Poems Found

A collection of poetry to have and to hold

[poemsfound]

Big with Dawn

Yesterday: me, a stone, the river,

a bottle of Jack, the clouds

with unusual speed crept by.

A man was in the middle of me.

I was humbled.

Not by him. The earth,

with its unusual speed,

went from dawn to dusk to dawn.

Just like that. The light

every shade of gold. Gold. I’m

greedy for it. Light is my currency.

I am big with dawn. So hot & so

pregnant with the fire I stole. 

By pregnant I mean everything

you see is of me. Daylight

is my daughter. Dusk, my lover’s 

post-pleasure face. And the night?

Well. Look up.

Are you ever really alone?

-- Katie Condon 

[lunchboxpoems]

[lunchboxpoems]

[bostonpoetryslam]

Poetry is the intense and devoted study of everything—of plants, of each other—in a way that is not utilitarian, but is actually about the heart. It is among the things that I think gives us our best chance. That close looking, that wonder, that devotion, that care, and that love. Studying love is also one of our chances.

Ross Gay, interviewed by Matthew Burgess for Teachers & Writers Magazine (via bostonpoetryslam)

[poemsfound]

Will You?

When, at the end, the children wanted to add glitter to their valentines, I said no.

I said nope, no, no glitter, and then, when they started to fuss, I found myself

saying something my brother’s football coach used to bark from the sidelines when one

of his players showed signs of being human: oh come on now, suck it up.

That’s what I said to my children. Suck what up? my daughter asked,

and, because she is so young, I told her I didn’t know and never mind, and she took

that for an answer. My children are so young when I turn off the radio as the news turns

to counting the dead or naming the act, they aren’t even suspicious. My children

are so young they cannot imagine a world like the one they live in. Their God is still

a real God, a whole God, a God made wholly of actions. And I think they think I work

for that God. And I know they will someday soon see everything and they will know about

everything and they will no longer take never mind for an answer. The valentines

would’ve been better with glitter, and my son hurt himself on an envelope, and then, much

later, when we were eating dinner, my daughter realized she’d forgotten one of the three

Henrys in her class. How can there be three Henrys in one class? I said, and she said, Because there are.

And so, before bed we took everything out again—paper and pens and stamps and scissors—

and she sat at the table with her freshly washed hair parted smartly down the middle and wrote

WILL YOU BE MINE, HENRY T.? and she did it so carefully, I could hardly stand to watch.

– Carrie Fountain

[poemsfound]

The Women

An evening of expected rain. Out the window clouds lifted their skirts and the wind poured in. We were the mothers lingering over the dessert tray, placing the sweets in our mouths, one by one. We were the soothers and givers, keepers of children and men. Those days, our skin bunched up at the bra line, eyelids gathering like crinoline as it folds. Yet standing there at the table, there was nothing in the world we were in want of, not even the loves that had escaped us. Whatever we suffered, we let go of willingly. To know we were not the same women as before did not pain us. When the others spoke their voices swept over us like bees hovering over lilacs. Outside, lights strobed over the Hudson; we watched a white boat riding the crest of a wave, headed to sea. We felt an ache we realized was happiness, almost unbearable. -- J. Mae Barizo

[apoemaday]

Two-Headed Calf

by Laura Gilpin

Tomorrow when the farm boys find this freak of nature, they will wrap his body in newspaper and carry him to the museum.

But tonight he is alive and in the north field with his mother. It is a perfect summer evening: the moon rising over the orchard, the wind in the grass. And as he stares into the sky, there are twice as many stars as usual.

[poemsfound]

Habitation

Marriage is not a house or even a tent it is before that, and colder: the edge of the forest, the edge of the desert                    the unpainted stairs at the back where we squat outside, eating popcorn the edge of the receding glacier where painfully and with wonder at having survived even this far we are learning to make fire 

-- Margaret Atwood

[poemsfound]

Crush

Maybe my limbs are made mostly for decoration, like the way I feel about persimmons. You can’t really eat them. Or you wouldn’t want to. If you grab the soft skin with your fist it somehow feels funny, like you’ve been here before and uncomfortable, too, like you’d rather squish it between your teeth impatiently, before spitting the soft parts back up to linger on the tongue like burnt sugar or guilt. For starters, it was all an accident, you cut the right branch and a sort of light woke up underneath, and the inedible fruit grew dark and needy. Think crucial hanging. Think crayon orange. There is one low, leaning heart-shaped globe left and dearest, can you tell, I am trying to love you less.

