets while twirling in that lighter, 

queerer moon gravity, let’s love each other 
(so good) on the moon, let’s love 
the moon        
on the moon

Click here for more information about Chen Chen. This poem was first published in Poem-a-Day in May, 2021, by the Academy of American Poets.

alisonmcghee.com
My podcast: Words by Winter

Poem of the Week, by Catherine Pierce

Posted on by alisonmcghee

This summer, July 17-19, I’m offering a mini-session of our popular Write Together sessions, in which we gather on Zoom for an hour in the morning and an hour in the evening and write quietly together from a guided prompt. $100, with one half-price no-questions-asked scholarship remaining. Please click here for all the details. I’d love to see you in the Zoom room.

A few days ago my friend Julie and I spent half an hour in the anechoic chamber at Orfield Labs, which is the official “quietest place on earth.” It was entirely dark and entirely silent but for the sounds of our breathing and my (always gurgly) stomach.

Minutes went by. My wild, tumbling mind began to still. A feeling of peace replaced thought. Usually I think of my arms and legs and head and chest as separate, but there in the chamber my body felt whole, and I was so grateful to it. When the guide opened the door and turned the lights on and asked how we felt, all I could think was I want to live here.

Abecedarian for the Power Outage, by Catherine Pierce
Absolute, the sudden silence—the fan stops
buzzing, the refrigerator hushes. No,
child, the night-light can’t turn on. The nervous
dog curls herself like a comma against any soft thing.
Everything non-house—crickets, wind rustle,
full white moon—is amplified. Everything else: vanished.
Goodbye, breaking and broken news; farewell, accomplishing. Dear
husband, shall we fool around? Dear moon, you reckless marvel.
In this floating black sphere, there are no edges,
just transformations. The microwave looks
kindly in the candle’s amber
light. The curtains are full of possibilities.
Miraculous, this gift: how
nothing can reach you here. Not what you haven’t done, not tomorrow’s
OB-GYN appointment, not all the wildfires and floods and hurricanes
piling up like megaphoned
questions you can’t answer. The night
roils around you, only it’s not the night, it’s
something bigger, something that holds you, something
that tells you, gently but firmly, this can’t last,
under no circumstances will this last.
Vellum moon, solicitous microwave—nothing
will stay. You’ve drawn
Xs through your obligations,
you’re pleading for more time, but the power blares back,
zealous in its quest to return what you dropped. Here: Every stone. Every needle.

Click here for more information about poet Catherine Pierce. This poem first appeared in the The Southern Review. 

alisonmcghee.com
My podcast: Words by Winter

Poem of the Week, by Brittany Rogers

Posted on by alisonmcghee

This summer, July 17-19, I’m offering a mini-session of our popular Write Together sessions, in which we gather on Zoom for an hour in the morning and an hour in the evening and write quietly together from a guided prompt. Cost: $100, with one half-price no questions asked scholarship remaining. Please click here for all the details. I’d love to see you in the Zoom room.

Years ago, changes to zoning laws in my beloved Minneapolis neighborhood began a shift from small, cool, local businesses and artisans to new luxury apartments and big box retail. Then came the pandemic, the murder of George Floyd, and some hard reckonings. Currently there are lots of vacant storefronts, petty and not-petty crime, and ongoing road construction that messes things up even more. But! The big, vacant CB2 store is being turned into a roller skating rink! Disco roller skating, birthday parties, karaoke skating, toddler skating. The day I found out this great news is the same day I read this fabulous poem.

Throwback Night, Midway Skating Rink, by Brittany Rogers

I ignore the kids’ slinky arms. The dishes. They daddy. Tonight
I rush to the rink with my best friend, her fingers locked into mine.
The sun dipped already, but we sweating, edges ribboned under
summer’s breath. I forget to take pictures, but trust. We fine.
Out after dark, awestruck at our own grown. Downtown
ain’t looked like ours since they landed on Woodward and mined,
hollowed the center to erect a highrise. Joke’s on them.
Everybody here Black and in love and my,
don’t we know how to reclaim what’s ours. We on beat with it.
Look how our thighs obey: backwards, glide, turn, slow whine.
The DJ cuts to Cupid Shuffle, and even on skates, we hustle. Our necks,
tilted bottles, laughter splashing and messy. Oh, how I mined
for this belonging, scythe swinging, searching for my name. So busy
hiding from selfish, I had dropped damn near everything that was mine.

