Alison McGhee’s Poem of the Week | Alison McGhee

Poem of the Week, by Craig Santos Perez

Posted on June 6, 2020 by alisonmcghee

A994E53E-322E-47E7-ACA5-AEEF0E11266E The area around Cup Foods in Minneapolis has become a memorial, and I walked there yesterday from my house, past a smiling man holding up a cardboard sign at 36th and Stevens.

Me: “I’m sorry, I didn’t bring any cash.”
Man: “You brought your good looks, though.”

I laughed and so did he, then we talked for a while and I told him where I was going. “It’s wrong, isn’t it,” he said. “Murdered like that.” Yes. It’s wrong. All the wrongness floods over in waves and the only thing that helps is to channel it into action toward a better world. I am not Pasifika, but this poem feels so familiar nonetheless.

Ars Pasifika, by Craig Santos Perez

when the tide

of silence

rises

say “ocean”

then with the paddle

of your tongue

rearrange

the letters to form

“canoe”

For more information about Craig Santos Perez, please click here.

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Poems of the Week, by Ross Gay

Posted on June 1, 2020 by alisonmcghee

My daughter to me last night, as I weeded the front gardens with empty streets and choppers circling overhead: “Hey Ma. It’s past 8. Curfew.”

Me: “If I see the national guard tearing down the block I’ll just run inside.”

Another conversation I wouldn’t have predicted I’d ever be having, but this is where we are. I’ll be working the rest of my life to undo the racism baked into me, my community, and this country.

Pulled Over in Short Hills, NJ, 8:00 AM, by Ross Gay

It’s the shivering. When rage grows
hot as an army of red ants and forces
the mind to quiet the body, the quakes
emerge, sometimes just the knees,
but, at worst, through the hips, chest, neck
until, like a virus, slipping inside the lungs
and pulse, every ounce of strength tapped
to squeeze words from my taut lips,
his eyes scanning my car’s insides, my eyes,
my license, and as I answer the questions
3, 4, 5 times, my jaw tight as a vice,
his hand massaging the gun butt, I
imagine things I don’t want to
and inside beg this to end
before the shiver catches my
hands, and he sees,
and something happens.

A Small Needful Fact, by Ross Gay

Is that Eric Garner worked
for some time for the Parks and Rec.
Horticultural Department, which means,
perhaps, that with his very large hands,
perhaps, in all likelihood,
he put gently into the earth
some plants which, most likely,
some of them, in all likelihood,
continue to grow, continue
to do what such plants do, like house
and feed small and necessary creatures,
like being pleasant to touch and smell,
like converting sunlight
into food, like making it easier
for us to breathe.

For more information about Ross Gay, please click here.

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Poem of the Week, by Delmore Schwartz

Posted on May 23, 2020 by alisonmcghee

Do you ever semi-wake up and not know where you are, how old you are, who is next to you (or not), what it is you are meant to do, who it is you are meant to be? As I typed that question just now, the words fugue state drifted into my mind. What exactly fugue state means I didn’t know until a second ago, when I looked it up, but it fits the feeling of those half-asleep wakings.

So does this poem. A while ago I woke up with time is the fire in which we burn running through my head. It felt familiar, but why? Had I made it up and then abandoned it somewhere in some unfinished novel? I typed the exact line into a search engine and up floated Delmore Schwartz, calling to me from the previous century, haunting me with his own unanswered questions.

Calmly We Walk Through This April’s Day, by Delmore Schwartz

Calmly we walk through this April’s day,
metropolitan poetry here and there,
in the park sit pauper and rentier,
the screaming children, the motor-car
fugitive about us, running away,
between the worker and the millionaire
number provides all distances,
it is Nineteen Thirty-Seven now,
many great dears are taken away,
what will become of you and me
(this is the school in which we learn …)
besides the photo and the memory?
(… that time is the fire in which we burn.)

(This is the school in which we learn …)
what is the self amid this blaze?
what am I now that I was then
which I shall suffer and act again,
the theodicy I wrote in my high school days
restored all life from infancy,
the children shouting are bright as they run
(this is the school in which they learn …)
ravished entirely in their passing play!
(… that time is the fire in which they burn.)

Avid its rush, that reeling blaze!
Where is my father and Eleanor?
Not where are they now, dead seven years,
but what they were then?
No more? No more?
From Nineteen-Fourteen to the present day,
Bert Spira and Rhoda consume, consume
not where they are now (where are they now?)
but what they were then, both beautiful;

each minute bursts in the burning room,
the great globe reels in the solar fire,
spinning the trivial and unique away.
(How all things flash! How all things flare!)
What am I now that I was then?
May memory restore again and again
the smallest color of the smallest day:
time is the school in which we learn,
time is the fire in which we burn.

