Alison McGhee’s Poem of the Week

Poem of the Week, by Langston Hughes

Posted on by alisonmcghee

My poems podcast, Words by Winter, can be found here.

Here in my neighborhood, in the wake of another shooting of a Black man, choppers circle nightly, protests happen nightly, and stores and restaurants keep their window plywood boards on standby.

Tension runs high. I scan the streets for cars and trucks with out of state plates driving erratically, zipping the wrong way down my one-way street, the way they did a year ago, when under cover of darkness men searched through our gardens for incendiaries planted earlier.

There’s plenty of racism to go around in Minnesota and there are also nationwide white supremacy groups happy to help the movement. I loved Langston Hughes’s poems as a child and I love them still. Last night I walked past a SWAT car filled with police officers at the end of my block and thought of this poem.

 

I, too, sing America
     – Langston Hughes

I am the darker brother.
They send me to eat in the kitchen
when company comes,
but I laugh,
and eat well,
and grow strong.

Tomorrow,
I’ll be at the table
when company comes.
Nobody’ll dare
say to me,
“Eat in the kitchen,”
then.

Besides, they’ll see how beautiful
I am
and be ashamed–

I, too, am America.


For more information about Langston Hughes, please click here.

alisonmcghee.com

Poem of the Week, by Eileen Myles

Posted on by alisonmcghee

My poems podcast, Words by Winter, can be found here.

The way my dog places his paws on my shoulders and looks into my eyes. That day last week when the rain blew in and the temperature dropped 29 degrees in twenty minutes. How coffee beans smell when they’re ground fresh at dawn. The way the man behind the cheese counter yesterday said Excuse me, I just have to tell you I love your hair and then hugged himself with happiness. These purple Dr. Seussian flowers. This bowl of crisp popcorn. How extravagantly the mint spreads beneath the baby apple tree. How the earth begins to rise beneath the car from the Dakotas westward, like the crest and slope of the planet’s chest. The way the calm baby in the stroller this morning silently turned to keep my gaze all the way down the block. I wish I could give all of this to all of you.

At a Waterfall, Reykjavik, by Eileen Myles

I still feel like
the world
is a piece
of bread

I’m holding
out half
to you.

For more information about Eileen Myles, please click here.

alisonmcghee.com
Words by Winter: my new podcast

Poem of the Week, by Philip Larkin

Posted on by alisonmcghee

My poems podcast, Words by Winter, can be found here.

Hey Driz. Drizzle. Z’Drazzle. Drazzle. Draz. It’s been just over a week since we held hands in your living room and talked and laughed and cried. We both knew it would be our last conversation.

Daisy the dog kept watch from the porch. I don’t know who has her now, but I know it’s someone wonderful, because you would have made sure of that.

Last night I lay awake thinking about Grandpa, that past, ancient dog of yours, the one you cared for with such devotion that you spent hours every night —hours–wandering your backyard with him as he stumbled around the perimeter, looking for something that never appeared.

You had so much more patience than I ever will, Z’drizzle.

To your students, you were that teacher, the teacher they’ll remember their entire lives, the teacher who saw them, who knew them, who understood them in a way no one else did. I may as well have been one of your students.

Remember our greasy breakfasts and love of diners? Remember how you introduced me to Al’s? Remember our mutual adoration of the State Fair?

How about the day you brought a few of your favorite students all the way to Minneapolis to meet me? You taught them to love my first novel. Remember her, you said, pretending I couldn’t hear you. She’s going to be famous. Then you took them all out for pizza in the big city.

Remember that time we sailed around the streets of Elbow Lake in that giant old convertible of yours, when I was the author for the author event you yourself had organized and we were already fifteen minutes late? You were always late. This didn’t seem to bother you or anyone else either. Maybe because everyone loved you so much.

Did it surprise me that the Go Fund Me organized by your students surpassed its $100 goal by over $12,000? It did not. Did it surprise me that you never mentioned a word of it to me? It did not.

Remember when you went surfing for the first time, on that trip to southern California? I never heard you talk like that. Never saw that look in your eyes. You loved surfing in a way that changed you. I remember trying to figure out how you, on a rural teacher’s salary, could somehow afford to go surfing in California more often.