-- Ada Limon

[lunchboxpoems]

NATASHA SAJÉ

[lunchboxpoems]

EVERY SINGLE DAY

(After Raymond Carver’s Hummingbird)

Suppose I said the word “springtime”

and I wrote the words “king salmon”

on a piece of paper

and mailed it to you.

When you opened it

would you remember that afternoon we spent

together in the yellow boat

when the early whales were feeding

and we caught our first fish of the year?

Or would you remember that time off Cape Flattery

when you were a little girl:

your father smoking, telling stories as he ran the boat,

then the tug and zing of that very first fish

spooling off into the gray-green world;

you laughing and brushing back your hair

before setting the hook?

I know I am hard to understand sometimes

particularly when you are standing

at the post office with only a piece of paper

saying “king salmon” on it

but just think of it as a promissary note

and that electric tug, that thrill

pulling your mind into deep water

is how I feel about you every,

single day.

JOHN STRALEY

[poemsfound]

Will You?

When, at the end, the children wanted to add glitter to their valentines, I said no.

I said nope, no, no glitter, and then, when they started to fuss, I found myself

saying something my brother’s football coach used to bark from the sidelines when one

of his players showed signs of being human: oh come on now, suck it up.

That’s what I said to my children. Suck what up? my daughter asked,

and, because she is so young, I told her I didn’t know and never mind, and she took

that for an answer. My children are so young when I turn off the radio as the news turns

to counting the dead or naming the act, they aren’t even suspicious. My children

are so young they cannot imagine a world like the one they live in. Their God is still

a real God, a whole God, a God made wholly of actions. And I think they think I work

for that God. And I know they will someday soon see everything and they will know about

everything and they will no longer take never mind for an answer. The valentines

would’ve been better with glitter, and my son hurt himself on an envelope, and then, much

later, when we were eating dinner, my daughter realized she’d forgotten one of the three

Henrys in her class. How can there be three Henrys in one class? I said, and she said, Because there are.

And so, before bed we took everything out again—paper and pens and stamps and scissors—

and she sat at the table with her freshly washed hair parted smartly down the middle and wrote

WILL YOU BE MINE, HENRY T.? and she did it so carefully, I could hardly stand to watch.

-- Carrie Fountain

[poemsfound]

Perhaps the World Ends Here

The world begins at a kitchen table. No matter what, we must eat to live.

The gifts of earth are brought and prepared, set on the table. So it has been since creation, and it will go on.

We chase chickens or dogs away from it. Babies teethe at the corners. They scrape their knees under it.

It is here that children are given instructions on what it means to be human. We make men at it, we make women.

At this table we gossip, recall enemies and the ghosts of lovers.

Our dreams drink coffee with us as they put their arms around our children. They laugh with us at our poor falling-down selves and as we put ourselves back together once again at the table.

This table has been a house in the rain, an umbrella in the sun.

Wars have begun and ended at this table. It is a place to hide in the shadow of terror. A place to celebrate the terrible victory.

We have given birth on this table, and have prepared our parents for burial here.

At this table we sing with joy, with sorrow. We pray of suffering and remorse. We give thanks.

Perhaps the world will end at the kitchen table, while we are laughing and crying, eating of the last sweet bite.

-- Joy Harjo

[poemsfound]

salvage

I have learned to need the body I spent years trying to rid the world of

have learned to cherish its pale rebel hymn warped by ghost heat, carried, carried

by all my loyal dead. I have learned to crawl backward into the wilderness

to ask, to eat, to steep in your gentleness. Let this be where I permit forgiveness

to know your name, to leave our cruelest years where & how we need them most—

behind & unlit.

-- Rachel McKibbens

[lunchboxpoems]

NO

Poetry is sometimes a no.  Its relative silence is the negative’s underhanded form of singing.  Its flights into a range-y interior are, in the world of fervid external motion, sometimes a method of standing still.  Poetry is semi-popular with teenagers and revolutionaries and good at going against, saying whatever is the opposite of whatever, providing nonsense for sense and sense despite the world’s alarming nonsense. 

ANNE BOYER

[poemsfound]

-- Ada Limon

[lunchboxpoems]

ON FOOT I WANDERED THROUGH THE SOLAR SYSTEMS

On foot

I wandered through the solar systems,

Before I found the first thread of my red dress.

Already I have a sense of myself.

Somewhere in space my heart hangs,

emitting sparks, shaking the air,

to other immeasurable hearts.

EDITH SÖDERGRAN