Ezzard Charles Drive, Cincinnati, Ohio, circa 1980
Snuffed out candlewick shadow
disappears in the shimmer
of her snuff cans. The silver
cylinders cradle the powder
she’s prone to pucker, her lower lip
smooth with the stuff. She takes
her time. This is her time. Her mind
space.
Her words pinch in slow motion.
Tho nobody’s home. & she ain’t
studin you. She knows when to
leave her imaginings. No tobacco-
cancer concerns this eve.
It’s all banana pudding feet
in slippers, vanilla wafer-colored
waves
and wigs. She’ll leave this realm
at sixty-five, much to her children
& husband’s surprise.
Copyright © 2024 by Yona Harvey. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on March 15, 2024, by the Academy of American Poets.
I
Living is no laughing matter: you must live with great seriousness like a squirrel, for example— I mean without looking for something beyond and above living, I mean living must be your whole occupation. Living is no laughing matter: you must take it seriously, so much so and to such a degree that, for example, your hands tied behind your back, your back to the wall, or else in a laboratory in your white coat and safety glasses, you can die for people— even for people whose faces you’ve never seen, even though you know living is the most real, the most beautiful thing. I mean, you must take living so seriously that even at seventy, for example, you’ll plant olive trees— and not for your children, either, but because although you fear death you don’t believe it, because living, I mean, weighs heavier.
II
Let’s say we’re seriously ill, need surgery— which is to say we might not get up from the white table. Even though it’s impossible not to feel sad about going a little too soon, we’ll still laugh at the jokes being told, we’ll look out the window to see if it’s raining, or still wait anxiously for the latest newscast. . . Let’s say we’re at the front— for something worth fighting for, say. There, in the first offensive, on that very day, we might fall on our face, dead. We’ll know this with a curious anger, but we’ll still worry ourselves to death about the outcome of the war, which could last years. Let’s say we’re in prison and close to fifty, and we have eighteen more years, say, before the iron doors will open. We’ll still live with the outside, with its people and animals, struggle and wind— I mean with the outside beyond the walls. I mean, however and wherever we are, we must live as if we will never die.
III
This earth will grow cold, a star among stars and one of the smallest, a gilded mote on blue velvet— I mean this, our great earth. This earth will grow cold one day, not like a block of ice or a dead cloud even but like an empty walnut it will roll along in pitch-black space . . . You must grieve for this right now —you have to feel this sorrow now— for the world must be loved this much if you’re going to say “I lived”. . .
From Poems of Nazim Hikmet, translated by Randy Blasing and Mutlu Konuk, published by Persea Books. Copyright © 1994 by Randy Blasing and Mutlu Konuk. Used with the permission of Persea Books. All rights reserved.
From her perch on the docent’s gloved wrist, she
watches us with the eyes of any creature handled too
much: featherless head a closed door, body a mask of
silence. In the steep twilight descending like the
backwards count of a nurse’s voice leading a patient
into unconsciousness, the handler explains to our
circle the generalities of the species—the turkey
vulture’s primary form of self-defense is the
regurgitation of semi-digested meat that is then
vomited onto a predator’s face—and the
particularities of this one, who had come to them with
a broken wing. I, too, have places on my body knitted
back together by unseen hands, scars laid while I slept
the sleep of the unknowing: one above the belly
button, and another below where two fingers must
have parted the dark hair before shaving a path. Does
she remember the first faces to peer toward her as she
surfaced? Every time I try to write what those hands
did, I end up plunging my own fingers deep inside
until I pull up the voice of the surgeon in post-op: I
usually have to pay women to take their clothes off for
me. Oh, the shudder of her black-feathered shoulders.
Oh, the bile rising in her throat
Copyright © 2024 by Keetje Kuipers. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on March 8, 2024, by the Academy of American Poets.
Nature’s first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf’s a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.
From The Poetry of Robert Frost edited by Edward Connery Lathem. Copyright © 1923, 1947, 1969 by Henry Holt and Company, copyright © 1942, 1951 by Robert Frost, copyright © 1970, 1975 by Lesley Frost Ballantine. Reprinted by permission of Henry Holt and Company, LLC.
translated from the Kreyòl by Danielle Legros Georges
In what language should I speak to you
when the words beneath our sheets
blow over my belly
life has me holding a grudge
pouring coffee on my recollections
not revealing where the moon finds its water
When children cry
and won’t stop
one after the other the words dry up
in the palm of my hand
not letting me baptize the dark
Believe me
I don’t know what you are:
A navel that’s lost its cord in the midst of a poetry book?
A hibiscus flower with a sickly eye?
A bird with its wings pinned to its back?
I was surprised by you
I didn’t know who you were
Today your mouth’s upturned
This shout, louder than your pain
***
In what language should I speak to you
when prayer kneels before poverty
and our daughters fly kites
by the cathedral
sick of washing their marbles
in the vestry
Believe me
I don’t know your name
when a ten-year-old beggar
undresses his hunger beneath the statue of Saint Anne
each grain of rice leaving a scar on our skin
***
The wind takes a break to make us drunk
we carry it on our backs
our way is rugged
In what language should I speak to you
when the sun loses its way
Believe me
I don’t remember what hurts me most
I stand on tiptoe to gather stars
that capsize never to rise again
Love has lost its name
continents don’t remain steady
one wild day, we’ll meet
without my knowing who you are
Plidetwal
Nan ki lang pou m pale avè w
Lè pawòl anba dra
Pase souf li sou vant mwen
lavi kenbe m nan kè
koule kafe nan memwa m
li pa di m kote lalin bwè dlo
Lè timoun ap kriye
san rete
youn apre lòt mo yo seche
nan pla men m
san yo pa ban m tan pou m batize fènwa
Kwè m si ou vle
mwen pa konn ki sa ou ye
Yon lonbrit ki pèdi kòd li nan mitan liv pwezi
Yon flè choublak ki gen malozye
Yon zwazo ak zèl li mare dèyè do l
Mwen pantan sou ou
san m pa t konnen kilès ou ye
Jodi a bouch ou tètanba
Rèl sa a pi gwo pase doulè w
***
Nan ki lang pou m pale avè w
lè lapriyè met ajenou devan lamizè
Pitit fi n ap monte kap
bò katedral
Yo bouke lave grenn mab
anndan sakristi
Kwè m si ou vle
M pa konn ki jan ou rele
lè yon ti pòv dizan
dezabiye grangou l nan pye Sentàn
chak grenn diri kite yon mak sou po n
***
Van an kabicha pou l fè nou sou
nou pote l sou do
chimen nou kalboso
nan ki lang pou m pale avè w
lè solèy la
bliye wout li
Kwè m si ou vle
m pa sonje sa k fè m pi mal
m kanpe sou pwent pye pou m ranmase zetwal
yo chavire yo pa janm remonte
Lanmou pèdi papye l
kontinan pa ret anplas
yon jou sovaj na rankontre
san m pa mande ki moun ou ye
Copyright © 2024 by Évelyne Trouillot and Danielle Legros Georges. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on June 18, 2024, by the Academy of American Poets.