For more information about Delmore Schwartz, click here.

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Poem of the Week, by Bob Hicok

Posted on May 16, 2020 by alisonmcghee

Yesterday I had a hitch installed on the back of my car. The U-Haul installation place was off a busy frontage road, its entrance blocked by men who came running up to my car, masks askew, shouting at me in Spanish, a language I (still) don’t speak, holding up fingers —one? two? and pushing each other: Me! Me! No, me!

Finally I understood. This was a U-Haul place full of moving trucks for rent. They were asking did I need help moving, and how many men did I need? I shook my head, tried to smile, tried to explain I was only there for a hitch, tried again to smile. The look in their eyes told me they didn’t understand, told me they were just this side of desperate, told me they’d do anything for work.

Calling Him Back from Layoff, by Bob Hicok

I called a man today. After he said
hello and I said hello came a pause
during which it would have been

confusing to say hello again so I said
how are you doing and guess what, he said
fine and wondered aloud how I was

and it turns out I’m OK. He
was on the couch watching cars
painted with ads for Budweiser follow cars

painted with ads for Tide around an oval
that’s a metaphor for life because
most of us run out of gas and settle

for getting drunk in the stands
and shouting at someone in a t-shirt
we want kraut on our dog. I said

he could have his job back and during
the pause that followed his whiskers
scrubbed the mouthpiece clean

and his breath passed in and out
in the tidal fashion popular
with mammals until he broke through

with the words how soon thank you
ohmyGod which crossed his lips and drove
through the wires on the backs of ions

as one long word as one hard prayer
of relief meant to be heard
by the sky. When he began to cry I tried

with the shape of my silence to say
I understood but each confession
of fear and poverty was more awkward

than what you learn in the shower.
After he hung up I went outside and sat
with one hand in the bower of the other

and thought if I turn my head to the left
it changes the song of the oriole
and if I give a job to one stomach other

forks are naked and if tonight a steak
sizzles in his kitchen do the seven
other people staring at their phones

hear?

For more information on Bob Hicok, please click here.

To listen to Words by Winter, my new poem and storytelling podcast, click here.

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Poem of the Week, by Maggie Smith

Posted on May 9, 2020 by alisonmcghee

me and Arthur
The tattoo over my daughter’s heart spells out the words of love I’ve said to her every night we’ve ever slept beneath the same roof. Loving my children is the biggest, easiest part of me.

What if you loved everyone the way you love them, Alison?

Once in a while, for a tiny breath of time, I get a glimpse of what living in that imaginary world would feel like, and it’s overwhelming. It’s not the world I live in, but I wish it were.

Rain, New Year’s Eve, by Maggie Smith

The rain is a broken piano,
playing the same note over and over.

My five-year-old said that.
Already she knows loving the world

means loving the wobbles
you can’t shim, the creaks you can’t

oil silent—the jerry-rigged parts,
MacGyvered with twine and chewing gum.

Let me love the cold rain’s plinking.
Let me love the world the way I love

my young son, not only when
he cups my face in his sticky hands,

but when, roughhousing,
he accidentally splits my lip.

Let me love the world like a mother.
Let me be tender when it lets me down.

Let me listen to the rain’s one note
and hear a beginner’s song.

For more information about the wondrous Maggie Smith, please click here.

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Poem of the Week, by Hayden Saunier

Posted on May 2, 2020 by alisonmcghee

When my kids were little and nothing else worked I used to resort to the dreaded counting threat. I’m going to count to ten. One. Two. Three. Why this worked I don’t really know, but I never had to count past three. Until the day my son just kept sitting at the table, his bright blue eyes fixed on mine.

One. Two. Three. My voice got louder and slower: FOUR. F I V E. His younger sisters, panicked, urged him to get going, but he didn’t move. S I X. S E V E N.

Oh shit, I thought, the jig’s up. I started to laugh. He did too. We both knew that something was over –some irredeemable bit of childhood–but something new had begun. The ordinary miracle of growing up, that small shift in the universe.

Hard Facts (Especially), by Hayden Saunier

Most everything we’re taught
is wrong.

Especially fixed rules
about small engine

repair in adverse
marine conditions,

walking on ice,
and anything

to do with people.
Especially our own

strange selves.
And so the door

to the ordinary miracle
swings open.

For more information about poet Hayden Saunier, please check out her website.

Words by Winter: my poetry podcast,

My website.

