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Poem of the Week, by Dorianne Laux

Posted on by alisonmcghee

A few days ago I drove before dawn down Lake Street, the major city street that runs through south Minneapolis. It was dark. Nearly all the restaurants and bodegas and auto repair shops and gas stations were closed. But through the windows I could see the shadowy outlines of morning shift workers in the restaurant kitchens and storerooms, so many of them immigrants.

How many of them are terrified, here in this city where we have been invaded by our own government? How many of them can’t even risk coming to work, here where daily acts of vicious cruelty are making it hard to breathe?

Later that morning came the honks and whistles that mean the presence of ICE . Up and down the block people ran out, one in pajamas, all of us with our whistles and our phones. A friend texted me from an elementary school she was monitoring to make sure the kids and staff got in safely. Another stood vigil at the site of Renee Good’s murder. Later that afternoon I helped pack endless boxes of food for people who don’t have enough.

That night a friend texted me from the parking lot of a Mexican restaurant he was monitoring to make sure staff got home safe. And yesterday, so many thousands of Minneapolitans braved -11 degree weather to march in peaceful protest. All of us doing what we can, because we can, for the sake of strangers: human beings just like us.

For the Sake of Strangers, by Dorianne Laux

No matter what the grief, its weight,
we are obliged to carry it.
We rise and gather momentum, the dull strength
that pushes us through crowds.
And then the young boy gives me directions
so avidly. A woman holds the glass door open,
waits patiently for my empty body to pass through.
All day it continues, each kindness
reaching toward another – a stranger
singing to no one as I pass on the path, trees
offering their blossoms, a child
who lifts his almond eyes and smiles.
Somehow they always find me, seem even
to be waiting, determined to keep me
from myself, from the thing that calls to me
as it must have once called to them –
this temptation to step off the edge
and fall weightless, away from the world.

Click here for more information about Dorianne Laux, one of my favorite poets. Today’s poem first appeared in For the Sake of Strangers, publish in 1994 by BOA Editions.

alisonmcghee.com
My podcast: Words by Winter

Poem of the Week, by Gwendolyn Brooks

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Friends, I’m leading a FREE workshop, Mapping the Unmapped, next Saturday, January 24, from 12-3 pm Central time. This workshop has been updated for anyone living in the midst of tremendous upheaval, e.g., the ICE invasion in the Twin Cities. No writing experience necessary; while we’re welcome to share reflections, we won’t be sharing or critiquing our writing. My hope is we’ll all leave with some useful techniques to help keep ourselves steady and grounded in the midst of upheaval of any kind. Email me to sign up.

Screenshot from the Star Tribune

Three friends and I stood for hours behind a table in 11 degree weather at a massive protest last Saturday, dishing up brownies and cake and water and hand warmers and gloves from a local food justice nonprofit to shivering, energized protesters of all ages and races and backgrounds. “I love you!” one young woman shouted at me. “I love you right back!” I said, and we hugged each other.

In the past week: Two of my neighbors were tear gassed as they yelled at ICE agents who had just crashed a car driven by a brown man. My nephew walked through an ICE raid at the high school adjoining his middle school. Workers remodeling a friend’s house and housecleaners for other friends are too afraid to leave their apartments. I turned the corner onto my own block and had to pull over to avoid three ICE vehicles zipping the wrong way up our one-way street. Whistles, car horns, and observers filming with their cell phones as multiple armed men haul brown people out of their cars or apartments or places of work and throw them to the ground are now commonplace.

What is happening here, with these nonstop raids, is not about returning people who came to this country hoping for a better life, nearly all of whom work nonstop to support their families and do not rely on any kind of public assistance, back to their countries of origin because they lack documentation. It is about racism. It is about terror. It is about cowing all of us into submission.

​Paul Robeson, by Gwendolyn Brooks

That time
we all heard it,
cool and clear,
cutting across the hot grit of the day.
The major Voice.
The adult Voice
forgoing Rolling River,
forgoing tearful tale of bale and barge
and other symptoms of an old despond.
Warning, in music-words
devout and large,
that we are each other’s
harvest:
we are each other’s
business:
we are each other’s
magnitude and bond.

Please click here for more information about Gwendolyn Brooks. Today’s poem appears in The Essential Gwendolyn Brooks, published in 2005 by the Library of America. 
alisonmcghee.com
My podcast: Words by Winter

Poem of the Week, by Alison McGhee

Posted on by alisonmcghee

ICE was on my block yesterday, masked young men with guns driving large vehicles the wrong way up our one-way street. Picture them as a baby, Alison, I tell myself. Picture them being bullied. Picture a parent being cruel to them. Picture them as a small, lonely, scared child. This little routine is my secret weapon for combatting hatred in my own heart, a tried and true way to create empathy. These days, my secret weapon is getting lots of play. It usually works. But not always.

