Today’s poem is from A. Rose Hill, who by all accounts I’ve seen is a remarkable woman. She was recommended to me by B.J. Buckley, a significant poet in her own right, who touts Hill as being almost single-handedly responsible for establishing an ongoing state poetry organization in Wyoming, WYOPoets, and a monthly decade-long poetry workshop in Sheridan, Wyoming, the Third Thursday Poets. Hill was also a poet laureate of that state and has nurtured generations of poets there to keep community and to keep writing. When the Meadowlark Sings Beside my mother’s grave, mourners stand silent, sad ..read more

Tonight’s poem, by Heidi Kasa, won first place in the most recent PoetrySuperHighway Annual Poetry Contest. I love its prose-poem structure and its use of anaphora (repetition, particularly at the start of each stanza). I also really like the idea that maybe killing tools don’t want the legacy they were made for. The Bullet Cures “a bullet doesn’t ask to be given back” -K-Ming Chang, Bestiary The bullet asks to be the fire that melts it. The bullet asks to be given back, returned to the earth. To become a bridge, a garden gate, a plant liner. A tent, enclosing instead of burying. A ring that k ..read more

Somehow I got the date wrong on Shakespeare’s birth- and deathday and pegged it as the 24th instead of the 23rd. Oops. I’m exhausted. So here’s his Sonnet 27, which is also about exhaustion, but maybe not the worst kind. Weary with toil, I haste me to my bed, The dear repose for limbs with travel tired; But then begins a journey in my head, To work my mind, when body’s work’s expired: For then my thoughts, from far where I abide, Intend a zealous pilgrimage to thee, And keep my drooping eyelids open wide, Looking on darkness which the blind do see: Save that my soul’s imaginary sight Presents ..read more

I first encountered this arresting poem when it won second place in the most recent PoetrySuperHighway Annual Poetry Contest. And fair warning: this poem addresses sexual assault, so if you are sensitive to this subject, please proceed with caution, or else just wait for tomorrow’s poem. It is a remarkable, excellent work of literature, but because of its content, I’m putting it behind a “read more” line so that you can decide whether you are able to read it at this time. unsavage the boy after ansel elkins unhook his gaze from hers           unappetite the lust b ..read more

I always love featuring one of Fady’s poems in this series — nearly every year — and even more so tonight because he has just won the Jackson Poetry Prize, and extremely deservingly so. He also has a new book out entitled […] from Milkweed Editions. This poem is from his book Tethered to Stars. How many twins and proxies can you find? Gemini After yoga, I took my car to the shop. Coils, spark plugs, computer chips, and a two-mile walk home, our fossilized public transportation, elementary school recess hour, kids whirling joy, the all-familiar neighborhood. And then another newly demolished ho ..read more

And now, finally, the conclusion to Tova Hinda Siegel’s “Triptych For My Father.” In Between I think of my father in between his accomplishments. He was oh so capable. Hey, first in the province on his Bar exam! And more. But what I remember is not that. I remember my 4-year-old self, squealing on the early morning drives around the trout filled mountain lake, him pretending to almost miss the turn. I remember his late night smile for my 8-year-old, grown up self, bringing law school study break dinners, him happy for the respite.  I remember his groggy middle of the night embrace of my 1 ..read more

Here is the second poem in Tova Hinda Siegel’s “Triptych For My Father.” Apple Trees The yard held apple trees, seven I seem to recall. All Macintosh all dwarf all planted by my father all fruit destined for pies and applesauce. Macintosh were unique, were Canadian he said. No other was bred by Canadian spirit and soil and air chilled to freezing by snow warmed to budding in Spring. Canadian earth, filled with dark worms, rich with fat smells of grass decomposed by winter’s fasting blanket, mudded by warmed breezes of Summer’s impatience. Fruit pinked and reddened to flavor’s peak and crunch ..read more

This weekend I’m posting a triptych, doing it in three parts (three posts), by Tova Hinda Siegel. I also want to tell you about a poetry reading I’m giving, in person, this Sunday. If you’re in the Richmond/Rosenberg area just outside of Houston, I’ll be reading at Lit Book Bar. There are several poets reading, starting at 2:00, and the reading goes until 4:00, including an open mic in the last half hour or so. So come out and hear lots of good poets and read a poem yourself! Lit Book Bar is also really interesting because it is both a bookshop and an actual bar/lounge, with full cocktail and ..read more

So, most of us are taught haiku when we’re young. Many of us are taught that they are three-line poems of seventeen syllables (5-7-5 in those three lines) about nature. And that’s not wrong. It’s just incomplete. Haiku don’t have to be, strictly speaking, seventeen syllables. Or three lines. Or maybe even always about nature. They can be! But they don’t always have to be. They can be brief lyrics which include both an image and a comment. (To be fair, nature is often involved.) Observe this lovely one by Aeryk Pierson: Life, the small moments Collected in memory.  A pollen heavy bee.  ..read more

I first read this poem when it was named one of the winners, third place, of the most recent Poetry Super Highway Annual Poetry Contest. (Considering this contest often gets over 800 entries per year, this is an outstanding accomplishment!) And if you’re wondering what a sonnenizio is, it’s a poetic form invented by Kim Addonizio. It’s fourteen lines long and begins with a line from someone else’s sonnet, and then it uses one of the words from that line is each subsequent line, ending with a rhyming couplet. Marvelous! Grandma’s Telling Me Sonnenizio on a line from Ashley Anna McHugh’s “The Un ..read more