literature

Poem of the Week, by David Hernandez

Posted on by alisonmcghee

Smile and say hi to everyone you pass. Be your kindest self. Focus all your energy on the students in this room. Make life better for everyone you can, every time you can. These are the vows I make and constantly break but keep re-upping nonetheless. My latest scheme: adding “with joy!” or “joyfully!” to my daily to-do lists. Vacuum joyfully! Weed with joy! Joyfully write1000 words! Weirdly, this helps.

Anyone Who Is Still Trying, by David Hernandez

Any person, any human, any someone who breaks
          up the fight, who spackles holes or FedExes
ice shelves to the Arctic to keep the polar bears
          afloat, who talks the wind-rippled woman
down from the bridge. Any individual, any citizen
          who skims muck from the coughing ocean,
who pickets across the street from antigay picketers
          with a sign that reads, GOD HATES MAGGOTS,
or, GOD HATES RESTAURANTS WITH ZAGAT RATINGS
          LESS THAN 27. Any civilian who kisses
a forehead heated by fever or despair, who reads
          the X ray, pins the severed bone. Any biped
who volunteers at soup kitchens, who chokes
          a Washington lobbyist with his own silk necktie—
I take that back, who gives him mouth-to-mouth
          until his startled heart resumes its kabooms.
Sorry, I get cynical sometimes, there is so much
          broken in the system, the districts, the crooked
thinking, I’m working on whittling away at this
          pessimism, harvesting light where I can find it.
Any countryman or countrywoman who is still
          trying, who still pushes against entropy,
who stanches or donates blood, who douses fires
          real or metaphorical, who rakes the earth
where tires once zeroed the ground, plants something
          green, say spinach or kale, say a modest forest
for restless breezes to play with. Any anyone
          from anywhere who considers and repairs,
who builds a prosthetic beak for an eagle—
          I saw the video, the majestic bird disfigured
by a bullet, the visionary with a 3-D printer,
          with polymer and fidelity, with hours
and hours and hours, I keep thinking about it,
          thinking we need more of that commitment,
those thoughtful gestures, the flight afterward. 

For more information on David Hernandez, please click here.

Poem of the Week, by Anna Belle Kaufman

Posted on by alisonmcghee

My father, who died two years ago today, was a giant man. Some of his clothes hang in my closet: his old army jacket, his Dairylea windbreaker, one of his Yankees baseball caps.

After he died I turned two of his other shirts and a pair of his worn pants into a simple patchwork quilt for my mother. It was hard to cut up his clothes. Wait, this is his favorite shirt, he’s going to need it, even though he wasn’t.

I still need him though. His enormous presence –that giant laugh, that hurricane hug, his absolute solidity–was grounding in a way I didn’t understand until he was gone.

Cold Solace, by Anna Belle Kaufman

When my mother died,
one of her honey cakes remained in the freezer.
I couldn’t bear to see it vanish,
so it waited, pardoned,
in its ice cave behind the metal trays
for two more years.

On my forty-first birthday
I chipped it out,
a rectangular resurrection,
hefted the dead weight in my palm.

Before it thawed,
I sawed, with serrated knife,
the thinnest of slices —
Jewish Eucharist.

The amber squares
with their translucent panes of walnuts
tasted — even toasted — of freezer,
of frost,
a raisined delicacy delivered up
from a deli in the underworld.

I yearned to recall life, not death —
the still body in her pink nightgown on the bed,
how I lay in the shallow cradle of the scattered sheets
after they took it away,
inhaling her scent one last time.

I close my eyes, savor a wafer of
sacred cake on my tongue and
try to taste my mother, to discern
the message she baked in these loaves
when she was too ill to eat them:

I love you.
It will end.
Leave something of sweetness
and substance
in the mouth of the world.

​Click here for more information about poet, artist, and writer Anna Belle Kaufman. Today’s poem first appeared in The Sun magazine in 2010. 

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