Questionnaire, by Alison McGhee

Where were you when you made the decision to sign
up for ICE?
When you signed the contract, did you picture your
brown niece, the one you taught to skateboard?
Are you picturing her now, as you pull the mask up to
your eyes?
When you think of your great-grandmother as a child,
fleeing the pogroms for life on the Lower East Side,
do you remember how hard she worked?
How young she died?
When you think of your brown niece on the
skateboard you taught her to ride, do you
picture someone with a mask
pulling her off it and zip-tying
her hands?

Where in your body do you feel whatever it is you feel
when you remember the day your brown now-
skateboarding infant niece came home from the
hospital with your sister and her brown husband and
they put her in your arms?
When you think of your brother-in-law now, that
brown man who taught you to play chess and
helped you night after night with your math homework
those years you lived with your sister and him because
your father kept slamming you against the wall, do you
picture someone in a mask yanking him from his car and
slamming him to the ground?
What do you plan to do with your $50,000 signing bonus?
How many masks do you have at home?
How often do you wash them?
Do any of them have blood spots?
How much does a mask cost?

A version of today’s poem will appear in the anthology THE COUNTRY IN THE MIRROR: Poems of Protest and Witness, to be published this year by Rootstock Publisher.
alisonmcghee.com
My podcast: Words by Winter

Poem of the Week, by Joseph Enzweiler

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Come Write Together with us for an hour each morning, January 12-17. Each day’s Zoom session features different readings, different prompts, and the chance to write quietly together in solidarity and appreciation. Click here for more information and to sign up. 

I’m sitting here in pre-dawn darkness looking at our Christmas tree. The ornaments on it span more than a century: fragile faded globes that belonged to my grandmother, a barely-hanging-together paper chain made by an elementary-school daughter, a 2025 wooden star someone left in the Poetry Hut yesterday, a flame-colored kayak my Christmas-loving mother bought me two summers ago in Old Forge, NY.

And a bunch of ancient, weird ornaments that at a painful time when I had to leave behind most of the ornaments I cherished and had gathered over many years, I bought ar Value Village. Tattered boxes of discards left over from someone’s estate sale.

But guess what, it’s possible to grow to love and appreciate strange old ornaments that must have meant something precious to people you’ll never know. Many things are possible in life. I keep reminding myself of that.  

Christmas 1963, by Joseph Enzweiler

Because we wanted much that year
and had little. Because the winter phone
for days stayed silent that would call
our father back to work, and he
kept silent too with our mother,
fearfully proud before us.

Because I was young that morning
in gray light untouched on the rug
and our gifts were so few, propped
along the furniture, for a second
my heart fell, then saw how large
they made the spaces between them

to take the place of less. Because
the curtained sun rose brightly
on our discarded paper and the things
themselves, these forty years,
have grown too small to see, the emptiness
measured out remains the gift,

fills the whole room now, that whole year
out across the snowy lawn. Because
a drop of shame burned quietly
in the province of love. Because
we had little that year
and were given much.

Click here for more information about Joseph Enzweiler. Today’s poem first appeared in 2004 in  The Man Who Ordered Perch, published by Iris Press. 

alisonmcghee.com
My podcast: Words by Winter

NEW Winter and Spring 2026 Creative Writing Workshops!

Posted on by alisonmcghee

Hello friends,

It’s been…quite a year. (I leave it to you to fill in all the blanks both general and personal.) At this point every December I write myself a letter that begins Dear Allie and then goes on to reflect on everything the year meant to me. These letters are starting to pile up –ten years’ worth now–and sometimes I read through a few of them and shake my head and laugh, because dang, it’s clear that, for good and not-good, I’ve always been who I am.

This is probably why I like to break out of my routines (I get sick of myself!) and why I need to break out of them. New energy, renewed energy, a spark of new creativity. If you feel the same, maybe a creative writing workshop is what you’re looking for. Or, maybe one would be the perfect gift for someone you love and appreciate.

I’ve just scheduled five new creative writing workshops for Winter-Spring 2026, along with our annual Write Together, which this year is January 12-17. Three of the newly-scheduled workshops are free, and the other two are $100. All are held via Zoom, so you can join in no matter where you are in the world. Below is the winter-spring schedule and thumbnail descriptions. Click here for all the details and registration info.

