poem

Poem of the Week, by James Baldwin

Posted on by alisonmcghee

It’s hard to live in the world. This line has spoken itself in my head throughout my life, especially right now. Don’t let them get to you, Allie. That little mantra got me through some hard times when I was a child, and while it’s a flawed philosophy it’s still a helpful one when it comes to bullies, because bullies love reactions.

Who do you turn to in hard times? That question was asked a few weeks ago in my church, where the only creed is love, compassion, kindness, inclusion, and social justice. Those who have gone before me, was my instant answer. Those who have done the hard things. Those who have already stepped through those distant doors and did so with courage and heart. Like James Baldwin. What seems hopeless isn’t, because the earth is always shifting, the light is always changing, and nothing is fixed.

For Nothing Is Fixed, by James Baldwin

For nothing is fixed,
forever, forever, forever,
it is not fixed;
the earth is always shifting,
the light is always changing,
the sea does not cease to grind down rock.
Generations do not cease to be born,
and we are responsible to them
because we are the only witnesses they have.
The sea rises, the light fails,
lovers cling to each other,
and children cling to us.
The moment we cease to hold each other,
the moment we break faith with one another,
the sea engulfs us and the light goes out. 

Click here for more information about poet, essayist, short story writer, critic, novelist and iconic American James Baldwin.  

alisonmcghee.com
My podcast: Words by Winter

Poem of the Week, by Naomi Shihab Nye

Posted on by alisonmcghee

​More than half my country’s wealth is hoarded by a few hundred billionaires. A few of them have bought their way into power and have said they’d like to take away the bare-bones security our government guarantees to ordinary hardworking people. They call it ‘disruption,’ but it’s chaos and destruction and pain. It doesn’t have to be this way. We don’t have to let it be this way.

When they were tiny and had a bad dream I held my children and sang to them and soothed them so they would feel loved and secure and safe. Isn’t that what we were born to do? Don’t we reach out instinctively to help those who are hurting? We’re not going to be able to live in this world if we can’t take care of each other.

Shoulders, by Naomi Shihab Nye

A man crosses the street in rain,
stepping gently, looking two times north and south,
because his son is asleep on his shoulder.

No car must splash him.
No car drive too near to his shadow.

This man carries the world’s most sensitive cargo
but he’s not marked.
Nowhere does his jacket say FRAGILE,
HANDLE WITH CARE.

His ear fills up with breathing.
He hears the hum of a boy’s dream
deep inside him.

We’re not going to be able
to live in this world
if we’re not willing to do what he’s doing
with one another.

The road will only be wide.
The rain will never stop falling.

 Click here for more information about the iconic Naomi Shihab Nye. Today’s poem is from her collection Red Suitcase, published in 1994 by BOA Editions. 

alisonmcghee.com
My poetry + conversations podcast: Words by Winter

Poem of the Week, by Kasey Jueds

Posted on by alisonmcghee

When the world feels too much, too scary, too overwhelming, too helpless, my dog brings me back to his world, the world of wild things who do not tax their lives with forethought of grief. The world of warm fur, small thudding heart, searching eyes I feel gazing at me until I lift my eyes to his and he thuds his tail rapidly, over and over again, shifting on his front paws and willing me to motion for him to jump up onto my lap to push his cold nose against me and butt me with his head harder than you think he’d be capable of until I pet him. Over and over and over he wants to be petted, and over and over and over I pet him until he’s ready to get on with his day, his stores of affection and attention, and mine, having been renewed.

Claim, by Kasey Jueds

Once during that year
when all I wanted
was to be anything other
than what I was, the
dog took my wrist
in her jaws. Not to hurt
or startle, but the way
a wolf might, closing her mouth
over the leg of another
from her pack. Claiming me
like anything else: the round luck
of her supper dish or the bliss
of rabbits, their infinite
grassy cities. Her lips
and teeth circled
and pressed, tireless
pressure of the world
that pushes against you
to see if you’re there,
and I could feel myself
inside myself again, muscle
to bone to the slippery
core where I knew
next to nothing
about love. She wrapped
my arm as a woman might wrap
her hand through the loop
of a leash—as if she
were the one holding me
at the edge of a busy street,
instructing me to stay.

