A Poem for You: Fall Song by Joy Harjo
admin2024-09-25T14:35:49-04:00Fall Song Joy Harjo It is a dark fall day.The earth is slightly damp with rain.I hear a jay.The cry is blue.
A Poem for You: From “Spanish Folk Songs” by Salvador De Madariaga
admin2024-09-11T15:26:00-04:00From “Spanish Folk Songs” Salvador De Madariaga II Of the dust of the earth Can I make songs. One is scarcely over, A new one comes. Del polvo de la tierra Saco yo coplas. No bien se acaba una Ya tengo otra. LV Like two trees we are By fate separated. The road is between But the boughs are mated. Como dos árboles somos Que la suerte nos separa, Con un camino por medio, Pero se juntan las ramas. CII I see myself as a crow. All are wearing clothes of gladness, Clothed in black mourning I go. Me comparo con [...]
A Poem for You: Story—Late Summer or Early Fall by Yoo Heekyung
admin2024-09-11T15:37:29-04:00Story—Late Summer or Early Fall Yoo Heekyung translated from the Korean by Stine An Late summer or early fall—memories are unreliable Father was lying on his side In the swaying spiderweb, no spider could be seen The spider is hiding, why don’t you try touching the spiderweb But I am afraid The sound of wooden floorboards creaking Withering up for decades, Father rolled over to his other side And when he did, his scent, his warmth Just as I hadn’t touched the spiderweb, I didn’t dare touch my father’s back And so, neither the spider nor my father moved Why couldn’t I [...]
A Poem for You: Jersey by JoAnne McFarland
admin2024-09-05T16:19:12-04:00Jersey JoAnne McFarland He tells me he’s a parolee looking for a good woman but he’s been bad so bad trapped in a sheet of ice wrapping the meat in paper shudders I shouldn’t be eating red meat with my hypertension and high cholesterol the steaming calf He says he’s been out six months but still it’s hard you know how it is the wrong people their bright ideas attempts to rise his bloody apron a recipe buckles and gives me an extra pound Copyright © 2024 by JoAnne McFarland. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on June 6, 2024, by the Academy [...]
A Poem for You: Borrow by Sarah McCartt-Jackson
admin2024-06-18T13:33:08-04:00Borrow Sarah McCartt-Jackson We borrow from the land what we can but cannot return to it: bluestem, coneflower, boneset, broomcorn, a ring-necked pheasant tied to a pole, a flat stretch of land we strip and tar and pave, a creek that gets deeper as it downrivers, its edges spoiled with runoff. We collect seeds from the sunflowers and sow them like quilt pieces, a little scrap of prairie rose here, scrap of meadowlark feather there. Tamp down the soil with plodding hooves, steel-toed boots. Listen as the tallgrass rattles its dry stems, cottonwood leaves quake as they remember mountain lakes. Listen [...]
A Poem for You: Midmorning by Selma Meerbaum-Eisinger
admin2024-06-18T13:24:42-04:00Midmorning Selma Meerbaum-Eisinger translated from the German by Carlie Hoffman Wind, dreamy notes, sings its lullaby, gently touching the leaves. I let myself be, seduced, immersed in song like grass. Air shivers and cools my fevered face wrapped in desire. Clouds drift by, scatter white, sun-stolen light. The old acacia leaves silence a trembling tangle of leaves. The scents of the earth rise, climb and then fall back to me. Vormittag Der Wind singt sein Schlaflied Mit träumendem Rauschen, Die Blätter umschmeichelt er weich. Ich laß‘ mich verfuhren, dem Liede zu lauschen und fühl‘ mich den Gräsern gleich. Es schauern die [...]
A Poem for You: Green Burial Unsonnet by Dante Di Stefano
admin2024-06-18T10:52:46-04:00Green Burial Unsonnet Dante Di Stefano In the milliseconds & minutes & millennia when I no longer am the bundle of meat & need unpoeming itself in the still hours of a full or empty house, I dream my eye socket encased underground with root & worm & watershed threading through it. | | The summers become hotter & hotter. | | Unbearable & luminous, the refrain of the song of extinction— My children & my children’s children will inherit the edges of cumulonimbus clouds, [...]
A Poem for You: [O But My Delicate Lover] by Sappho
admin2024-06-18T10:57:08-04:00[O But My Delicate Lover] Sappho O but my delicate lover, Is she not fair as the moonlight? Is she not supple and strong For hurried passion? Has not the god of the green world, In his large tolerant wisdom, Filled with the ardours of earth Her twenty summers? Well did he make her for loving; Well did he mould her for beauty; Gave her the wish that is brave With understanding. “O Pan, avert from his maiden Sorrow, misfortune, bereavement, Harm, and unhappy regret,” Prays one fond mortal.
A Poem for You: making life on a palette Raina J. León
admin2024-06-18T10:38:11-04:00making life on a palette Raina J. León After Charles Willson Peale (1741–1827), “George Washington at Princeton,” 1779 the color of life takes sun yellow and bluest blue sky and water for green ferns chartreuse buds beading above moss dappled shamrocks fragrant healing of sage, laurel, mint, basil, thyme, rosemary, myrtle amid the tall wonders of juniper pine, olive, pear even the meeting of sea and river— the sky, an intermingling of viridian and chetwode horizons, and cerulean clarity— offers its green seafoam, its seaweed pats, the crocodile at the edge of a freshwater marsh its teeth open gritted in green [...]
A Poem for You: From “A Rain of Stars” by Évelyne Trouillot
admin2024-06-18T10:22:05-04:00From “A Rain of Stars” Évelyne Trouillot translated from the Kreyòl by Danielle Legros Georges In what language should I speak to you when the words beneath our sheets blow over my belly life has me holding a grudge pouring coffee on my recollections not revealing where the moon finds its water When children cry and won’t stop one after the other the words dry up in the palm of my hand not letting me baptize the dark Believe me I don’t know what you are: A navel that’s lost its cord in the midst of a poetry book? A hibiscus [...]