Tina Kelley

Poem of the Week, by Tina Kelley

Posted on by alisonmcghee

Spots are still available in the July 17-19 mini-session of our popular Write Together sessions, in which we gather on Zoom for an hour in the morning and an hour in the evening and write quietly together from a guided prompt. Cost: $100. Click here for all the details. I’d love to see you in the Zoom room. 

My first password was a long jumble of numbers decreed to me by Compuserve and which I loathed because it had nothing to do with me or my life. My first choose-your-own password was a variation of my brother’s because his made me laugh. All my passwords since then –hundreds of them, because I don’t use a password manager even though yes, I know I should–are variations on the original. It still makes me smile.

Knowing someone’s password is a glimpse into their heart. Their mother’s childhood nickname, their father’s favorite sports team, the birthday of their child, their dog’s name, a zip code of a long ago apartment where they once lived and loved.

Lessons from the List of 100,000 Most Hacked Passwords, by Tina Kelley 
        —what God said after reading the whole thing

Oh my me! If only I had made you more imaginative.
Next upgrade, you need ten times the terabytes
of ingenuity, and boosted self-preservation too.
If you loved yourselves as I love you, sweet dim ones,

would you type in 123456 to crack every nest egg?
Number 14, after qwerty and password, is iloveyou,
which increases my faith in you. But how is yours in me?
There are 138 mentions of Jesus, but twice as many f*&%s.

368 have sex in them, including sexgod. I much prefer
glory2god and love4god, and appreciate how godgod1
ranks above ilovenookie1, if by one. 1,512 uses of love,
116 hates, including the hate in whatever. Tons o sucks.

Monkey ranks 19, dragon 20. Coming in at 37 out of 100,000?
Tinkle. No idea why. My favorite is the pilgrim, supplicant,
who tries to avoid red letter scolding and reset: letmein.
You, my lowercase meek one, get admitted to paradise.

The rest of you, pick one that reminds you to be better
every time you pay your bills or check your balances.
Make it a prayer, a remembrance of your favorite departed.
More than hackthis1. Maybe something, once, about joy?

Click here for more information about poet Tina Kelley. Today’s poem was first published in Presence: A Journal of Catholic Poetry. 

alisonmcghee.com
My podcast: Words by Winter

Poem of the Week, by Tina Kelley

Posted on by alisonmcghee

Sometimes I lie in the hammock at my shack in Vermont and look up –way up– at the two white pines it’s roped between. One of those white pines is so huge that it scares my friend. She thinks it holds too much power, like a keeper of the gates, but that’s what I like about it. Trees, trees, trees and me go way back. All the mountains I’ve hiked up, where the trees get shorter and spindlier until they disappear, and there’s nothing but the sky and rock and you. Once, I beheld a gray owl on a tree limb. I tilted my head left, the better to take him in, and so did he. I tilted right, and  so did he. We stood that way for a long time, regarding each other. There could be worse things than being descended from trees.

Having Evolved From Trees
– Tina Kelley
We are hazel-eyed.
Some things we are certain of:
Sun in the forest adds extra rooms.

We hide inner twisting under our skin.
A beehive within is a blessing.
Never play with matches. Ever.

We teach: to bloom, to fruit, to peel,
to heal in a swirling burl,
to suffer pruning silently.

We remember the itch of chickadees,
blue air of twilight like a shawl,
the liquor it resembles. We taste with whole selves.

Our women are never too stocky, don’t diet.
Our day — dressing, bedding down — is a year.
At weddings we wear wrensong tatting in our hair.

We converse in the pulses of rained-on leaves.
Our god is wind. We need no heartbeat.
We worship by swaying, masts in a marina.

Our low song, too low, withers and flaps.
We sanctify the privilege of embrace,
of running, the afterlife of dance.

The sun pulls life through us,
up and flaring, a yellow scarf
from a magic tube, higher, wider.

We die with loved ones, rot in their presence,
nourish their offspring and watch
the continuance, ever, exulting.

—

​For more information on Tina Kelley, please click ​here.

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