Alison McGhee’s Poem of the Week

Poem of the Week, by Ada Limon

Posted on by alisonmcghee

The other day I recaulked my bathtub. Razored out the repulsive old caulk, chipped and dug, alcoholed and bleached. Cut the tip off the tube of new caulk but the caulk gun didn’t work and I couldn’t squeeze it out of the tube. So I razored open the tube, spooned the caulk into a little plastic bag, snipped a corner of the bag and drew a bead around the tub as if I was frosting a cake. This worked, kind of anyway, and the tub looks pretty good.

Later that afternoon I read this poem by the inimitable Ada Limon and pictured that mountain lion in envy and admiration. Her six-foot fence, my baggie of caulk. . .

The Mountain Lion, by Ada Limon

I watched the video clip over and over,
night vision cameras flickering her eyes
an unholy green, the way she looked
the six-foot fence up and down
like it was nothing but a speed bump
then cleared the man-made border
in one impressive leap. A glance
over the shoulder, an annoyance,
as As if you could keep me out, or
keep me in. I don’t know what it
was that made me press replay and
replay. Not fear, though I’d be
terrified if I was face to face with
her, or heard her prowling in the night.
It was just that I don’t think I’ve
ever made anything look so easy.  Never
looked behind me and grinned or
grimaced because nothing could stop
me. I like the idea of it though, felt
like a dream you could will into being:
See a fence? Jump it.

For more information about Ada Limon, check out her website.

alisonmcghee.com

Words by Winter: my podcast

Poem of the Week, by James Laughlin

Posted on by alisonmcghee

Most of the time you don’t know, in the moment itself, the moments that will return to you for the rest of your life. The look on your daughter’s face that day, the way his hand felt when he held yours on the train. You don’t know when a moment will be the last time you see her, the last time you hear his voice.

But sometimes, even as a moment is happening, you know that it will be with you forever. That you will always be held inside its laughter, its love, its pure happiness and comfort, and that you will wish you were still in that moment. Even as you experience it, you are letting it go and you are wishing it back. Those are the moments that shiver your heart.

O Best of All Nights, Return and Return Again, by James Laughlin

How she let her long hair down over her shoulders, making a
love cave around her face. Return and return again.
How when the lamplight was lowered she pressed against
him, twining her fingers in his. Return and return again.
How their legs swam together like dolphins and their toes
played like little tunnies. Return and return again.
How she sat beside him cross-legged, telling him stories of
her childhood. Return and return again.
How she closed her eyes when his were open, how they
breathed together, breathing each other. Return and return again.
How they fell into slumber, their bodies curled together like
two spoons. Return and return again.
How they went together to Otherwhere, the fairest land they
had ever seen. Return and return again.
O best of all nights, return and return again.


Click here for more information about James Laughlin.

alisonmcghee.com

Words by Winter: my podcast

Poem of the Week, by Joshua Poteat

Posted on by alisonmcghee

This poem awes me every time I read it. It floats me up above the earth and outside of time and noise and sensation while thousands of years of humans and our endless struggles against ourselves and the planet play themselves out below. We cut down our forests to make ships on the seas, the seas rise against us, the whole tide of history washes in and over and out.

Sixteen words! The wild power of poetry. And now I’m laughing, because look how much longer this little backstory is than the poem itself.


Tintype, by Joshua Poteat

Whole forests went to sea
                        disguised as ships.

         Whole seas went to forest
                        disguised as time.

For more information on Joshua Poteat, please click here.


alisonmcghee.com

Words by Winter: my podcast

(early) Poem of the Week, by Grant Clauser

Posted on by alisonmcghee

It was surprisingly easy to get, someone who never should have been able to buy a gun once mused to me, a sentence that still turns my body to ice.

Last week at a Moth live show I sat in the front row the way I always do and watched warily as one of the storytellers brought a prop concealed in a plastic bag on stage. I turned to the stranger next to me and said I hope that’s not a gun in there, and then looked around to plot my exit routes. Should I crouch and scuttle or run in a zig zag?

