Tag Archives: Alison Mcghee

June 28, 2012 · 1:41 am

Poem of the Week, In Michael Robins’s class minus one by Bob Hicok

At the desk where the boy sat, he sees the Chicago River.
It raises its hand.
It asks if metaphor should burn.
He says fire is the basis for all forms of the mouth.
He asks, why did you fill the boy with your going?
I didn’t know a boy had been added to me, the river says.
Would you have given him back if you knew?
I think so, the river says, I have so many boys in me,
I’m worn out stroking eyes looking up at the day.
Have you written a poem for us? he asks the river,
and the river reads its poem,
and the other students tell the river
it sounds like a poem the boy would have written,
that they smell the boy’s cigarettes
in the poem, they feel his teeth
biting the page.
And the river asks, did this boy dream of horses?
because I suddenly dream of horses, I suddenly dream.
They’re in a circle and the river says, I’ve never understood
round things, why would leaving come back
to itself?
And a girl makes a kiss with her mouth and leans it
against the river, and the kiss flows away
but the river wants it back, the river makes sounds
to go after the kiss.
And they all make sounds for the river to carry to the boy.
And the river promises to never surrender the boy’s shape
to the ocean.
–

A big thank you to Alison McGhee for her generous curation of these beautiful poems.
For more information about Bob Hicok, please click here:http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/bob-hicok
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June 14, 2012 · 4:56 am

Poem of the Week: A Blessing from My Sixteen Years’ Son by Mary Karr

They’re all gorgeous but this one especially so.

 

I have this son who assembled inside me
during Hurricane Gloria. In a flash, he appeared,
in a heartbeat. Outside, pines toppled.

Phone lines snapped and hissed like cobras.
Inside, he was a raw pearl: microscopic, luminous.
Look at the muscled obelisk of him now

pawing through the icebox for more grapes.
Sixteen years and not a bone broken,
not a single stitch. By his age,

I was marked more ways, and small.
He’s a slouching six foot three,
with implausible blue eyes, which settle

on the pages of Emerson’s “Self Reliance”
with profound belligerence.
A girl with a navel ring

could make his cell phone go brr,
or an Afro’d boy leaning on a mop at Taco Bell –
creatures strange as dragons or eels.

Balanced on a kitchen stool, each gives counsel
arcane as any oracle’s. Bruce claims school
is harshing my mellow. Case longs to date

a tattooed girl, because he wants a woman
willing to do stuff she’ll regret.
They’ve come to lead my son

into his broadening spiral.
Someday soon, the tether
will snap. I birthed my own mom

into oblivion. The night my son smashed
the car fender, then rode home
in the rain-streaked cop car, he asked, Did you

and Dad screw up so much?
He’d let me tuck him in,
my grandmother’s wedding quilt

from 1912 drawn to his goateed chin. Don’t
blame us, I said. You’re your own
idiot now. At which he grinned.

The cop said the girl in the crimped Chevy
took it hard. He’d found my son
awkwardly holding her in the canted headlights,

where he’d draped his own coat
over her shaking shoulders. My fault,
he’d confessed right off.

Nice kid, said the cop.

–

A big thank you to Alison McGhee for her generous curation of these fantastically beautiful poems.
For more information on Mary Karr, please click here: http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/mary-karr
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May 29, 2012 · 4:46 pm

Poem of the Week: Gate C 22 by Ellen Bass

At gate C 22 in the Portland airport
a man in a broad-band leather hat kissed
a woman arriving from Orange County.
They kissed and kissed and kissed. Long after

the other passengers clicked the handles of their carry-ons
and wheeled briskly toward short-term parking,
the couple stood there, arms wrapped around each other
like satin ribbons tying up a gift. And kissing.

Like she’d just staggered off the boat at Ellis Island,
like she’d been released from ICU, snapped
out of a coma, survived bone cancer, made it down
from Annapurna in only the clothes she was wearing.

Neither of them was young. His beard was gray.
She carried a few extra pounds you could imagine
she kept saying she had to lose. But they kissed lavish
kisses like the ocean in the early morning

of a calm day at Big Sur, the way it gathers
and swells, taking each rock slowly
in its mouth, sucking it under, swallowing it
again and again. We were all watching—

the passengers waiting for the delayed flight to San Jose,
the stewardesses, the pilots, the aproned woman icing
Cinnabons, the guy selling sunglasses. We couldn’t
look away. We could taste the kisses, crushed

in our mouths like the liquid centers of chocolate cordials.
But the best part was his face. When he drew back
and looked at her, his smile soft with wonder, almost
as though he were a mother still

opened from giving birth, like your mother
must have looked at you,
no matter what happened after—
if she beat you, or left you, or you’re lonely now—

you once lay there, the vernix
not yet wiped off and someone gazing at you
like you were the first sunrise seen from the earth.
The whole wing of the airport hushed,

each of us trying to slip into that woman’s middle-aged body,
her plaid bermuda shorts, sleeveless blouse,
little gold hoop earrings, glasses,
all of us, tilting our heads up.
–
For more information about Ellen Bass, please click here: http://www.ellenbass.com/index.php
–

A big thank you to Alison McGhee for her generous curation of these beautiful poems.
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#!/pages/Alison-McGhee/119862491361265?ref=ts

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May 3, 2012 · 7:26 pm

Poem of the Week – What the Living Do by Marie Howe

Johnny, the kitchen sink has been clogged for days, some utensil probably
fell down there.
And the Drano won’t work but smells dangerous, and the crusty dishes
have piled up

waiting for the plumber I still haven’t called. This is the everyday we
spoke of.
It’s winter again: the sky’s a deep headstrong blue, and the sunlight
pours through.