1. Write Together 2026! Jan. 12-17, 10-11 am CT

In our popular Write Together sessions, we convene each morning in our Zoom Room for a one-hour session. Each hour includes a brief reading and continues with a 30- to 45-minute guided prompt related to the theme of the day. Each day’s theme is different, each session features a different reading and a different prompt (or two to choose from), and all are designed to wake up the magical writer who lives within us all.

2. The Transformation of Trauma: three FREE workshops via Zoom

Have you gone through something awful, either recently or a long time ago? Maybe someone you love died, or you lost your job or home or a beloved pet. Maybe someone you love is an addict, and you struggle with conflicting feelings on how best to care for them and yourself. Maybe someone sexually assaulted you, or abused you over a long period of time. Maybe as a child, or adult, you struggled through domestic violence or emotional manipulation. If your life is compromised by any of these experiences, and you’re looking for some relief and support, welcome to these workshops. 

Mapping the Unmapped: Saturday, January 24, 12-3 pm Central Time (check your time zone)
This workshop is designed for anyone living in the wake of loss: of a loved one, a job, a home, a relationship, a long-cherished dream, your physical or mental health.

Rewriting the Story, Reclaiming the Self: Friday, March 20, 1-4 pm Central Time (check your time zone)
This workshop is designed for anyone living with the memories, recent or long ago, of abuse: bullying, domestic violence, an emotionally abusive relationship, a sexual or physical assault.

The Echo That Remains: Friday, April 17, 1-4 pm Central Time (check your time zone)
This workshop is for anyone who loved someone who died of suicide, substance abuse, or untreated mental or physical illness.

3. Winter and Spring 2026 Half-day Workshops via Zoom

Could your creative spirit use a recharge? Come join me on my (virtual) porch for an exhilarating, fun, intensive workshop! All my three-hour workshops are taught via Zoom and designed for writers of any and all experience. No preparation or skills required. Workshop offerings are regularly updated (check out the brand-new Plotting for Pantsers and The Intuitive Leap class), and I’d also be happy to design one specifically for your writing group. Each workshop requires a minimum of five participants and is capped at fifteen.

Half-day workshop fee: $100. Note that I also offer a pay-as-you’re-able option to participants under financial duress (I’ve been there myself), up to two per class, from $10-$95, no questions asked.

The Freedom of Form: Saturday, March 21st, 9 -12 Central Time (check your time zone)

When you’re stuck in a piece of writing, feeling lifeless, what do you do? Grind through, hoping desperately that a window will open? Give up? Take a break? Declare yourself a failure and slink off to drown your sorrows? I’ve taken a shot at all these methods, and none of them work as well for me as re-framing the work itself. I give myself seemingly arbitrary rules to work within, e.g., Write this scene as a series of text messages, or, Write this novel as a series of one-hundred-word passages. 

The freedom of assigned form is real, people, and it’s why novels usually have chapters, and picture books are usually under 500 words. It’s why enduring forms of poetry like haiku and sonnets and sestinas are still alive and thriving. In this workshop, which is designed for writers in all genres, we will play with form as a way to open up your writing, your mind and your heart to the freedom and creativity inherent in all art. We’ll complete some in-class writings, discuss published works and in general have a great and exhilarating time.

Memoir in Moments: Writing Your Life. Friday, April 10, 1-4 pm Central Time (check your time zone)

Maybe you’re at a new stage of life, looking back. Maybe you’re thinking about your family, or your children, and all the stories they might not know about you. Maybe you’re looking back on your childhood, the things you wondered about back then, the conversations you had, the places you went, how all of them were pieces of a much larger life puzzle. Think about that T-shirt you wore all the time in seventh grade. Think about your favorite dessert when you were five years old. Your favorite song as a senior in high school. The secret you’ve never told anyone. The dream that came true, and the one that didn’t. The unexpected turns your life has taken, and how they placed pattern to everything that came after. We’ll focus on memoir moments in this class, brief, specific writing prompts that shine up from the page and give readers a perhaps unexpected window into who you are. 

For more information on these and other workshops, check out my website.

Poem of the Week, by Marie Howe

Posted on by alisonmcghee

Would you like to start the new year with an hour each morning of quiet writing in the company of others, without the pressure of sharing or feedback? Please join us for Write Together, January 12-17. Each day’s Zoom session features different readings, different prompts, and the chance to write quietly together in solidarity and appreciation. $100, with one scholarship remaining. Click here for more information and to sign up. 