We cover sockets with plastic caps, put car seats in cars, buckle our seatbelts, put locks on cabinets, stop signs at corners, add a rotten egg stink to odorless gas. We keep ourselves safer in common sense ways. We can do the same with guns. Mass violence is inevitable only if we shrug and say it is. Mass violence is acceptable only if we shrug and say it is. We are helpless only if we give up. So don’t give up. Take action. Here is one of my favorite organizations.

J35, by Grant Clauser
       
For two weeks
a killer whale
pushed its dead calf
around the ocean,
diving to the cold darkness
each time the desiccating baby
sank to the bottom.
She cradled her offspring
in her dangerous mouth,
raised the stillborn
back to the surface
to make sure its collapsed blowhole
could reach the air.

What if mythology
got it wrong about Sisyphus?
The rock not punishment
from the gods, but the weight
of regret falling
back on him,
grief rolling over
him each night
as he tried to quiet
the nightmares,
then woke again
to push it as far
up the mountain
as his shoulders could take.

Finally the whale-watchers
said it was over,
the body too decomposed
and eaten by fish
for the mother to keep
carrying, and the ocean
eventually separated them
by wave and storm,
the orca rejoined its pod
to follow the salmon,
something to focus on
while moving forward

Click here for more information about Grant Clauser.

alisonmcghee.com

Words by Winter: my podcast

Poem of the Week, by Eileen Sheehan

Posted on by alisonmcghee

This quote is from my novel All Rivers Flow to the Sea. It pops up here and there around the world, on Instagram pages and Pinterest boards, translated into various languages. It’s taken on a life of its own, one I couldn’t have predicted. But I do remember writing these words, how the sentences spun themselves out as if they were trying to tell me something important. This poem feels the same way.

Holding the Note, by Eileen Sheehan

Singing class began with me being asked
to sing the scale. The class would laugh.

I never laughed because I already knew
I could not hold a tune, except inside my head.

For almost half a term I dreaded
Thursday mornings, until I told my mother

how I was used as an anti-tuning fork
to demonstrate how not to climb the scale.

My mother simplified it all with her advice,
Girl, on Thursday next, don’t sing.

So, next class I met her gaze dead on,
sealed my mouth tight shut. No matter

how many times she ordered me,
I allowed not one sound escape my throat.

Silence spread across the room
like a held note. I knew I had her then

for silence was my realm, not hers.
She rammed the tuning fork against

the wooden desk and instructed the
best singer in the room to lead

the group. My mother never asked a thing
when I got home but she sang, around the house,

a song that had my name in it:
and the girl inside the song could sing.

I carry every word and turn to The Spinning
Wheel: inside my head I sing it still.

For more information about Eileen Sheehan, please click here.

alisonmcghee.com

Words by Winter: my podcast

Poem of the Week, by Muriel Rukeyser

Posted on by alisonmcghee

Yesterday I opened a can of tomatoes, squished them through my fingers to break them up, added them to the soup, and suddenly pictured the long line of people who made this possible. The invisible humans who planted the seeds, watched over the growing plants, harvested the tomatoes, hauled them to the processing plant, trucked them to the store, stocked the shelf I plucked them from. The people who made the can, cast the iron pot, strung together the gas lines that feed my stove.

I happily eat alone at restaurants and bars, go to movies alone, travel thousands of miles and across oceans alone, work alone, spend much of my time alone. But still, my life is entirely dependent on the decency of people I don’t know and will never know. Every time I read this poem I think about that.

Islands, Muriel Rukeyser

O for God’s sake
they are connected
underneath

They look at each other
across the glittering sea
some keep a low profile

Some are cliffs
The bathers think
islands are separate like them

For more information about Muriel Rukeyser, please click here.
alisonmcghee.com

Words by Winter: my podcast

Poem of the Week, by Sara Teasdale

Posted on by alisonmcghee

The other night I dreamed I saw a girl in a treehouse, reading. A girl in a hay fort, reading. A girl in her room, reading about worlds she didn’t live in, worlds that weren’t hers but maybe someday could be.

