poem of the week

Poem of the Week, by Gregory Orr

Posted on by alisonmcghee

Book party! ​I rarely do book events and I would love to see you at the book party for my brand-new novel, Weird Sad and Silent, in the world as of next Tuesday. Please come to the launch party at Next Chapter Booksellers in St. Paul on Tuesday, May 27, at 6 pm. I’ll read a little, we’ll talk, we’ll celebrate, and there might even be some tiny gifts for you. Click here for all the details. 

A few days ago I was driving down Lake Street singing along to Can’t Get Enough by Depeche Mode at high volume. At a long red light I glanced over and saw a woman with earbuds dancing as she waited for the bus. She looked so happy and free. Her moves synced up exactly to the beat of Can’t Get Enough, one of those weird serendipitous things.

The other day a friend told me she felt guilty about feeling any moment of happiness amidst the nonstop horrors of this administration, and I heard myself tell her that if we can’t feel joy then they’ve won. Which is true. So I went straight out and bought myself some disco lights, and now you’re all invited to my house for a dance party.

To Be Alive, by Gregory Orr

To be alive: not just the carcass
but the spark.
That’s crudely put, but. . . 

If we’re not supposed to dance,
why all this music?

For more information about Gregory Orr, please check out his website. 
alisonmcghee.com
My podcast: Words by Winter

Poem of the Week, by Philip Larkin

Posted on by alisonmcghee

Minnesotans! There’s ​plenty of room in my FREE workshop on Friday, May 2, 1-4 Central Time: The Echo That Remains. This workshop, held via Zoom, is for anyone who loved someone who died of suicide, substance abuse, or untreated mental or physical illness. Click here for more information and to register. ​Note that we do not share our writing with each other in this workshop, which you may find freeing. All are welcome, free of charge, no writing experience necessary.  

Last week I stood on a beautiful bridge, watching the current flow beneath, when an idling motorboat dislodged a duck nest from the pilings. The nest went floating down the river, the mother duck frantic, fluttering up from her seven eggs and down again, helpless to stop the drift. Finally she jumped off and paddled to shore, her nest soon out of sight.

It hurt beyond all reason to witness that duck and her nest, because even though it was unintentional, too many other losses aren’t, like this heinous administration’s wanton, daily, abject cruelty. The world throws so much at all of us, animal and human; we should be careful of each other, and kind.

The Mower, by Philip Larkin

The mower stalled, twice; kneeling, I found   
a hedgehog jammed up against the blades,   
killed. It had been in the long grass.

I had seen it before, and even fed it, once. 
Now I had mauled its unobtrusive world   
unmendably. Burial was no help:

Next morning I got up and it did not.
The first day after a death, the new absence   
is always the same; we should be careful

of each other, we should be kind   
while there is still time.

Click here for more information about Philip Larkin. 
alisonmcghee.com
My podcast: Words by Winter

Poem of the Week, by Sarah Freligh

Posted on by alisonmcghee

A few of the thousands of memories I conjure when I need them: my grandmother, telling me of course I was doing the right thing. A night in summer when RJ and Doc and I slept on quilts on the beach, the sound of the waves and the smell of the ocean. How my father’s hug would lift me off the ground.

The day long ago when my phone chirped and I opened it to a tiny video from a daughter far away: a mother and child sea lion, sunning on the rough shore of a Galapagos sea. The mother sea lion stretched and flopped over. Then the camera flipped around and a girl with wide eyes and a tumble of dark curls was smiling at me. Love you, Mom, she whispered, and then the screen went blank. I still see her smile, hear that whisper.

Wondrous, by Sarah Freligh

I’m driving home from school when the radio talk
turns to E.B. White, his birthday, and I exit
the here and now of the freeway at rush hour,

travel back into the past, where my mother is reading
to my sister and me the part about Charlotte laying her eggs
and dying, and though this is the fifth time Charlotte

has died, my mother is crying again, and we’re laughing
at her because we know nothing of loss and its sad math,
how every subtraction is exponential, how each grief

multiplies the one preceding it, how the author tried
seventeen times to record the words She died alone
without crying, seventeen takes and a short walk during

which he called himself ridiculous, a grown man crying
for a spider he’d spun out of the silk thread of invention —
wondrous how those words would come back and make

him cry, and, yes, wondrous to hear my mother’s voice
ten years after the day she died — the catch, the rasp,
the gathering up before she could say to us, I’m OK.

For more information on Sarah Freligh, please visit her website.

Poem of the Week, by Tony Hoagland

Posted on by alisonmcghee

Minnesotans! There’s still room in my FREE workshop on Friday, May 2, 1-4 Central Time: The Echo That Remains. This workshop, held via Zoom, is for anyone who loved someone who died of suicide, substance abuse, or untreated mental or physical illness. Click here for more information and to register. All are welcome, no writing experience necessary. 

How many times a day do you feel like a failure? I once asked the Painter. All day every day, he answered, to which I nodded.