The open living room windows because the heat’s on too high in here, and
I can’t turn it off.
For weeks now, driving, or dropping a bag of groceries in the street,
the bag breaking,

I’ve been thinking: This is what the living do. And yesterday, hurrying
along those
wobbly bricks in the Cambridge sidewalk, spilling my coffee down my
wrist and sleeve,

I thought it again, and again later, when buying a hairbrush: This is it.
Parking. Slamming the car door shut in the cold. What you called
that yearning.

What you finally gave up. We want the spring to come and the winter to
pass. We want
whoever to call or not call, a letter, a kiss – we want more and more and
then more of it.

But there are moments, walking, when I catch a glimpse of myself in the
window glass,
say, the window of the corner video store, and I’m gripped by a cherishing
so deep

for my own blowing hair, chapped face, and unbuttoned coat that I’m
speechless:
I am living, I remember you.

–
A big warm thank you to Alison McGhee for lovingly curating and sharing these beautiful poems.
For more information on Marie Howe, please click here: http://www.mariehowe.com/
–
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April 25, 2012 · 5:37 am

The Accidental Life

I worked with a woman called Nicole Ciomek for awhile a few years ago at Arsenal Pulp Press . Over the years Nicole and I have stayed in touch through Facebook and we’ve a also  become mutual readers of each others blogs.  Nicole’s blog is quite different from mine. Condofire is a magazine of my interests and the most personal I have gotten is the “Conversations with My Mother” series I wrote because I found my mother quite funny.

From time to time I have considered writing more about certain aspects of my life,  particularly the wild flying leaps I’ve taken over the years but I’ve shied away from it for a number of reasons. Partly I don’t want to get hurt – partly my family’s privacy.

But I think it’s an interesting and worthwhile thing to do because at the end of the day the one thing social media can do is globally connect people with similar experiences. Connecting with others makes life less lonely. But it takes courage to write openly and truthfully about your life and particularly about the things that by nature, choice or accident make you different from the norm. It takes courage to reveal yourself.

Nicole has done something with her blog that I have been unable to do – she talks openly about her life, her love, her triumphs, her terrors, her hurts, the cancer that changed her life at 28 years old and the life altering fact that she can’t give birth to children and how this makes her feel.  Her life was changed for her. The accident of her life irrevocably changed her journey as much as she had it planned.

I love reading Nicole’s blog because she makes incremental decisions every day in spite of the obstacles and the strange change in plans she’s had to encounter,  to live and embrace her life with love and intelligence. Like Nicole I can’t/couldn’t/didn’t have kids. I understand how difficult it is to be standing in front of someone who has just asked you if you have kids and when you answer “no” says immediately “The best thing I ever did was have my kids”. Well, really.

How does she deal with these messy issues? Like this:

“To be in the moment. To put aside fears. To let go of control over things you cannot control. To give love without an expectation of return. To be thoughtful and kind. To laugh. To enjoy. To look to the bright side. To give out praise and support. To be open to change and what the future holds.  Well, this is really living isn’t it?”

 Alison McGhee stopped by here awhile ago and left a comment about a book I want to read. She described the book this way “What a weird, giant, sprawling, messy beautiful book.” Wow, I loved that sentence because it’s the best description of life I’ve ever seen. “What a weird, giant, sprawling, messy beautiful life.” You can plan it but those plans will change. So thanks to my online friends for the things they do. Keep your hearts and minds brave and bold.
And one last thing – Nicole’s post Infertility: Women Without Children ‘Have Nothing’? was picked up by the Huffington Post which is awesome. Give it a read:)

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March 29, 2012 · 3:52 pm

Poem of the Week: Diagnosis:Birds in the Blood by Anna Journey

The hummingbird’s nervous embroidery
through beach fog by our back

patio’s potato vine
reminds me of my mother’s southern

drawl from the kitchen: She’s flying,
flying like bird! I’ve heard that

as a child I involuntarily flapped my hands
at my side during moments

of intense concentration. I’d flutter
over a drawing, a doll, a blond hamster

in a shoebox maze. There are ways
to keep from breaking

apart. My guardians. My avian
blood. I believed

birds bubbled inside me—my own
diagnosis—though the doctors called it

something else: a harmless
twitch. A body’s

crossed wires. The lost
birds of my childhood

nerves have never
returned. But when you held

my elbow as we walked the four
blocks to the boardwalk,

we saw the brief
dazzle of a black-

chinned hummingbird—the first
I’d ever seen. It sheened

and tried to sip
from my sizzled wrists’

vanilla perfume. I knew
a single one

from the magic
flock had finally found me.

