Alison McGhee’s Poem of the Week

Poem of the Week, by Michael Pearce

Posted on by alisonmcghee

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

Yesterday a friend told me that when his family tracks mud inside he goes silent and forces himself to be calm while he scrubs it away. He doesn’t want his children to go through what he did. As he spoke I remembered yelling at my little kids and hating myself for it.

And I remembered a year ago, when a young father and his little son meandered by my house. The boy desperately wanted a toy on the lawn across the street. He went into full meltdown, screaming and thrashing, but his father knelt down and spoke softly.

You really want the truck, don’t you. Do you want to talk about it?

Yes. Yes. Yes.

His father picked him up and held him while they talked. By the end of the block, he was calm. When I read this beautiful poem I thought about my friend’s determination not to repeat his father’s patterns. I pictured that young dad and how he soothed his son. It gives me hope for the future.

My Father Got Beat, by Michael Pearce

My father got beat
but he never beat me.

His skinny frame would tighten up,
he’d start to shake with a seething rage
at my errors, my arrogance,
he’d clench his bony fingers and say
“I’ll sock ya” but he never did.

My father’s father drank like a drunk.
He hit my dad,
called him a sissy,
infected him with T.B.,
threatened him with a knife,
and sometimes just disappeared
for a week or longer.
My dad drank at night,
drank beer and worked.
A quiet man, he put in long hours
and never talked about what hurt.

He told me that when he’d worked
Emergency at County General
he’d seen what beatings do to kids
and then he knew he’d never beat his.
He didn’t say much about himself
but he told me that.

You’ll hear guys say
they’d take a bullet for their kid.
You’ll hear guys say a lot of stuff.
My dad stepped between a bullet and me,
stopped that mayhem
from ripping through his chest and
into the hearts of the ones he loved,
did it at a cost to his angry soul,
did it for me and my sister and brother
and for what is decent.

One time I got up the nerve
to tell him I loved him.
All he could say was thank you.

MICHAEL PEARCE’s first collection of poems, Santa Lucia by Starlight, is forthcoming.

alisonmcghee.com
Words by Winter: my new podcast

Poem of the Week, by Chen Chen

Posted on by alisonmcghee

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

This gorgeous poem goes out to all the gay men –my love and thanks for the boundless comfort and acceptance and laughter and love you have given me my entire adult life–and gay women and gay children and teens I’ve loved in my life, and lo, there are so many.

To my family and everyone in it, gay and straight and trans and bi and anything else that might come along. To all the beautiful men in drag I admired in the women’s room at Man Ray back in the day. To all of you we lost to the plague.

To saying no to people who tell you you’re a no. To everyone who stands up for others, known or not. Most of all, to the absolute joy of being exactly who you are in the midst of people who love you for exactly that.

Summer, by Chen Chen

You are the ice cream sandwich connoisseur of your generation.

Blessed are your floral shorteralls, your deeply pink fanny pack with travel-size lint roller just in case.

Level of splendiferous in your outfit: 200.

Types of invisible pain stemming from adolescent disasters in classrooms, locker rooms, & quite often Toyota Camrys: at least 10,000.

You are not a jigglypuff, not yet a wigglytuff.

Reporters & fathers call your generation “the worst.”

Which really means “queer kids who could go online & learn that queer doesn’t have to mean disaster.”

Or dead.

Instead, queer means, splendiferously, you.

& you means someone who knows that common flavors for ice cream sandwiches in Singapore include red bean, yam, & honeydew.

Your powers are great, are growing.

One day you will create an online personality quiz that also freshens the breath.

The next day you will tell your father, You were wrong to say that I had to change.

To make me promise I would. To make me promise.

& promise.

For more information on Chen Chen, please check out their website.

alisonmcghee.com

Poem of the Week, by Jim Moore

Posted on by alisonmcghee

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

The other day I passed a tall chemo-bald man in a fur hat despite the warm day. They cut the bad parts out and now I’m good to go, he told the UPS driver. I smiled at him and he waved, full of cheer.