The only novel of mine you didn’t know practically by heart is the last one, the one I dedicated to you, Z’draz, long before we knew you were sick. You never read that one because Dammit, you always make me cry, Alison McGhee, and I have to save my tears until I’m through this and can handle another Alison McGhee book.

Z’driz, you always called me by my full name. In every single conversation we ever had, including the last one, you would at some point pause, shake your head, and say Alison McGhee, with this look in your eyes. As if I was some kind of wonder. Which I’m not, but guess what? You were.

Zdrazil loved my writing, I wept to a friend the other night. He loved me. It was like I couldn’t do anything wrong in his eyes.

Oh my beautiful friend. I will miss you forever.

You told me that last day you were scared to die and I told you I didn’t trust people who weren’t. We laughed about that, a little. Four days later you crossed through that door.

I’m going to write about you, John Zdrazil, I said, when you couldn’t keep your eyes open anymore and I knew it was time to go. And you know I mean it because I’m using your full and proper name.

Ordinarily that would’ve made you laugh, but you just looked me in the eye and nodded slowly. Then your eyes filled.

Write me a poem, you said.

John Zdrazil, that is the one and only request you ever made of me. Write me a poem. I drove the three hours home and wrote you a series of haiku then and there, so I could text them to you before it was too late. We were out of time and we both knew it. We’re all out of time, which is why we should be careful of each other, and kind, the way you always were, John.

The Mower, by Philip Larkin

The mower stalled, twice; kneeling, I found   
a hedgehog jammed up against the blades,   
killed. It had been in the long grass.

I had seen it before, and even fed it, once.   
Now I had mauled its unobtrusive world   
unmendably. Burial was no help:

Next morning I got up and it did not.
The first day after a death, the new absence   
is always the same; we should be careful

of each other, we should be kind   
while there is still time.

For more information about Philip Larkin, please click here.

alisonmcghee.com
Words by Winter: my new podcast

Poem of the Week, by Cathy Ross

Posted on by alisonmcghee

My poems podcast, Words by Winter, can be found here.

Years ago my daughter and I spent a magical week in Istanbul. We visited mosques, ate Turkish candy, drank mint tea, took a boat down the Bosphorus to the mouth of the Black Sea, smoked a hookah on the front porch of a restaurant where we sat for hours watching the passersby. We were mistaken, variously, for Brazilian, French, and Canadian women.

One evening, while my daughter slept, I sat by the window and listened to the calls of the muezzins rising over the city in the call to prayer. The sound filled my heart and I told myself what I always do when something beautiful happens during a trip: You’ll be back, Allie. You’ll hear this again. But I won’t. Every beautiful moment is a miracle, and then it’s gone.

If the Moon Came Out Only Once a Month, by Cathy Ross

If the moon came out only once a month
people would appreciate it more. They’d mark it
in their datebooks, take a walk by moonlight, notice
how their bedroom window framed its silver smile.
And if the moon came out just once a year,
it would be a holiday, with tinsel streamers
tied to lampposts, stores closing early
so no one has to work on lunar eve,
travelers rushing to get home by moon-night,
celebrations with champagne and cheese.
Folks would stay awake ’til dawn
to watch it turn transparent and slowly fade away.
And if the moon came out randomly,
the world would be on wide alert, never knowing
when it might appear, spotters scanning empty skies,
weathermen on TV giving odds—“a 10% chance
of moon tonight”—and when it suddenly began to rise,
everyone would cry “the moon is out,” crowds
would fill the streets, jostling and pointing,
night events would be canceled,
moon-closure signs posted on the doors.
And if the moon rose but once a century,
ascending luminous and lush on a long-awaited night,
all humans on the planet would gather
in huddled, whispering groups
to stare in awe, dazzled by its brilliance,
enchanted by its spell. Years later,
they would tell their children, “Yes, I saw it once.
Maybe you will live to see it too.”
But the moon is always with us,
an old familiar face, like the mantel clock,
so no one pays it much attention.
Tonight
why not go outside and gaze up in wonder,
as if you’d never seen it before,
as if it were a miracle,
as if you had been waiting
all your life.

For more information on Cathy Ross, please check out her website.


alisonmcghee.com

Poem of the Week, by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

Posted on by alisonmcghee

My poems podcast, Words by Winter, can be found here.

