Blind Curse

On this modest break, I'll be stepping away from blogging to focus more time and energy on writing poems. I'm on a productive streak, and I will do whatever I can to keep it going. I'll check back in here when I've written the next Pushcart Prize-winning poem.

Today I also received my contributor copy of Kansas City Voices, Vol. 14. This issue contains a lot of impressive poems and artworks, and I'm honored to have one of my own poems published inside. If you like supporting artists and small presses, consider buying a copy for someone you like. If you hate artists and independent publishers, please buy a copy for someone you despise. The spite will really come through when the despised person opens his mailbox to your angry parcel.

As we push forward to comfortable and joyous family gatherings, I hope you'll appreciate this poem by Simon Ortiz.

Happy Thanksgiving.

"Blind Curse"

You could drive blind
for those two seconds
and they would be forever.
I think that as a diesel truck
passes us eight miles east of Mission.
Churning through the storm, heedless
of the hill sliding away.
There isn’t much use to curse but I do.
Words fly away, tumbling invisibly
toward the unseen point where
the prairie and sky meet.
The road is like that in those seconds,
nothing but the blind white side
of creation.  

                    You’re there somewhere,
a tiny struggling cell.
You just might be significant
but you might not be anything.
Forever is a space of split time
from which to recover after the mass passes.
My curse flies out there somewhere,
and then I send my prayer into the wake
of the diesel truck headed for Sioux Falls
one hundred and eighty miles through the storm.

- by Simon Ortiz, from After and Before the Lightning (1994)

Celebration // Maybe I'll Come Down

Recently, I've been zooming left and right and down, but mostly up. A few days ago, I got word that one of my poems will be published by Linden Avenue Literary Journal in March—hooray! I'll be sure to self-promote when that issue comes out.

In all seriousness, Linden Ave is a wonderful publication. Because I'm honored for their support, I hope anyone reading this will take the time to check out their website or follow their Facebook and Twitter pages. They're great folks, and they publish a lot of gut-punch writing.

In the spirit of zooming, and of feeling elevated, here's a song by one of my favorite acts.

- "Maybe I'll Come Down" by Soul Coughing, from El Oso (1998)

The Men

Tonight I went to a reading by B.H. Fairchild. I'm exhausted but elated. Here is one of his poems, courtesy of The Poetry Foundation.

"The Men"

As a kid sitting in a yellow vinyl

booth in the back of Earl’s Tavern,

you watch the late-afternoon drunks

coming and going, sunlight breaking

through the smoky dark as the door

opens and closes, and it’s the future

flashing ahead like the taillights

of a semi as you drop over a rise

in the road on your way to Amarillo,

bright lights and blonde-haired women,

as Billy used to say, slumped over

his beer like a snail, make a real man

out of you, the smile bleak as the gaps

between his teeth, stay loose, son,

don’t die before you’re dead. Always

the warnings from men you worked with

before they broke, blue fingernails,

eyes red as fate. A different life

for me, you think, and outside later,

feeling young and strong enough to raise

the sun back up, you stare down Highway 54,

pushing everything—stars, sky, moon,

all but a thin line at the edge

of the world—behind you. Your headlights

sweep across the tavern window,

ripping the dark from the small, humped

shapes of men inside who turn and look,

like small animals caught in the glare

of your lights on the road to Amarillo.

- by B.H. Fairchild, from The Arrival of the Future (1986)

The School Children

"The School Children" 

The children go forward with their little satchels.
And all morning the mothers have labored
to gather the late apples, red and gold,
like words of another language. 

And on the other shore
are those who wait behind great desks
to receive these offerings. 

How orderly they are — the nails
on which the children hang
their overcoats of blue or yellow wool. 

And the teachers shall instruct them in silence
and the mothers shall scour the orchards for a way out,
drawing to themselves the gray limbs of the fruit trees
bearing so little ammunition.

- by Louise Glück, from The House on Marshland (1975)

A Cottony Fate

"A Cottony Fate"

Long ago, someone
told me: avoid or. 

It troubles the mind
as a held-out piece of meat disturbs a dog. 

Now I too am sixty.
There was no other life.

- by Jane Hirshfield, from The Paris Review (Summer 2014)

Dream Variations

The below poem is by Langston Hughes, a fellow Missourian.

