april is: a poem a day for national poetry month

Apr 30 2011 ∞

April 30, 2011: Wandering Around an Albuquerque Airport Terminal, Naomi Shihab Nye

Wandering Around an Albuquerque Airport Terminal
Naomi Shihab Nye

After learning my flight was detained 4 hours,
I heard the announcement:
If anyone in the vicinity of gate 4-A understands any Arabic,
Please come to the gate immediately.

Well — one pauses these days. Gate 4-A was my own gate. I went there.
An older woman in full traditional Palestinian dress,
Just like my grandma wore, was crumpled to the floor, wailing loudly.
Help, said the flight service person. Talk to her. What is her
Problem? we told her the flight was going to be four hours late and she
Did this.

I put my arm around her and spoke to her haltingly.
Shu dow-a, shu- biduck habibti, stani stani schway, min fadlick,
Sho bit se-wee?

The minute she heard any words she knew — however poorly used -
She stopped crying.

She thought our flight had been canceled entirely.
She needed to be in El Paso for some major medical treatment the
Following day. I said no, no, we’re fine, you’ll get there, just late,

Who is picking you up? Let’s call him and tell him.
We called her son and I spoke with him in English.
I told him I would stay with his mother till we got on the plane and
Would ride next to her — southwest.

She talked to him. Then we called her other sons just for the fun of it.

Then we called my dad and he and she spoke for a while in Arabic and
Found out of course they had ten shared friends.

Then I thought just for the heck of it why not call some Palestinian
Poets I know and let them chat with her. This all took up about 2 hours.

She was laughing a lot by then. Telling about her life. Answering
Questions.

She had pulled a sack of homemade mamool cookies — little powdered
Sugar crumbly mounds stuffed with dates and nuts — out of her bag —
And was offering them to all the women at the gate.

To my amazement, not a single woman declined one. It was like a
Sacrament. The traveler from Argentina, the traveler from California,
The lovely woman from Laredo — we were all covered with the same
Powdered sugar. And smiling. There are no better cookies.

And then the airline broke out the free beverages from huge coolers —
Non-alcoholic — and the two little girls for our flight, one African
American, one Mexican American — ran around serving us all apple juice
And lemonade and they were covered with powdered sugar too.

And I noticed my new best friend — by now we were holding hands —
Had a potted plant poking out of her bag, some medicinal thing,

With green furry leaves. Such an old country traveling tradition. Always
Carry a plant. Always stay rooted to somewhere.

And I looked around that gate of late and weary ones and thought,
This is the world I want to live in. The shared world.

Not a single person in this gate — once the crying of confusion stopped
— has seemed apprehensive about any other person.

They took the cookies. I wanted to hug all those other women too.
This can still happen anywhere.

Not everything is lost.

==

Also by Naomi Shihab Nye: Supple Cord | The Rider

On this day in…

2010: from Pioneers! O Pioneers!, Walt Whitman
2009: from The Waste Land, T.S. Eliot
2008: from Five-Finger Exercises, T.S. Eliot
2007: Journey of the Magi, T.S. Eliot
2006: Preludes, T.S. Eliot
2005: A Song for Simeon, T.S. Eliot

Thank you so much for reading all month! ‘til next year. In the meantime, you can always browse the masterlist of all past poems.

Apr 29 2011 ∞

April 29, 2011: Prayer, Marie Howe

Prayer
Marie Howe

Someone or something is leaning close to me now
trying to tell me the one true story of my life:

one note,
low as a bass drum, beaten over and over:

It’s beginning summer,
and the man I love has forgotten my smell

the cries I made when he touched me, and my laughter
when he picked me up

and carried me, still laughing, and laid me down,

among the scattered daffodils on the dining room table.

And Jane is dead,
and I want to go where she went,
where my brother went,

and whoever it is that whispered to me

when I was a child in my father’s bed is come back now:
and I can’t stop hearing:
This is the way it is,
the way it always was and will be—

beaten over and over—panicking on street corners,
or crouched in the back of taxicabs,

afraid I’ll cry out in jammed traffic, and no one will know me or
know where to bring me.

There is, I almost remember,
another story:

It runs alongside this one like a brook beside a train.
The sparrows know it; the grass rises with it.

The wind moves through the highest tree branches without
seeming to hurt them.

Tell me.
Who was I when I used to call your name?