Dog person versus cat person versus beer versus wine versus Gen Z versus baby boomers versus millennials versus Gen X versus The Greatest Generation versus red states versus blue states versus New England versus Midwest versus West versus North versus South versus pro versus anti.

Categorization makes me tense. Can’t I love both dogs and cats? (I do.) Can’t I be a novelist and a poet and a picture book writer? (I am.) Why do any of us have to be this and not that? Someone profits by having us believe it’s a good thing to divide, slot, label and categorize, and it’s not us. I love blurred lines and this poem for the same reason.

Where We Are Headed, by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

At first we just say flower. How
thrilling it is to name. Then it’s
aster. Begonia. Chrysanthemum.

We spend our childhood learning
to separate one thing from another.
Daffodil. Edelweiss. Fern. We learn

which have five petals, which have six.
We say, “This is a gladiolus, this hyacinth.”
And we fracture the world into separate

identities. Iris. Jasmine. Lavender.
Divorcing the world into singular bits.
And then, when we know how to tell

one thing from another, perhaps
at last we feel the tug to see not
what makes things different, but

what makes things the same. Perhaps
we feel the pleasure that comes
when we start to blur the lines—

and once again everything
is flower, and by everything,
I mean everything.


For more information on Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer, please check out her website.

alisonmcghee.com

Poem of the Week, by Kirsten Dierking

Posted on by alisonmcghee

My poems podcast, Words by Winter, can be found here.

Last week a writer friend and I hiked through the woods and talked about how in middle age you realize that some things won’t happen. You’ve run out of time to be an Olympic athlete, to have a sixty-year marriage, to sail around the world on a boat you built yourself.

We talked about how mystifying it is to realize that some things you thought you wanted were precluded from the start by circumstances, or by your own personality. Because you were frantically busy trying to earn a living, or raise your children, or hold yourself together. Because in truth you crave solitude, time to make art.

We talked about our books, and how often we feel like failures. Then we ordered more cocktails and ate cake and laughed. I feel so lucky to have friends like him, and to live this odd life of mine, so full of failure and love in equal measure.

Lucky, by Kirsten Dierking


All this time,
the life you were
supposed to live
has been rising around you
like the walls of a house
designed with warm
harmonious lines.

As if you had actually
planned it that way.

As if you had
stacked up bricks
at random,
and built by mistake
a lucky star.


For more information about Kirsten Dierking, please click here.

alisonmcghee.com

Poem of the Week, by Linda Hogan

Posted on by alisonmcghee

My poems podcast, Words by Winter, can be found here.

Someone once asked me to describe a place that would feel perfectly safe. The feeling of being held inside a fallen hollow tree next to a river on a summer day –warm, safe, almost asleep–instantly came to me.

This is the same feeling that comes with my oldest memory, of being born. Traveling in warmth down a kind of river, soft metal touching down and lifting off my head (they used forceps to pull me out). Light at the end. A feeling which couldn’t have been in words but which was entirely clear: Here we go again. A sense of inevitability, and acceptance of whatever would come.

To Be Held, by Linda Hogan

To be held
by the light
was what I wanted,
to be a tree drinking the rain,
no longer parched in this hot land.
To be roots in a tunnel growing
but also to be sheltering the inborn leaves
and the green slide of mineral
down the immense distances
into infinite comfort
and the land here, only clay,
still contains and consumes
the thirsty need
the way a tree always shelters the unborn life
waiting for the healing
after the storm
which has been our life.

For more information about Linda Hogan, please visit her website.

alisonmcghee.com
Words by Winter: my new podcast

Poem of the Week, by Ron Koertge

Posted on by alisonmcghee

My poems podcast, Words by Winter, can be found here.

How to survive the next meeting you don’t want to be in: Focus on the famished, clawed creature that just now slunk into the room and is now crawling over everyone’s feet in turn. Does anyone else notice? They do not!

Where is the creature now? The only way to know is to pay close attention to body language. An upper lip will twitch, a butt will shift on its chair, fingers will suddenly drum.

Meanwhile, the endless droner drones on and on, no one brave enough to interrupt. Only the clawed creature can finally stop the madness. But when? When will sweet release come?

This is how I get through meetings. It’s also why I so love Ron Koertge’s funny, subversive, turn-things-inside-out world-of-imagination poems.

