Good Bones by Maggi Smith

Life is short, though I keep this from my children. Life is short, and I’ve shortened mine in a thousand delicious, ill-advised ways, a thousand deliciously ill-advised ways I’ll keep from my children. The world is at least fifty percent terrible, and that’s a conservative estimate, though I keep this from my children. For every bird there is a stone thrown at a bird. For every loved child, a child broken, bagged, sunk in a lake. Life is short and the world is at least half terrible, and for every kind stranger, there is one who would break you, though I keep this from my children. I am trying to sell them the world. Any decent realtor, walking you through a real shithole, chirps on about good bones: This place could be beautiful, right? You could make this place beautiful. This poem originally appeared in Waxwing, Issue 10, in June 2016. Used with permission of the author.

THE NO MORE APOLOGIZING, THE NO MORE LITTLE LAUGHING BLUES by Lyn Lifshin

apologizing for going to school instead of having a job that made money or babies pretending I took the bus to an office, paper clips in my ear and never that I was reading Wyatt, writing my own dreams in the dust under the bed apologizing for my hair, wild gypsy hair that fell out of every clip the way the life I started dreaming of did. Apologizing for the cats you know, if someone said my skirt was too short, I explained or said sorry, but never that I finally loved my legs I spent years apologizing for not having babies, laughing when someone pulled a Baby Gerber jar out of the closet and held it in front of my eyes like it was some damn cross or a star I should have thrown that thru the glass, I didn’t need to explain the music I liked. One friend said that’s noise. Another said isn’t denim for children? Well I laughed the apologizing oh I don’t want no trouble laugh over the years, pretending to cook, pretending to like babying my husband the only place I said what I meant was in poems. That green was like some huge forbidden flower that grew so big it couldn’t even fit in the house, pulled me out of a window with it toward Colorado I apologized for being what they thought a woman was by being flattered when someone said you write like a man and for not being what they thought a woman, for the cats and leaves instead of booties, for the poems When someone said well, how much do you get paid? you know I pretended, pretended, pretended, I couldn’t stop trying to please the A, the star, the good girl on the forehead. The spanking clean haunted half my life. But the poems had their own life and mine finally followed where the poems were growing, warm paper skin growing finally in my real bed until the room stopped spinning for good the way it used to when I dressed up in suits and hair spray pretending to be all those things I wasn’t: teacher, good girl, lady, wife. I was writing about cocks and hair for years before I’d felt, when I was still making love just on the sheets of paper When the poems first came out, one woman I drove to school with said, I can’t take this. Another said, I don’t know, this can’t be the you I know, so brutal, violent. Which is the real The man I was with moved to the other side of the bed. This was worse than not having babies. His mother said they always knew I was odd my clothes, my hair, the books I brought to bed. They said I never seemed like one of them My own family thought it was OK but couldn’t I write of things that were pleasant? They wanted to know how much I got paid and why I didn’t write for The Atlantic Look, I still have trouble saying no. I want all of you to care about what I’m thinking, maybe even to want my hair It's true, I put a no smoking sign up on the door but twice I have gotten out ashtrays But I have stopped being grateful to be asked to read or to always have some lover right there beside me it's still not easy to get off the phone, tell a young stoned poet it’s a bore to lie with the phone in my ear like a cold rock while he goes on about the evils of money, charging it to my phone But now when I hear myself laughing the apologizing laugh, I know what swallowing those black seeds can do and I spit them out. Like tobacco. (something men could always do) Nothing good grows from the I’m sorry, sorry, only those dark branches and they will get you from inside Lyn Lifshin

2 poems on GRIEF: Dorianne Laux's 'For the Sake of Strangers' and 'The Thing is' by Ellen Baas

2 poems on Grief: ‘FOR the SAKE of STRANGERS’ BY DORIANNE LAUX No matter what the grief, its weight, we are obliged to carry it. We rise and gather momentum, the dull strength that pushes us through crowds. And then the young boy gives me directions so avidly. A woman holds the glass door open, waiting patiently for my empty body to pass through All day it continues, each kindness reaching toward another- a stranger singing to no one as I pass on the path, trees offering their blossoms, a child who lifts his almond eyes and smiles. Somehow they always find me, seem even to be waiting, determined to keep me from myself, from the thing that calls to me as it must have once called to them this temptation to step off the edge and fall weightless, away from the world. *** ‘THE THING IS’ by ELLEN BAAS to love life, to love it even when you have no stomach for it and everything you’ve held dear crumbles like burnt paper in your hands, your throat filled with the silt of it. When grief sits with you, its tropical heat thickening the air, heavy as water more fit for gills than lungs; when grief weights you down like your own flesh only more of it, an obesity of grief, you think, How can a body withstand this? Then you hold life like a face between your palms, a plain face, no charming smile, no violet eyes, and you say, yes, I will take you I will love you, again. ***

