#feast on your life
How the Trees on Summer Nights Turn into a Dark River
Barbara Crooker
how you can never reach it, no matter how hard you try,
walking as fast as you can, but getting nowhere,
arms and legs pumping, sweat drizzling in rivulets;
each year, a little slower, more creaks and aches, less breath.
Ah, but these soft nights, air like a warm bath, the dusky wings
of bats careening crazily overhead, and you’d think the road
goes on forever. Apollinaire wrote, “What isn’t given to love
is so much wasted,” and I wonder what I haven’t given yet.
A thin comma moon rises orange, a skinny slice of melon,
so delicious I could drown in its sweetness. Or eat the whole
thing, down to the rind. Always, this hunger for more.
==
Today in:
2020: Ash, Tracy K. Smith
2019:Under Stars, Dorianne Laux
2018:Afterlife,Natalie Eilbert
2017:There Are Birds Here, Jamaal May
2016:Poetry, Richard Kenney
2015:Dreaming at the Ballet, Jack Gilbert
2014:Vocation, Sandra Beasley
2013:Near the Race Track, Brigit Pegeen Kelly
2012:from Ask Him, Raymond Carver
2011:Sweet Star Chisel, Dearest Flaming Crumbs in Your Beard Lord, John Rybicki
2010:Rain Travel, W.S. Merwin
2009:Goodnight, Li-Young Lee
2008:Bearhug, Michael Ondaatje
2007:Meditation at Lagunitas, Robert Hass
2006:Autumn, Rainer Maria Rilke
2005:On Turning Ten, Billy Collins
The Problem with Travel
Ada Limón
Every time I’m in an airport,
I think I should drastically
change my life: Kill the kid stuff,
start to act my numbers, set fire
to the clutter and creep below
the radar like an escaped canine
sneaking along the fence line.
I’d be cable-knitted to the hilt,
beautiful beyond buying, believe
in the maker and fix my problems
with prayer and property.
Then, I think of you, home
with the dog, the field full
of purple pop-ups—we’re small
and flawed, but I want to be
who I am, going where
I’m going, all over again.
–
More Ada Limón: What I Didn’t Know Before || Instructions on Not Giving Up || The Conditional
Today in:
2021: When I Say That Loving Me Is Kind Of Like Being A Chicago Bulls Fan, Hanif Abdurraqib
2020:fromChildren Walk on Chairs to Cross a Flooded Schoolyard, Patrick Rosal
2019:If Life Is As Short As Our Ancestors Insist It Is, Why Isn’t Everything I Want Already At My Feet, Hanif Abdurraqib
2018:Bliss and Grief, Marie Ponsot
2017:Verge, Mark Doty
2016:Ever, Meghan O’Rourke
2015:The Two Times I Loved You the Most In a Car, Dorothea Grossman
2014:May Day, Phillis Levin
2013:The Triumph of the Infinite, Mark Strand
2012:Mermaid Song, Kim Addonizio
2011:the laughing heart, Charles Bukowski
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
aubade for the whole hood
Nate Marshall
today i offer my self
all the small kindnesses.
i’m out here
with breath in my body
though it may be stank
& body in my control
though it may be too soft
or too large or not enough.
today i offer the whole crib
a jam we ain’t heard in a minute
& permission to turn the news down
& move a hip like a suggestion
to a lover.
on this day i declare the pockmarked
street i grew up on a miracle.
i declare the bills, even the overdue
ones, a blessing. who knew
that we would still be here
to see these injustices. how can we measure
the disrespect of lack against that precious surprise?
real talk,
today i tell myself truths
other than the one that makes me low,
i give myself the gift of a joke with the homies.
real talk,
today i stay woke
to all the terror
but also to my favorite food
or my favorite place
or my best hope for our people
& i work to make all
my best lives possible.
==
Today in:
2020:Keeping Things Whole, Mark Strand
2019:New Year’s Day, Kim Addonizio
2018:I Know You Think I’ve Forgotten, Jane Hirshfield
2017:The Writer, Richard Wilbur
2016:from Seven Skins, Adrienne Rich
2015:I Ask Percy How I Should Live My Life, Mary Oliver
2014:In the Park, Maxine Kumin
2013:To A Sad Daughter, Michael Ondaatje
2012:My Dead Friends, Marie Howe
2011:Staying After, Linda Gregg
2010:Dream Song 14, John Berryman
2009:What We Kept, Megan Alpert
2008:Please Take Back the Sparrows, Suzanne Buffam
2007:It Happens Like This, James Tate
2006:Tantalus in May, Reginald Shepherd
2005:September Song, Geoffrey Hill
Waking After the Surgery
Leila Chatti
And just like that, I was whole again,
seam like a drawing of an eyelid closed,
gauze resting atop it like a bed
of snow laid quietly in the night
while I was somewhere or something
else, not quite dead but nearly, freer,
my self unlatched for a while as if it were
a dog I had simply released from its leash
or a balloon slipped loose from my grip
in a room with a low ceiling, my life
bouncing back within reach, my life
bounding toward me when called.