The broken world is a phrase I see everywhere these days. Yeah, it’s broken, and yeah, wild worry about the future keeps me from sleep. But haven’t all our hearts been broken, over and over, and don’t most of us just want to keep going? Want to haul ourselves up from a fall, from surgery, from depression, from everything that gets thrown at us, so that we can keep on living? There’s something so beautiful about that.

Whatever Else, by Jim Moore

Whatever else, the little smile on the face of the woman
listening to a music the rest of us can’t hear and a sky at dawn
with a moon all its own. Whatever else, the construction crane
high above us waiting to be told how to do our bidding,
we who bid and bid and bid. Whatever else, the way cook #1
looks with such longing at cook #2. Let’s not be too sad
about how sad we are. I know about the disappearance
of the river dolphins, the sea turtles with tumors.
I know about the way the dead
don’t return no matter how long they take to die
in the back of the police car. I know about the thousand ways our world
betrays itself. Whatever else, my friend, spreading wide his arms,
looks out at the river and says,
“After all, what choice did I have?” After all,
I saw the man walking who’d had the stroke, saw the woman
whose body won’t stop shaking. I saw the frog in the tall grass,
boldly telling us who truly matters. I saw the world
proclaim itself an unlit vesper candle while a crow
flew into the tip of it, sleek black match, burning.

For more information about Jim Moore, please check out his website

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Poem of the Week, by Langston Hughes

Posted on by alisonmcghee

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

My family is multiracial so these latest murders, of eight Asian Americans in Atlanta by yet another white guy with a Hitler haircut, feel more personal to me, more terrifying, right? Wrong. The idea that it’s on Asian Americans and their families to speak out against hatred is as exhausting as being the lone woman in a roomful of men trying to explain to them what sexism is. It is not my responsibility or my family’s responsibility to take a stand against these hate crimes, it’s everyone’s responsibility.

You know that phrase you still see here and there, If you see something, say something? Flip it around and use it for good. Fellow white people, I ask you to practice putting it to use in your own life. When you hear someone (including someone you love) make a “joke” or a remark with racist overtones, practice saying “Oh, I’m not comfortable with that.”

Do it in a way that works for you and your personality. I usually smile-grimace and squinch up my shoulders and say “oh yikes, no no no.” In my experience, this is surprisingly effective. It works for anti-gay and anti-women “jokes” too. Check out this perfect tiny tutorial by the wonderful Linda Sue Park for more tips. Remember that baby steps are still steps.


Freedom, by Langston Hughes

Freedom will not come
today, this year
            nor ever
through compromise and fear.

I have as much right
as the other fellow has
            to stand
on my two feet
and own the land.

I tire so of hearing people say,
let things take their course.
Tomorrow is another day.
I do not need my freedom when I’m dead.
I cannot live on tomorrow’s bread.
            Freedom
            is a strong seed
            planted
            in a great need.
            I live here, too.
            I want my freedom
            just as you.  

For more information on Langston Hughes, please click here.

alisonmcghee.com
Words by Winter: my new podcast

Poem of the Week, by Joyce Sutphen

Posted on by alisonmcghee

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

“Paco, my one real goal in life is for you to be happy.” Actual words that came out of my mouth yesterday. There’s no come on, hurry up about walks with this boy. He gets to choose where he wants to go and how long he wants to spend sniffing that clump of grass. He gets to inspect a dead worm all he wants, and if he wants to roll in it, okay, fine (kind of).

We wander and inspect and I try to see the world through his nose and ears and eyes. His love of the world and his fascination with the garbage cans in the same alley we walk down day after day makes me think of this beautiful poem, by a poet who somehow, always, manages to find words to keep the soul alive.

What to Do, by Joyce Sutphen


Wake up early, before the lights come on
in the houses on a street that was once
a farmer’s field at the edge of a marsh.

