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Fourth Circuit

Hello Friends,


Today's poem comes from a somewhat unexpected location: an order from the United States Court of Appeals Fourth Circuit filed yesterday, agreeing to vacate an injunction while Gavin Grimm's case proceeds. Gavin Grimm, as you may recall, is a young transgender man who just needs to be able to use the boys' bathroom at his high school. It must be National Poetry Month, because Senior Judge Davis invokes the work of the Palestinian-American poet Naomi Shihab Nye in the concurring opinion to the court order!
You can read the whole (short! worth a read!) court document as a PDF here; Nye's poem also appears below. Many thanks to Emilie Eagan for sharing this court doc and explaining it to me on Facebook!
Enjoy.

Ellen


Famous
The river is famous to the fish.
The loud voice is famous to silence,

which knew it would inherit the earth

before anybody said so.
The cat sleeping on the fence is famous to the birds

watching him from the birdhouse.
The tear is famous, briefly, to the cheek.
The idea you carry close to your bosom

is famous to your bosom.
The boot is famous to the earth,

more famous than the dress shoe,

which is famous only to floors.
The bent photograph is famous to the one who carries it

and not at all famous to the one who is pictured.
I want to be famous to shuffling men

who smile while crossing streets,

sticky children in grocery lines,

famous as the one who smiled back.
I want to be famous in the way a pulley is famous,

or a buttonhole, not because it did anything spectacular,

but because it never forgot what it could do.
■

Poet Naomi Shihab Nye was also featured for Poem-A-Day April 29, 2016, Poem-A-Day April 17, 2015, and Poem-A-Day April 2, 2014.

Put A Ring On It

Hello Friends,


Was Beyoncé's "Single Ladies" inspired by A.E. Stallings's "With no ring on her finger / You cannot hope to hold her" — which appeared in the April 2004 issue of Poetry Magazine? We may never know. But what I can tell you is that this poetic form — where the 2nd and 4th line of one stanza become the 1st and 3rd line of the next stanza — is called a pantoum.
I hope you enjoy.

Ellen


Another Lullaby for Insomniacs
Sleep, she will not linger:

She turns her moon-cold shoulder.

With no ring on her finger,

You cannot hope to hold her.
She turns her moon-cold shoulder

And tosses off the cover.

You cannot hope to hold her:

She has another lover.
She tosses off the cover

And lays the darkness bare.

She has another lover.

Her heart is otherwhere.
She lays the darkness bare.

You slowly realize

Her heart is otherwhere.

There's distance in her eyes.
You slowly realize

That she will never linger,

With distance in her eyes

And no ring on her finger.
■

Hungry Gorge



A Divine Image
Cruelty has a Human Heart

And Jealousy a Human Face

Terror the Human Form Divine

And Secrecy, the Human Dress
The Human Dress, is forged Iron

The Human Form, a fiery Forge.

The Human Face, a Furnace seal'd

The Human Heart, its hungry Gorge.
■


Hello Friends,
William Blake grapples with what it means for humans to be made in God's image in several of his works in Songs of Experience (1794). I am particularly struck in this poem that poets have been comparing the human heart to a gorge for hundreds of years.

I hope you enjoy. Ellen

Clifton Street

Hello Friends,


I've been in bed sick for a couple of days, but yesterday I finally ventured out to the pharmacy for medicine. On my bus ride back, sunlight glinted off the sign for Clifton Street just so — so today we're doing a Lucille Clifton poem. It's not that time of the month, but Clifton wrote enough poems on this topic I'm pretty sure she'd be happy to have us reading them anytime.
Enjoy.

Ellen


poem in praise of menstruation
if there is a river

more beautiful than this

bright as the blood

red edge of the moon          if
there is a river

more faithful than this

returning each month

to the same delta          if there
is a river

braver than this

coming and coming in a surge

of passion, of pain          if there is
a river

more ancient than this

daughter of eve

mother of cain and of

abel          if there is in
the universe such a river          if

there is some where water

more powerful than this wild

water

pray that it flows also

through animals

beautiful and faithful and ancient

and female and brave
■

Audre Our Lorde

Hello Friends,


Yesterday, we got Mark O'Brien's take on what it means to be able to breathe. Today's poem is another take on being able to breathe — and the miracle of survival that is every black queer woman's life. Thinking about the Black Lives Matter movement, sadly the imprint of fear Audre Lorde writes about resonates just as keenly today as it did forty years ago. Lorde is often quoted for saying, "Your silence will not protect you," and this poem is also another take on that theme.
Enjoy.

