#a poem a day

Here in the lighthouse of the home
The third floor perched in the canopy
With an eye on the ridge across the valley
I write
Windows like portholes
Walls like a barn
And old decals from children long grown
The floor is of plywood
The windows hooked shut
Nails poking through a ceiling of oak
The birds roost close
To the wood they call home
Tapping on the beams
Of trees long gone

I hear the subtle grace
of soft paws coming close
And we both find comfort
In the rigidity of a simple roost
We’ve settled onto a pallet
Covered by a blanket folded flat
Our coats of fur and wool
Keeping out the cold
We’ve licked all our wounds clean
But we both rest better these days
Where we can’t be seen
Up where there are no dishes or bills
No musts or ought tos or stills
Just splinters and all the heat
the house below couldn’t keep

I’m writing a poem every day this December. I hope you enjoy some of them. I wrote this one listening to “Glory Bound” by The Wailin’ Jennys. And if you’d like to subscribe to the newsletter, click here.

There’s a photo when
I was 6
or 10
And my jaw is clenched now
just as it was then
Lips pursed and eyes narrowed
Hands gripped and brow furrowed
All this blame on traffic and death
Always feeling put out and bereft
But I can’t say it’s time
or stress
It’s just me, in motion and at rest
in the backyard
under the window
playing a spy
or a widow
Because I knew
I’d fend for myself
Just never thought it would be
as tame as boring
as a night-guard on my shelf



I’m writing a poem every day this December. I hope you enjoy some of them. And if you’d like to subscribe to the newsletter, click here.

Fresh broccoli and cut onion
Boiled water and a good husband
I could sit here for days
And watch you age
Cat on the pillow
Dog on the floor
All just waiting for our meals

Now I know I don’t wow you
In the way that I want to
But I’m tipsy and hungry
In sweats
And a pony
And you love me more each day

I’m writing a poem every day this December. I hope you enjoy some of them. And if you’d like to subscribe to the newsletter, click here.

Can I objectify myself
Lap up the power
feel the blood on my thighs
Warm and sour
veins of velvet
an ocean they can’t swim
Iron and grass and discontent

And that good body
The vascular, the valleys
Squeezing the fruit
Rivulets of sugars
sticking and sinking in
gluing hair to the tiny moguls
Of riveted skin

Can I kneel in the mirror
grow nails long and sharp
Can I sink them in the center
To pull it apart
build a kingdom
make them sick
swim in the moat
lick my lips


I’m writing a poem every day this December. I hope you enjoy some of them. I wrote this one listening to “Desire” by Meg Myers, “Blue Light” by Kelela, and “Leave The Light On” by Overcoats. And if you’d like to subscribe to the newsletter, click here.

Seagulls create heat maps in the sky
And the wind run its fingers through the grass
A december sun feels warmer than it should
And I forget the birds
Are just circling the dump

The blowing can only hold off
the decay for so long
The threads begin to show
Years of neglect distorting colors
Years of use taking them away
And all we do is repaint to repay

I can feel the distortion in my skin
Nutrients tainted by years of undone
I am the parasite
As we eat the host alive
I standby

I’m writing a poem every day this December. I hope you enjoy some of them. I wrote this one listening to “Nighttime Hunger” by Overcoats. And if you’d like to subscribe to the newsletter, click here.

Clicking clacking
Clapping thwacking
Does and does not
Is and is not
But was and does
and all that
He nods
And I clasp
He prints
And I gasp
Clomping huffing
Fuming guffawing
To my gas-powered pile of crap

Y’all, I was very busy today, so today’s poem is, well… it’s about my truck. I promised a poem a day, and that’s what you’re going to get. 

I’d go out of my mind
If I wasn’t stuck inside it
And when I hear myself thinking
I wonder who hears it
‘Cause she doesn’t like it
When I check my pulse and
she’s got no use for shakes
And compulsions
So I talk to myself
to talk to her
And between the words
I can rest

I’m writing a poem every day this December. I hope you enjoy some of them. And if you’d like to subscribe to the newsletter, click here.

