#ross gay
I tried to challenge myself by making art that wasn’t… primarily pink in colour scheme, and I STRUGGLED Y’ALL.
So I cheated and managed to sneak a little bit in here but overall, I don’t hate it??? Also more typography fun!
Also the poem was Burial by Ross Gay and even when he writes about grief, his poems are joyous and it’s my favourite kind of poetry.
Prayer for My Unborn Niece or Nephew
Ross Gay
Today, November 28th, 2005, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania,
I am staring at my hands in the common pose
of the hungry and penitent. I am studying again
the emptiness of my clasped hands, wherein I see
my sister-in-law days from birthing
the small thing which will erase,
in some sense, the mystery of my father’s departure;
their child will emerge with ten fingers,
and toes, howling, and his mother will hold
his gummy mouth to her breast and the stars
will hang above them and not one bomb
will be heard through that night. And my brother will stir,
waking with his wife the first few days, and he will run
his long fingers along the soft terrain of his child’s skull
and not once will he cover the child’s ears
or throw the two to the ground and cover them
from the blasts. And this child will gaze
into a night which is black and quiet.
She will pull herself up to her feet
standing like a buoy in wind-grooved waters,
falling, and rising again, never shaken
by an explosion. And her grandmother
will watch her stumble through a park or playground,
will watch her sail through the air on swings,
howling with joy, and never once
will she snatch her from the swing and run
for shelter because again, the bombs are falling.
The two will drink cocoa, the beautiful lines
in my mother’s face growing deeper as she smiles
at the beautiful boy flipping the pages of a book
with pictures of dinosaurs, and no bomb
will blast glass into this child’s face, leaving
the one eye useless. No bomb will loosen the roof,
crushing my mother while this child sees
plaster and wood and blood where once his Nana sat.
This child will not sit with his Nana, killed by a bomb,
for hours. I will never drive across two states
to help my brother bury my mother this way. To pray
and weep and beg this child to speak again.
She will go to school with other children,
and some of them will have more food than others,
and some will be the witnesses of great crimes,
and some will describe flavors with colors, and some
will have seizures, and some will read two grade
levels ahead, but none of them will tip their desks
and shield their faces, nor watch as their teacher
falls out of her shoes, clinging to the nearest child.
This child will bleed
and cry and curse his living parents
and slam doors and be hurt and hurt again. And she will feel
clover on her bare feet. Will swim in frigid waters.
Will climb trees and spy cardinal chicks blind
and peeping. And no bomb will kill this child’s parents.
No bomb will kill this child’s grandparents. No bomb
will kill this child’s uncles. And no bomb will kill
this child, who will raise to his mouth
some small morsel of food of which there is more
while bombs fall from the sky like dust
brushed from the hands of a stupid god and children
whose parents named them will become dust
and their parents will drape themselves in black
and dream of the tiny mouths which once reared
to suckle or gasp at some bird sailing by
and their tears will make a mud which will heal nothing,
and today I will speak no word
except the name of that child whose absence
makes the hands of her parents shiver. A name
which had a meaning.
As will yours.
—for Mikayla Grace
==
Also by Ross Gay: A Small Needful Fact.
Today in:
2020: Vigil, Phillis Levin
2019:Nights in the Neighborhood, Linda Gregg
2018:I Dreamed Again, Anne Michaels
2017:wishes for sons, Lucille Clifton
2016:Told You So, Keetje Kuipers
2015:Accident, Mass. Ave., Jill McDonough
2014:This Hour and What Is Dead, Li-Young Lee
2013:To Myself, Franz Wright
2012:Manet’s Olympia, Margaret Atwood
2011:Three Rivers, Alpay Ulku
2010:Ode to Hangover, Dean Young
2009:We become new, Marge Piercy
2008:The Only Animal, Franz Wright
2007:Dream Song 385, John Berryman
2006:The Quiet World, Jeffrey McDaniel
2005:Man and Wife, Robert Lowell
Poem to My Child, If Ever You Shall Be
Ross Gay
—after Steve Scafidi
The way the universe sat waiting to become,
quietly, in the nether of space and time,
you too remain some cellular snuggle
dangling between my legs, curled in the warm
swim of my mostly quietest self. If you come to be—
And who knows?—I wonder, little bubble
of unbudded capillaries, little one ever aswirl
in my vascular galaxies, what would you think
of this world which turns itself steadily
into an oblivion that hurts, and hurts bad?