For the Sake of Strangers BY DORIANNE LAUX

No matter what the grief, its weight, we are obliged to carry it. We rise and gather momentum, the dull strength that pushes us through crowds. And then the young boy gives me directions so avidly. A woman holds the glass door open, waiting patiently for my empty body to pass through All day it continues, each kindness reaching toward another- a stranger singing to no one as I pass on the path, trees offering their blossoms, a child who lifts his almond eyes and smiles. Somehow they always find me, seem even to be waiting, determined to keep me from myself, from the thing that calls to me as it must have once called to them this temptation to step off the edge and fall weightless, away from the world.

San Antonio by Naomi Shihab Nye

San Antonio Tonight I lingered over your name, the delicate assembly of vowels a voice inside my head. You were sleeping when I arrived. I stood by your bed and watched the sheets rise gently. I knew what slant of light would make you turn over. It was then I felt the highways slide out of my hands. I remembered the old men in the west side cafe, dealing dominoes like magical charms. It was then I knew, like a woman looking backward, I could not leave you, or find anyone I loved more. -- Naomi Shihab Nye, from Is This Forever, or What? Poems and Paintings from Texas.

Calling All Grandmothers by Alice Walker

We have to live differently. or we will die in the same old ways. Therefore I call on all Grand Mothers everywhere on the planet to rise and take your place in the leadership of the world. Come out of the kitchen out of the fields out of the beauty parlors out of the television Step forward and assume the role for which you were created: to lead humanity to health, happiness and sanity. I call on all the Grand Mothers of Earth and every person who possesses the Grand Mother Spirit of respect for life and protection of the young to rise and lead. The life of our species depends on it. & I call on all men of Earth to gracefully and gratefully stand aside & let them (let us) do so.

Because You Asked about the Line Between Prose and Poetry by Howard Nemerov, (1920 – 1991)

Sparrows were feeding in a freezing drizzle That while you watched turned to pieces of snow Riding a gradient invisible From silver aslant to random, white, and slow. There came a moment that you couldn't tell. And then they clearly flew instead of fell.

The Art of Disappearing by Naomi Shihab Nye

When they say Don’t I know you? say no. When they invite you to the party remember what parties are like before answering. Someone is telling you in a loud voice they once wrote a poem. Greasy sausage balls on a paper plate. Then reply. If they say We should get together say why? It’s not that you don’t love them anymore. You’re trying to remember something too important to forget. Trees. The monastery bell at twilight. Tell them you have a new project. It will never be finished. When someone recognizes you in a grocery store nod briefly and become a cabbage. When someone you haven’t seen in ten years appears at the door, don’t start singing him all your new songs. You will never catch up. Walk around feeling like a leaf. Know you could tumble any second. Then decide what to do with your time. Naomi Shihab Nye, from Words Under the Words: Selected Poems (Far Corner Books, 1995)

The Wasted Years by Karin Gottshall

The wasted years were filled with movies, dreams about Venice, bread and raspberry jam. A hundred books that drifted by like laundry blown loose from the line, their pages unmarked and remembered only vaguely. I fell asleep reading. I listened to Verdi and whole afternoons were gone. I worked: boxing chocolate, sweeping floors, asking would you like whipped cream on that? There were dogs and cats: I looked into their faces. I thought if I’d been a painter I would have purpose now: I would paint saints, I would paint insects, I would paint the coffee shop filled with ghosts in the morning. I went to art supply stores and smelled the charcoal, bought myself thick blank books that were never filled. My shoes wore out and I found another pair just the same. My recipe for peace was a baked pear and my remedy for sorrow was a smoke. My friends called at regular intervals and we spoke about the past as though it were a puzzle we’d yet to solve. I lay in the sun and didn’t care what happened. Birdsong poured like sticky liquid from the trees and stuck one moment to the next, and I felt my life adhere and slide like syrup as I fell asleep under the thousand shades of green.