The violinist with the beautiful smile in this photo used to be one of my closest friends. She lived in a small bright green ranch house right across the street from the middle school, and we would sneak out of school at lunchtime and go there to drink chocolate milk and eat peanut butter sandwiches.

Her sisters and brothers were in high school, unimaginably older and cool, laughing and talking and making offhand jokes about things like sex and drugs and rock ‘n roll. Had I been alone I would have been stunned and cowed and half-paralyzed by their coolness, their easy laughter. But I wasn’t alone. I was with her.

Why did she like me? In retrospect I was a quiet observer and not much fun back then, although maybe I’m not the best judge of that. But one reason she liked me is easy: she liked nearly everyone. She had a huge and generous heart. She was also unafraid of things that I was afraid of, like saying out loud that which scared me, hurt me, made me angry. She was honest about things. She saw life clearly, and stating the obvious didn’t scare her.

The boy I had a crush on used to ask if he could have a punch off my lunch ticket. Sure, I would say. I’ll pay you back, he would say. He’d run across the grass, back into the school. He won’t, you know, she observed. He won’t pay you back. And you’ll give it to him tomorrow if he asks. I looked at her. She looked back at me and smiled. She was wise. She was honest. She stated things the way they were. And she was unjudging. She was one of those rarest of creatures, a human being completely comfortable in her own skin.

She died of an aneurysm almost thirty years ago now, but I think of her most every day. That dark hair, those blue blue eyes, that grin. On the rare occasions when I drink chocolate milk, I make a mental toast to her. In my memory she is always smiling. A big, merry smile that showed off her high cheekbones. When I think of her, I also think of this poem.

My Dead Friends, by Marie Howe

I have begun,
when I’m weary and can’t decide an answer to a bewildering question

to ask my dead friends for their opinion
and the answer is often immediate and clear.

Should I take the job? Move to the city? Should I try to conceive a child
in my middle age?

They stand in unison shaking their heads and smiling—whatever leads
to joy, they always answer,

to more life and less worry. I look into the vase where Billy’s ashes were —
it’s green in there, a green vase,

and I ask Billy if I should return the difficult phone call, and he says, yes.
Billy’s already gone through the frightening door,

whatever he says I’ll do.

Click here for more information about Marie Howe. Today’s poem first appeared in What the Living Do, published in 1998 by W.W. Norton & Company.
alisonmcghee.com
My podcast: Words by Winter

Poem of the Week, by Manuel Iris

Posted on by alisonmcghee

Would you like to start the new year with an hour each morning of quiet writing in the company of others, without the pressure of sharing or feedback? Please join us for Write Together, January 12-17. Each day’s Zoom session features different readings, different prompts, and the chance to write quietly together in solidarity and appreciation. $100, with one scholarship remaining. Click here for more information and to sign up. 

Because more than half of all suicides in the U.S. are by gun. Because my great-aunt’s leg was shot off by a hunting rifle. Because I watched a stolen Kia with boys hanging out the windows holding guns tear down my block. Because my friend was robbed at gunpoint in the church parking lot.

Because my cousin died by self-inflicted gunshot. Because someone once shot their gun off into my phone to make me think they were dead. Because my teacher friend sometimes calls in sick on Mondays because most school shootings happen on Mondays. Because the instructor in the gun familiarization class I took because I felt I should meet my enemy goes nowhere without his guns, not even room to room in his own apartment. Because when I’m in other countries I don’t worry I’ll be shot.

Prayer for a Potential Mass Murderer, a Future School Shooter, by Manuel Iris

May you find healing
before you find a weapon. 

May you find a safe place to cry
before you find a weapon. 

May your voice find the right words
and the right ears
before you find a weapon. 

May love be as available to you
as weapons are in America. 

I am talking to you
the deeply sad, the sick,
the neglected, the abused,
the bullied, the ignored,
the violent suicidal. 

You are also us,
you come from us
to bite us in the heart
with our own mouth. 

You will be us until we take
the hurt from your heart,
the rage from your mind,
the gun from your hands. 

May the silence heal
your thirst for revenge,
your heart full of hate,
your head full of plans
and scenarios. 

May your hurt
and our wound
stop existing. 

And may we stop being devoured
by the monsters we are, the pain
we have created. 

Click here for more information about Manuel Iris. Today’s poem was first published in Rattle #89, Fall 2025. 

alisonmcghee.com

Write Together 2026!

