Alison McGhee's Blog, page 15

Poem of the Week, by Antonio Machado

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Thursday I had some minor heart surgery to fix a lifelong glitch. There was a moment of pure fear before they went to work –it’s my heart, you know?– and I asked them all please to take good care of me. Later I didn’t think I remembered anything, but then, the next day, I had a memory of my heart burning inside my chest. Because it had literally been burned, lasered in four places. And I thought of this poem, which is one of the five I would bring to a desert island if I hadn’t already memorized it. Golden bees making sweet honey out of past bitterness.

Last Night I Had a Dream

- Antonio Machado (translated by Alan Trueblood)

Last night I had a dream–

a blessed illusion it was–

I dreamt of a fountain flowing

deep down in my heart.

Water, by what hidden channels

have you come, tell me, to me,

welling up with new life

I never tasted before?

Last night I had a dream–

a blessed illusion it was–

I dreamt of a hive at work

deep down in my heart.

Within were the golden bees

straining out the bitter past

to make sweet-tasting honey,

and white honeycomb.

Last night I had a dream–

a blessed illusion it was–

I dreamt of a hot sun shining

deep down in my heart.

The heat was in the scorching

as from a fiery hearth;

the sun in the light it shed

and the tears it brought to the eyes.

Last night I had a dream–

a blessed illusion it was–

I dreamed it was God I’d found

deep down in my heart.

 

For more information on Antonio Machado, please click here.

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Poem of the Week, by lucille clifton

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The ongoing focus of my fabulous church for the non-churchy is racial justice, and the service this morning was particularly fabulous. We started out dancing in the pews to Pharrell Williams, we listened to the words of two of my favorite Nina Simone songs, we read a little Thoreau and Frederick Douglass and we all left laughing and full of energy. Halfway through the last song, some of my favorite lines from lucille clifton came ghosting into my head, including the last lines of this particular poem, so here you go.

The Lost Baby Poem

- lucille clifton

the time i dropped your almost body down

down to meet the waters under the city

and run one with the sewage to the sea

what did i know about waters rushing back

what did i know about drowning

or being drowned

you would have been born into winter

in the year of the disconnected gas

and no car     we would have made the thin

walk over genesee hill into the canada wind

to watch you slip like ice into strangers’ hands

you would have fallen naked as snow into winter

if you were here i could tell you these

and some other things

if i am ever less than a mountain

for your definite brothers and sisters

let the rivers pour over my head

let the sea take me for a spiller

of seas    let black men call me a stranger

always     for your never named sake

- for more information on lucille clifton (she spelled her name lower case), please click here.

- ​My blog: alisonmcghee.com/blog

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Poem of the Week, by Janee H. Baugher

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Every time I read this poem, the last line brings a lump to my throat. Not sure why. Maybe thinking about all the times in my life I’ve been afraid, but all those times there was something next to me, made by me, that was “never afraid”?

Light’s Effect on the Body

-  Janée J. Baugher

You’re not alone.

Your shadow’s your perfect fit.

It has no specificities

just imperial black — sum of all colors

all possibilities

to cast the pure, generalized you.

You are the body

that makes shadow possible.

Your body

is light’s filter on shadow.

When you run

from light, shadow’s the one sure thing before you.

Upon your death

shadow becomes a shadow of itself.

It began small

as you did. And through all that happened

your shadow was never afraid.

–

For more information on Janee H. Baugher, please click here.

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My blog: alisonmcghee.com/blog

My Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#!/p...

Poem of the Week, by Tracy K. Smith

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“Poems infatuated with their own smarts and detached from any emotional grounding can leave the reader feeling lonely, empty and ashamed for having expected more.” YES. That line is excerpted from a tiny but fierce essay that the poet Tracy K. Smith wrote this past summer. Don’t try to be smart, don’t try to hide. Just put your heart on the line.

Don’t You Wonder, Sometimes?

- Tracy K. Smith

1.

After dark, stars glisten like ice, and the distance they span

Hides something elemental. Not God, exactly. More like

Some thin-hipped glittering Bowie-being—a Starman

Or cosmic ace hovering, swaying, aching to make us see.

And what would we do, you and I, if we could know for sure

That someone was there squinting through the dust,

Saying nothing is lost, that everything lives on waiting only

To be wanted back badly enough? Would you go then,

Even for a few nights, into that other life where you

And that first she loved, blind to the future once, and happy?