Poem of the Week, by Jim Moore

Posted on April 25, 2020 by alisonmcghee

On a moonless night a long time ago, just off the highway, I leaned against a cinder block wall with a payphone pressed to my ear. The only light came from passing cars and a bug-stained fluorescent bulb mounted above the phone. The voice on the other end was bored, disinterested. Across the miles I felt the connection diminishing, no, diminished, no, gone.

I ground my forehead against the wall and tried to sound un-desperate, un-despairing, un-lonely, un-everything I actually felt. At that moment something dropped onto my shoulder and then to the ground – a blob of white putty that turned into an albino frog that then dragged itself away into the weeds.

That frog and that night still come washing over me sometimes, the way they did when I read this poem.

True Enough, by Jim Moore

I have forgotten many things.
But I do remember
the bank of clover along the freeway
we were passing thirty years ago
when someone I loved made clear to me
it was over.

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

Poem of the Week, by Abraham Lincoln

Posted on April 18, 2020 by alisonmcghee

Photos 967 Yesterday I sat at the table all day and labored through every paragraph of every page of a forthcoming novel, trying for the many-eth time to get the timeline perfect, and then I got up this morning and did it again. If Micah disappears on Wednesday night and Sesame starts looking for him on Thursday morning and winter break is a week from Friday and the weekends don’t count then how many days will it take for blah blah blah blah blah. Scratch paper and pen to my right, calendar to my left, stuck in the middle with my own inadequacy.

Why are timelines so maddeningly difficult for you, Alison? Shouldn’t you be better at them by now? Just how hard can it possibly be to count up the days and make them fit? Very, apparently. This is when I turn for help to this poem, which floats through my head at least a few times a day, written by a little boy who wanted to be good someday.

Abraham Lincoln, by Abraham Lincoln, age nine

Abraham Lincoln
his hand and pen
he will be good but
god knows When

Poem of the Week, by Steve Healey

Posted on April 11, 2020 by alisonmcghee

One of my daughters had a friend when she was little, a friend the rest of us couldn’t see. He had a strange name which we all loved. Sometimes we would check in on him. “He’s asleep,” was the most common answer. Sometimes “He’s visiting his grandma,” or even “He went away.” Once, disturbingly, “he died.”

The invisible friend was a shadow part of our family. Mentions of him made us laugh, but I used to wonder if he helped my daughter figure out the world and cope with it in ways I, her mother, couldn’t. It’s hard for me to be around small children, the way they march forward into the world despite their tininess. How their inherent, bewildering bravery propels them toward all the things that will break their hearts. How they keep going anyway.

How About, by Steve Healey

the house is haunted but
all the ghosts are nice ones
mostly nice but sometimes mean
when they eat our snacks without asking
how about there’s a ghost horse
with big snack lips but she’s nice and gives us
slow-gallop rides over furniture hills

all the ghosts are part of our family
but grown-ups can’t see them
how about I’m the daughter you’re the son
or we’re both half daughter half son
half comet half horse
going around the carousel

over there is the black hole where
we ate crackers and grapes today for snack
in that corner all the galaxies
that don’t care if we don’t
say please and thank you

how about Dad never says we have to clean up
this mess because he’s our tiny cute baby
he’s always napping in his crib
or he’s in the room where he writes poems
and inside him there’s a baby who has
another baby inside him

how about the babies have a war
inside him and become orphans or
how about we’re the orphans in a poem
Dad writes then we’re adopted
by the ghost horse and off
we ride through the snowy air
we say the words
and disappear

For more information about Steve Healey, please check out his website.

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Twitter and Instagram: @alisonmcgheewriter

Poem of the Week, by Sean Thomas Dougherty

Posted on March 28, 2020 by alisonmcghee

Mr. Kraft and his family lived in the town of 300 I grew up five miles north of. One day when I was about nine, he and my mother stood talking in his driveway. He nodded to me at one point and said quietly to my mother, “She’s got it.”

She, meaning me. Got it, as in. . . I don’t know what. But those three words have seen me through every rough patch of my entire life. Every awful conversation, every time someone has tried to tear me down, and also in those dark and frequent moments when I think, You’re a failure, Alison.

I remember how still I stood in Mr. Kraft’s driveway that day, how something lifted from my shoulders, how the world suddenly seemed bigger and kinder. I thought of him again when I read this poem. Wherever you are now, Mr. Kraft, in whatever far-off universe, know how you softened the world for a small girl that day, and how she never forgot your words.

Why Bother, by Sean Thomas Dougherty

Because right now there is someone
out there with
a wound in the exact shape
of your words.

For more information about Sean Thomas Dougherty, please check out his website.

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