poem of the week

Poem of the Week, by Joy Harjo

Posted on by alisonmcghee

My poems podcast, Words by Winter, can be found here.

Think up a person, I tell the zoom room, like a toddler with wild red curls. Hands go up. People emerge. Now give me an object, like a ceramic pit bull. Objects appear. We write them all down, column A and column B. Now put one from each column together and write down what happens.

Ten minutes later, everyone reads aloud what they wrote. We lean forward to listen, clap, nod, laugh. Witnesses to unknown people and unknown worlds that instantly conjured themselves into being.

My fingers have spent their lives clattering across the keyboard, conjuring up worlds. What’s real? What’s not? Is there a difference? This poem feels so familiar.

The Poem I Just Wrote, by Joy Harjo

The poem I just wrote is not real.
And neither is the black horse
who is grazing on my belly.
And neither are the ghosts
of old lovers who smile at me
from the jukebox.

For more information about Joy Harjo, our current poet laureate, please click here.

alisonmcghee.com

Poem of the Week, by Ellen Bass

Posted on by alisonmcghee

My poems podcast, Words by Winter, can be found here.

The world is too big if you make it so. This sentence has been running through my head lately. Every time I feel besieged by the world’s problems, which is most of the time, it comes back to me.

This morning the dog and I got up at dawn and went into our tiny backyard. We watered the vegetables and the flowers and the baby apple trees and the mint. The water made rainbows over the mint and the tight clean smell of it reset my mind a little. So I went in search of more lighten-ment. Crushed a little lavender, some Russian sage, basil, rosemary, more mint, until the air was full of their scents and so was I. The world is too big if you make it so.

Any Common Desolation, by Ellen Bass

can be enough to make you look up
at the yellowed leaves of the apple tree, the few
that survived the rains and frost, shot
with late afternoon sun. They glow a deep
orange-gold against a blue so sheer, a single bird
would rip it like silk. You may have to break
your heart, but it isn’t nothing
to know even one moment alive. The sound
of an oar in an oarlock or a ruminant
animal tearing grass. The smell of grated ginger.
The ruby neon of the liquor store sign.
Warm socks. You remember your mother,
her precision a ceremony, as she gathered
the white cotton, slipped it over your toes,
drew up the heel, turned the cuff. A breath
can uncoil as you walk across your own muddy yard,
the big dipper pouring night down over you, and everything
you dread, all you can’t bear, dissolves
and, like a needle slipped into your vein—
that sudden rush of the world.

For more information on Ellen Bass, please click here.

alisonmcghee.com

Poem of the Week, by Laura Gilpin

Posted on by alisonmcghee

My poems podcast, Words by Winter, can be found here.

Whenever I pass a baby on the sidewalk our eyes meet and hold. Babies turn their heads to keep holding that gaze, sometimes all the way to the end of the block. They want to examine me, so they do. This is what I most appreciate about babies; that acceptance of themselves and what they want.

My dog is also like this. When he wants his belly rubbed, his throat stroked, he flops next to me and pushes his nose into me until I pet him. He’s taught himself how to speak what he must think is Human: low mutterings, high warbles that all mean touch me touch me touch me. He too knows what he wants and is unafraid to ask for it.

I don’t exactly know why babies and dogs and this poem make me want to cry, but they do.

 

The Two-Headed Calf, by Laura Gilpin

Tomorrow when the farm boys find this
freak of nature, they will wrap his body
in newspaper and carry him to the museum.

But tonight he is alive and in the north
field with his mother. It is a perfect
summer evening: the moon rising over
the orchard, the wind in the grass. And
as he stares into the sky, there are
twice as many stars as usual.

For more information on Laura Gilpin, please click here.

alisonmcghee.com

Poem of the Week, by Eileen Myles

Posted on by alisonmcghee

My poems podcast, Words by Winter, can be found here.

The way my dog places his paws on my shoulders and looks into my eyes. That day last week when the rain blew in and the temperature dropped 29 degrees in twenty minutes. How coffee beans smell when they’re ground fresh at dawn. The way the man behind the cheese counter yesterday said Excuse me, I just have to tell you I love your hair and then hugged himself with happiness. These purple Dr. Seussian flowers. This bowl of crisp popcorn. How extravagantly the mint spreads beneath the baby apple tree. How the earth begins to rise beneath the car from the Dakotas westward, like the crest and slope of the planet’s chest. The way the calm baby in the stroller this morning silently turned to keep my gaze all the way down the block. I wish I could give all of this to all of you.

At a Waterfall, Reykjavik, by Eileen Myles

I still feel like
the world
is a piece
of bread

I’m holding
out half
to you.

For more information about Eileen Myles, please click here.

alisonmcghee.com
Words by Winter: my new podcast

Poem of the Week, by Cathy Ross

Posted on by alisonmcghee

My poems podcast, Words by Winter, can be found here.