Would I put on my coat and return to the kitchen where my

Mother and father sit waiting, dinner keeping warm on the stove?

Bowie will never die. Nothing will come for him in his sleep

Or charging through his veins. And he’ll never grow old,

Just like the woman you lost, who will always be dark-haired

And flush-faced, running toward an electronic screen

That clocks the minutes, the miles left to go. Just like the life

In which I’m forever a child looking out my window at the night sky

Thinking one day I’ll touch the world with bare hands

Even if it burns.

–

For more information on Tracy K. Smith, please click here: http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/...

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My blog: alisonmcghee.com/blog

My Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#!/p...

Poem of the Week, by William Butler Yeats

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I went to a literary festival last week and took part in a flash fiction workshop, in which you had to write a story under 250 words. My story was titled “The Pilgrim Soul in Her,” and I was feeling pretty smuggish-proud of myself, having come up with that clever title, because it’s a line lifted from the below poem by Mr. Yeats and I thought that most in the room (writers all) would recognize it. But nope. Nary a one did. This raised a silent hue and cry inside me, along the lines of Bring Back Yeats, so here you go.

 

When You Are Old

- William Butler Yeats

When you are old and grey and full of sleep,

And nodding by the fire, take down this book,

And slowly read, and dream of the soft look

Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;

How many loved your moments of glad grace,

And loved your beauty with love false or true,

But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,

And loved the sorrows of your changing face;

And bending down beside the glowing bars,

Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled

And paced upon the mountains overhead

And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.

–

​For more information on Yeats, please click here.

My blog: alisonmcghee.com/blog

My Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#!/pages/Alison-McGhee/119862491361265?ref=ts

Poem of the Week, by Catalina Ferro

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Everyone in my creative writing workshop memorized a poem and recited it last week in class. The only rule was that the poem had to be a minimum of three lines long (think haiku). “Anxiety Group” was one of the many poems, and even though she was nervous and worried that she’d forget some of the lines, the writer who performed it did a great job. The power of the poem, there in the classroom, was such that I went and looked it up to see the original slam poet perform it. Give it a look (link at bottom). “Here we are, all in the lifeboat together.”

Anxiety Group

- Catalina Ferro

There is a German satellite falling to Earth.

She says,

‘What if it hits me?’

Welcome to Anxiety Group.

The kingdom of the sweaty palm and the jiggling leg,

Where the women wrap themselves up tight.

Where the men bite nails till blood.

We are the magnifiers of molehills.

We are the princes of panic,

The ambassadors of anguish.

There is no pride here.

We lack the discipline of the eating disorder group

Lack the self-riotousness of bereavement group

And we’re not as fun as procrastinators anonymous.

Nobody wants to be here.

Me? I don’t sleep.

Can’t sleep.

I make insomnia look professional,

Make your tossing and turning look like afternoon hiccups.

The longest I’ve gone is nine days,

Went literally insane.

Sleep deprivation is a form of torture, you know,

And I do this to myself.

Melatonin makes me sad,

Benadryl is for amateurs,

Hypnotics turn off the lights too quickly,

And weed makes me crazy.

Diazepam, Lorazepam, Bromazepram, Alprazolam,

Klonopin is the only thing that works.

And they’re weaning me off it,

So, like a baby forced to remove breast from mouth, take bottle instead,

I got sent to anxiety group.

And apparently, we’re all going to die,

Because while the girl to my left worries that the satellite will hit her,

The woman to my right worries that it will hit a nuclear power plant,

And then,

We’re all fucked.

My father says only rich people go to therapy,

Poor people got shit to do.

And yet, here I am,

In this lifeboat

Surrounded by eight of the most beautiful, crazy ass motherfuckers the word has ever seen.

‘What if it’s not just a mole?’

‘What if it’s a flesh-eating virus?’

‘What if I fail at life?’

‘But what if it really is the rapture this time?’

‘What if they hit us again?

‘What if I wake one morning to see planes scraping skies again?’

‘What if it’s me this time?’

And I think ‘Wow.

It must be exhausting to want to live this much.’

Fuck the depressives,

Fuck the body-image meditation group,

Fuck sex addicts anonymous.

Give me your tired,

Your poor,

Your anxious,

Your huddles masses yearning to breathe deeply and count to ten.

