#the everyday we spoke of
Ode to the Unbroken World, Which Is Coming
Thomas Lux
It must be coming, mustn’t it? Churches
and saloons are filled with decent humans.
A mother wants to feed her daughter,
fathers to buy their children things that break.
People laugh, all over the world, people laugh.
We were born to laugh, and we know how to be sad;
we dislike injustice and cancer,
and are not unaware of our terrible errors.
A man wants to love his wife.
His wife wants him to carry something.
We’re capable of empathy, and intense moments of joy.
Sure, some of us are venal, but not most.
There’s always a punchbowl, somewhere,
in which floats a…
Life’s a bullet, that fast, and the sweeter for it.
It’s the same everywhere: Slovenia, India,
Pakistan, Suriname—people like to pray,
or they don’t,
or they like to fill a blue plastic pool
in the back yard with a hose
and watch their children splash.
Or sit in cafes, or at table with family.
And if a long train of cattle cars passes
along West Ridge
it’s only the cattle from East Ridge going to the abattoir.
The unbroken world is coming,
(it must be coming!), I heard a choir,
there were clouds, there was dust,
I heard it in the streets, I heard it
announced by loudhailers
mounted on trucks.
==
More Thomas Lux: A Little Tooth · Postcard to Baudelaire · Henry Clay’s Mouth
Today in:
2020: What Kind of Times Are These, Adrienne Rich
2019:Conversation with Phillis Wheatley #2, Tiana Clark
2018:Love Poem, Denise Levertov
2017:Young Wife’s Lament, Brigit Pegeen Kelly
2016:For the Confederate Dead, Kevin Young
2015:Awaking in New York, Maya Angelou
2014:when you have forgotten Sunday: the love story, Gwendolyn Brooks
2013:Scrambled Eggs and Whiskey, Hayden Carruth
2012:My Place, Franz Wright
2011:from The Wild Geese, Wendell Berry
2010:Love After Love, Derek Walcott
2009:To This May, W.S. Merwin
2008:Father, Ted Kooser
2007:from Little Sleep’s-Head Sprouting Hair in the Moonlight, Galway Kinnell
2006:Crusoe in England, Elizabeth Bishop
2005:Dream Song 1, John Berryman
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
Cindy Comes To Hear Me Read
Jill McDonough
Cindy: not her real name. I met her
in prison, and people in prison I give
the fake names. I taught her Shakespeare, remember
her frown, wide eyes, terror of getting
things wrong. Her clear, arguable thesis
on Desdemona’s motives, Desdemona’s past. The last
days were hard on her, it taking visible work
to see things could be worse. Imagine: I did.
But now she’s out! In jewelry and makeup, new
clothes, haircut she chose and paid for. We hugged.
We’d never hugged; it’s not allowed. On the outside
you can hug whoever you want. She told me she has
an apartment now, a window, an ocean view. She has
acar, she told me, and we both cracked up. The thought of it
wild, as farfetched then as when you’re a kid playing
grown-up, playing any kind of house. She has
a job. She drives there in traffic. Each day
she sees the angry people. Sweet, silly people,
mad—God bless them—at traffic. At other cars.
She laughs, she told me, laughs out loud alone
in her car. People around her angry as toddlers. Whole
highways of traffic, everybody at the work of being free.
==
Today in:
2020: from This Magic Moment, David Kirby
2019:Poem In Which I Become Wolverine, José Olivarez
2018:In the Beginning God Said Light, Mary Szybist
2017:from Contradictions: Tracking Poems, Adrienne Rich
2016:I Said Yes but I Meant No, Dean Young
2015:Cardinal Cardinal, Stephen Dunn
2014:Ezra Pound’s Proposition, Robert Hass
2013:Wistful sounds like a brand of air freshener, Bob Hicok
2012:Not Getting Closer, Jack Gilbert
2011:Written in Pencil in the Sealed Railway-Car, Dan Pagis
2010:The Moss of His Skin, Anne Sexton
2009:It’s This Way, Nazim Hikmet
2008:The Problem With Skin, Aimee Nezhukumatathil
2007:Serenade, Terrance Hayes
2006:The Old Liberators, Robert Hedin
2005:Morning Song, Sylvia Plath
Hurry
Marie Howe
We stop at the dry cleaners and the grocery store
and the gas station and the green market and
Hurry up honey, I say, hurry,
as she runs along two or three steps behind me
her blue jacket unzipped and her socks rolled down.
Where do I want her to hurry to? To her grave?
To mine? Where one day she might stand all grown?
Today, when all the errands are finally done, I say to her,
Honey I’m sorry I keep saying Hurry—
you walk ahead of me. You be the mother.
And, Hurry up, she says, over her shoulder, looking
back at me, laughing. Hurry up now darling, she says,
hurry, hurry, taking the house keys from my hands.
==
On this day in:
2020: Oh, Robert Creeley
2019:It Was Summer Now and the Colored People Came Out Into the Sunshine, Morgan Parker
2018:In Two Seconds, Mark Doty
2017:Aubade, Louis MacNeice
2016:Before, Ada Limón
2015:Sign for My Father, Who Stressed the Bunt, David Bottoms
2014:Ullapool Bike Ride, Chris Powici
2013:Clothespins, Stuart Dybek
2012:Ghost Story, Matthew Dickman
2011:Graves We Filled Before the Fire, Gabrielle Calvocoressi
2010:On Being Asked To Write A Poem Against The War In Vietnam, Hayden Carruth
2009:The Bear-Boy of Lithuania, Amy Gerstler
2008:Today’s News, David Tucker
2007:All There is to Know About Adolph Eichmann, Leonard Cohen
2006:Gamin, Frank O’Hara
2005:[this is what you love: more people. you remember], D.A. Powell