Years ago my daughter and I spent a magical week in Istanbul. We visited mosques, ate Turkish candy, drank mint tea, took a boat down the Bosphorus to the mouth of the Black Sea, smoked a hookah on the front porch of a restaurant where we sat for hours watching the passersby. We were mistaken, variously, for Brazilian, French, and Canadian women.

One evening, while my daughter slept, I sat by the window and listened to the calls of the muezzins rising over the city in the call to prayer. The sound filled my heart and I told myself what I always do when something beautiful happens during a trip: You’ll be back, Allie. You’ll hear this again. But I won’t. Every beautiful moment is a miracle, and then it’s gone.

If the Moon Came Out Only Once a Month, by Cathy Ross

If the moon came out only once a month
people would appreciate it more. They’d mark it
in their datebooks, take a walk by moonlight, notice
how their bedroom window framed its silver smile.
And if the moon came out just once a year,
it would be a holiday, with tinsel streamers
tied to lampposts, stores closing early
so no one has to work on lunar eve,
travelers rushing to get home by moon-night,
celebrations with champagne and cheese.
Folks would stay awake ’til dawn
to watch it turn transparent and slowly fade away.
And if the moon came out randomly,
the world would be on wide alert, never knowing
when it might appear, spotters scanning empty skies,
weathermen on TV giving odds—“a 10% chance
of moon tonight”—and when it suddenly began to rise,
everyone would cry “the moon is out,” crowds
would fill the streets, jostling and pointing,
night events would be canceled,
moon-closure signs posted on the doors.
And if the moon rose but once a century,
ascending luminous and lush on a long-awaited night,
all humans on the planet would gather
in huddled, whispering groups
to stare in awe, dazzled by its brilliance,
enchanted by its spell. Years later,
they would tell their children, “Yes, I saw it once.
Maybe you will live to see it too.”
But the moon is always with us,
an old familiar face, like the mantel clock,
so no one pays it much attention.
Tonight
why not go outside and gaze up in wonder,
as if you’d never seen it before,
as if it were a miracle,
as if you had been waiting
all your life.

For more information on Cathy Ross, please check out her website.


alisonmcghee.com

Poem of the Week, by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

Posted on by alisonmcghee

My poems podcast, Words by Winter, can be found here.

Dog person versus cat person versus beer versus wine versus Gen Z versus baby boomers versus millennials versus Gen X versus The Greatest Generation versus red states versus blue states versus New England versus Midwest versus West versus North versus South versus pro versus anti.

Categorization makes me tense. Can’t I love both dogs and cats? (I do.) Can’t I be a novelist and a poet and a picture book writer? (I am.) Why do any of us have to be this and not that? Someone profits by having us believe it’s a good thing to divide, slot, label and categorize, and it’s not us. I love blurred lines and this poem for the same reason.

Where We Are Headed, by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

At first we just say flower. How
thrilling it is to name. Then it’s
aster. Begonia. Chrysanthemum.

We spend our childhood learning
to separate one thing from another.
Daffodil. Edelweiss. Fern. We learn

which have five petals, which have six.
We say, “This is a gladiolus, this hyacinth.”
And we fracture the world into separate

identities. Iris. Jasmine. Lavender.
Divorcing the world into singular bits.
And then, when we know how to tell

one thing from another, perhaps
at last we feel the tug to see not
what makes things different, but

what makes things the same. Perhaps
we feel the pleasure that comes
when we start to blur the lines—

and once again everything
is flower, and by everything,
I mean everything.


For more information on Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer, please check out her website.

alisonmcghee.com

Poem of the Week, by Kirsten Dierking

Posted on by alisonmcghee

My poems podcast, Words by Winter, can be found here.

Last week a writer friend and I hiked through the woods and talked about how in middle age you realize that some things won’t happen. You’ve run out of time to be an Olympic athlete, to have a sixty-year marriage, to sail around the world on a boat you built yourself.

We talked about how mystifying it is to realize that some things you thought you wanted were precluded from the start by circumstances, or by your own personality. Because you were frantically busy trying to earn a living, or raise your children, or hold yourself together. Because in truth you crave solitude, time to make art.

We talked about our books, and how often we feel like failures. Then we ordered more cocktails and ate cake and laughed. I feel so lucky to have friends like him, and to live this odd life of mine, so full of failure and love in equal measure.

Lucky, by Kirsten Dierking


All this time,
the life you were
supposed to live
has been rising around you
like the walls of a house
designed with warm
harmonious lines.

As if you had actually
planned it that way.

As if you had
stacked up bricks
at random,
and built by mistake
a lucky star.


