Poem-A-Day April 2: to the patron saint of bingo

Hello Friends,
I collect poems year-round to share with you in April, and over the past year I found that I had accumulated quite a number of poems about grief and death. I lost my grandmother and my uncle a year ago, and it showed in the poems I had saved. I won’t subject you to all of them, but we will read a select few scattered throughout the month, including today’s selection: poet Craig Santos Perez’s tribute to his grandmother. This poem comes from a beautiful new collection about life in Guam and as part of a diaspora, from unincorporated territory [åmot] (2023).
Enjoy.
Ællen

ginen achiote

bingo is not indigenous to guam
yet here [we] are

in the air-conditioned community center
next to the village catholic church

i help set the bingo cards
& ink daubers on the cafeteria table

you sit in a wheelchair
like an ancient sea turtle

this has been your daily ritual
but the last time i played bingo with you

was 25 years ago when i was a teenager
& still lived on-island

hasso’ when you won you never shouted
“bingo” too boastfully

when you lost you simply said
“agupa’ tomorrow we’ll be lucky”

here no one punishes you
for speaking chamoru

here no war invades & occupies life
no soldiers force you to bow

to a distant emperor or pledge
allegiance to a violent flag

bingo balls turn in the wire cage
like large beads from broken rosaries

i no longer attend mass
yet here i am praying

to the patron saint of bingo
please call your fateful combination

of letters & numbers
i pray for you to win not for money

but because you carry
so much loss

having outlived grandpa
& all your childhood friends

suddenly someone shouts “bingo”
you put down think ink dauber

sink into the shell of your wheelchair
“when’s your flight” you ask me

“agupa’ grandma tomorrow”
but today i feel so lucky

for this chance
to play bingo with you

one
last time

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Poem-A-Day April 1: Happy National Poetry Month!

Hello Friends, and Happy National Poetry Month 2024!

In celebration, I will be sending you one poem per day just for the month of April: 30 days, 30 poems, 30 poets.

For those of you new to the list: No prior poetry experience is required to enjoy this poem-a-day list! I’m not going to send you some obtuse obscure long ode that’s impossible to understand (hopefully). My selections do skew heavily, but not exclusively, to American poets writing in English — hence the name “Meet Me in 811,” the Dewey Decimal Code for American Poetry (and my favorite part of the library to wander around picking random books off the shelves).

This poem-a-day series is strictly for personal use only; in almost all cases, I do not have poets’ nor poetry publishers’ permission to reproduce their work. For a more official poem-a-day email list, please visit the Academy of American Poets (poets.org), the creators and sponsors of National Poetry Month.

And now for today’s poem: Naomi Shihab Nye is a Palestinian American poet who I have featured many times before over the years but perhaps never as urgently as today. What is your most sensitive cargo?

Thanks,
Ællen

Shoulders

A man crosses the street in rain,
stepping gently, looking two times north and south,
because his son is asleep on his shoulder.

No car must splash him.
No car drive too near to his shadow.

This man carries the world’s most sensitive cargo
but he’s not marked.
Nowhere does his jacket say FRAGILE,
HANDLE WITH CARE.

His ear fills up with breathing.
He hears the hum of a boy’s dream
deep inside him.

We’re not going to be able
to live in this world
if we’re not willing to do what he’s doing
with one another.

The road will only be wide.
The rain will never stop falling.

■

Poem-A-Day April 30: Everything Has Two Endings

Hello Friends,

Well here we are: it’s the last day of April. We’ve packed a lot into 30 days — including couplets, tercets, quatrains, sonnets, haiku, and an abecedarian; poems from the 1700s, 1800s, 1900s, and 2000s; poems by Black, Latinx, Native American, Asian American, Arab American, and white poets; poems by transgender, queer, lesbian, gay, bisexual, and straight poets; and more. Thank you so much for joining me in poetry this month!

If you had a favorite poem this month, I’d love to hear about it. Your replies let me know someone is reading these poems I send out.

I have one last poem for you, which appears in poet Jane Hirschfield’s 2013 collection Come, Thief.

Enjoy.
Ællen

Everything Has Two Endings

Everything has two endings—
a horse, a piece of string, a phone call.

Before a life, air.
And after.

As silence is not silence, but a limit of hearing.

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Poem-A-Day April 29: Grocery List Poems

Hello Friends,
Today’s poem by Rhiannon McGavin appears in her 2021 collection Grocery List Poems. McGavin uses slant rhymes in this sonnet, like “loves” and “carves” or “driver’s” and “stranger’s.”
Enjoy.
Ællen

Manifesto in an unknown language

No, I couldn’t sleep, I’m building my loves
from the smell of rain and the bus driver’s
soft wave when I’m broke, from a sea that carves
cracked bottles into gems, and a stranger’s
laugh runs a vein of silver through the night,
a love cut from the dark when a kissing
scene fades on a film screen. Say the last time
someone touches me with a tender feeling
and I’ll eat the clock. Name the next time, win
all the lucky pennies I’ve thrown away
waiting for that love like a nasturtium,
the petals with their birthday candle flame,
hot and sweet. The kind of love in my steps
where empty rooms are only rooms you’ve left.