Return (For Ellen) -- Daniel Halpern

Come back again and again, the fields no longer hold their colors on limbs of light over the earth, under the sky, over the soft dicondra, the clover and weeds that spread, that pressed their dark root systems into the rich fields. The old neighbors have passed quietly into the earth. Your family has broken down and is traveling. Still, this is where your mouth in humor first closed over the mouth of the girl who lived behind you, where you learned to live poised on the edge of talking. Come back, the fields are gone and your friends are gone, the girl behind you has married into another city, the roads out of town are direct now and fast, and everyone you knew is gone, or no longer wants to know you. But you must return, back to the long stretch of main street reaching across the entire length of the valley, back to the mild, mid-winter days around Christmas, back to what is now only remembered because nothing is the same here anymore. There are no fields, nothing edible on the land anymore–only the traffic moving this way, then back again, then back again. The light is no longer reflected in the earth but you return because there is always something that survives: come back again to old friends living against dark fields, come back again, the family holding dinner for you, come back, come back again.

The Thing Is BY ELLEN BASS

to love life, to love it even when you have no stomach for it and everything you’ve held dear crumbles like burnt paper in your hands, your throat filled with the silt of it. When grief sits with you, its tropical heat thickening the air, heavy as water more fit for gills than lungs; when grief weights you down like your own flesh only more of it, an obesity of grief, you think, How can a body withstand this? Then you hold life like a face between your palms, a plain face, no charming smile, no violet eyes, and you say, yes, I will take you I will love you, again. Poem copyright ©2002 Ellen Bass, "The Thing Is," from Poetry of Presence: An Anthology of Mindfulness Poems, (Grayson Books, 2017). Poem reprinted by permission of Ellen Bass and the publisher.

Secret of Life - Diana Der-Hovanessian

Once during the war on a bus going to Portsmouth a navy yard worker told me the secret of life. The secret of life, he said, can never be passed down one generation to the other. The secret of life, he said, is hunger. It makes an open hand. The secret of life is money. But only the small coins. The secret of life, he said, is love. You become what you lose. The secret of life, he said, is water. The world will end in flood. The secret of life, he said, is circumstance. If you catch the right bus at the right time you will sit next to the secret teller who will whisper it in your ear.

Antilamentation - Dorianne Laux

Regret nothing. Not the cruel novels you read to the end just to find out who killed the cook. Not the insipid movies that made you cry in the dark, in spite of your intelligence, your sophistication. Not the lover you left quivering in a hotel parking lot, the one you beat to the punchline, the door, or the one who left you in your red dress and shoes, the ones that crimped your toes, don’t regret those. Not the nights you called god names and cursed your mother, sunk like a dog in the living room couch, chewing your nails and crushed by loneliness. You were meant to inhale those smoky nights over a bottle of flat beer, to sweep stuck onion rings across the dirty restaurant floor, to wear the frayed coat with its loose buttons, its pockets full of struck matches. You’ve walked those streets a thousand times and still you end up here. Regret none of it, not one of the wasted days you wanted to know nothing, when the lights from the carnival rides were the only stars you believed in, loving them for their uselessness, not wanting to be saved. You’ve traveled this far on the back of every mistake, ridden in dark-eyed and morose but calm as a house after the TV set has been pitched out the upstairs window. Harmless as a broken ax. Emptied of expectation. Relax. Don’t bother remembering any of it. Let’s stop here, under the lit sign on the corner, and watch all the people walk by.

Émigré ~ © Jose Varghese

No one ever asks why your home failed to contain you. They assume you’ve just grown out of it. But the signs are too clear now - you lose the bliss of belonging anywhere once home kicks you out. But you smile, and never speak of the swaying ways doors locked you out, eyes showed you the way away, mouths shut tight in frowns, as you tread indifference, to find a way out. Only a guava tree in your courtyard tried to stop you with a thud of an over-ripe fruit falling down, breaking open, its red flesh a wound that would never heal. But you couldn’t stop the words that formed you, the thoughts that made you grow - each, a leap of faith. You heard footsteps in the dark coming to hunt them down. You went away, aimless, escaped to endless wandering, spent a lifetime seeing guava in persimmon, tasting the bliss of being nothing. One day a pavement vendor, the next an office clerk in stiff shirt, and then, when you make the mark, a character full of depth - someone who could be played by Sidney Poitier, or Denzel Washington; and then, a speck of dirt in a street, a being of nothing. They celebrate your wronged, diminished life. They envy the power of your scars, long for your perpetual loneliness, fight for the ground that doesn’t exist beneath your feet. ('Luminous Echoes' anthology, Dublin: 2016)

Harlem | Langston Hughes

What happens to a dream deferred? Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun? Or fester like a sore— And then run? Does it stink like rotten meat? Or crust and sugar over— like a syrupy sweet? Maybe it just sags like a heavy load. Or does it explode?