Langston Hughes, February 1959

"Dream Variations"

To fling my arms wide
In some place of the sun,
To whirl and to dance
Till the white day is done.
Then rest at cool evening
Beneath a tall tree
While night comes on gently,
     Dark like me—
That is my dream!
To fling my arms wide
In the face of the sun,
Dance! Whirl! Whirl!
Till the quick day is done.
Rest at pale evening . . .
A tall, slim tree . . .
Night coming tenderly
     Black like me.

- by Langston Hughes, from The Weary Blues (1926)

The Writer

We lost the poet Richard Wilbur this week. I was unfamiliar with his work until a poetry class I took last spring, and I'm grateful to have found his poems. Though he isn't my favorite poet (not by a long shot), many of his poems are impressive and surprising in the way of most honest art.

If you like this, you can learn more about Wilbur's writing career here.

"The Writer"

In her room at the prow of the house
Where light breaks, and the windows are tossed with linden,
My daughter is writing a story.

I pause in the stairwell, hearing
From her shut door a commotion of typewriter-keys
Like a chain hauled over a gunwale. 

Young as she is, the stuff
Of her life is a great cargo, and some of it heavy:
I wish her a lucky passage. 

But now it is she who pauses,
As if to reject my thought and its easy figure.
A stillness greatens, in which 

The whole house seems to be thinking,
And then she is at it again with a bunched clamor
Of strokes, and again is silent. 

I remember the dazed starling
Which was trapped in that very room, two years ago;
How we stole in, lifted a sash 

And retreated, not to affright it;
And how for a helpless hour, through the crack of the door,
We watched the sleek, wild, dark 

And iridescent creature
Batter against the brilliance, drop like a glove
To the hard floor, or the desk-top, 

And wait then, humped and bloody,
For the wits to try it again; and how our spirits
Rose when, suddenly sure, 

It lifted off from a chair-back,
Beating a smooth course for the right window
And clearing the sill of the world. 

It is always a matter, my darling,
Of life or death, as I had forgotten. I wish
What I wished you before, but harder.

- "The Writer" by Richard Wilbur, from Walking to Sleep (1969)

And Then It Was Less Bleak Because We Said So

"And Then It Was Less Bleak Because We Said So"

Today there has been so much talk of things exploding
into other things, so much that we all become curious, that we
all run outside into the hot streets
and hug. Romance is a grotto of eager stones
anticipating light, or a girl whose teeth
you can always see. With more sparkle and pop
is the only way to live. Your confetti tongue explodes
into acid jazz. Small typewriters
that other people keep in their eyes
click away at all our farewell parties. It is hard
to pack for the rest of your life. Someone is always
eating cold cucumber noodles. Someone will drop by later
to help dismantle some furniture. A lot can go wrong
if you sleep or think, but the trees go on waving
their broken little hands.

-  by Wendy Xu, from You Are Not Dead (2013)

Bright Blue Self-Portrait

The below poem, "Bright Blue Self-Portrait," is by the American writer Frank Lima. Born in Spanish Harlem in 1939, Lima's youth was marked by drug addiction, recovery from which led him to realize his love of poetry. After earning an MFA from Columbia University, Lima decided to pursue a career as a chef, though he continued to write until his death in 2013.

Lima was also featured in this painting by Wynn Chamberlain, which features Lima standing behind fellow New York poet Frank O'Hara:

Wynn Chamberlain, Poets Dressed and Undressed (1964)

If you enjoy this poem, you can read more of Lima's work here.

"Bright Blue Self-Portrait"

I thank the spiders’ webs and the circus dancers who stain our eyes with
Rapid movements and authorize our handcuffs to make no distinction
Between night and day or love and hate.
No one will know the sum of our arduous daily separations from bed to

Work. These pillars actually belong to you since I have not counted them
Or know any more than you do where they are or in what country they
Still exist. We can put all our concerns into a loaf of bread and French
Kisses, go to movies and watch the splashing milk on the screen imitate

the forest in the moonlight. Why all the fuss about the patrons becoming
Feathers, discharging their ideas of nobility on the evening news? There
Are no lights in the theater just soft snow from the balcony that is the
Little red schoolhouse where all this began.