By Alejandra Pizarnik

If you dare to frighten
the truth out of this old wall
and its fissures, its gashes
that form shapes and sphinxes
and hands and clepsydras
surely a presence
for your thirst will emerge,
and no doubt this absence
that drinks you dry will leave you.

by Alejandra Pizarnik

She wants to speak, but I know what she is. She believes love is death—even if everything devoid of love disgusts her. Since her love makes her innocent, why should she speak? Mistress of the Castle, her fingers play upon mirrors of pronouns.

by Amina Saïd

I was ten years old head full of sky
I borrowed the sun’s wings
to fly toward that spot between two shores

I built towers of sand
where that shadow lived which served as my body

body ripened by a sun of extreme summer
I was in the wind’s thoughts
intonations of light
composed my landscape

in the color of day
I scowled with the stones
where scorpions sheltered
on the island, women went masked
perhaps out of modesty

sky in my head I would make myself invisible
to see better knocked at windowpanes
where the day gathered
in an ordinary hymn
I looked for meaning in form—
somewhere out there the world had to exist

I was twenty years old impatient
to shore up at new continents
I left my father’s house
gave my avian liberty up to the light
entered the space of darkness

I tried to open invisible doors
claimed to read the very stuff of silence
like a mother tongue
made a beginning of the past
and a double absence of the present

body more alive than dead
I refused to let night separate me
from day or day from night

watcher of dreams whom a dream invented
what was I looking for when I opened my eyes
on the colors of the world
which the sun never lets out of its sight

from words’ second memory
real feeling is born
I inhabit that music
which I can’t be the only one to hear

by Amina Saïd

I was born of a silence
between the sea and the olive-tree

the mystery of an errant star
protects me from myself

I was born of a silence
between the sea and the olive-tree
of the rhythm of waves
and the childhood of light

words have a visible face
which hides another one

at the crossroads of the poem
some of them resist
expose me to the danger of speech

I was born of a silence
between the sea and the olive-tree
of the rhythm of waves
and the childhood of light
of July’s wedding of a summer moon
of an obvious fact and of a question

hanging from the world’s breath
I take my place in a sorrowful
wandering the place where I live
is always a border

I was born of a silence
between the sea and the olive-tree
of the rhythm of waves
and the childhood of light
of July’s wedding of a summer moon
of an obvious fact and of a question
of a swallow’s solitary flight
and of a fickle star

last meeting-place with yourself
death crater fiery mouth
where you leave your last pair of sandals

our path starts from the sun
to return to the sun

by Amina Saïd

I slept for three centuries on a bed of stones
I saw things men had forgotten
I measured the distance that separated heaven from earth
I read the palm’s lines I delivered the augury
a voice not my own spoke from my mouth
I disappeared into a city that had disappeared
armed horsemen invaded our plains
there we stayed waiting for the next barbarians
the sea withdrew from the doors of my city
I gained the favor of the earth’s rivers
I tattooed the day with my dreams
my face saw my other face
I did not hear the voice that was calling me
the hand that sought me did not find me
I was born many times from each star
I died as many times with each day’s sun
I took the early boat headed for nowhere
I asked for a room in the country of others
I had accomplished nothing before our farewells
I lived in the setting sun in the Levant in the wind’s space
I was that foreigner who came with evening
doubly foreign between north and south
I carved sad birds on gray stones
I drew those stones and inhabited them
I built rafts where there was no ocean
I pitched tents where there was no desert
caravans brought me to a dream of the orient
my calligraphies traveled on cloud-back
I remembered the snow of almond trees
I followed birds’ flight-paths
to the moon’s mountain to the eiderdown of birth
I learned and forgot all the languages on earth
I made a bonfire of all its homelands
some nights I drank from the flask of oblivion
I searched for my star in the bed of stars
I kept your love in the crease of my palm
I wove a carpet from the wool of memory
I unfolded the world under the arch of beginnings
I bandaged the wounds of twilight
I made bouquets of my seasons and offered them to life
I counted the trees that separate me from you
there were two of us on earth now we are alone here
I pulled a belt of words tight around my waist
I covered the mirrors’ illusions with a shroud
I cultivated silence like a rare plant
glimmer by glimmer I deciphered the night
for a while death courted me

by Amina Saïd

fire iron blood barbed wire
Djibouti meditates on Red Sea shore
dhows rot in the cove of the port
Rimbaud seated pensive at a school desk
has no more ink for his pen
no paper for a poem
kilomètre 12 sheet metal refugee village
big water containers rusting alongside the path
the volcanoes’ twin cones burst from the blood of the sea
like a woman’s breasts pointing toward the sun
triangular bushes holding up the stretch of sky
nomad pastor standing on a rock scanning infinity
a holy man’s tomb is marked with a green cloth
tied to a pole thrust in a pile of rocks
a brown rock circle marks out a mosque
fields of black lava swarming with snakes
toothless smile of the rift across the trail
Lake Assal eye of salt open wide on another sky
blue mauve purple mountains of the Ethiopian dream
passage of caravans loaded with sweat and salt

Conditioned to ecstasy, the poet is like a gorgeous unknown bird mired in the ashes of thought. If he succeeds in freeing himself, it is to make a sacrificial flight to the sun. His dreams of a regenerate world are but the reverberations of his own fevered pulse beats. He imagines the world will follow him, but in the blue he finds himself alone. Alone but surrounded by his creations; sustained, therefore to meet the supreme sacrifice.