Give me this collection of blurted confessions,

Of psychosomatic itch,

Of twitch and tick,

Of stutter and sweat,

Give me these weak kneed,

Jumpy-ass, too much saliva, break out in hives, awkward stomach, hair falling out,

Chewing lips, restless leg, pounding heart bastards

Any day of the week

These people who fight through every day

Like fucking gladiators,

Who fight demons worse than you and I could dream of,

Just because they want so badly to live

To hold on

To love

Because you can’t be this afraid of losing everything

If you don’t love everything first

Because you have to have

a soul-crushing hope

That things will get better

To be this afraid of missing it.

–

To watch Catalina Ferro perform “Anxiety Group,” please click here.

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My blog: alisonmcghee.com/blog

My Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#!/p...

Poem of the Week, by Lianne Spidel

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The workshops I teach, at my non-traditional, designed-for-working-adults university, are filled with all kinds of characters, with characters meaning people: tattoo artists, auto mechanics, journalists, pearl-wearing grandmothers, cops, military vets, hairdressers, graphic designers and you name it, you get the picture. Within the first class, friendships and alliances are formed. I can’t even call them unlikely alliances, because they aren’t. People are people, first and always. “A gentle affinity.”
Summer School
           – Liann Spidel
Because I needed to know for a poem,

I asked the science teacher sitting

next to me (the one they teased

about his massive chest) to explain

to me the composition of a cloud.
He had already told me he was there

only for the credit, a step up

on the salary scale. His wife

wanted a bigger house, the kids

were growing, he was overwhelmed

with bills and coaching.

I said, “When you’re my age

it will empty out.

There’s too much, then all

at once there’s almost nothing.”

When he answered me about the cloud,

his voice went soft:

“Moisture on dust,” and when

I asked him “in” or “on,”

he said it didn’t matter

either way. We never shared

a coffee and spoke only

of casual things, a still viable

jock and a graying grandmother

pretending to concentrate on the course

content, side by side through indolent

hours, easy in the peaceful co

existence a couple of prepositions

had provided–a gentle affinity,

pleasure like moisture on dust.

–

​For more information on Lianne Spidel, please click here: http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/l...​

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My blog: alisonmcghee.com/blog

My Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#!/pages/Alison-McGhee/119862491361265?ref=ts

Poem of the Week, by Bob Hicok

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I’ve been stuck on long poems the past few weeks, poems that tell stories from beginning to end. This one makes me wince and laugh and wince and laugh. Why does it take so long for parents and children to see each other as people, unstuck from the If only you’d done this or that. I have taught for a long time now at an under-the-radar state university created for working adults. Many of my students, when asked to write about a workplace they know intimately, scratch out intense, short, powerful pieces set in restaurants or loading docks or auto body shops or telephone call centers or daycares. I can’t imagine my dad ever, by choice, sitting down to read or write a poem, but he could tell you anything you want to know about any Yankees player from the last sixty years. Or how to get a chainsaw unstuck from a tree trunk. Or that a splash of Clorox will do as a disinfectant for a cut in a pinch. He could also tell you what it’s like to watch one of his children in pain, and not know how to help, or what to say. He might not put that feeling in words like “we’d turned into a door full of sun,” but I am picturing him right now, easing himself into the car, ready to drive us both up to the diner, and reaching over to turn on the passenger seat warmer because he knows I’m always cold.
O my pa-pa

- Bob Hicok
Our fathers have formed a poetry workshop.

They sit in a circle of disappointment over our fastballs

and wives. We thought they didn’t read our stuff,

whole anthologies of poems that begin, My father never,

or those that end, and he was silent as a carp,

or those with middles which, if you think

of the right side as a sketch, look like a paunch

of beer and worry, but secretly, with flashlights

in the woods, they’ve read every word and noticed

that our nine happy poems have balloons and sex

and giraffes inside, but not one dad waving hello

from the top of a hill at dusk. Theirs

is the revenge school of poetry, with titles like

“My Yellow Sheet Lad” and “Given Your Mother’s Taste

for Vodka, I’m Pretty Sure You’re Not Mine.”

