Kaylin Haught

Poem of the Week, by Kaylin Haught

Posted on by alisonmcghee

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Two blocks from home a young woman cheerfully waved at me to cross the street, calling “Mama! Mama! Come here, Mama!” I wasn’t her mama but I was curious, so I crossed the street, at which point she gestured to a small car with two enormous plastic-wrapped rolled rugs sticking out of the trunk and windows and said “Please mama, help. God bless you, mama.”

This was fascinating, because she was half my age, twice my size, and by all appearances completely strong and healthy, but I decided to roll with it. I heaved the first rug out of the trunk/window and dragged it with difficulty and zero help across the long curved drive into her apartment building, then repeated the process with the second rug. At which point the young woman gestured happily for me to follow her down the hallway with the rugs: “Thank you mama! God bless you mama!”

Still fascinated (maybe because I can’t imagine myself ever being so bold), I ended up heaving both rugs down the hallway and into her apartment, where I propped them against the wall of her living room and then, despite her blessings and pleas, left without unwrapping and arranging them for her. And what this anecdote has to do with today’s poem of the week, I’m not sure, other than it falls into the categories of Life is interesting and mystifying and Some people have no qualms asking for exactly what they want and My back hurts now and Sometimes I just feel like saying yes.

God Says Yes To Me, by Kaylin Haught

I asked God if it was okay to be melodramatic
and she said yes
I asked her if it was okay to be short
and she said it sure is
I asked her if I could wear nail polish
or not wear nail polish
and she said honey
she calls me that sometimes
she said you can do just exactly
what you want to
Thanks God I said
And is it even okay if I don’t paragraph
my letters
Sweetcakes God said
who knows where she picked that up
what I’m telling you is
Yes Yes Yes

Click here for more information on Illinois poet Kaylin Haught. This poem first appeared here in 2016.

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Poem of the Week, by Kaylin Haught

Posted on by alisonmcghee

God Says Yes to Me

     – Kaylin Haught

I asked God if it was okay to be melodramatic
and she said yes
I asked her if it was okay to be short
and she said it sure is
I asked her if I could wear nail polish
or not wear nail polish
and she said honey
she calls me that sometimes
she said you can do just exactly
what you want to
Thanks God I said
And is it even okay if I don’t paragraph
my letters
Sweetcakes God said
who knows where she picked that up
what I’m telling you is
Yes Yes Yes

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Prompted by a line from a poem by Wyn Cooper

Posted on by alisonmcghee

“The stars have fallen onto the sheets, fallen down to sleep with me.”

Lines from poems scroll continuously through me. Beginning at dawn, when I wake up, and throughout the day, lines from poems come to me, recite themselves silently in my head, in my voice, like song refrains spoken not sung.

Without poetry I would be a lost person. Remembered lines and fragments calm the wildness of my heart, absorb it into their own wildness and wilderness, translate it into words, corral the inner chaos and make it bearable.

Without poetry I might have to set fire to myself, to make the fire go away. Bless you, you poems, you tiny mantras placing slender arms around the day: I care. I want you.

Which is itself a fragment from a poem. Like all the below, which have been through-threading themselves throughout my mind ever since I woke up today.

* * *

detail-from-masaccios-expulsion-from-the-garden1

I don’t know exactly what a prayer is. What I do know is  how to pay attention, how to kneel down in the grass, how to be  idle and blessed.  . .

Whatever leads to joy, they always say, to more life, and less worry.

It is difficult not to love the world, but possible.

The life I didn’t lead took place in Italy.

But one man loved the pilgrim soul  in you, and loved the sorrows of your changing face.

Come up to me, love, out of the river, or I will come down to you.

Sweetcakes God said
who knows where she picked that up
what I’m telling you is
Yes Yes Yes

What will you do with your one wild and precious life?

Today would be your birthday, and I send my love to you across the bridgeable divide.

Sometimes it is necessary to re-teach a thing its loveliness.

And did you get what you wanted from this life, even so?

Last night as I  was sleeping I dreamt – oh marvelous illusion – that I had a beehive here inside my heart. And the golden bees were making white combs and sweet honey from my old failures.

At night we consoled ourselves
By discussing the meaning of homesickness.
But there was no home to go home to.
There was no getting around the ocean.
We had to go on finding out the story
by pushing into it —

The sea was no longer a metaphor.
The book was no longer a book.
That was the plot.
That was our marvelous punishment.

I am not done with my changes.