All the girls were me. All were alone, none were lonely. None needed someone else to tell her what she could or couldn’t do with her life. Do unto others as you would not have them do unto you, Supreme Court injustices. I will disregard you. You’re afraid of that girl with a book because you should be.

The Crystal Gazer, by Sara Teasdale

I shall gather myself into myself again,
   I shall take my scattered selves and make them one,
Fusing them into a polished crystal ball
   Where I can see the moon and the flashing sun.

I shall sit like a sibyl, hour after hour intent,
   Watching the future come and the present go,
And the little shifting pictures of people rushing
   In restless self-importance to and fro.

For more information about Sara Teasdale, please click here.
alisonmcghee.com

Words by Winter: my podcast

Poem of the Week, by Jim Moore

Posted on by alisonmcghee

When someone signs up for a workshop they often say something like Alison, I need you to be hard on me. Don’t sugarcoat anything. I just tilt my head and smile.

When I was young I sat through lots of tense workshops in which a few lukewarm-nice things were said and then the “real” critique started, about everything wrong with the piece. Too many times I watched students turn bright red, fight back tears.

“I do best when a teacher is tough on me.” Do you, though? What about when someone focuses on what’s beautiful, what is yours and yours alone? Watch a wild, silent power emerge. The teacher in this poem speaks to the artist in me.

A Young Man, a Stranger, Smiled at Me, by Jim Moore

           Maybe I reminded him of his grandfather
or his favorite teacher in grade school,
           the one who lied to him
about his painting of the goldfish bowl,
           who looked hard at it and said, Beautiful.

For more information about Jim Moore, please visit his website.

alisonmcghee.com

Words by Winter: my podcast

Poem of the Week, by Anne Carson

Posted on by alisonmcghee

I once had a hideous job traveling to various colleges for short stints teaching Speed Reading (useless), Study Skills (mostly useless), and Mnemonics (useless unless memorizing long random numbers is your thing). The job paid almost nothing so I camped in state parks and scooped up extra packages of crackers, butter, mayonnaise, and marmalade at fast-food restaurants for supplemental calories.

But the students were great, because students are always great, and sometimes they were sad to say goodbye. Our paths will cross again in an airport someday, I used to tell them, and I believed it. I still believe it, even though it’s never happened. Someday I will meet them again: lost friends, lost students, lost loves. We’ll each be late for our flights, with time for only a few words, so we’ll have to make them count: I hope you know how much I loved you.

excerpted from The Glass Essay, by Anne Carson

Perhaps the hardest thing about losing a lover is
to watch the year repeat its days.
It is as if I could dip my hand down

into time and scoop up
blue and green lozenges of April heat
a year ago in another country.

I can feel that other day running underneath this one
like an old videotape—

For more information about Anne Carson, please click here. 

alisonmcghee.com

Words by Winter: my podcast

Poem of the Week, by Ada Limón

Posted on by alisonmcghee

When I was a little kid I loved the book The Prophet, by Kahlil Gibran, to the extent that I memorized my favorite lines: Your children are not your children. They are the sons and daughters of life’s longing for itself. Then I grew up and had children, and then my children grew up, and sometimes it feels so befuddling, like wait, stop, come back, how did this all happen so fast?

This is when I instinctively and silently recite one of my mantras – They’re people in the world before they’re your children, Alison – a line that came to me years ago and which I never fully understood until three days ago, when I read this poem by the wondrous Ada Limón.

What I Didn’t Know Before, by Ada Limón

was how horses simply give birth to other
horses. Not a baby by any means, not
a creature of liminal spaces, but a four-legged
beast hellbent on walking, scrambling after
the mother. A horse gives way to another
horse and then suddenly there are two horses,
just like that. That’s how I loved you. You, 
off the long train from Red Bank carrying
a coffee as big as your arm, a bag with two
computers swinging in it unwieldily at your
side. I remember we broke into laughter
when we saw each other. What was between
us wasn’t a fragile thing to be coddled, cooed
over. It came out fully formed, ready to run.

For more information about Ada Limón, whose poems are beloved to me, please visit her website.

alisonmcghee.com

Words by Winter: my podcast