Poem of the Week, by Winter Jones
Minnesotans! 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.
When I read this poem I thought about how bringing a child into the world, knowing everything we know about what life may throw at them, is an act of…what, defiance in the face of it all? Selfishness, because you yourself want to feel that kind of giant love for someone else forever and ever? Hope, that they will love their lives? Faith, that you can make the world better for them and they can make the world better by being in it?
Molecules from everyone who ever lived circulate inside us. Gandhi. Hitler. Your great-great-great-great-great grandmother. That former friend who no longer speaks to you. The beloved dog who died at fifteen. The poets who wrote the poems you memorize and recite to yourself. Everyone you love, and everyone you don’t. The past, the present, the unknown future: breathe in. Breathe out.
Concessions, by Winter Jones
(There is a 98.2% chance that at least one of the molecules in your lungs came from Caesar’s last breath. From Innumeracy, by John Allen Paulos)
If Caesar, then my great-uncle too.
He waited until the farm was sold,
went into the field and shot himself.
Was his last breath soft, a letting-go? Or was it
sorrow? I lie awake imagining his final air,
still alive in my body.
Then my girl lights up my phone. Three time zones
away she tracks me by cell location, senses
I’m awake in the dark: love you mama
This is the child who couldn’t sleep without my touch,
without my own breaths timed to hers.
Back then she once told me she wouldn’t be sad if I died.
You wouldn’t?
Nope. Because I’d be dead too. I couldn’t live without you.
Her air also swirls inside me.
Before she was born I was young.
I didn’t know the weight of this kind of love,
how it would hurt. Would terrify.
Would turn me dangerous, like the time I hurtled between
her and the raving man in the grocery store.
Love you more, I text back.
Every breath’s a bargain struck between fear and trust,
a concession we make to stay in the world.
The truth we carry within: for every
great-uncle who leaves this world
by lonely blast of bullet, a bright flame of child.
Click here for more information about John Allen Paulos.
alisonmcghee.com
My podcast: Words by Winter
My five year old nephew is currently huddled behind closed doors inside his family’s new freestanding pantry, where he fits neatly into the bottom cupboard. I know this because my brother texts me ongoing updates as to this fixation with the pantry, along with the fact that my nephew just declared he’s no longer a ninja genius but a secret agent. (Didn’t surprise me at all. I never bought the ninja genius line.) My nephew cracks me up and breaks my heart the way all little kids, over and over, break my heart. 
Alison McGhee 