Poem-A-Day April 21: Unaccompanied

Venice, Unaccompanied

Waking
on the train, I thought
we were attacked

          by light:
chrome-winged birds
hatching from the lagoon.

          That first day
the buoys were all
that made the harbor

          bearable:
pennies sewn into a hemline.
Later I learned to live in it,

          to walk
through the alien city—
a beekeeper’s habit—

          with fierce light
clinging to my head and hands.
Treated as gently as every

          other guest—
each house’s barbed antennae
trawling for any kind

          of weather—
still I sobbed in a glass box
on an unswept street

          with the last
few lire ticking like fleas
off my phonecard I’m sorry

          I can’t
stand this, which
one of us do you love?

■
“Venice, Unaccompanied” appears in poet Monica Youn’s 2003 collection Barter. Thank you to Rick Barot for introducing me to this poem.

Poem-A-Day April 19: Variation on the Word Sleep

Variation on the Word Sleep

I would like to watch you sleeping,
which may not happen.
I would like to watch you,
sleeping. I would like to sleep
with you, to enter
your sleep as its smooth dark wave
slides over my head

and walk with you through that lucent
wavering forest of bluegreen leaves
with its watery sun & three moons
towards the cave where you must descend,
toward your worst fear

I would like to give you the silver
branch, the small white flower, the one
word that will protect you
from the grief at the center
of your dream, from the grief
at the center. I would like to follow
you up the long stairway
again & become
the boat that would row you back
carefully, a flame
in two cupped hands
to where your body lies
beside me, and you enter
it as easily as breathing in

I would like to be the air
that inhabits you for a moment
only. I would like to be that unnoticed
& that necessary.

■
“Variation on the Word Sleep” appears in Margaret Atwood’s Selected Poems II: 1976 – 1986.

Margaret Atwood was also featured for Poem-a-day, April 21, 2008.

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

■
“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.

■
“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.

■
“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.