==
Buy Leila Chatti’s book: Deluge.
On this day in:
2020: Gutbucket, Kevin Young
2019:Insomnia, Linda Pastan
2018:How Many Nights, Galway Kinnell
2017:The Little Book of Hand Shadows, Deborah Digges
2016:Now I Pray, Kathy Engel
2015:Why I’m Here, Jacqueline Berger
2014:Snow, Aldo, Kate DiCamillo
2013:from The Escape, Philip Levine
2012:Thirst, Mary Oliver
2011:Getting Away with It, Jack Gilbert
2010:*turning, Annie Guthrie
2009:I Don’t Fear Death, Sandra Beasley
2008:The Dover Bitch, Anthony Hecht
2007:Death Comes To Me Again, A Girl, Dorianne Laux
2006:Up Jumped Spring, Al Young
2005:Old Women in Eliot Poems, David Wright
July
Cristin O'Keefe Aptowicz
The figs we ate wrapped in bacon.
The gelato we consumed greedily:
coconut milk, clove, fresh pear.
How we’d dump hot espresso on it
just to watch it melt, licking our spoons
clean. The potatoes fried in duck fat,
the salt we’d suck off our fingers,
the eggs we’d watch get beaten
’til they were a dizzying bright yellow,
how their edges crisped in the pan.
The pink salt blossom of prosciutto
we pulled apart with our hands, melted
on our eager tongues. The green herbs
with goat cheese, the aged brie paired
with a small pot of strawberry jam,
the final sour cherry we kept politely
pushing onto each other’s plate, saying,
No, you. But it’s so good. No, it’s yours.
How I finally put an end to it, plucked it
from the plate, and stuck it in my mouth.
How good it tasted: so sweet and so tart.
How good it felt: to want something and
pretend you don’t, and to get it anyway.
==
On this day in:
2020: Poem Beginning With A Retweet, Maggie Smith
2019:Waiting for Happiness, Nomi Stone
2018:United, Naomi Shihab Nye
2017:If You Are Over Staying Woke, Morgan Parker
2016:High School Senior, Sharon Olds
2015:Dog in Bed, Joyce Sidman
2014:Persephone Writes to Her Mother, Tara Mae Mulroy
2013:Hook, James Wright
2012:How to Build an Owl, Kathleen Lynch
2011:Expecting, Kevin Young
2010:The Choir, Luke Kennard
2009:I Come Home Wanting To Touch Everyone, Stephen Dunn
2008:Visible World, Richard Siken
2007:Anywhere Else, Maggie Dietz
2006:After Work, Richard Jones
2005:The Sheep-Child, James Dickey
Instructions on Not Giving Up
Ada Limón
More than the fuchsia funnels breaking out
of the crabapple tree, more than the neighbor’s
almost obscene display of cherry limbs shoving
their cotton candy-colored blossoms to the slate
sky of Spring rains, it’s the greening of the trees
that really gets to me. When all the shock of white
and taffy, the world’s baubles and trinkets, leave
the pavement strewn with the confetti of aftermath,
the leaves come. Patient, plodding, a green skin
growing over whatever winter did to us, a return
to the strange idea of continuous living despite
the mess of us, the hurt, the empty. Fine then,
I’ll take it, the tree seems to say, a new slick leaf
unfurling like a fist to an open palm, I’ll take it all.
–
Oh, friends. Remember this time a year ago, when we were all newly scared and frustrated and stuck at home? And now here we are: wearily scared and frustrated and probably still stuck at home. Can you believe it’s been a year? Can you believe it hasn’t been ten? Thank god for poetry right now.
As a reminder, you can get these poems once a day all April by signing up here. Or find them all month on Twitter,Tumblr,RSSortagged by topic. (Disclaimer: the tag page takes EONS to load, apologies.) [Should I add Instagram?! I can’t decide.]
–
More Ada Limón (I’m obsessed).
Today in…
2020:Motto, Bertolt Brecht
2019:Separation, W.S. Merwin
2018:Good Bones, Maggie Smith
2017:Better Days, A.F. Moritz
2016:Jenny Kiss’d Me, Leigh Hunt
2015:The Night House, Billy Collins
2014:Tim Riggins Speaks of Waterfalls, Nico Alvarado
2013:Nan Hardwicke Turns Into a Hare, Wendy Pratt
2012:A Short History of the Apple, Dorianne Laux
2011:New York Poem, Terrance Hayes
2010:On Wanting to Tell [ ] about a Girl Eating Fish Eyes, Mary Szybist
2009:A Little Tooth, Thomas Lux
2008:The Sciences Sing a Lullabye, Albert Goldbarth
2007:Elegy of Fortinbras, Zbigniew Herbert
2006:When Leather is a Whip, by Martin Espada
2005:Parents, William Meredith
