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“We need poetry as living language, the core of every language, something that is still spoken, aloud or in the mind, muttered in secret, subversive, reaching around corners, crumpled into a pocket, performed to a community, read aloud to the dying, recited by heart, scratched or sprayed on a wall. That kind of language.”
― Adrienne Rich, The Best American Poetry 1996

“What saves and ruins?
(The museum)

What blooms amongst the rocks?
(A ship)

What opens wide and explains why?
(A burning window)

What is ill-advised in the new world?
(What ends at the treeline.
What split like a lip into two less viable possibilities.)

What shimmers on our bodies when we are warm?
(Our historic burning) What lines both the inside of our coats
and the inside of our mouths?
(Our current burning)
What is the real museum?
What is wet and is yet a wick?
(The tongue, which becomes colorless over time.
Which flakes.)”
― Catie Rosemurgy

“The Fire

When a human is asked about a particular fire,
she comes close:
then it is too hot,
so she turns her face—

and that’s when the forest of her bearable life appears,
always on the other side of the fire. The fire
she’s been asked to tell the story of,
she has to turn from it, so the story you hear
is that of pines and twitching leaves
and how her body is like neither—

all the while there is a fire
at her back
which she feels in fine detail,
as if the flame were a dremel
and her back its etching glass.

You will not know all about the fire
simply because you asked.
When she speaks of the forest
this is what she is teaching you,

you who thought you were her master.”
― Katie Ford, Blood Lyrics: Poems

“But I know we need to keep warm here on earth
And when your shawl is as thin as mine is, you tell stories.”
― Naomi Shihab Nye, Red Suitcase