Would you curse me my careless caressing you
into this world or would you rise up
and, mustering all your strength into that tiny throat
which one day, no doubt, would grow big and strong,
scream and scream and scream until you break the back of one injustice,
or at least get to your knees to kiss back to life
some roadkill? I have so many questions for you,
for you are closer to me than anyone
has ever been, tumbling, as you are, this second,
through my heart’s every chamber, your teeny mouth
singing along with the half-broke workhorse’s steady boom and gasp.
And since we’re talking today I should tell you,
though I know you sneak a peek sometimes
through your father’s eyes, it’s a glorious day,
and there are millions of leaves collecting against the curbs,
and they’re the most delicate shade of gold
we’ve ever seen and must favor the transparent
wings of the angels you’re swimming with, little angel.
And as to your mother—well, I don’t know—
but my guess is that lilac bursts from her throat
and she is both honeybee and wasp and some kind of moan to boot
and probably she dances in the morning—
but who knows? You’ll swim beneath that bridge if it comes.
For now let me tell you about the bush called honeysuckle
that the sad call a weed, and how you could push your little
sun-licked face into the throngs and breathe and breathe.
Sweetness would be your name, and you would wonder why
four of your teeth are so sharp, and the tiny mountain range
of your knuckles so hard. And you would throw back your head
and open your mouth at the cows lowing their human songs
in the field, and the pigs swimming in shit and clover,
and everything on this earth, little dreamer, little dreamer
of the new world, holy, every rain drop and sand grain and blade
of grass worthy of gasp and joy and love, tiny shaman,
tiny blood thrust, tiny trillion cells trilling and trilling,
little dreamer, little hard hat, little heartbeat,
little best of me.
–
Today in:
2021: Choi Jeong Min, Franny Choi
2020:Earl, Louis Jenkins
2019:Kul, Fatimah Asghar
2018:My Life Was the Size of My Life, Jane Hirshfield
2017:I Would Ask You To Reconsider The Idea That Things Are As Bad As They’ve Ever Been, Hanif Abdurraqib
2016:Tired, Langston Hughes
2015:Democracy, Langston Hughes
2014:Postscript, Seamus Heaney
2013:The Ghost of Frank O’Hara, John Yohe
2012:All Objects Reveal Something About the Body, Catie Rosemurgy
2011:Prayer, Marie Howe
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
…joy is the mostly invisible, the underground union between us, you and me, which is, among other things, the great fact of our life and the lives of everyone and thing we love going away. If we sink a spoon into that fact, into the duff between us, we will fnd it teeming. It will look like all the books ever written. It will look like all the nerves in a body. We might call it sorrow, but we might call it a union, one that, once we notice it, once we bring it into the light, might become flower and food. Might be joy.
Ross Gay, The Book of Delights
“there are, on this planet alone, something like two million naturally occurring sweet things, some with names so gorgeous as to kick the steel from my knees: agave, persimmon, stick ball, the purple okra I bought for two bucks at the market. Think of that. The long night, the skeleton in the mirror, the man behind me on the bus taking notes, yeah, yeah. But look; my niece is running through a field calling my name. My neighbor sings like an angel and at the end of my block is a basketball court. I remember. My color’s green. I’m spring.”— Ross Gay, excerpt of “Sorrow Is Not My Name”, in Bringing the Shovel Down
“there are, on this planet alone, something like two million naturally occurring sweet things, some with names so gorgeous as to kick the steel from my knees: agave, persimmon, stick ball, the purple okra I bought for two bucks at the market. Think of that. The long night, the skeleton in the mirror, the man behind me on the bus taking notes, yeah, yeah. But look; my niece is running through a field calling my name. My neighbor sings like an angel and at the end of my block is a basketball court. I remember. My color’s green. I’m spring.”— Ross Gay, excerpt of “Sorrow Is Not My Name”, in Bringing the Shovel Down