Henry Miller - The Time of the Assassins: a Study of Rimbaud

by Cesar Vallejo

I will die in Paris with a rainstorm,
on a day I already remember,
I will die in Paris—and I don’t shy away—
perhaps on a Thursday, as today is, in autumn.

      It will be Thursday, because today, Thursday, as I prose
these lines, I’ve put on my humeri in a bad mood,  
and, today like never before, I’ve turned back,
with all of my road, to see myself alone.

      César Vallejo has died; they kept hitting him,  
everyone, even though he does nothing to them,
they gave it to him hard with a club and hard

      also with a rope; witnesses are
the Thursday days and the humerus bones,  
the solitude, the rain, the roads…

by Joshua Espinoza

every word i say is true
especially the hyperbolic
the more ridiculous the more real
i’m dying
i’m literally dying
i wore a denim skirt out today and i didn’t die
all plants are queer
the palm tree outside my window is gay as hell
i’m getting there
i’ve stood in the sun and covered myself in dirt
while crying for two hours
about some old song called you and me before we met
we were two women in love
before we ever knew it
the sky is the same way about the mountains
the buildings are the same way
about the people in them
i am the same way
about my body
i remember a million things before i fall asleep
i lose them
that’s the only law of physics i believe in

by Ezra Pound

You came in out of the night
And there were flowers in your hand,
Now you will come out of a confusion of people,
Out of a turmoil of speech about you.

I who have seen you amid the primal things
Was angry when they spoke your name
IN ordinary places.
I would that the cool waves might flow over my mind,
And that the world should dry as a dead leaf,
Or as a dandelion see-pod and be swept away,
So that I might find you again,
Alone.

1. We want to sing the love of danger, the habit of danger and of temerity.
2. The essential elements of our poetry will be courage, daring, and revolt.

From the Futuristic Manifesto

by Rainer Maria Rilke

It is life in slow motion,
it’s the heart in reverse,
it’s a hope-and-a-half:
too much and too little at once.

It’s a train that suddenly
stops with no station around,
and we can hear the cricket,
and, leaning out the carriage

door, we vainly contemplate
a wind we feel that stirs
the blooming meadows, the meadows
made imaginary by this stop.

by Ahmad Shamloo

When was it and how
That breeze
Told me of your graceful amble?
How long has it been
Since your humble birth?
When was it and how
That fire
Told the story of my burning ecstasy?
How long has it been
Since a volcano last erupted?
When was it and how
That water
Talked of our flowing purity?
How long shall we wait
Until the sea storms again?
When was it and how
That the earth
Was an undeniable truth beneath our feet?
How long shall we wait
Until the birth of hope anew? 

By Lisa Zaran (2005)

It is later than late,
the simmered down darkness
of the jukebox hour.

The hour of drunkenness
and cigarettes.

The fools hour.

In my dreams,
I still smoke, cigarette after cigarette.

It’s okay, I’m dreaming.

In dreams, smoking can’t kill me.

It’s warm outside.

I have every window open.

There’s no such thing as danger,
only the dangerous face of beauty.

I am hanging at my window
like a houseplant.

I am smoking a cigarette.

I am having a drink.

The pale, blue moon is shining.

The savage stars appear.

Every fool that passes by
smiles up at me.

I drip ashes on them.

There is music playing from somewhere.

A thready, salt-sweet tune I don’t know
any of the words to.

There’s a gentle breeze making
hopscotch with my hair.

This is the wet blanket air of midnight.

This is the incremental hour.

This is the plastic placemat of time
between reality and make-believe.

This is tabletop dream time.

This is that faint stain on your mattress,
the one you’ll discover come morning,
and wonder how.

This is the monumental moment.

The essential: look at me now.

This is the hour.

Isn’t it lovely? Wake up the stars!
Isn’t it fabulous? Kiss the moon!
Where is the clock? The one that
always runs ahead.
The one
that always tries to crush me with
its future.

By Dino Buzzati

I wish you would come to me
in a winter evening,
and squeezed together
behind the window panes,
looking at the solitude
of the dark and icy roads,
I wish we would remember
the winters of fairy tales,
where we lived together
without knowing it.

Through the same enchanted paths
we passed in fact,
you and I,
with halting steps,
together we went across forests crawling with wolves,
and the same geniuses spied on us
from the tufts of moss
hanging from the towers,
among the fluttering of ravens.

Together,
without knowing it,
from there perhaps we both looked
towards the mysterious life,
waiting for us.
Therein throbbed in us
for the first time
crazy and tender wishes. 

“Do you remember?”
we will say each other,
squeezing gently in the warm room.