Wander from room to room, hoping to find
words that could be enough to keep the soul
alive, words that might be useful or kind

in a world that is more wasteful and cruel
every day. Remind us that we are
like grass that fades, fleeting clouds in the sky,

and then give us just one of those moments
when we were paying attention, when we gave
up everything to see the world in

a grain of sand or to behold
a rainbow in the sky, the heart
leaping up.

For more information about Joyce Sutphen, please click here.
alisonmcghee.com

Poem of the Week, by Brian Trimboli

Posted on by alisonmcghee

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

One of my dearest friends is brilliant, wild and fearless in body and mind. Whatever she does, she does with all her heart. If something entrances her she will follow it as far as she can: flamenco dancing, acupuncture, poetry, figure skating, music, rowing, the list is endless.

She doesn’t live by the rules most of us live by. I could fill the walls of my house with photos of her and those walls would come alive with her energy.

When I picture her in my mind she’s always laughing, bright eyes full of fun, but I have seen her in despair and exhaustion and pain. I don’t know exactly why this gorgeous poem, so full of pain and longing, brings her to mind, but it does. My friend was young once too. She’s never stopped dreamimg.

Things My Son Should Know After I’ve Died, by Brian Trimboli

I was young once. I dug holes
near a canal and almost drowned.
I filled notebooks with words
as carefully as a hunter loads his shotgun.
I had a father also, and I came second to an addiction.
I spent a summer swallowing seeds
and nothing ever grew in my stomach.
Every woman I kissed,
I kissed as if I loved her.
My left and right hands were rival.
After I hit puberty, I was kicked out of my parents’ house
at least twice a year. No matter when you receive this
there was music playing now.
Your grandfather isn’t
my father. I chose to do something with my life
that I knew I could fail at.
I spent my whole life walking
and hid such colorful wings.

For more information about Brian Trimboli, please click here.
alisonmcghee.com

Poem of the Week, by Joe Mills

Posted on by alisonmcghee

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

As a lone wolf when it comes to work and a non-team sports person, I don’t really know what being part of a team that wants to beat another team feels like. I think of myself as my own competitor: write better, do better, be better. When my kids played sports I used to sit on the bleachers and absentmindedly cheer if I saw a good goal, which doesn’t go over well if the other team made it.

Talking about competition is complicated, because if I claim I’m not competitive, others will often laugh and say “yes, you are.” So maybe I don’t really understand it. Maybe I don’t want to. Why do we agree to live in a system that emphasizes winning over others instead of mutual aid? Does the world have to be this way or do we make it this way? Isn’t everyone good at something others aren’t?

A couple of years ago on a family vacation I watched my children play a game called Pandemic, where all the players work together to beat a virus before it wipes them out. When I read this poem I thought of that game and its beautiful, imaginary, unfamiliar world.

Turning, by Joseph Mills
 

My friend’s kid runs the sideline, gets a pass,
turns, and scores with a kick to the near post.

It’s how the play should go, but at this age
rarely does. My son sprints to him, arms up.

They high five and celebrate a moment,
then turn to jog back to their positions.

Last year, they would have hopped around madly,
twirled, fallen backwards, and rolled in the grass.

This season, they are serious. No more
skipping. No more acting sweetly goofy.

Now, they turn towards one another rather
than towards us. No more checking that we’ve seen.

But we have. We know the score, and what’s lost
as they try to turn themselves into men.

For more information on Joe Mills, please check out his website.

alisonmcghee.com

Poem of the Week, by Rebecca Elson

Posted on by alisonmcghee

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

When I was pregnant I used to look at people passing by on the sidewalk, sitting in restaurants, laughing and talking and arguing, and think Every single one of them came out of a woman. This fact reassured me, because the thought of giving birth was terrifying. How could this giant thing in my belly possibly emerge without breaking me apart?