They’re not trying to make the poems better

so much as sharper or louder, more like a fishhook

or electrocution, as a group

they overcome their individual senilities,

their complete distaste for language, how cloying

it is, how like tears it can be, and remember

every mention of their long hours at the office

or how tired they were when they came home,

when they were dragged through the door

by their shadows. I don’t know why it’s so hard

to write a simple and kind poem to my father, who worked,

not like a dog, dogs sleep most of the day in a ball

of wanting to chase something, but like a man, a man

with seven kids and a house to feed, whose absence

was his presence, his present, the Cheerios,

the PF Flyers, who taught me things about trees,

that they’re the most intricate version of standing up,

who built a grandfather clock with me so I would know

that time is a constructed thing, a passing, ticking fancy.

A bomb. A bomb that’ll go off soon for him, for me,

and I notice in our fathers’ poems a reciprocal dwelling

on absence, that they wonder why we disappeared

as soon as we got our licenses, why we wanted

the rocket cars, as if running away from them

to kiss girls who looked like mirrors of our mothers

wasn’t fast enough, and it turns out they did

start to say something, to form the words hey

or stay, but we’d turned into a door full of sun,

into the burning leave, and were gone

before it came to them that it was all right

to shout, that they should have knocked us down

with a hand on our shoulders, that they too are mystified

by the distance men need in their love.

–

​For more information on Bob Hicok, please click here: http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/b...​

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My blog: alisonmcghee.com/blog

My Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#!/pages/Alison-McGhee/119862491361265?ref=ts

Poem of the Week, by B.H. Fairchild

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In the past couple of weeks I keep coming back to this poem. I’ve read it through a few times, slowly, each time thinking the same thoughts, along the lines of This is a story, not a poem, and I wish there were more plumber/electrician/miner/farmer poets, and Why does this poem make me want to cry, and Geeze, these lines “our fathers fall in love with their own stories” and “And they did not because they were men, and this was a boy” are beautiful, and Honest to God, the stories we make up out of our lives are what get us through, and then I think about some of the quick and fierce and goodlooking boys I grew up with, almost none of whom I’ve seen since high school graduation, and I can see them out on the twilight ballfield of this poem.

 

Body and Soul

- B.H. Fairchild

Half-numb, guzzling bourbon and Coke from coffee mugs,

our fathers fall in love with their own stories, nuzzling

the facts but mauling the truth, and my friend’s father begins

to lay out with the slow ease of a blues ballad a story

about sandlot baseball in Commerce, Oklahoma decades ago.

These were men’s teams, grown men, some in their thirties

and forties who worked together in zinc mines or on oil rigs,

sweat and khaki and long beers after work, steel guitar music

whanging in their ears, little white rent houses to return to

where their wives complained about money and broken Kenmores

and then said the hell with it and sang Body and Soul

in the bathtub and later that evening with the kids asleep

lay in bed stroking their husband’s wrist tattoo and smoking

Chesterfields from a fresh pack until everything was O.K.

Well, you get the idea. Life goes on, the next day is Sunday,

another ball game, and the other team shows up one man short.

They say, we’re one man short, but can we use this boy,

he’s only fifteen years old, and at least he’ll make a game.

They take a look at the kid, muscular and kind of knowing

the way he holds his glove, with the shoulders loose,

the thick neck, but then with that boy’s face under

a clump of angelic blonde hair, and say, oh, hell, sure,

let’s play ball. So it all begins, the men loosening up,

joking about the fat catcher’s sex life, it’s so bad

last night he had to hump his wife, that sort of thing,

pairing off into little games of catch that heat up into

throwing matches, the smack of the fungo bat, lazy jogging

into right field, big smiles and arcs of tobacco juice,

and the talk that gives a cool, easy feeling to the air,

talk among men normally silent, normally brittle and a little

angry with the empty promise of their lives. But they chatter

and say rock and fire, babe, easy out, and go right ahead

and pitch to the boy, but nothing fancy, just hard fastballs

right around the belt, and the kid takes the first two

but on the third pops the bat around so quick and sure

that they pause a moment before turning around to watch

the ball still rising and finally dropping far beyond

the abandoned tractor that marks left field. Holy shit.

They’re pretty quiet watching him round the bases,

but then, what the hell, the kid knows how to hit a ball,

so what, let’s play some goddamned baseball here.

And so it goes. The next time up, the boy gets a look

at a very nifty low curve, then a slider, and the next one

is the curve again, and he sends it over the Allis Chalmers,

high and big and sweet. The left field just stands there, frozen.

As if this isn’t enough, the next time up he bats left-handed.