==

Also by Marie Howe:

What the Living Do
Part of Eve’s Discussion
Death, The Last Visit

On this day in…

2010: The Talker, Chelsea Rathburn
2009: There Are Many Theories About What Happened, John Gallagher
2008: bon bon il est un pays, Samuel Beckett
2007: Root root root for the home team, Bob Hicok
2006: Fever 103°, Sylvia Plath
2005: King Lear Considers What He’s Wrought, Melissa Kirsch

8 notes

Apr 28 2011 ∞

April 28, 2011: Like Kerosene, Olena Kalytiak Davis

Like Kerosene
Olena Kalytiak Davis

Yes, it’s daily
that we move into each other—but this morning
I was separate even from myself—
my hands were shovels, I had mosquito netting for hair,
and the insect beating against the night
was my heart. My name was hallow
and the sky was made of shale when

I walked into a part of morning
I’ve never seen: the sky still heavy, still
smoldering with the nightmares of others,
the drunkenness and sorrow rising like dew, like fog,
like smoke back into the clouds. Suddenly,
my face was wet with it. I wanted to lie down
with it. To rest against the almost exhausted night.

Uncertain of what to do there
I started dividing the layers, the sediment,
thinking: Usually I sleep through his sadness.

And the morning asking: Why do you keep track
of the middle of the day when you should be
waxing the moon? How can these young fragile branches
be left out in the darkness, and who set that darkness
wandering inside your heart? Who can your love ignite,
like this, like kerosene?

And then the sky lit the morning.
And then I went in to set my own house on fire.
And then I lay down next to you:
a body filling with feathers or with snow
asking: and who are you that my love can light
like this, like kerosene.

==

On this day in…

2010: Variations on a Theme by William Carlos Williams, Kenneth Koch
2009: from Tag, Anne Carson
2008: The Leaving, Brigit Pegeen Kelly
2007: Theories of Time and Space, Natasha Trethewey
2006: Dream Song 145, John Berryman
2005: Having It Out With Melancholy, Jane Kenyon

28 notes

Apr 27 2011 ∞

April 27, 2011: from The Wild Geese, Wendell Berry

from The Wild Geese
Wendell Berry

Geese appear high over us,
pass, and the sky closes. Abandon,
as in love or sleep, holds
them to their way, clear
in the ancient faith: what we need
is here. And we pray, not
for new earth or heaven, but to be
quiet in heart, and in eye,
clear. What we need is here.

==

Read the full poem.

April 26, 2011: In Praise of My Bed, Meredith Holmes

In Praise of My Bed
Meredith Holmes

At last I can be with you!
The grinding hours
since I left your side!
The labor of being fully human,
working my opposable thumb,
talking, and walking upright.
Now I have unclasped
unzipped, stepped out of.
Husked, soft, a be-er only,
I do nothing, but point
my bare feet into your
clean smoothness
feel your quiet strength
the whole length of my body.
I close my eyes, hear myself
moan, so grateful to be held this way.

==

On this day in…

2010: Black Swan, Brigit Pegeen Kelly
2009: In Me as the Swans, Leslie Williams
2008: Gnosticism V, Anne Carson
2007: American Names, Stephen Vincent Benet
2006: since feeling is first, e.e. cummings
2005: The Second Coming, W.B. Yeats

26 notes

Apr 25 2011 ∞

April 25, 2011: Three Rivers, Alpay Ulku

Three Rivers
Alpay Ulku

What are you doing now, Anne-Marie, on the night we would bring home good things to cook
              and watch movies from the 1940’s, the work week finally at an end.

Who will light the stove for you now that I’m not there?

I imagine you in our city of bridges, where the mid-West flows into the East and South, singing.

What with the apple trees baring their branches, the light “like none other that I’ve seen before,
              worn and soft,”

and your new coat that matches the color of your hair perfectly, so that you cross the lawn to
              the Cathedral of Learning trailing footprints in the frost;

what with Mau-Mau Kitty, who leaves presents in our bed for you, their fur licked in one
              direction and their heads neatly reattached, so they will be pleasing to the eye as well,

do you still look for me, for a moment, when you swing into our favorite cafe, in our
              neighborhood named for its squirrels?

When I come home at last in the season of cherry blossoms in the rain, will you still love me?