​Click here for more information about Kasey Jueds (pronounced Judds). Today’s poem is from her book Keeper​, published in 2013 by the University of Pittsburgh Press.
alisonmcghee.com
My poetry podcast: Words by Winter

Poem of the Week, by Chen Chen

Posted on by alisonmcghee

Some things are hard for me, like remembering the washers when I’m putting together a bed from a giant box with indecipherable instructions and lots of diagrams and arrows (are washers really necessary? Yes, Alison, they are).

It is when I finally finish the task only to notice all the washers patiently waiting and realize I now have to do the whole thing over again, that I take a deep breath and recite one of my guiding mantras: Alison, you are not a jigglypuff, not yet a wigglytuff.

Thank you, Chen Chen, for many things, especially that line. Here’s to saying no to people who tell you you’re a no. To everyone who stands up for others, known or not. Most of all, to the absolute joy of being exactly who you are in the midst of people who love you for exactly that.

Summer, by Chen Chen

You are the ice cream sandwich connoisseur of your generation.

Blessed are your floral shorteralls, your deeply pink fanny pack with travel-size lint roller just in case.

Level of splendiferous in your outfit: 200.

Types of invisible pain stemming from adolescent disasters in classrooms, locker rooms, & quite often Toyota Camrys: at least 10,000.

You are not a jigglypuff, not yet a wigglytuff.

Reporters & fathers call your generation “the worst.”

Which really means “queer kids who could go online & learn that queer doesn’t have to mean disaster.”

Or dead.

Instead, queer means, splendiferously, you.

& you means someone who knows that common flavors for ice cream sandwiches in Singapore include red bean, yam, & honeydew.

Your powers are great, are growing.

One day you will create an online personality quiz that also freshens the breath.

The next day you will tell your father, You were wrong to say that I had to change.

To make me promise I would. To make me promise.

& promise.

For more information on Chen Chen, please check out his website.

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

Andes Mint #16: Sleepwalker

Posted on by alisonmcghee

Sleepwalker

A child enters your room sometime after midnight.
You know it’s your son by the silhouette of his cheek,
his spiky, sleep-tossed hair.
You say his name. He doesn’t answer.
You call his name again and
again, he does not answer.
It is your boy, isn’t it?
Or have you transformed a masked stranger into a
second-grader in blue plaid flannel pajamas?

A whisper of a laugh escapes him and
it does not sound like the laughter of the boy you know.
Someone else has come upon you,
insinuated himself into your family,
eased in on a black night.
Fear slips cold gloves around your lungs and
you can’t breathe.
Motionless on the threshold, the
stranger stares at you in darkness.

Next morning at breakfast the
eight-year-old is back. His spoon lifts
in and out of a cereal bowl, flashing silver.
He sees you gazing at him in the morning sun.
He smiles his gap-toothed smile.
After a minute you smile back at him.
You don’t want to think about
what you witnessed there, in the dark:
the man inside the boy, waiting to get out.

Poem of the Week, by Wendell Berry

Posted on by alisonmcghee

There is No Going Back
– Wendell Berry

No, no, there is no going back.
Less and less you are
that possibility you were.
More and more you have become
those lives and deaths
that have belonged to you.
You have become a sort of grave
containing much that was
and is no more in time, beloved
then, now, and always.
And so you have become a sort of tree
standing over a grave.
Now more than ever you can be
generous toward each day
that comes, young, to disappear
forever, and yet remain
unaging in the mind.
Every day you have less reason
not to give yourself away.

For more information on Wendell Berry, please click here: http://www.wendellberrybooks.com/

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