poems about memory

Poem of the Week, by Faith Shearin

Posted on by alisonmcghee

Twin Citians! I’d love to see you at Truth Be Told, an evening of live storytelling to welcome the fall. Date: Sunday, September 27, 7-9 pm Place: New City Center, 3104 16th Ave S, Minneapolis, MN 55407 Theme: Stellar storytellers sharing true personal stories on the theme of “Connection” Cost: Free! A goodwill offering will be split between the storytellers and Sisters’ Camelot, a local food justice nonprofit

Most nights now I sit on the floor for a couple of hours, surrounded by old sagging boxes, reading all the letters and cards I’ve saved from high school on.

I’ve avoided this job for decades. It’s always felt like too much, too much, too much. Then I randomly decided to call it the Gratitude and Blessings Project, and a switch instantly flipped. Oh my beautiful friends, here you are again, with your inimitable handwriting.

Look at the thousands of letters, no exaggeration, from my word-loving mother, and the few from my non-writer father, like the one on yellow legal paper in which he “wholeheartedly endorsed” my plan to become a novelist. “If it doesn’t work out there are a zillion other options and you will find them, Alison.” Astonishing words from a Depression baby who wanted only stability and security.

All these decades-ago missives, full of secrets and dreams and longing and laughter. All our young selves shimmering up from the pages. All the times and ways we loved each other, all the hallways that lead back to those rooms.

Directions to Your College Dorm, by Faith Shearin

All hallways still lead to that room
with its ceiling so high it might have been

a sky, and your metal bed by the window,
and your crate of books. First,

you must walk across the deep
winter campus to find your friend

throwing snowballs that float
for years. Then, open our letters:

shelves of words. You will find
our coats, our awkwardness, the tickets

from the trains that witnessed
our confusion. Love was the place

where we became as naked
as morning; it was dangerous and

dappled and we visited its shores
with suitcases and maps from childhood.

I remember our shadows growing
on your wall while a candle

swallowed itself. You kept a single
glass of water on a desk and it trembled

whenever we danced.


Click here for more information about Faith Shearin.

alisonmcghee.com
Words by Winter (my poetry podcast)

Poem of the Week, by Jessica Greenbaum

Posted on by alisonmcghee

For a Traveler
– Jessica Greenbaum

I only have a moment so let me tell you the shortest story,
about arriving at a long loved place, the house of friends in Maine,
their lawn of wildflowers, their grandfather clock and candid
portraits, their gabled attic rooms, and woodstove in the kitchen,
all accessories of the genuine summer years before, when I was
their son’s girlfriend and tied an apron behind my neck, beneath
my braids, and took from their garden the harvest for a dinner
I would make alone and serve at their big table with the gladness
of the found, and loved. The eggplant shone like polished wood,
the tomatoes smelled like their furred collars, the dozen zucchini
lined up on the counter like placid troops with the onions, their
minions, and I even remember the garlic, each clove from its airmail
envelope brought to the cutting board, ready for my instruction.
And in this very slight story, a decade later, I came by myself,
having been dropped by the airport cab, and waited for the family
to arrive home from work. I walked into the lawn, waist-high
in the swaying, purple lupines, the subject of June’s afternoon light
as I had never been addressed — a displaced young woman with
cropped hair, no place to which I wished to return, and no one
to gather me in his arms. That day the lupines received me,
and I was in love with them, because they were all I had left,
and in that same manner I have loved much of the world since then,
and who is to say there is more of a reason, or more to love?



—

​For more information on Jessica Greenbaum, please click here: http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/jessica-greenbaum​


—
My blog: alisonmcghee.com/blog

My Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#!/pages/Alison-McGhee/119862491361265?ref=ts