–
A big thank you to Alison McGhee for her curation of these beautiful poems.
For more about Anna Journey, please click here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anna_Journey
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March 11, 2012 · 6:22 pm

Poem of the Week – Philip Levine – You Can Have It

My brother comes home from work
and climbs the stairs to our room.
I can hear the bed groan and his shoes drop
one by one. You can have it, he says.

The moonlight streams in the window
and his unshaven face is whitened
like the face of the moon. He will sleep
long after noon and waken to find me gone.

Thirty years will pass before I remember
that moment when suddenly I knew each man
has one brother who dies when he sleeps
and sleeps when he rises to face this life,

and that together they are only one man
sharing a heart that always labors, hands
yellowed and cracked, a mouth that gasps
for breath and asks, Am I gonna make it?

All night at the ice plant he had fed
the chute its silvery blocks, and then I
stacked cases of orange soda for the children
of Kentucky, one gray boxcar at a time

with always two more waiting. We were twenty
for such a short time and always in
the wrong clothes, crusted with dirt
and sweat. I think now we were never twenty.

In 1948 in the city of Detroit, founded
by de la Mothe Cadillac for the distant purposes
of Henry Ford, no one wakened or died,
no one walked the streets or stoked a furnace,

for there was no such year, and now
that year has fallen off all the old newspapers,
calendars, doctors’ appointments, bonds,
wedding certificates, drivers licenses.

The city slept. The snow turned to ice.
The ice to standing pools or rivers
racing in the gutters. Then bright grass rose
between the thousands of cracked squares,

and that grass died. I give you back 1948.
I give you all the years from then
to the coming one. Give me back the moon
with its frail light falling across a face.

Give me back my young brother, hard
and furious, with wide shoulders and a curse
for God and burning eyes that look upon
all creation and say, You can have it.

–
Many thanks to Alison McGhee for her curation of these lovely poems.
For more information on Philip Levine, please click here: http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/philip-levine
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February 28, 2012 · 3:19 pm

Poem of the Week: Funeral Blues by W.H. Auden

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling on the sky the message He Is Dead,
Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.

He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last for ever: I was wrong.

The stars are not wanted now: put out every one;
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun;
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood.
For nothing now can ever come to any good.

A big thank you to Alison McGhee for her thoughtful curation of these beautiful poems.

–
For more information on W.H. Auden, please click here: http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/120
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February 16, 2012 · 4:31 pm

Poem of the Week: Overheard by Ross Gay

It’s a beautiful day
the small man said from behind me
and I could tell he had a slight limp
from the rasp of his boot against the sidewalk
and I was slow to look at him
because I’ve learned to close my ears
against the voices of passersby, which is easier than closing
them to my own mind,
and although he said it I did not hear it
until he said it a second or third time
but he did, he said It’s a beautiful day and something
in the way he pointed to the sun unfolding
between two oaks overhanging a basketball court
on 10th Street made me, too
catch hold of that light, opening my hands
to the dream of the soon blooming
and never did he say forget the crick in your neck
nor your bloody dreams; he did not say forget
the multiple shades of your mother’s heartbreak,
nor the father in your city
kneeling over his bloody child,
nor the five species of bird this second become memory,
no, he said only, It’s a beautiful day,
this tiny man
limping past me
with upturned palms
shaking his head
in disbelief.
–

A big thank you to Alison McGhee for curating these poems.
For more information on Ross Gay, please click here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ross_Gay
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February 2, 2012 · 6:25 pm

Poem of the Week – June the Horse by Jim Harrison

Sleep is water. I’m an old man surging
upriver on the back of my dream horse
that I haven’t seen since I was ten.
We’re night riders through cities, forests, fields.

I saw Stephanie standing on the steps of Pandora’s Box
on Sheridan Square in 1957. She’d never spoken
to me but this time, as a horse lover, she waved.

I saw the sow bear and two cubs. She growled
at me in 1987 when I tried to leave the cabin while her cubs
were playing with my garbage cans. I needed a drink
but I didn’t need this big girl on my ass.

We swam up the Neva in St. Petersburg in 1972
where a girl sat on the bank hugging a red icon
and Raskolnikov, pissed off and whining, spat on her feet.

On the Rhône in the Camargue fighting bulls
bellowed at us from a marsh and 10,000 flamingos
took flight for Africa.

This night-riding is the finest thing I do at age seventy-two.
On my birthday evening we’ll return to the original
pasture where we met and where she emerged from the pond
draped in lily pads and a coat of green algae.
We were children together and I never expected her return.

One day as a brown boy I shot a wasp nest with bow and arrow,
releasing hell. I mounted her from a stump and without
reins or saddle we rode to a clear lake where the bottom
was covered with my dreams waiting to be born.
One day I’ll ride her as a bone-clacking skeleton.
We’ll ride to Veracruz and Barcelona, then up to Venus.

–

Thanks to Alison McGhee for her curation of these beautiful poems.
For more information on Jim Harrison, please click here: http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/jim-harrison
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