They can’t believe it, and the pitcher, a tall, mean-faced

man from Okarche who just doesn’t give a shit anyway

because his wife ran off two years ago leaving him with

three little ones and a rusted-out Dodge with a cracked block,

leans in hard, looking at the fat catcher like he was the sonofabitch

who ran off with his wife, leans in and throws something

out of the dark, green hell of forbidden fastballs, something

that comes in at the knees and then leaps viciously towards

the kid’s elbow. He swings exactly the way he did right-handed

and they all turn like a chorus line toward deep right field

where the ball loses itself in sagebrush and the sad burnt

dust of dustbowl Oklahoma. It is something to see.

But why make a long story long: runs pile up on both sides,

the boy comes around five times, and five times the pitcher

is cursing both God and His mother as his chew of tobacco sours

into something resembling horse piss, and a ragged and bruised

Spalding baseball disappears into the far horizon. Goodnight,

Irene. They have lost the game and some painful side bets

and they have been suckered. And it means nothing to them

though it should to you when they are told the boy’s name is

Mickey Mantle. And that’s the story, and those are the facts.

But the facts are not the truth. I think, though, as I scan

the faces of these old men now lost in the innings of their youth,

it lying there in the weeds behind that Allis Chalmers

just waiting for the obvious question to be asked: why, oh

why in hell didn’t they just throw around the kid, walk him,

after he hit the third homer? Anybody would have,

especially nine men with disappointed wives and dirty socks

and diminishing expectations for whom winning at anything

meant everything. Men who knew how to play the game,

who had talent when the other team had nothing except this ringer

who without a pitch to hit was meaningless, and they could go home

with their little two-dollar side bets and stride into the house

singing If You’ve Got the Money, Honey, I’ve Got the Time

with a bottle of Southern Comfort under their arms and grab

Dixie or May Ella up and dance across the gray linoleum

as if it were V-Day all over again. But they did not

And they did not because they were men, and this was a boy.

And they did not because sometimes after making love,

after smoking their Chesterfields in the cool silence and

listening to the big bands on the radio that sounded so glamorous,

so distant, they glanced over at their wives and noticed the lines

growing heavier around the eyes and mouth, felt what their wives

felt: that Les Brown and Glenn Miller and all those dancing couples

and in fact all possibility of human gaiety and light-heartedness

were as far away and unreachable as Times Square or the Avalon

ballroom. They did not because of the gray linoleum lying there

in the half-dark, the free calendar from the local mortuary

that said one day was pretty much like another, the work gloves

looped over the doorknob like dead squirrels. And they did not

because they had gone through a depression and a war that had left

them with the idea that being a man in the eyes of their fathers

and everyone else had cost them just too goddamn much to lay it

at the feet of a fifteen year-old-boy. And so they did not walk him,

and lost, but at least had some ragged remnant of themselves

to take back home. But there is one thing more, though it is not

a fact. When I see my friend’s father staring hard into the bottomless

well of home plate as Mantle’s fifth homer heads toward Arkansas,

I know that this man with the half-orphaned children and

worthless Dodge has also encountered for the first and possibly

only time the vast gap between talent and genius, has seen

as few have in the harsh light of an Oklahoma Sunday, the blonde

and blue-eyed bringer of truth, who will not easily be forgiven.

 

 

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​For more information on B.H. Fairchild, please click here: http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/b-h-fairchild​

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My blog: alisonmcghee.com/blog

My Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#!/pages/Alison-McGhee/119862491361265?ref=ts

Poem of the Week, by David Hernandez

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Kathmandu, upstate New York and New Hampshire. That is where the three youthful companions are heading, separately, this weekend. The fact that the youngest is moving into her freshman dorm right at this very minute means that one part of my life is over and another is beginning. Hello, sky. Nice to see you.

 

Sincerely, the Sky

- David Hernandez

Yes, I see you down there

looking up into my vastness.

What are you hoping

to find on my vacant face,

there between the crisscross

of telephone wires?

You should know I am only

bright blue now because of physics:

molecules break and scatter

my light from the sun

more than any other color.

You know my variations

azure at noon, navy by midnight.

How often I find you

then on your patio, pajamaed

and distressed, head thrown

back so your eyes can pick apart

not the darker version of myself

but the carousel of stars.

To you I am merely background.

You barely hear my voice.

Remember I am most vibrant

when air breaks my light.

Do something with your brokenness.