Ellen


A Litany for Survival
For those of us who live at the shoreline

standing upon the constant edges of decision

crucial and alone

for those of us who cannot indulge

the passing dreams of choice

who love in doorways coming and going

in the hours between dawns

looking inward and outward

at once before and after

seeking a now that can breed

futures

like bread in our children's mouths

so their dreams will not reflect

the death of ours;
For those of us

who were imprinted with fear

like a faint line in the center of our foreheads

learning to be afraid with our mother's milk

for by this weapon

this illusion of some safety to be found

the heavy-footed hoped to silence us

For all of us

this instant and this triumph

We were never meant to survive.
And when the sun rises we are afraid

it might not remain

when the sun sets we are afraid

it might not rise in the morning

when our stomachs are full we are afraid

of indigestion

when our stomachs are empty we are afraid

we may never eat again

when we are loved we are afraid

love will vanish

when we are alone we are afraid

love will never return

and when we speak we are afraid

our words will not be heard

nor welcomed

but when we are silent

we are still afraid
So it is better to speak

remembering

we were never meant to survive.
■

"A Litany for Survival" appears in Audre Lorde's 1977 collection The Black Unicorn.

Supporting the weight of condors

Hello Friends,


One of the wonderful things about poetry is that it can quickly and intensely give us glimpses into what it's like to be someone who grew up differently than we did, who thinks differently than we do, or who even breathes differently than we do.
Today's poem by Mark O'Brien is from his collection The Man in the Iron Lung (1997).
I hope you enjoy.

Ellen
P.S. A stevedore is someone who unloads cargo from ships — a dockworker or a longshoreman.


Breathing
Grasping for straws is easier;

You can see the straws.

"This most excellent canopy, the air, look you,"

Presses down upon me

At fifteen pounds per square inch,

A dense, heavy, blue-glowing ocean,

Supporting the weight of condors

That swim its churning currents.

All I get is a thin stream of it,

A finger's width of the rope that ties me to life

As I labor like a stevedore to keep the connection.

Water wouldn't be so circumspect;

Water would crash in like a drunken sailor,

But air is prissy and genteel,

Teasing me with its nearness and pervading immensity.

The vast, circumambient atmosphere

Allows me but ninety cubic centimeters

Of its billions of gallons and miles of sky.

I inhale it anyway,

Knowing that it will hurt

In the weary ends of my crumpled paper bag lungs.
■

what’s underneath

Hello Friends,


If when you go caving, you start to wonder what it is like to be a cave, and then you put it into words, then you are probably a poet.
One of the things I love best about today's poem from Ada Limón is that it ends with a beginning that could be the beginning of so many things — a cave, a mountain, a journey, a game, a test, a poetry month.
I hope you enjoy.

Ellen


Notes on the Below
—For Mammoth Cave National Park
Humongous cavern, tell me, wet limestone, sandstone caprock,

          bat-wing, sightless translucent cave shrimp,
this endless plummet into more of the unknown,

                    how one keeps secrets for so long.
All my life, I've lived above the ground,

          car wheels over paved roads, roots breaking through concrete,

and still I've not understood the reel of this life's purpose.
Not so much living, but hovering without sense.
What's it like to be always night? No moon, but a few lit up

          circles at your many openings. Endless dark, still time

must enter you. Like a train, like a green river?
Tell me what it is to be the thing rooted in shadow.

          To be the thing not touched by light (no that's not it)

to not even need the light? I envy; I envy that.
Desire is a tricky thing, the boiling of the body's wants,

          more praise, more hands holding the knives away.
I've been the one who has craved and craved until I could not see

          beyond my own greed. There's a whole nation of us.
To forgive myself, I point to the earth as witness.
To you, your Frozen Niagara, your Fat Man's Misery,

          you with your 400 miles of interlocking caves that lead

only to more of you, tell me,
what it is to be quiet, and yet still breathing.
          Ruler of the Underlying, let me

speak to both the dead and the living as you do. Speak

to the ruined earth, the stalactites, the eastern small-footed bat,
to honor this: the length of days. To speak to the core

          that creates and swallows, to speak not always to what's

shouting, but to what's underneath asking for nothing.
I am at the mouth of the cave. I am willing to crawl.
■

Ada Limón's "Notes on the Below" was featured for Poets.org Poem-a-Day series on November 29, 2016. Ada Limón was also featured for Meet Me in 811's Poem-A-Day April 7, 2016.