Ten years ago, on a whim at the end of December, I sat down at my dining table and hand-wrote myself a letter. Dear Allie, it began, here are some things you did in 2015. The letter is a simple bulleted list, but each entry, such as tried to be a good teacher and stayed in good shape despite plantar fasciitis, holds within it an arc of emotion and effort and accomplishment. I hadn’t looked at that letter since I wrote it, nor the subsequent letters I’ve written to myself every year since, but everything I tried to do that year came rushing back over me, along with a deep sense of being just one of a long, long line of humans who are all just trying.

Which brings me to this beautiful farewell poem by Tony Hoagland. The ending, which I had to read twice to understand was not an admonition but a gentle acknowledgment to himself that he had been a good man who should have been kinder to himself, still chokes me up.

Distant Regard, by Tony Hoagland

If I knew I would be dead by this time next year
I believe I would spend the months from now till then
writing thank-you notes to strangers and acquaintances,
telling them, “You really were a great travel agent,”
or “I never got the taste of your kisses out of my mouth.”
or “Watching you walk across the room was part of my destination.”
It would be the equivalent, I think,
of leaving a chocolate wrapped in shiny foil
on the pillow of a guest in a hotel–
“Hotel of earth, where we resided for some years together,”
I start to say, before I realize it is a terrible cliche, and stop,
and then go on, forgiving myself in a mere split second
because now that I’m dying, I just go
forward like water, flowing around obstacles
and second thoughts, not getting snagged, just continuing
with my long list of thank-yous,
which seems to naturally expand to include sunlight and wind,
and the aspen trees which gleam and shimmer in the yard
as if grateful for being soaked last night
by the irrigation system invented by an individual
to whom I am quietly grateful.
Outside it is autumn, the philosophical season,
when cold air sharpens the intellect; 
the hills are red and copper in their shaggy majesty.
The clouds blow overhead like governments and years.
It took me a long time to understand the phrase “distant regard,”
but I am grateful for it now,
and I am grateful for my heart,
that turned out to be good, after all;
and grateful for my mind,
to which, in retrospect, I can see
I have never been sufficiently kind.

For more information about the one and only Tony Hoagland, please read his obituary.

alisonmcghee.com
My podcast: Words by Winter

Poem of the Week, by Cati Porter

Posted on by alisonmcghee

Minnesotans! There’s still room in my FREE workshop tomorrow, April 6, 1-4 Central time: Rewriting the Story, Reclaiming the Self. This workshop, held via Zoom, 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. Click here for more information and to register. All are welcome, no writing experience necessary. 

Are you concealing a kidnapped child in the back of your car? Have you transported materials to make a bomb or flame thrower or grenade launcher across state lines? How much fentanyl or heroin, if any, are you concealing in your car? Where is your final destination? Do you know what you did wrong and why we pulled you over?

These were some of the many questions I was asked last week while driving from California to Minnesota after a cop and his partner tailed me for a good ten miles before finally pulling me over for an entirely fictitious reason.

Many things went through my head as they kept traipsing back and forth to their police car: how much more scared I would be if I weren’t white. How straightfaced and serious they looked as they told me what I (hadn’t) done wrong. How my dog would not stop barking and I was afraid they would get angry because of it. But mostly? That I’m the one being pulled over while a bunch of craven cowards are fine letting our democracy die. Am I angry, America? You have no idea.

Dear America, by Cati Porter

I am your daughter and
I am angry.

Born in a barn and
raised by wolves,

I have eaten
the porridge

and the plums
and I am not sorry.

You told me that
I can never go home again

but it was you
who sold me a bridge

that was not yours,
then set it on fire. 

Click here for more information about poet Cati Porter. Today’s poem is included in small mammals, published in 2023 by Mayapple Press.  
alisonmcghee.com
My podcast: Words by Winter

Poem of the Week, by Brian Bilston

Posted on by alisonmcghee

Minnesotans! There’s plenty of room in my FREE workshop Sunday, April 6, 1-4 Central time: Rewriting the Story, Reclaiming the Self. This workshop, held via Zoom, 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. Click here for more information and to register. All are welcome, no writing experience necessary. 

I never understood until now, deep down in my gut and in a way that jolts me awake throughout the night, how Hitler came to power so horrifyingly fast. Please, save me from hatred and disdain. Save me from refusing to see the hopes and dreams of others as equal to my own.

Refugees, by Brian Bilston

They have no need of our help
So do not tell me
These haggard faces could belong to you or I
Should life have dealt a different hand
We need to see them for who they really are
Chancers and scroungers
Layabouts and loungers
With bombs up their sleeves
Cut-throats and thieves
They are not
Welcome here
We should make them
Go back to where they came from
They cannot
Share our food
Share our homes
Share our countries
Instead let us
Build a wall to keep them out
It is not okay to say
These are people just like us
A place should only belong to those who are born there
Do not be so stupid to think that
The world can be looked at another way

(Now read from bottom to top.)

