Handorable Me

🔥 Staring at the flames of the woodstove fire
🔥 guarded by its glass door, I’m trying to remember
🔥 what I’m good at—surprised when it occurs to me
🔥 I’m good at making this fire out of kindling
🔥 I’ve split, plus one piece of fir and two of oak, cut
🔥 from the large branches of the neighbor’s oak
🔥 that fell across the road two years ago
🔥 on a winter evening.

“Building a Fire,” Maxine Scates

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Photo by Kira auf der Heide on Unsplash

💌 A desiccated daffodil.
💌 A pigeon cooing on the sill.
💌 The old cat lives on love and water.
💌Y our mother’s balanced by your daughter:
💌 one faces death, one will give birth.
💌 The fulcrum is our life on earth,
💌 beginning, ending in a bed.
💌 We have to marry love and dread.

“Love and Dread,” Rachel Hadas

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Photo by Ant Rozetsky on Unsplash

It was like watching a wave approach
from a great distance, so great
💫
that at first it is not a wave at all, but
a mere horizon, static and singular,
💫
so that one, it being possible, presumably,
to avail oneself of the diversions
💫
of the beach, might turn one’s back
on the ocean altogether . . .

“The Climate,” Annelyse Gelman

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Photo by Sami Boudjelti on Unsplash

I imagine there is a place of deep rest—not in the resting but after,
when the body has forgotten the weight of fatigue or of its many
🕸️
betrayals—how unfair that once I thought it clever to blame my body
for the wounds in me: the ankle bulbous and aching, the heaviness
🕸️
in the thigh, and the fat, the encroachment of flesh. It is hard to believe
that there are those who do not know that it is possible to let things
🕸️
go, to then see the expansion of flesh—it is so easy, and that knowing
is a pathology. What is unknown to me is the clear day of rest—
🕸️
I carry a brain of crushed paper, everything unfolds as if by magic,
every spot of understanding is a miracle, I cannot take any credit
🕸️
for the revelations, they come and go as easily as the wind.

“Before Winter,” Kwame Dawes

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Photo by Cristian Newman on Unsplash

🍀 I cannot say I did not ask
🍀 to be born. I asked with my mother’s beauty,
🍀 and her money. I asked with my father’s desire
🍀 for his or***ms and for my mother’s money.
🍀 I asked with the cradle my sister had grown out of.
🍀 I asked with my mother’s longing for a son,
🍀 I asked with patriarchy. I asked
🍀 with the milk that would well in her breasts, needing to be
🍀 drained by a little, living pump.

“I Cannot Say I Did Not,” Sharon Olds

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Photo by Taylor Wilcox on Unsplash

I want to give more of my time
to others the less I have of it,
give it away in a will and testament,
give it to the girls’ club, give it
to the friends of the urban trees.

Your life is not your own and
never was. It came to you in a box
marked fragile. It came from the
complaint department like amends
on an order you did not place with
them.

“Open Gesture of an I,” D. A. Powell

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Photo by Alex Hawthorne on Unsplash

I don’t want to be a spice store.
I don’t want to carry handcrafted Marseille soap,
or tsampa and yak butter,
or nine thousand varieties of wine.
Half the shops here don’t open till noon
and even the bookstore’s brined in charm.
I want to be the one store that’s open all night
and has nothing but necessities.

“I Don’t Want to Be a Spice Store,” Christian Wiman

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Photo by Ahmad Ossayli on Unsplash

😶 I heard them and I still hear them
😶 above the threatening shrieks of police sirens
😶 above the honking horns of morning traffic,
😶 above the home-crowd cheers of Yankee Stadium
😶 above the school bells and laughter
😶l ighting up the afternoon
😶 above the clamoring trudge of the 1 train
😶 and the 2 and 4, 5, 6, the B and the D . . .

“Along the East River and in the Bronx Young Men Were Singing” by Ariel Francisco

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Photo by Andi Rieger on Unsplash

I bet I’ll never appear in a dream or a summer dress
or next door. Displaying on one hand my prowess, the other

my difficultness, I bet there will be just enough pain
to keep me alive, long enough for the moon to be mine,
just as the sea is of women: the cockle, the star,
and the movements of the earth. Just as
the whale, stuck in its baleen grin, climbs up
out of the depths and moves to its hidden
spawning grounds—
👽
I don’t know. What is it to be seen?

“Artichokes” by Bianca Stone

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Photo by Daniel Jensen on Unsplash

I lost so much
of the world’s beauty, as if I were watching
😔
every shining gift
on its branch with one eye. Because
😔
I was hungry. Because I was waiting
😔
to eat, a self
😔
crawling about the
world in search
😔
of small things.

“I give in to an old desire,” by Toi Derricotte

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Photo by Vince Fleming on Unsplash

🙄 things got terribly ugly incredibly quickly

🙄 things got ugly embarrassingly quickly

🙄 actually things got ugly unbelievably quickly

🙄 honestly things got ugly seemingly infrequently

🙄 initially things got ugly ironically usually

🙄 awfully carefully things got ugly unsuccessfully

🙄 occasionally things got ugly mostly painstakingly

🙄 quietly seemingly things got ugly beautifully . . .

“American Sonnet for the New Year,” by Terrance Hayes

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Photo by Marek Szturc on Unsplash

It's been snowing since 10 am today. 🌨 Perfect time to remember that winter is not going to be with us forever ❄️ and we aren't leaving in the the Game of Thrones world where winters are seven years long. 😮⁠
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Lets remember the summer delights 🌞 and the feeling of a ladybug tickling your palm, looking for the way up, spreading its wings and flying away like a tiny silent helicopter.⁠
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Photo by Juanita Swart on Unsplash. Thank you, Juanita!

Photo by Juanita Swart on Unsplash Download this photo by Juanita Swart on Unsplash