Category: Poems

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Naming

The way a name lingers in the snow
when traced by hand.
The way angels are made in snow,
all body down,
arms moving from side to ear to side to ear—
a whisper, a pause;
slight, melting hesitation—

The pause in the hand as it moves
over a name carved in black granite.
The Chuck, Chuck, Chuck,
of great-tailed grackles
at southern coastal marshes,
or the way magpies repeat,
Meg, Meg, Meg—

The way the rib cage of a whale
resembles the architecture of I. M. Pei.
The way two names on a page
separated by thousands of lines,
pages, bookshelves, miles, can be connected.
The way wind hums through cord grass;
rain on bluestem, on mesquite—

The sandpiper’s tremble
as it skitters over tidal mudflats,
tracking names in the wet silt,
silt that has been building
since Foreman lost to Ali,
since Troy fell—building until
we forget names altogether—

The way children, who know only
syllables endlessly repeated,
connect one moment to the next
humming, humming, humming—
The way magpies connect branches
into thickets for their nesting—

Curve of thumb caressing
the letters of a loved one’s name
on the printed page, connecting
each letter with a trace of oil
from fingerprint to fingerprint,
again and again and again—

—Scott Edward Anderson, from Fallow Field

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Segments of an Orange

            How can I rest?
            How can I be content
            when there is still
            that odor in the world?

                  — Louise Gluck

Hours before she died, my grandmother
sucked dry three segments of a navel orange
and, claiming her appetite had a short range,
hooked out the pulp with her finger,
shreds catching on her ring. With delicate theater,
she wrapped the untouched sections in a napkin
she’d halved down the center folded line
to keep them fresh for later.

I fly in to sit shiva from Orange County,
where the branches that bear citrus are bent
by a greedy public who can’t resist
loading their bushels with questionable bounty –
the hard, yellowing rinds left hanging by migrant
workers, who know best this business

of surplus, and restraint, and what to pick when.
And all at once, oranges are everywhere:
In the shampoo I use to wash my niece’s hair.
In the disinfectant wiped onto porcelain
fixtures in the home where the dead are lain.
On the plates I fix for guests too old to rise from chairs;
nestled, smugly poisoning the air
from grass-filled bamboo baskets sent by friends.

My niece balances the fruit on her baby-fat palms
before rolling them to the great-aunts, who can’t
remember the exact numbers of their ages but who speak
with accents Polish enough to date them.
” ‘Range,” Corrie says. She’s learning to want
the meaning to match the sound, so when she plucks
it on the string of her tongue over and over
her relatives will marvel and give applause.
She bowls the fruit at every leg in the house,
each pant-suited visitor a pin to strike and quiver.
Tomorrow, one of my grandmother’s sisters
will trip on a forgotten orange and break
her hip, and the doctor will adjust his face
and pat her silk-clad shoulder, and call her, “Helen Dear.”

And in the hospital she’ll tell the story
of my frugal grandmother’s last day
to the congregated bedside brood,
and claim she’d prefer a fruit with more glory.
“But should the season call for an orange,” she’ll say,
“at least make it blood, my darlings. Make mine blood.”

—Jen Karetnick, from Brie Season, Kelsay Books/White Violet Press. First appeared in The Slate. Used by permission of the poet.

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Timeless

Some girls, no matter their age, know
Beauty authored their bones, sure as star-fall,
and inhabits them still, extending
a singular charm that delights, like the one
collected with joy that adorns
my mother’s mid-century bracelet,
tarnished now. Can you picture
the tiniest kitchen scale?—
its dial the size of a dilated pupil,
the needle, an eyelash
that really swivels,
from one to our culturally perfect ten, although
grace, bone-deep, begins, Mama said,
light years away, arriving
among us, over and over.
Nor can it be reckoned, or earned,
no matter the distance traveled,
sheltering as the night sky.
Shine, then, she said, shine
before the body winks out.

—Laurie Klein, author of Where the Sky Opens. “Timeless” first appeared in Adanna Literary Journal and online Abbey of the Arts

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Captain Depth Perception

I see you like space
between my car and the raised
bumper of an F150 sitting
wider than yellow parking lines.
I know when to brake and back
up, when to cut the wheel
so I turn just far enough
into your space, filling it
with so much of myself that
almost I fill it all, almost
I feel the crunch of fender and truck.
My power saves
paint jobs at a price.
Every hero has her heal.
Mine’s the depth I can’t stop
sensing, a constant knowledge
of our world packed tight,
nearing collision, and the fear
of someone cutting too sharp,
closing the space completely.
At night I know twin lights
of speeding cars enough
to pull out and see we’re safe
in our sufficient depth of space.

—Marcus Goodyear, from Barbies at Communion, T. S. Poetry Press

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Shade Half Drawn

How strange: the only people out, these two
a girl, her aunt or grandmother

strolling
statelier than lilies grow

in weather they make a small crowdedness
for warmth, fly before the rain like chaff

immune to change they come down the block
as they do day after day

in a small pink coat in practical beige
linked by fingers, the walk home from the store

there is no sound
except the shuffle of sensible, rubber-soled shoes,
the tattoo of first heels

lavender along the sidewalk knots
and unknots its fragrance

the light changes around the window,
stretching, the maple shooting skyward

their hands pull apart
and you want to do something

sacrificial, and magnificent, to preserve
those figures under a turning sky that is not on fire

that does not fill with ash, that lowers only fat
snow clouds onto the roofs and ornamental cherries.

—Anne M. Doe Overstreet, from Delicate Machinery Suspended,
T. S. Poetry Press

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Stayed

for Ann Voskamp

Why do we not
leave home.
Is it really for fear
of what lies
beyond, or rather
for fear that the
roof will abscond
with the doors
and the shutters
we’ve always known.
And who would they
blame if it happened
just so, if the whole
curtained place simply
picked up its stakes,
disappeared on the wind
in our absence. What
are we really afraid
of, why do we not
leave home.

—L.L. Barkat, from InsideOut: Poems, International Arts Movement

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To Be a Pilgrim

To be a pilgrim is to ring the stones
with the clean music of your best black heels,
each click a lucky strike that sparks a fire
to see by, that lights up the long and level road
you walk with no map, no stick, no wheels
to relieve you when your feet ache and tire.

To be a pilgrim own what you own,
stuff it in your clutch, lug it in your tote,
all the heavy history you’d like to lose
nestled up against your dead mother’s shoes.
To be a pilgrim you must be a killer
of myth, a new invention of desire.
Every pilgrim is a truth-teller.
Every pilgrim is a liar.

—Angela Alaimo O’Donnell, from Still Pilgrim, Paraclete Press, used by permission of the poet

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Set

After raspberry pancakes
Mom declared
in our olive-green kitchen:
today, I’ll teach you to swing.

She hoisted her own
thick hips
into the black smile
next to me

pumped sky
in her stone washed jeans.

Just gotta lean
into it.

Then below that bar of rust,
her seat suddenly

snapped.

She gripped the old chains—stuck the landing.
Remember our laugh?

Lung-crush of hilarity
while everyone else
held their
          breath.

—Bethany Rohde, from Casual: A Little Book of Jeans Poems & Photos, T. S. Poetry Press