Actually it was because of you I did not attend as often as I should have.
I was too embarrassed to face you across the clay modeling tables since I
Always felt like the clay in your hands was a cartoon version of my teen
Years, dear slippery-fish ladies of the sleepy west.

Don’t forget, my early life will be yours, too,
With its self-descriptions of poetic justice,
The tiny creatures we write about can describe themselves in the moss
We leave behind.

- by Frank Lima, from Incidents of Travel in Poetry (2016)

Body and Kentucky Bourbon

In the dark, my mind's night, I go back
to your work-calloused hands, your body

and the memory of fields I no longer see.
Cheek wad of chew tobacco,

Skoal-tin ring in the back pocket
of threadbare jeans, knees

worn through entirely. How to name you:
farmhand, Kentucky boy, lover.

The one who taught me to bear
the back-throat burn of bourbon.

Straight, no chaser, a joke in our bed,
but I stopped laughing; all those empty bottles,

kitchen counters covered with beer cans
and broken glasses. To realize you drank

so you could face me the morning after,
the only way to choke down rage at the body

sleeping beside you. What did I know
of your father's backhand or the pine casket

he threatened to put you in? Only now,
miles and years away, do I wince at the jokes:

white trash, farmer's tan, good ole boy.
And now, alone, I see your face

at the bottom of my shot glass
before my own comes through.

- "Body and Kentucky Bourbon" by Saeed Jones, from Prelude to Bruise (2014)

Birthright

"Birthright AKA My Father Explains How We Got Here"

I’m not sure how many more times
you want to hear your own myth

The Blue Moon spit you out
which I thought was your first mistake
Son you only get a few resurrections
and you used one already
in a night full of red wings
and light dangling in steam
but hey sometimes we don’t have a choice
in what blood we rode in on

Anyway the cardinal came to the window
and I knew
somewhere something I cared about
was spilling

So I take off running after your mother
a scarlet prayer unraveling behind me
“God, I hope he looks like his mama”

I got in just before the blades
sharp things brought you into this world
sharp things might be what keep you here

they cleaved your mother’s stomach
like a fresh snowfall
you came from scars boy
if nothing else you get that from me

 - by Julian Randall, from Vinyl Poetry (July 2016)

Genealogy

"Genealogy"

This stream took a shorter course—
a thread of water that makes oasis

out of mud, in pooling,
does not aspire to lake. To river, leave

the forest, the clamorous wild.
I cannot. Wherever I am,

I am here, nonsensical, rhapsodic,
stock-still as the trees. Trickling

never floods, furrows its meager path
through the forest floor.

There will always be a root
too thirsty, moss that only swallows

and spreads. Primordial home, I am dying
from love of you. Were I tuber or quillwort,

the last layer of leaves that starts the dirt
or the meekest pond,

I would absorb everything.
I would drown. Water makes song

of erratic forms, and I hear the living
push back branches, wander off trail.

- by Jennifer Chang, from The History of Anonymity (2008)

It's Hard to Keep a Clean Shirt Clean

 "It's Hard to Keep a Clean Shirt Clean"

Poem for Sriram Shamasunder
And All of Poetry for the People 

It’s a sunlit morning
with jasmine blooming
easily
and a drove of robin redbreasts
diving into the ivy covering
what used to be
a backyard fence
or doves shoving aside
the birch tree leaves
when
a young man walks among
the flowers
to my doorway
where he knocks
then stands still
brilliant in a clean white shirt

He lifts a soft fist
to that door
and knocks again

He’s come to say this
was or that
was
not
and what’s
anyone of us to do
about what’s done
what’s past
but prickling salt to sting
our eyes

What’s anyone of us to do
about what’s done

And 7-month-old Bingo
puppy leaps
and hits
that clean white shirt
with muddy paw
prints here
and here and there

And what’s anyone of us to do
about what’s done
I say I’ll wash the shirt
no problem
two times through
the delicate blue cycle
of an old machine
the shirt spins in the soapy
suds and spins in rinse
and spins
and spins out dry 
not clean

still marked by accidents
by energy of whatever serious or trifling cause
the shirt stays dirty
from that puppy’s paws

