Crips, Bloods, and butterflies.
A sunflower somehow planted
in the alley. Its broken neck.
Maybe memory is all the home
you get. And rage, where you
first learn how fragile the axis
upon which everything tilts.
But to say you’ve come to terms
with a city that’s never loved you
might be overstating things a bit.
All you know is there was once
a walk-up where now sits a lot,
vacant, and rats in deep grass
hide themselves from the day.
That one apartment fire
set back in ’76—one the streets
called arson to collect a claim—
could not do, ultimately, what
the city itself did, left to its own dank
devices, some sixteen years later.
Rebellions, said some. Riots,
said the rest. In any case, flames;
and the home you knew, ash.
It’s not an actual memory, but
you remember it still: a rust-
bottomed Datsun handed down,
then stolen. Stripped, recovered,
and built back from bolts.
Driving away in May. 1992.
What’s left of that life quivers
in the rearview—the world on fire,
and half your head with it.
Copyright © 2018 by John Murillo. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on May 1, 2018, by the Academy of American Poets.
The world undresses
its wounds. It wounds. This Father—
His memory, torn
clouds: forgetful weather.
God’s goodness licks
bowls bone-clean. Our fingers
twist crumbs from air.
We are hungry children
abandoned by our country
for bombs. For Rockets’ Red glare. How
could we ever be patriots?
My father is my flag.
The national anthem is
every word, every single word
my mother could not whisper—
could not say,
could not say:
her father colonized her.
Made her mother nasty with jealousy.
Could not say: she can’t stay
In this world of touching.
It maims.
It elects evil.
It is two gendered.
It kneels on Sunday.
The Lord is
American &
aims His rifle
at us, His children
once beggars
rise into guerrillas.
Copyright © 2025 by W. J. Lofton. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on February 17, 2025, by the Academy of American Poets.
Editorial Assistant. Executive Assistant. Administrative Assistant. Writing
Center Director. Writing Teacher. Receptionist. Poetry Fellow. Technical
Writer. Barista. Waitress. Applying for three jobs a day doesn’t get me a
job. I get an offer from the diner and then the diner burns down. I flop an
interview at the local Subway. I make a couple hundred a month writing
blogs for hotels I cannot afford. I write a blog about Benjamin Franklin’s
Ghost House. It’s a chalk outline in the ground where his house was torn
down. I have a Ghost Life. My friends all get jobs. I know because they
each come to the bar with a polished eye around their neck. The eyes can
foresee only positive futures. In the future, my friends eat takeout and
rescue a dog. They have children they’ve made on purpose and call by
fashionable names. I try to look into their job-eyes, and the eyes close
their bulbous lids. The lids make a horrible smacking sound like someone
closing their mouth to go hmmmm—then not saying what everyone knows
they want to say. Was my phone voice too weak? Did my neck look too
brittle to hold a full-size job-eye? The lease is running out much faster
than my life is. Every day, my apartment gets one-cubic-inch smaller. The
walls get so short I only have room for the bed. I lie there and dream of
having any real job.
Copyright © 2024 by Nicole Connolly. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on July 1, 2024, by the Academy of American Poets.
The world begins at a kitchen table. No matter what, we must eat to live.
The gifts of earth are brought and prepared, set on the table. So it has been since creation, and it will go on.
We chase chickens or dogs away from it. Babies teethe at the corners. They scrape their knees under it.
It is here that children are given instructions on what it means to be human. We make men at it, we make women.
At this table we gossip, recall enemies and the ghosts of lovers.
Our dreams drink coffee with us as they put their arms around our children. They laugh with us at our poor falling-down selves and as we put ourselves back together once again at the table.
This table has been a house in the rain, an umbrella in the sun.
Wars have begun and ended at this table. It is a place to hide in the shadow of terror. A place to celebrate the terrible victory.
We have given birth on this table, and have prepared our parents for burial here.
At this table we sing with joy, with sorrow. We pray of suffering and remorse. We give thanks.
Perhaps the world will end at the kitchen table, while we are laughing and crying, eating of the last sweet bite.
From The Woman Who Fell From the Sky (W. W. Norton, 1994) by Joy Harjo. Copyright © 1994 by Joy Harjo. Used with permission of the author.
to Mary Rose
Here is our little yard
too small for a pool
or chickens let alone
a game of tag or touch
football Then
again this stub-
born patch
of crabgrass is just
big enough to get down
flat on our backs
with eyes wide open and face
the whole gray sky just
as a good drizzle
begins I know
we’ve had a monsoon
of grieving to do
which is why
I promise to lie
beside you
for as long as you like
or need
We’ll let our elbows
kiss under the downpour
until we’re soaked
like two huge nets
left
beside the sea
whose heavy old
ropes strain
stout with fish
If we had to we could
feed a multitude
with our sorrows
If we had to
we could name a loss
for every other
drop of rain All these
foreign flowers
you plant from pot
to plot
with muddy fingers
—passion, jasmine, tuberose—
we’ll sip
the dew from them
My darling here
is the door I promised
Here
is our broken bowl Here
my hands
In the home of our dreams
the windows open
in every
weather—doused
or dry—May we never
be so parched
Copyright © 2024 by Patrick Rosal. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on March 13, 2024, by the Academy of American Poets.