Posted on by alisonmcghee

Write Together 2026: January 12-17, 10-11 a.m. Central Time every day (note time zone)

Welcome to Write Together 2026! In our popular Write Together sessions, we convene each morning in our Zoom Room for a one-hour session. Each hour includes a brief reading and continues with a 30- to 45-minute guided prompt related to the theme of the day. Each day’s theme is different, each session features a different reading and a different prompt (usually two to choose from), and all are designed to wake up the magical writer who lives within us all.

The Write Together sessions were inspired by my regular January solo practice of a week devoted solely to generating new ideas, having fun, and playing around with cool new prompts. There’s something so comforting and freeing about knowing that a whole group are writing together at the same time, each of us in our little Zoom boxes, with no expectation of sharing or feedback. We do extend the last day’s meeting for an open mic session – anyone who wishes is welcome to read something generated during the week for applause and appreciation.

You won’t have to take time off work or your daily routine –unless of course you want to–but in the mini-session you will have six hour-long opportunities to write in a focused, intensive, exhilarating way in a room full of others doing exactly the same thing. Come have fun and see what you come up with!

Registration and payment for the January 2026 session: $100. To register, email me at alisonmcghee@gmail.com or simply send payment and note you’re registering for Write Together 2026. Registration is tentative until payment is received. You may send payment via Venmo to @Alison-McGhee-1, Zelle to alisonmcghee@gmail.com, or by personal check. Please email me with any questions. Note: I offer two half-price scholarships ($50 each) for this workshop – if you need one, let me know and it’s yours, no questions asked.

Poem of the Week, by Alice N. Persons

Posted on by alisonmcghee

When walking in crowds I sometimes think that man could be a rapist or that man could be a serial killer or I wonder if that’s a loaded gun in that bulgy pocket. There’s no fear in these thoughts, just a kind of distant, idle curiosity.

I’m switching things up now, though. Maybe that woman runs a senior dog rescue; maybe that man sings show tunes in a nursing home every Thursday; maybe she’s a pediatric oncologist; maybe he roams the neighborhood every day with a plastic bag; picking up trash.

Maybe that woman with the dark hair and sparkly eyeglasses once saw a young man standing by the edge of a tall building, and she sensed he was gathering his strength to jump, and she approached gently and told him how she had once felt the same way, and she was there to listen if he wanted to talk, and he did, and she listened, and now a decade later they send each other a tiny daily text, just to say Hi, thinking about you. Sending love.

the man in front of you, by Alice N. Persons 

is just tall enough
has soft black hair
and golden skin
wide shoulders
and smells good

you stand behind him
in the movie line
or buying flowers on boylston street
or see him on the subway
not far down the car
his clean brown hands
on the overhead rail

the man in front of you
could have just killed someone
or might have a bitter face
may love no one
or always sleep alone

the man in front of you
hurries out of the station
or rushes around the corner
and vanishes into a cab
you never see his face
but in dreams he comes to you
and does not slip away

Click here for more information about Alice N. Persons. Today’s poem appears in Never Say Never, published in 2004 by Moon Pie Press.  
alisonmcghee.com​ 
My podcast: Words by Winter

Poem of the Week, by Rob Ingraham

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In elementary school we had to write a lot of book reports, and this felt unbearable to me. How can a book possibly be boiled down to a few lines of plot and description of style? It would have crushed my soul, so I had to come up with an alternative, which was to make up imaginary books and then write book reports about them.

Most of my imaginary books were about winter pioneers, trying their best to survive in a one-room unchinked cabin, huddled around meager fires, facing the endless snows of winter. (Yes, I’m a northerner, and yes, I spent a lot of time reading the Little House books.)

To this day I can’t read book jackets, and it’s almost impossible for me to write jacket copy for one of my own books. I feel the same way about resumés. How can a bland listing of degrees and jobs possibly convey the truth of a human being?

Resumé, by Rob Ingraham

In French, it simply means a summary,
which limits what it can and can’t convey
despite my padding and hyperbole.
No room to cite the winter night I lay
inside an ambulance (my friend was dead),
they strapped me down, the flares lit up the snow.
No place to say how luckily I wed,
or itemize what took me years to know.
The format’s not designed to mention awe;
transcendence can’t be summarized at all.
And nowhere on the page to say I saw
a plane explode, I saw a building fall.
But these are skills not easily assessed;
all references provided on request.

I’ve been unable to find out more personal information about Rob Ingraham, but you can click here for another of his poems. Today’s poem was first published in Rattle #22 in the winter of 2004. 

alisonmcghee.com
My podcast: Words by Winter