You’ve started saving magazines again, bus passes, too, and receipts from the grocery store.
              Colored paper clips. Coupons. Old sea shells, from the winter we lived on the Cape.

When Mr. Lobster visits my Jacuzzi, no one tries to talk me into setting him free in the harbor:
              the days are long and silent:

I drop him in, and we watch each other through the steam.

I’m driving home from the airport without you. I feel sad in my stomach.

==

April 24, 2011: Sweet Star Chisel, Dearest Flaming Crumbs in Your Beard Lord, John Rybicki

Sweet Star Chisel, Dearest Flaming Crumbs in Your Beard Lord,
John Rybicki

May my body last—last so I can sing apple blossoms blown out of my open mouth and
raining their petals onto rag-top convertibles, and fields of wild asparagus; raining their
petals onto milk barns and silos and blowing them wide open; petals melting down onto
the tongues of men and women hanging their clock faces out every open window along
Sixth Avenue; wild blossoms gusting into doorways and tumbling up staircases; blossoms
whirlwinding around the bare ankles, whirlwinding around the heart of my beloved and
climbing with her into bed; blossoms swirling into hospital rooms and churches, spilling
their feathers onto the shimmering outlines of just gone people down on their knees—those
feathery vowels, those blood drop men and women, locking their fingers around the lowest
rung of those ladders we haul around like crosses mounted to our backs; ladders jutting
their bones into the stars; sweet ladders we’ll one day take off and climb, pushing our faces
through the blue womb of this world, into that garden of stars bell knocking on their
vines.

==

April 23, 2011: the laughing heart, Charles Bukowski

the laughing heart
Charles Bukowski

your life is your life
don’t let it be clubbed into dank submission.
be on the watch.
there are ways out.
there is a light somewhere.
it may not be much light but
it beats the darkness.
be on the watch.
the gods will offer you chances.
know them.
take them.
you can’t beat death but
you can beat death in life, sometimes.
and the more often you learn to do it,
the more light there will be.
your life is your life.
know it while you have it.
you are marvelous
the gods wait to delight
in you.

==

Also by Bukowski: The Crunch | the mockingbird

On this day in…

2010: from Jenny, Genya Turovskaya
2009: A Step Away From Them, Frank O’Hara
2008: Entry, Lisa Sewell
2007: Meanwhile, Richard Siken
2006: Preface to a Twenty Volume Suicide Note, Amiri Baraka
2005: Holy Sonnet XIV, John Donne

27 notes

Apr 22 2011 ∞

April 22, 2011: Northern Pike, James Wright

Northern Pike
James Wright

All right. Try this,
Then. Every body
I know and care for,
And every body
Else is going
To die in a loneliness
I can’t imagine and a pain
I don’t know. We had
To go on living. We
Untangled the net, we slit
The body of this fish
Open from the hinge of the tail
To a place beneath the chin
I wish I could sing of.
I would just as soon we let
The living go on living.
An old poet whom we believe in
Said the same thing, and so
We paused among the dark cattails and prayed
For the muskrats,
For the ripples below their tails,
For the little movements that we knew the crawdads were making
under water,
For the right-hand wrist of my cousin who is a policeman.
We prayed for the game warden’s blindness.
We prayed for the road home.
We ate the fish.
There must be something very beautiful in my body,
I am so happy.

==

[James Wright is the father of yesterday’s poet, Franz Wright.

Also by James Wright: A Blessing.]

On this day in…

2010: Humpbacks, Mary Oliver
2009: Alone, Jack Gilbert
2008: From Blossoms, Li-Young Lee
2007: For Grace, After A Party, Frank O’Hara
2006: Wild Geese, Mary Oliver
2005: A Brief for the Defense, Jack Gilbert

15 notes

Apr 21 2011 ∞

April 21, 2011: The Forties, Franz Wright

The Forties
Franz Wright

And in the desert cold men invented the star

==

More by (& about) Franz Wright:

Letter | The Only Animal | The Poem | Publication Date

On this day in…

2010: Prayer of the Backhanded, Jericho Brown
2009: A Primer, Bob Hicok
2008: Because You Asked about the Line between Prose and Poetry, Howard Nemerov
2007: Open Letter to the Muse, Kristy Bowen
2006: A Sad Child, Margaret Atwood
2005: The Crunch, Charles Bukowski

9 notes

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