I take that fine white shirt
from India
the threads as soft as baby
fingers weaving them
together
and I wash that shirt
between
between the knuckles of my own
two hands
I scrub and rub that shirt
to take the dirty
markings
out

At the pocket
and around the shoulder seam
and on both sleeves
the dirt the paw
prints tantalize my soap
my water my sweat
equity
invested in the restoration
of a clean white shirt

And on the eleventh try
I see no more
no anything unfortunate
no dirt

I hold the limp fine
cloth
between the faucet stream
of water as transparent
as a wish the moon stayed out
all day

How small it has become!
That clean white shirt!
How delicate!
How slight!
How like a soft fist knocking on my door!
And now I hang the shirt
to dry
as slowly as it needs
the air
to work its way
with everything

It’s clean.
A clean white shirt
nobody wanted to spoil
or soil
that shirt
much cleaner now but also
not the same
as the first before that shirt
got hit got hurt
not perfect
anymore
just beautiful

a clean white shirt

It’s hard to keep a clean shirt clean.

 - by June Jordan, from Directed by Desire: The Collected Poems of June Jordan (2005)

Notes on Longing

"Notes on Longing"

It smells of after-rain tonight.
Duck bones, a wounded egg on rice.
On the corner, there is a shop
that makes keys, keys that open
human doors, doors that lead
to rooms that hold families
of four or seven who sit at a table.
There is a mother who brings
sizzling flounder on a wide platter
for the family whose ordinary
mouths have been made to sing.

- by Tina Chang, from Half-Lit Houses (2004)

The Value of Poetry

Some scrambled thoughts before an appointment:

Our culture has always impressed upon me the value of hard work. As a self-proclaimed "poet," I hold no illusions about the imposed financial value of my work. I will never pay my bills writing poetry, and I am okay with that. I remind myself that many writers had trying day jobs: Maya Angelou was a cable car conductor. John Clare was a thresher. Junot Díaz worked in a steel mill.

As a young professional, though, I'm struggling more and more to find the balance between my types of work. My full-time job pays my bills. My unpaid volunteer work at New Letters on the Air helps me endure the full-time job, and may one day help me step into a paying job that I love. I'm beyond happy to be there, even if it means working longer hours. But after all those hours, I'm exhausted. I don't want to write. I don't even want to be around my friends. I just want to stay in and watch Curb Your Enthusiasm until it's time to go to bed and start the whole process over.

This is the hard work that everyone keeps talking about.

In today's America, where we value labor solely based on its economic worth, how are artists supposed to do their damn jobs? (And what of the artists who aren't nearly as privileged as I am?) When did we cease to champion creative endeavors? The answer, of course, is that we never much valued artists' contributions, at least not in the same way we value bankers' and lawyers'. And that's a problem. Art is the lens through which we see ourselves, as a collective and as individuals. It helps us find versions of the truth, most importantly those truths that are not quite comfortable or easy. That perspective is priceless.

Last Friday at New Letters, we were pulling together a show with writer Judith Ortiz Cofer, and she described her routine of waking up at 5 a.m. every morning to write, simply because it was the only time she could find. She sacrificed sleep and relationships to be able to find those hours, which is strangely comforting. Her priorities are evidence—to me, anyway—that it's impossible to have everything, and that that is okay. (I'm looking at you, Sheryl Sandberg.)

I'm trying hard myself to be comfortable with those sacrifices. Eventually, I'll get there.

You can hear this week's show here if you're interested.

As always, thank you for reading.

Lying in a Hammock

"Lying in a Hammock at William Duffy’s Farm in Pine Island, Minnesota"

Over my head, I see the bronze butterfly,   

Asleep on the black trunk,

Blowing like a leaf in green shadow.   

Down the ravine behind the empty house,   

The cowbells follow one another   

Into the distances of the afternoon.   

To my right,

In a field of sunlight between two pines,   

The droppings of last year’s horses   

Blaze up into golden stones.

I lean back, as the evening darkens and comes on.   

A chicken hawk floats over, looking for home.

I have wasted my life.

- by James Wright, first published in The Paris Review (1961)

Volver (The Snow Man)

It's been a little while. Whoops.

