April 2020

Poem-A-Day April 18: I’m sorry there won’t be any salad and I love you

In Defense of Our Overgrown Garden

Last night the apple trees shook and gave each lettuce a heart
Six hard red apples broke through the greenhouse glass and
Landed in the middle of those ever-so-slightly green leaves
That seem no mix of seeds and soil but of pastels and light and
Chalk x’s mark our oaks that are supposed to be cut down
I’ve seen the neighbors frown when they look over the fence
And see our espalier pear trees bowing out of shape I did like that
They looked like candelabras against the wall but what’s the sense
In swooning over pruning I said as much to Mrs. Jones and I swear
She threw her cane at me and walked off down the street without
It has always puzzled me that people coo over bonsai trees when
You can squint your eyes and shrink anything without much of
A struggle ensued with some starlings and the strawberry nets
So after untangling the two I took the nets off and watched birds
With red beaks fly by all morning at the window I reread your letter
About how the castles you flew over made crenellated shadows on
The water in the rainbarrel has overflowed and made a small swamp
I think the potatoes might turn out slightly damp don’t worry
If there is no fog on the day you come home I will build a bonfire
So the smoke will make the cedars look the way you like them
To close I’m sorry there won’t be any salad and I love you

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“In Defense of Our Overgrown Garden” appears in poet Matthea Harvey’s 2000 collection Pity the Bathtub Its Forced Embrace of the Human Form.

Poem-A-Day April 16: won’t you celebrate with me

won’t you celebrate with me

what i have shaped into
a kind of life? i had no model.
born in babylon
both nonwhite and woman
what did i see to be except myself?
i made it up
here on this bridge between
starshine and clay,
my one hand holding tight
my other hand; come celebrate
with me that everyday
something has tried to kill me
and has failed.

■

Lucille Clifton’s “won’t you celebrate with me” can be found in Book of Light (1993). Washington, DC celebrates Emancipation Day on April 16 each year.

Poet Lucille Clifton was also featured for Poem-a-day, April 22, 2019, Poem-a-day, April 5, 2017, and Poem-a-day, April 2, 2008.

Poem-A-Day April 13: The secret anniversaries of the heart

Holidays

The holiest of all holidays are those
     Kept by ourselves in silence and apart;
     The secret anniversaries of the heart,
     When the full river of feeling overflows;—
The happy days unclouded to their close;
     The sudden joys that out of darkness start
     As flames from ashes; swift desires that dart
     Like swallows singing down each wind that blows!
White as the gleam of a receding sail,
     White as a cloud that floats and fades in air,
     White as the whitest lily on a stream,
These tender memories are;—a Fairy Tale
     Of some enchanted land we know not where,
     But lovely as a landscape in a dream.

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“Holidays” can be found in Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s Kéramos: And Other Poems (1878) and was also featured for Poem-a-Day April 13, 2018.

Poem-A-Day April 10: lady horse swagger

How to Triumph Like a Girl

I like the lady horses best,
how they make it all look easy,
like running 40 miles per hour
is as fun as taking a nap, or grass.
I like their lady horse swagger,
after winning. Ears up, girls, ears up!
But mainly, let’s be honest, I like
that they’re ladies. As if this big
dangerous animal is also a part of me,
that somewhere inside the delicate
skin of my body, there pumps
an 8-pound female horse heart,
giant with power, heavy with blood.
Don’t you want to believe it?
Don’t you want to lift my shirt and see
the huge beating genius machine
that thinks, no, it knows,
it’s going to come in first.

■

“How to Triumph Like a Girl” appears in the beautiful collection Bright Dead Things (2015) by poet Ada Limón.

Poet Ada Limón was also featured for Poem-a-Day April 2, 2018, Poem-a-Day April 2, 2017, and Poem-a-Day April 7, 2016.

Poem-A-Day April 9: Once again.

Hello Friends,

The purpose of today’s poem is not to make you feel bad if you have ever misgendered someone. But this piece is about sharing what it feels like — the exhaustion, the burden — to be a person who is misgendered, particularly when it happens 34 times a day.

<3 Ellen (they/them)

The Formula for Forgiveness

If I am she 34 times in a day
And I am only he twice
What is the difference between me and her?
How do we add up?

If 34 times in a day
Multiplies by 2
Each time a she
Takes me by the neck
What is the product of my identity?

For every:

Old habits die hard
We’ll get there
It’s going to take everyone some time
That’s not what I meant
It’ll take some getting used to
You have to be a little more understanding
Just be patient with us
It’s hard to remember

For every:

Hey, just a reminder my pronouns are he/him
Hi, can someone chat her to let her know what my pronouns are?
Hello, I would appreciate it if you would use my pronouns
Just a reminder my pronouns are he/him
You didn’t use my pronouns at all today

For every:

I mean he
I’m sorry, I meant he
His pronouns are he/him
You mean he
His, not hers
Remember he
It’s he/him

That has not been said
On my behalf
From my family
And friends

For every:

She — with no follow-up
With no correction
With no apology
Just she
Just this bomb
Just the salt into the wound I’ve learned how to disguise
Into a chuckle
Into a smile
Into
I forgive you
Once again

I forgive you all
Once again

I will solve this problem for you all
Once again

Don’t worry about the math
Once again

I will solve this on my own

Once again.