In the same way, it reassures me to look around at everyone –the old man walking his old pug, the child darting down the trail with her stuffed monkey, the woman smiling at me with her eyes above her Gromit mask early this morning–and think, it will happen to all of them, too. My faith is a searching one without definitive answers, but it comforts me to know others wonder the same big questions. Makes me feel like I’m part of a long line, something so much bigger than myself. I picture the poet-astronomer Rebecca Elson, who died young, lying under the stars and feeding herself with their light.

Antidotes to Fear of Death, by Rebecca Elson

Sometimes as an antidote
to fear of death,
I eat the stars.

Those nights, lying on my back,
I suck them from the quenching dark
til they are all, all inside me,
pepper hot and sharp.

Sometimes, instead, I stir myself
into a universe still young,
still warm as blood:

No outer space, just space,
the light of all the not yet stars
drifting like a bright mist,
and all of us, and everything
already there
but unconstrained by form.

And sometime it’s enough
to lie down here on earth
beside our long ancestral bones:

to walk across the cobble fields
of our discarded skulls,
each like a treasure, like a chrysalis,
thinking: whatever left these husks
flew off on bright wings.

For more information on Rebecca Elson, please read her fascinating obituary.
alisonmcghee.com
Words by Winter: my new podcast

Poem of the Week, by Stephanie Niu

Posted on by alisonmcghee

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

My dad once told me that his school music teacher told him not to sing. Mouth the words, pretend to sing, but don’t. Every time I think about this, it hurts. Last February I was visiting my parents when they called my brother to sing him Happy Birthday. I secretly took a video of my big dad, phone clutched to his mostly-deaf ear, leaning forward in the lamplight and straining out the words.

How many songs are locked up inside each of us? When I read this beautiful poem below I wished I could go back in time and tell that little boy to sing as loud as he wanted.

 

A Lao Jia Song Is a Song of Home, by Stephanie Niu

There were two times I heard my father sing.
Once from behind the camera, panning to my brother’s
birthday cake, his happy birthday a key off,
so bad it is valiant, my brother blushing before the table.

The second was at a feast—a mountain village
south of Kunming where, my father pointed out,
people readied for winter like animals,
mixing butter into their tea.

There was something there, his eyes watching
the long-haired buffalo graze the cold hills
as our little bus wound up and up. His favorite American books
were the Little House series, with their descriptions

of simple tasks, how they churned butter from cream.
At the dinner, roast lamb, dark pickled flowers,
a strong tea, and before long his song:
the haunting rise of an attempt at melody,

his voice breaking before it can carry.
Somehow they recognize it, the mountain family,
and they lean over and whisper “This is a lao jia song,”
because we have never heard it

in all these years, we are sitting with strangers
trying to imagine what he is mourning.

This poem was first published in Southeast Review. For more information about Stephanie Niu, please check out her website.
alisonmcghee.com
Words by Winter: my new podcast

Poem of the Week, by Stephen Cushman

Posted on by alisonmcghee

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

Paco! Our new little guy, elegant, lively and full of curiosity and affection. An athlete too — no matter how fast we run the leash never slackens, and every dash through the living room involves catlike leaps on and off the couch. Everything interests him, but when I’m working, he turns into a quiet little comma and burrows close to me and the laptop. He’s supposedly about a year old but seems younger to me, a funny little puppy who rarely barks and reminds me of the dog in the poem below, a poem I loved years ago at first reading, just like we loved Paco at first sight.

Smaller Dog, by Stephen Cushman

We can’t all be
brightest in the sky

or the biggest guy
in outer space.

But I don’t envy
anybody’s place

or need to feel
I have no worth

because I’m far
from Orion’s heel.

My yellow-white
double star

delivers its light
to nearby Earth

in eleven years flat,
which is pretty fast,

but my other boast
is Helen: she

loved me most
of all her hounds,

and you can’t beat that.
So I, unsurpassed

in her esteem,
made no sounds

when secretly
they left for Troy.

He was the dream
igniting the dark

scarcity of joy.
How could I bark?



For more information about Stephen Cushman, please check out his website.
alisonmcghee.com