The Search Party, by Ron Koertge
       

It’s hopeless. Maureen and I broke up
again. While the party goes on
without me, I’m sulking in the kitchen

eating all the chips and guacamole
when the host’s daughter comes in.

Nora opens the door to the refrigerator.
There’s a stuffed bear leaning on the cottage
cheese.

She says, “That’s Robert Falcon Scott,
the explorer. He needs medical attention
ASAP.”

She looks at me. “Can I trust you to wait
right here while I go for the huskies?”

Now I cannot leave my post. Not to dance,
not to make a beer run. Not even if someone
comes in to say she likes my new shirt.

Nora returns with two stuffed dogs. The door
to Antarctica opens.

Nora cradles the bear. She tries to feed it
a Cheeto. “Hold on, Robert. Help
is on the way.”

To me, she says, “Harness the dogs.
We have to move fast.”

It’s starting to snow. My hands are freezing
as I untangle the tow lines.


For more information about Ron Koertge, please click here.

alisonmcghee.com
Words by Winter: my new podcast

Poem of the Week, by Grace Schulman

Posted on by alisonmcghee

My poems podcast, Words by Winter, can be found here.

Find the ducks

The pink stucco and stone house across the street is slanty, sprawling, and old, with a few apartments carved out of what at one point must have been a single-family house. I think of it as the Francis of Assisi house – the place exudes an easygoing generosity and a happiness with the earth it’s built on.

Animals think so too. Squirrels, birds, and rabbits abound in the yard. A family of ducks has lived there for years, right here in the middle of the city. The inhabitants of the Francis of Assisi house put out birdbaths and a tiny pool for them. The ducks fly to nearby rooftops, including ours, and perch there to survey the block.

When walking home I sometimes see a car or two waiting patiently for the ducks to cross the street. Neighbors stroll by to watch the ducks. The ducks live happily on our block in the duck world that they and everyone else seem to love. They remind me of this beautiful poem.

Because, by Grace Schulman

Because, in a wounded universe, the tufts
of grass still glisten, the first daffodil
shoots up through ice-melt, and a red-tailed hawk

perches on a cathedral spire; and because
children toss a fire-red ball in the yard
where a schoolhouse façade was scarred by vandals,

and joggers still circle a dry reservoir;
because a rainbow flaunts its painted ribbons
and slips them somewhere underneath the earth;

because in a smoky bar the trombone blares
louder than street sirens, because those
who can no longer speak of pain are singing;

and when on this wide meadow in the park
a full moon still outshines the city lights,
and on returning home, below the North Star,

I see new bricks-and-glass where the Towers fell;
and I remember my lover’s calloused hand
soften in my hand while crab apple blossoms

showered our laps, and a yellow rose
opened with its satellites of orange buds,
because I cannot lose the injured world

without losing the world, I’ll have to praise it.

For more information on Grace Schulman, please click here.

alisonmcghee.com
Words by Winter: my new podcast

Poem of the Week, by Harryette Mullin

Posted on by alisonmcghee

My poems podcast, Words by Winter, can be found here.

Hearing someone use the word “they” when describing a group of people –gay, Black, poor, immigrant, etc.–makes me wary and tired because I know I then have to tilt my head and say When you say ‘they,’ who exactly do you mean?

I hate doing this because I hate confrontation, however subtle. The question alone usually serves its purpose, but not if the response is You know what I’m talking about. Then I lie —Not really– and wait politely for the next response, and on and on until the point’s been made, the way this poem does with such succinct power.

Elliptical, by Harryette Mullen

They just can’t seem to . . . They should try harder to . . . They ought to be more . . . We all wish they weren’t so . . . They never . . . They always . . . Sometimes they . . . Once in a while they . . . However it is obvious that they . . . Their overall tendency has been . . . The consequences of which have been . . . They don’t appear to understand that . . . If only they would make an effort to . . . But we know how difficult it is for them to . . . Many of them remain unaware of . . . Some who should know better simply refuse to . . . Of course, their perspective has been limited by . . . On the other hand, they obviously feel entitled to . . . Certainly we can’t forget that they . . . Nor can it be denied that they . . . We know that this has had an enormous impact on their . . . Nevertheless their behavior strikes us as . . . Our interactions unfortunately have been . . .

For more information about Harryette Mullin, please click here.
alisonmcghee.com
Words by Winter: my new podcast