I feel a strange and slight twinge of maternal guilt for neglecting this blog, but mostly I feel excitement. For the past month or so, my focus has landed hard on poetry. In the last week, I was very lucky to do a featured reading and a symposium presentation. I also just got a piece accepted for publication by Kansas City Voices. Obviously, I'm incredibly grateful and surprised by all this, but other arenas of my life have diminished for it. In addition to the spareness of this blog, I managed to somehow kill my hydroponic dill plant, which is fed and watered by an automated machine. (I deserve a special award for that one.)

That's all my long-winded way of saying that it's impossible to find time and energy to do even half the things I want. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing. I'm only reading the books that truly hook me (I strongly recommend Yaa Gyasi's Homegoing). I'm accidentally spending more time away from the Internet. I'm starting a new job tomorrow. I'm exploring Kansas City, and pulling my head out of its own self-involved thoughts every now and then to honestly look at the current moment. It's much easier said than done, but there is no discovery like seeing a familiar place as if for the first time again.

This post seems to be building to a point, but it's not there. So, because it is Sunday morning and the laundry basket is calling my name, I'll end this scrambled, rambling post with a poem I love.

As always, thank you for reading this far.

"The Snow Man"

One must have a mind of winter
To regard the frost and the boughs
Of the pine-trees crusted with snow;

And have been cold a long time
To behold the junipers shagged with ice,
The spruces rough in the distant glitter

Of the January sun; and not to think
Of any misery in the sound of the wind,
In the sound of a few leaves,

Which is the sound of the land
Full of the same wind
That is blowing in the same bare place

For the listener, who listens in the snow,
And, nothing himself, beholds
Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.

- by Wallace Stevens, from the collection Harmonium (1923)

Having a Coke with You

"Having a Coke with You"

is even more fun than going to San Sebastian, Irún, Hendaye, Biarritz, Bayonne
or being sick to my stomach on the Travesera de Gracia in Barcelona
partly because in your orange shirt you look like a better happier St. Sebastian
partly because of my love for you, partly because of your love for yoghurt
partly because of the fluorescent orange tulips around the birches
partly because of the secrecy our smiles take on before people and statuary
it is hard to believe when I’m with you that there can be anything as still
as solemn as unpleasantly definitive as statuary when right in front of it
in the warm New York 4 o’clock light we are drifting back and forth
between each other like a tree breathing through its spectacles 

and the portrait show seems to have no faces in it at all, just paint
you suddenly wonder why in the world anyone ever did them 

I look
at you and I would rather look at you than all the portraits in the world
except possibly for the Polish Rider occasionally and anyway it’s in the Frick
which thank heavens you haven’t gone to yet so we can go together the first time
and the fact that you move so beautifully more or less takes care of Futurism
just as at home I never think of the Nude Descending a Staircase or
at a rehearsal a single drawing of Leonardo or Michelangelo that used to wow me
and what good does all the research of the Impressionists do them
when they never got the right person to stand near the tree when the sun sank
or for that matter Marino Marini when he didn’t pick the rider as carefully
as the horse 

it seems they were all cheated of some marvelous experience
which is not going to go wasted on me which is why I am telling you about it

by Frank O'Hara, originally published in 1960

- Frank O'Hara reading the poem in his apartment in 1966, taken from the film USA: Poetry, Frank O'Hara

Ode to a Drone

"Ode to a Drone"

Hell-raiser, razor-feathered
risers, windhover over
Peshawar,

power's
joystick-blithe
thousand-mile scythe,

proxy executioner's
proxy ax
pinged by a proxy server,

winged victory,
pilot cipher
unburdened by aught

but fuel and bombs,
fool of God, savage
idiot savant

sucking your benumbed
trigger-finger
gamer's thumb

by Amit Majmudar, from Dothead (2016)

City Rain, City Streets

I wrote this little tidbit while I was out walking last Friday night. It's still sort of doughy and shapeless, so I'm kneading little corners, here and there. It doesn't have a title. As always, your readerly perspective is welcome.

Last Saturday, I drove up to Omaha. I have enough to say about it to make a forthcoming post this week. For now, I'll just share that endless bookstores and giant slides exist there, and that driving in Omaha is 45% more frustrating than in Kansas City.

Hey, thanks for reading this.