More Lies - Karin Gottshall

Sometimes I say I’m going to meet my sister at the café— even though I have no sister—just because it’s such a beautiful thing to say. I’ve always thought so, ever since I read a novel in which two sisters were constantly meeting in cafés. Today, for example, I walked alone on the wet sidewalk, wearing my rain boots, expecting someone might ask where I was headed. I bought a steno pad and a watch battery, the store windows fogged up. Rain in April is a kind of promise, and it costs nothing. I carried a bag of books to the café and ordered tea. I like a place that’s lit by lamps. I like a place where you can hear people talk about small things, like the difference between azure and cerulean, and the price of tulips. It’s going down. I watched someone who could be my sister walk in, shaking the rain from her hair. I thought, even now florists are filling their coolers with tulips, five dollars a bundle. All over the city there are sisters. Any one of them could be mine.

Self-Compassion by James Crews

My friend and I snickered the first time we heard the meditation teacher, a grown man, call himself honey, with a hand placed over his heart to illustrate how we too might become more gentle with ourselves and our runaway minds. It’s been years since we sat with legs twisted on cushions, holding back our laughter, but today I found myself crouched on the floor again, not meditating exactly, just agreeing to be still, saying honey to myself each time I thought about my husband splayed on the couch with aching joints and fever from a tick bite—what if he never gets better?— or considered the threat of more wildfires, the possible collapse of the Gulf Stream, then remembered that in a few more minutes, I’d have to climb down to the cellar and empty the bucket I placed beneath a leaky pipe that can’t be fixed until next week. How long do any of us really have before the body begins to break down and empty its mysteries into the air? Oh honey, I said—for once without a trace of irony or blush of shame— the touch of my own hand on my chest like that of a stranger, oddly comforting in spite of the facts. Copyright © 2021 by James Crews. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on November 17, 2021, by the Academy of American Poets.

The Mower BY PHILIP LARKIN

The Mower BY PHILIP LARKIN The mower stalled, twice; kneeling, I found A hedgehog jammed up against the blades, Killed. It had been in the long grass. I had seen it before, and even fed it, once. Now I had mauled its unobtrusive world Unmendably. Burial was no help: Next morning I got up and it did not. The first day after a death, the new absence Is always the same; we should be careful Of each other, we should be kind While there is still time.

The Time Around Scars by Michael Ondaatje

A girl whom I’ve not spoken to or shared coffee with for several years writes of an old scar. On her wrist it sleeps, smooth and white, the size of a leech. I gave it to her brandishing a new Italian penknife. Look, I said turning, and blood spat onto her shirt. My wife has scars like spread raindrops on knees and ankles, she talks of broken greenhouse panes and yet, apart from imagining red feet, (a nymph out of Chagall) I bring little to that scene. We remember the time around scars, they freeze irrelevant emotions and divide us from present friends. I remember this girl’s face, the widening rise of surprise. And would she moving with lover or husband conceal or flaunt it, or keep it at her wrist a mysterious watch. And this scar I then remember is a medallion of no emotion. I would meet you now and I would wish this scar to have been given with all the love that never occurred between us.

To Love Someone Long-Term Is to Attend a Thousand Funerals of the People They Used to Be - Heidi Priebe

The people they’re too exhausted to be any longer. The people they don’t recognize inside themselves anymore. The people they grew out of, the people they never ended up growing into. We so badly want the people we love to get their spark back when it burns out; to become speedily found when they are lost. But it is not our job to hold anyone accountable to the people they used to be. It is our job to travel with them between each version and to honor what emerges along the way. Sometimes it will be an even more luminescent flame. Sometimes it will be a flicker that disappears and temporarily floods the room with a perfect and necessary darkness. Source: (https://allyourprettywords.tumblr.com/)