■

Poem-A-Day April 28: Thank You

Thank You

If you find yourself half naked
and barefoot in the frosty grass, hearing,
again, the earth’s great, sonorous moan that says
you are the air of the now and gone, that says
all you love will turn to dust,
and will meet you there, do not
raise your fist. Do not raise
your small voice against it. And do not
take cover. Instead, curl your toes
into the grass, watch the cloud
ascending from your lips. Walk
through the garden’s dormant splendor.
Say only, thank you.
Thank you.

■


Today’s poem by Ross Gay appears in his 2006 collection Against Which.

Poem-A-Day April 27: will wait will wait

Hello Friends,
Today’s poem is one I really needed in my life 20 years ago this April but didn’t have yet.
— Ællen

To the Young Who Want to Die

Sit down. Inhale. Exhale.
The gun will wait. The lake will wait.
The tall gall in the small seductive vial
will wait will wait:
will wait a week: will wait through April.
You do not have to die this certain day.
Death will abide, will pamper your postponement.
I assure you death will wait. Death has
a lot of time. Death can
attend to you tomorrow. Or next week. Death is
just down the street; is most obliging neighbor;
can meet you any moment.

You need not die today.
Stay here—through pout or pain or peskiness.
Stay here. See what the news is going to be tomorrow.

Graves grow no green that you can use.
Remember, green’s your color. You are Spring.

■


You can learn more about suicide prevention through the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention.

Gwendolyn Brooks has also been previously featured for Poem-A-Day April 15, 2017: The Founding Mother and Poem-A-Day April 29, 2010: cool.

Poem-A-Day April 26: nectar at the roadside

From Blossoms

From blossoms comes
this brown paper bag of peaches
we bought from the boy
at the bend in the road where we turned toward
signs painted Peaches.

From laden boughs, from hands,
from sweet fellowship in the bins,
comes nectar at the roadside, succulent
peaches we devour, dusty skin and all,
comes the familiar dust of summer, dust we eat.

O, to take what we love inside,
to carry within us an orchard, to eat
not only the skin, but the shade,
not only the sugar, but the days, to hold
the fruit in our hands, adore it, then bite into
the round jubilance of peach.

There are days we live
as if death were nowhere
in the background; from joy
to joy to joy, from wing to wing,
from blossom to blossom to
impossible blossom, to sweet impossible blossom.

■


“From Blossoms” appears in poet Li-Young Lee’s 1986 collection Rose.

Li-Young Lee has also been featured for previously for Poem-A-Day April 9, 2018: I didn’t know I was blue, Poem-A-Day April 17, 2012: fire, doves, river-water, Poem-A-Day April 14, 2011: the sound of apples falling, and Poem-A-Day April 28, 2008: kempt.

Poem-A-Day April 25: What You Missed that Day You Were Absent from Fourth Grade

What You Missed that Day You Were Absent from Fourth Grade

Mrs. Nelson explained how to stand still and listen
to the wind, how to find meaning in pumping gas,

how peeling potatoes can be a form of prayer. She took
questions on how not to feel lost in the dark.

After lunch she distributed worksheets
that covered ways to remember your grandfather’s

voice. Then the class discussed falling asleep
without feeling you had forgotten to do something else—

something important—and how to believe
the house you wake in is your home. This prompted

Mrs. Nelson to draw a chalkboard diagram detailing
how to chant the Psalms during cigarette breaks,

and how not to squirm for sound when your own thoughts
are all you hear; also, that you have enough.

The English lesson was that I am
is a complete sentence.

And just before the afternoon bell, she made the math equation look easy.
The one that proves that hundreds of questions,

and feeling cold, and all those nights spent looking
for whatever it was you lost, and one person

add up to something.

■


“What You Missed that Day You Were Absent from Fourth Grade” appears in poet Brad Aaron Modlin’s 2016 collection Everyone at This Party Has Two Names.

Poem-A-Day April 24: stalled in the driveway

Golden Oldie

I made it home early, only to get
stalled in the driveway, swaying
at the wheel like a blind pianist caught in a tune
meant for more than two hands playing.

The words were easy, crooned
by a young girl dying to feel alive, to discover
a pain majestic enough
to live by. I turned the air-conditioning off,

leaned back to float on a film of sweat,
and listened to her sentiment:
Baby, where did our love go?—a lament
I greedily took in

without a clue who my lover
might be, or where to start looking.

■


Today’s sonnet by Rita Dove appears in her 1996 collection Mother Love: Poems.

As a bonus for today, my dear friend Michelle introduced me to a Tele-Poem Hotline established by the Oregon Poet Laureate Anis Mojgani: Just dial (503) 928-7008 to hear a poem! When I called in, the poem was even read by the poet herself. More in the Portland Monthly.