A Perfect Mess

Hello Friends!


Welcome to National Poetry Month! It's hard to believe it was ten years ago today that I started my own poem-a-day list to celebrate these 30 days with 30 poems by 30 poets. And ten years later, I still can't wait to do it all over again.
No prior poetry experience is required to enjoy this poem-a-day list! So feel free to invite friends and family to join you in this little poetry month celebration. Just send me an email, or sign up through the blog meetmein811.org — where you can also find an archive of the past ten years of poem-a-days.
I didn't plan out this year's poetry month as much as I sometimes do, so in some sense the best I can hope for is a "perfect mess" — which is what today's poem by Mary Karr is about. Karr finds the poetry in everyday items like umbrellas and pianos to paint a beautiful portrait of not just New York City but our collective humanity.
Enjoy.

Ellen


A Perfect Mess
I read somewhere

that if pedestrians didn't break traffic laws to cross

Time Square whenever and by whatever means possible,

          the whole city

would stop, it would stop.

Cars would back up to Rhode Island,

an epic gridlock not even a cat

could thread through. It's not law but the sprawl

of our separate wills that keeps us all flowing. Today I loved

the unprecedented gall

of the piano movers, shoving a roped-up baby grand

up Ninth Avenue before a thunderstorm.

They were a grim and hefty pair, cynical

as any day laborers. They knew what was coming,

the instrument white lacquered, the sky bulging black

as a bad water balloon and in one pinprick instant

it burst. A downpour like a fire hose.

For a few heartbeats, the whole city stalled,

paused, a heart thump, then it all went staccato.

And it was my pleasure to witness a not

insignificant miracle: in one instant every black

umbrella in Hell's Kitchen opened on cue, everyone

still moving. It was a scene from an unwritten opera,

the sails of some vast armada.

And four old ladies interrupted their own slow progress

to accompany the piano movers.

each holding what might have once been

lace parasols over the grunting men. I passed next

the crowd of pastel ballerinas huddled

under the corner awning,

in line for an open call—stork-limbed, ankles

zigzagged with ribbon, a few passing a lit cigarette

around. The city feeds on beauty, starves

for it, breeds it. Coming home after midnight,

to my deserted block with its famously high

subway-rat count, I heard a tenor exhale pure

longing down the brick canyons, the steaming moon

opened its mouth to drink from on high...
■

Mary Karr's "A Perfect Mess" appeared in Poetry Magazine, December 2012.

last poem

Hello Friends,

Well, it’s been quite the month! You’ve read a sonnet, villanelle, pantoum, limerick, terza rima, eulogy, couplets, tercets, quatrains, pocket poems, poems in translation, and plenty of free verse. You’ve read poems from the 1600s, 1700s, 1800s, 1900s, and 2000s. You’ve read poems by Latina poets, Black poets, Asian poets, Native American poets, and queer poets. Not bad for thirty days!

The last word this month goes to Ken Mikolowski — I will leave you with a poem from his 1991 collection Big Enigmas.

Thank you again for joining me in a celebration of poetry this month.
Ellen

Nothing

can replace
poetry
in my life
and one day
surely
it will

■

So much of any year is flammable

Burning the Old Year

Letters swallow themselves in seconds.
Notes friends tied to the doorknob,
transparent scarlet paper,
sizzle like moth wings,
marry the air.

So much of any year is flammable,
lists of vegetables, partial poems.
Orange swirling flame of days,
so little is a stone.

Where there was something and suddenly isn’t,
an absence shouts, celebrates, leaves a space.
I begin again with the smallest numbers.

Quick dance, shuffle of losses and leaves,
only the things I didn’t do
crackle after the blazing dies.

■

Today’s poem is by the Palestinian American poet Naomi Shihab Nye. For another take on “things I didn’t do,” see W.S. Merwin’s “Something I’ve not done.”