Click here for more information about Brittany Rogers. This poem was first published in Prairie Schooner. 

alisonmcghee.com
My ​poetry podcast: Words by Winter 

Poem of the Week, by Danez Smith

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The man in the white shirt, black pants, and briefcase, the one who stepped in front of the tank in Tiananmen Square and just stood there. The girl in the long dress who slid a flower into the barrel of the gun the officer had trained on her. The woman who ended up becoming a second mother to the boy who murdered her own son. In the face of justifiable horror at Israeli and Palestinian deaths and unjustifiable antisemitism, these are the people I’m thinking about these days.

Little Prayer, by Danez Smith

let ruin end here

let him find honey
where there was once a slaughter

let him enter the lion’s cage
& find a field of lilacs

let this be the healing
& if not    let it be

For more information about the wondrous Danez Smith, please check out their website. Note that a version of this post first appeared in 2017.

alisonmcghee.com

Words by Winter: my poetry podcast

Poem of the Week, by Leo Dangel

Posted on by alisonmcghee

This summer I’m offering a mini-session of our popular Write Together sessions, July 17-19, in which we gather on Zoom for an hour in the morning and an hour in the evening and write quietly together from a guided prompt. $100, with two half-price scholarships available, no questions asked. Please click here for all the details. I’d love to see you in the Zoom room.

Some friends and I were talking last week about certain memories that sustain us, that we keep somewhere way down in our hearts and don’t talk about with anyone, ever, but that we remember when we need strength, when we need to be reminded of who we are way down deep. A certain person, maybe, or a certain conversation, or a certain evening. These memories are a kind of invisible, silent fuel.

His Elderly Father as a Young Man, by Leo Dangel

This happened before I met your mother:
I took Jennie Johanson to a summer dance,
and she sent me a letter, a love letter,
I guess, even if the word love wasn’t in it.
She wrote that she had a good time
and didn’t want the night to end.
At home, she lay down on her bed
but stayed awake, listening to the songs
of morning birds outside her window.
I read that letter a hundred times
and kept it in a cigar box
with useless things I had saved:
a pocket knife with an imitation pearl handle
and a broken blade,
a harmonica I never learned to play,
one cuff link, an empty rifle shell.

When your mother and I got married,
I threw the letter away –
if I had kept it, she might wonder.
But I wanted to keep it
and even thought about hiding places,
maybe in the barn or the tool shed,
but what if it were ever found?
I knew of no way to explain why
I would keep such a letter, much less
why I would take the trouble to hide it.

Please click here for more details about poet Leo Dangel.

alisonmcghee.com
My podcast: Words by Winter

Poem of the Week, by Thomas Fenton

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Click here to read a thoughtful Publisher Weekly’s interview with me about my new novel, Telephone of the Tree. 

Today I sat in my favorite bakery working on a new book. This is a bakery I go to once or twice a week, where most of the staff are young and beautiful the way young people are always beautiful. It was late afternoon, a slow time of day, and behind the counter two of them were talking. Their voices rose and receded, paused and then tumbled along, full of laughter, then murmurs, then laughter again, and I thought of this poem. Maybe they’ve been friends for a long time. Maybe something is changing. Maybe they left the bakery and went to their separate homes and are thinking about each other now and smiling.

Serious, by James Fenton

Awake, alert,
suddenly serious in love,
you’re a surprise.
I’ve known you long enough —
now I can hardly meet your eyes.

It’s not that I’m
embarrassed or ashamed.
You’ve changed the rules

the way I’d hoped they’d change before I thought: hopes are for fools.

Let me walk with you.
I’ve got the newspapers to fetch.
I think you know
I think you have the edge
but I feel cheerful even so.

That’s why I laughed.
That’s why I went and kicked that stone.
I’m serious!
That’s why I cartwheeled home.
This should mean something. Yes, it does.

Click here for more information about James Fenton. Today’s poem, “Serious,” is from his collection Yellow Tulips, published in 2012 by Faber and Faber. 
alisonmcghee.com
My podcast: Words by Winter