Poem of the Week, by Yusef Komunyakaa
Hiking the other day up a steep and narrow trail, my eyes kept searching for where I should step next. And then my feet kept setting themselves down exactly where I wanted them to be. I didn’t have to look at them; they knew what to do. But how? How does this body of mine know how to do all the things it just. . . does? Dance and run and knead dough and type and shuffle a deck of cards and tell me when I’m hungry or cold or full or tired? How do all those signals make their magic way from eyes to brain to nerves to muscle and bone? Even though I don’t play basketball I felt my own self moving to every line of this beautiful spin of a poem. My body, all our bodies, are wondrous.
Slam, Dunk and Hook, by Yusef Komunyakaa
Fast breaks. Lay ups. With Mercury’s
insignia on our sneakers,
we outmaneuvered the footwork
of bad angels. Nothing but a hot
swish of strings like silk
ten feet out. In the roundhouse
labyrinth our bodies
created, we could almost
last forever, poised in midair
like storybook sea monsters.
a high note hung there
a long second. Off
the rim. We’d corkscrew
up & dunk balls that exploded
the skullcap of hope & good
intention. Lanky, all hands
& feet…sprung rhythm.
We were metaphysical when girls
cheered on the sidelines.
tangled up in a falling,
muscles were a bright motor
double-flashing to the metal hoop
nailed to our oak.
When Sonny Boy’s mama died
he played nonstop all day, so hard
our backboard splintered.
Glistening with sweat,
we rolled the ball off
our fingertips. Trouble
was there slapping a blackjack
against an open palm.
Dribble, drive to the inside,
& glide like a sparrow hawk.
Lay ups. Fast breaks.
We had moves we didn’t know
we had. Our bodies spun
on swivels of bone & faith,
through a lyric slipknot
of joy, & we knew we were
beautiful & dangerous.
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Before taking the city bus for the first time, I was scared. How much does it cost and what if you don’t have exact change and what are those green cards everyone else seems to be holding and oh crap what about that scanner thingie? Etcetera.
A few years ago, from my front porch, I watched an enormous, dark turtle labor its way across Emerson Avenue. It was winter. Snow and ice and slush. A giant turtle? 
On the surface there’s little in common between Lucille Clifton and me besides the fact that we both grew up in far upstate New York (which, as all upstaters know, is in fact a deep and powerful bond). But ever since I read The Lost Baby Poem in my early twenties, a poem that filled me with so much sorrow and pain and understanding that it felt as if I were somehow embedded in it, she has been a kindred spirit. 
This past week: the friends in a group discussion admitting they can barely ask what the honorarium is because it feels so selfish. The friend who wonders can I back out of this event in NYC because I just noticed there’s no travel reimbursement and I literally can’t afford it but I can’t stand to let anyone down. The friends who say they know it’s their own fault for feeling ashamed of their bodies and why can’t they just ignore all the ads for liposuction, juvaderm, lip filler, neck filler, breast augmentation, tummy tucks, and vaginal rejuvenation.
This was back in the days of dial-up modems with their squealy screechy sounds. The first line of the first review of my first novel came shimmering up on that clunky old computer screen: “First time novelist tries but fails to move or matter.” 
Everything physical, everything specific: the sharp scent of the woods that night in the Adirondacks when the rain drummed down on the canvas tent. The cold clear water that dazzled your body when you plummeted from the rope swing. The softness of the loam under your boots that cold dawn hike in Vermont.
Last fall I began getting letters like this from the president, the vice-president, the NRA, anti-abortion organizations. Not my typical mail. Why me? Then it came to me: in August a friend died, a Marine combat veteran, and in his honor I made a donation to the Wounded Warrior project, which must have triggered a hundred conservative mailing lists.
Alison McGhee 