​Click here for more information about Brian Bilston. I first found this poem last week on poet George Bilgere’s wonderful poetry site Poetry Town. 
alisonmcghee.com
My podcast: Words by Winter

Poem of the Week, by Jeffrey Harrison

Posted on by alisonmcghee

Minnesotans! There’s plenty of room in my FREE workshop this coming Tuesday, March 25, 6-9 pm Central: Mapping the Unmapped. This workshop is offered free of charge and 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. Click here for more information and to register. All are welcome, no writing experience necessary.  (Non-Minnesotans, note that I will be adding these to my workshop offerings in the future, and they will always be free.)

A long time ago my dog and I got up at 3 am and drove north out of the city because I wanted to see the Perseid meteor shower, which was intense that year. By the time we reached our destination (the entrance to a closed state park) and parked, the meteors were streaking down the sky. I sat on the hood of my car and watched them.

Gradually the bottom half of the sky was swallowed up by clouds, while above the clouds the meteors streaked silently on. Within minutes all I could see was darkness. I pictured the meteors behind the clouds, silently falling through space, burning themselves out in blackness.

When I need to remember I’m part of something much bigger, full of mystery and beauty and far beyond my tiny human life, I remember that night.

Interval, by Jeffrey Harrison

Sometimes, out of nowhere, it comes back,
that night when, driving home from the city,
having left the nearest streetlight miles behind us,

we lost our way on the back country roads
and found, when we slowed down to read a road sign,
a field alive with the blinking of fireflies,

and we got out and stood there in the darkness,
amazed at their numbers, their scattered sparks
igniting silently in a randomness

that somehow added up to a marvel
both earthly and celestial, the sky
brought down to earth, and brought to life,

a sublunar starscape whose shifting constellations
were a small gift of unexpected astonishment,
luminous signalings leading us away

from thoughts of where we were going
or coming from, the cares that often drive us
relentlessly onward and blind us

to such flickering intervals when moments
are released from their rigid sequence
and burn like airborne embers, floating free.

Click here for more information about Jeffrey Harrison. Today’s poem first appeared in his book Feeding the Fire, published in 2001 by Sarabande Books.
alisonmcghee.com
My podcast: Words by Winter

Poem of the Week, by Bradley Trumpfheller

Posted on by alisonmcghee

​Minnesotans! I’m offering three free workshops this spring on the transformation of trauma. Click here for more information and to register. All are welcome, no writing experience necessary. (Non-Minnesotans, note that I will be adding these to my workshop offerings in the future, and they will always be free.)

When you fold laundry you see the insides of clothes and sheets and towels –their raggedy seams and straining buttonholes and raveling threads–before you turn them right side out so they’re presentable for public viewing.

I’m like that laundry. No matter what’s unraveling inside, I know how to look smooth and together. Maybe most of us are like this.

This poem makes me think about the invisible seams in everyone. From heartbreaks mended (you’re never the same), memories beautiful or awful (you remember them all), dreams you dreamed that came true (or didn’t), a place or a person you return to in your mind when you need to be soothed.

Loom, by Bradley Trumpfheller

My mother says when she is anxious she finds a seam, 
finds stitches on her clothes, on furniture she’s near, always 
a verge has that feel, birch joints, wrinkles. It’s a relief
to think with the hands. Not with what years do, 
not with rings or someone else’s sadness. With the repair 
in a sheet her sister tore, breeze-fretted in the yard. 
Finds exactly where the hickory trees start themselves
against the yard. And shows me on the photograph 
which is only one of several, where though again 
they did not touch each other, standing on some shore, 
her mothers’ shadows touch each other. 
She shows it to me now to soothe me. As if soon 
it will be that blue in the air. Soon is what 
she thinks with. What she runs 
the edge of her thumb, her index finger over. 

Click here for more information about Bradley Trumpfheller. Today’s poem was published in 2024 by the Academy of American Poets. 

alisonmcghee.com
My podcast: Words by Winter

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. 

 alisonmcghee.com
My podcast: Words by Winter

Poem of the Week, by Robert W. King

Posted on by alisonmcghee

My house is more than a century old and filled with handcrafted woodwork and leaded glass bookcases and windows so beautiful that some days I stop just to admire them. I wonder about the craftspeople who made them, and how many hours and weeks and months and years of painstaking work it took them, and for only a single purpose: to make something beautiful and durable that would last for hundreds of years, far beyond their own lifetimes. Something for others to depend on. Something to be nurtured and cared for.

The people who made my house are the opposite of people who move fast and break things –things like the idea of democracy–that others, for centuries, have loved and cherished and protected and given their lives for.

Work, by Robert W. King

The workmen over and above the fence
fit bricks, lift mortar, slap it accurately
in place. Guilty by sitting idle, I
imagine they envy my luxury
of doing nothing until I remember
the days I had my hands full of shovel,
the dragline plowing the ditch of a sewer
through a future subdivision and how
I pitied those who walked by our work
with no apparent occupation,
denied the pleasure of making something,
piece by piece—even if it would soon
be buried—they would depend upon.

Click here for more information about poet Robert W. King. This poem was first published in 2008, in the online journal Rattle #29. 
alisonmcghee.com
My podcast: Words by Winter