For more information about Kirsten Dierking, please click here.

alisonmcghee.com

Poem of the Week, by Linda Hogan

Posted on by alisonmcghee

My poems podcast, Words by Winter, can be found here.

Someone once asked me to describe a place that would feel perfectly safe. The feeling of being held inside a fallen hollow tree next to a river on a summer day –warm, safe, almost asleep–instantly came to me.

This is the same feeling that comes with my oldest memory, of being born. Traveling in warmth down a kind of river, soft metal touching down and lifting off my head (they used forceps to pull me out). Light at the end. A feeling which couldn’t have been in words but which was entirely clear: Here we go again. A sense of inevitability, and acceptance of whatever would come.

To Be Held, by Linda Hogan

To be held
by the light
was what I wanted,
to be a tree drinking the rain,
no longer parched in this hot land.
To be roots in a tunnel growing
but also to be sheltering the inborn leaves
and the green slide of mineral
down the immense distances
into infinite comfort
and the land here, only clay,
still contains and consumes
the thirsty need
the way a tree always shelters the unborn life
waiting for the healing
after the storm
which has been our life.

For more information about Linda Hogan, please visit her website.

alisonmcghee.com
Words by Winter: my new podcast

Poem of the Week, by Ron Koertge

Posted on by alisonmcghee

My poems podcast, Words by Winter, can be found here.

How to survive the next meeting you don’t want to be in: Focus on the famished, clawed creature that just now slunk into the room and is now crawling over everyone’s feet in turn. Does anyone else notice? They do not!

Where is the creature now? The only way to know is to pay close attention to body language. An upper lip will twitch, a butt will shift on its chair, fingers will suddenly drum.

Meanwhile, the endless droner drones on and on, no one brave enough to interrupt. Only the clawed creature can finally stop the madness. But when? When will sweet release come?

This is how I get through meetings. It’s also why I so love Ron Koertge’s funny, subversive, turn-things-inside-out world-of-imagination poems.

The Search Party, by Ron Koertge
       

It’s hopeless. Maureen and I broke up
again. While the party goes on
without me, I’m sulking in the kitchen

eating all the chips and guacamole
when the host’s daughter comes in.

Nora opens the door to the refrigerator.
There’s a stuffed bear leaning on the cottage
cheese.

She says, “That’s Robert Falcon Scott,
the explorer. He needs medical attention
ASAP.”

She looks at me. “Can I trust you to wait
right here while I go for the huskies?”

Now I cannot leave my post. Not to dance,
not to make a beer run. Not even if someone
comes in to say she likes my new shirt.

Nora returns with two stuffed dogs. The door
to Antarctica opens.

Nora cradles the bear. She tries to feed it
a Cheeto. “Hold on, Robert. Help
is on the way.”

To me, she says, “Harness the dogs.
We have to move fast.”

It’s starting to snow. My hands are freezing
as I untangle the tow lines.


For more information about Ron Koertge, please click here.

alisonmcghee.com
Words by Winter: my new podcast

Poem of the Week, by Grace Schulman

Posted on by alisonmcghee

My poems podcast, Words by Winter, can be found here.

Find the ducks

The pink stucco and stone house across the street is slanty, sprawling, and old, with a few apartments carved out of what at one point must have been a single-family house. I think of it as the Francis of Assisi house – the place exudes an easygoing generosity and a happiness with the earth it’s built on.

Animals think so too. Squirrels, birds, and rabbits abound in the yard. A family of ducks has lived there for years, right here in the middle of the city. The inhabitants of the Francis of Assisi house put out birdbaths and a tiny pool for them. The ducks fly to nearby rooftops, including ours, and perch there to survey the block.

When walking home I sometimes see a car or two waiting patiently for the ducks to cross the street. Neighbors stroll by to watch the ducks. The ducks live happily on our block in the duck world that they and everyone else seem to love. They remind me of this beautiful poem.

Because, by Grace Schulman

Because, in a wounded universe, the tufts
of grass still glisten, the first daffodil
shoots up through ice-melt, and a red-tailed hawk

perches on a cathedral spire; and because
children toss a fire-red ball in the yard
where a schoolhouse façade was scarred by vandals,

and joggers still circle a dry reservoir;
because a rainbow flaunts its painted ribbons
and slips them somewhere underneath the earth;

because in a smoky bar the trombone blares
louder than street sirens, because those
who can no longer speak of pain are singing;

and when on this wide meadow in the park
a full moon still outshines the city lights,
and on returning home, below the North Star,

I see new bricks-and-glass where the Towers fell;
and I remember my lover’s calloused hand
soften in my hand while crab apple blossoms

showered our laps, and a yellow rose
opened with its satellites of orange buds,
because I cannot lose the injured world

without losing the world, I’ll have to praise it.

For more information on Grace Schulman, please click here.

alisonmcghee.com
Words by Winter: my new podcast