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“The Formula for Forgiveness” appears in poet Jae Escoto’s 2019 collection The Woman Inside of Me. You can also listen to Jae Escoto read this piece aloud in Split This Rock’s poetry database, The Quarry.

Poem-A-Day April 8: the truest brief blessing

The seder’s order

The songs we join in
are beeswax candles
burning with no smoke
a clean fire licking at the evening

our voices small flames quivering.
The songs string us like beads
on the hour. The ritual is
its own melody that leads us

where we have gone before
and hope to go again, the comfort
of year after year. Order:
we must touch each base

of the haggadah as we pass,
blessing, handwashing,
dipping this and that. Voices
half harmonize on the brukhahs.

Dear faces like a multitude
of moons hang over the table
and the truest brief blessing:
affection and peace that we make.

■

“The seder’s order” can be found in poet Marge Piercy’s 2006 collection The Crooked Inheritance.

Poem-A-Day April 7: When have I ever not loved

The Fist

The fist clenched round my heart
loosens a little, and I gasp
brightness; but it tightens
again. When have I ever not loved
the pain of love? But this has moved

past love to mania. This has the strong
clench of the madman, this is
gripping the ledge of unreason, before
plunging howling into the abyss.

Hold hard then, heart. This way at least you live.

■

“The Fist” can be found in poet Derek Walcott’s Collected Poems: 1948-1984.

Walcott is one of two Nobel Laureates from Saint Lucia (the other is economist William Arthur Lewis), making Saint Lucia the country with the highest Nobels per capita in the world.

For another outstanding fist poem, see “Making A Fist” by Naomi Shihab Nye.

O frabjous day!

Hello Friends,

Those of you who have been on this poem-a-day list for a few years can probably already guess that today I am challenging you to read “Jabberwocky” out loud to someone you know.

Making up words is something poetry and queerness have in common, two of my great interests. In Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass, it’s Humpty Dumpty who says (in a rather scornful tone), “When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.” I love that line — but Carroll also makes a point of humorously showing us that Humpty Dumpty’s conversations don’t go very well when he assumes that meaning is 100% created by the speaker (which Humpty Dumpty does when he is the speaker), nor when he assumes meaning is 100% created by the listener (which Humpty Dumpty does when he is the listener).

One of the things I love about “Jabberwocky” is that Carroll forces you to acknowledge the role of the reader, and not just the writer, in constructing the meaning of a poem — not just this poem but any poem. Carroll draws particular attention to the reader’s participation by using words for which we as readers must invent our own pronunciations and meanings — but even in other poems, where the words are not made up, we as readers are still applying our own meanings, in a sense creating our own translations, for the words on the page.

<3 Ellen

Jabberwocky

‘Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

“Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
The frumious Bandersnatch!”

He took his vorpal sword in hand:
Long time the manxome foe he sought —
So rested he by the Tumtum tree,
And stood awhile in thought.

And, as in uffish thought he stood,
The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,
Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,
And burbled as it came!

One two! One two! And through and through
The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!
He left it dead, and with its head
He went galumphing back.

“And hast thou slain the Jabberwock?
Come to my arms, my beamish boy!
O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!”
He chortled in his joy.

‘Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

■

If you’re feeling brave, also try one of these translations of Jabberwocky — into languages ranging from Spanish and Japanese to C++ and Klingon — compiled many years ago by Keith Lim.

“Jabberwocky” has also been featured in several previous poem-a-days.

Poem-A-Day April 5: a tale smaller than my thumbnail

A Short Story of Falling

It is the story of the falling rain
to turn into a leaf and fall again

it is the secret of the summer shower
to steal the light and hide it in a flower

and every flower a tiny tributary
that from the ground flows green and momentary

is one of water’s wishes and this tale
hangs in a seed-head smaller than my thumbnail

if only I a passerby could pass
as clear as water through a plume of grass

to find the sunlight hidden at the tip
turning to seed a kind of lifting rain drip

then I might know like water how to balance
the weight of hope against the light of patience

water which is so raw so earthy-strong
and lurks in cast iron tanks and leaks along

drawn under gravity toward my tongue
to cool and fill the pipe-work of this song

which is the story of the falling rain
that rises to the light and falls again

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“A Short Story of Falling” appears in poet Alice Oswald’s 2016 collection Falling Awake.

Poem-A-Day April 4: to go order

In the Company of Women

Make me laugh over coffee,
make it a double, make it frothy
so it seethes in our delight.
Make my cup overflow
with your small happiness.
I want to hoot and snort and cackle and chuckle.
Let your laughter fill me like a bell.
Let me listen to your ringing and singing
as Billie Holiday croons above our heads.
Sorry, the blues are nowhere to be found.
Not tonight. Not here.
No makeup. No tears.
Only contours. Only curves.
Each sip takes back a pound,
each dry-roasted swirl takes our soul.
Can I have a refill, just one more?
Let the bitterness sink to the bottom of our lives.
Let us take this joy to go.

■

“In the Company of Women” appears in Misery Islands (2014) by poet January Gill O’Neil.