My friend Lou
used to walk up to strangers
and tip them — no, really —
he’d cruise the South Side,
pick out the businessman on his way
to lunch, the slacker hanging
by the Beehive, the young girl
walking her dog, and he’d go up,
pull out a dollar and say,
Here’s a tip for you.
I think you’re doing a really
good job today. Then Lou would
walk away as the tipee stood
in mystified silence. Sometimes
he would cut it short with,
Keep up the fine work.
People thought Lou was weird,
but he wasn’t. He didn’t have much,
worked as a waiter. I don’t know
why he did it. But I know it wasn’t
about the magnanimous gesture,
an easy way to feel important,
it wasn’t interrupting the impenetrable
edge of the individual — you’d
have to ask Lou — maybe it was
about being awake, hand-to-hand
sweetness, a chain of kindnesses,
or fun — the tenderness
we forget in each other.
Category: Poetry
A Small Needful Fact By Ross Gay
Is that Eric Garner worked
for some time for the Parks and Rec.
Horticultural Department, which means,
perhaps, that with his very large hands,
perhaps, in all likelihood,
he put gently into the earth
some plants which, most likely,
some of them, in all likelihood,
continue to grow, continue
to do what such plants do, like house
and feed small and necessary creatures,
like being pleasant to touch and smell,
like converting sunlight
into food, like making it easier
for us to breathe.
The Universe, According to Rufino Tamayo By Monica Rico
Past the breath that only stars have, I find myself
an open hand of night with pupils that eclipse the moon.
The blackness underneath my feet, not above where the sky is filled with sea.
My eyelash covers the arm of the galaxy with one word that means, here.
I shake my hair like a cloud and let the spirals of my curls dot the hereafter with quasars.
I have no need to crush darkness, only hold my hand out to it like the five
fingers of my lungs that also expand and collapse.
I have hidden my teeth for days. I’m afraid
they will spill and become silver streetlights in competition with the marble gleam of the moon.
My sharp points are a reminder that I am atmosphere.
The snap of my fingers make stars pulse.
The smashed lilacs of my eyelids crumble into the depths of the ocean
under moonlight and the whisper of the most delicate dove.
I fear I will never eat. I fear
my tongue will hang itself on an ice cube.
Marigolds are in front of me like pursed lips, the head
of a child that knows to look up, arms spread as an echo.
I may disappear, but if I spell my name,
I return like dusk and pray to never fall asleep.
Witness By Ariana Brown
you said you held a gun first / then a girl / & both begged for mercy / & you are afraid / of your own
body / of the hands that are their own haunting / the coal / bursting through / your glowing skin / black
/ as the morning sun / born dying / the girl / writhing on the bed / the boys behind you / chanting / your
rebirth as a bullet / your reflection / something like your father’s / all the good air / sucked out of your
head / legacy of black pain / avenged / by teaching black boys /
to kill / & you want to know / if you are a monster / for being alive / when you cannot remember / the boy you were
some men / teach their sons to fish / some beat their wives / & say nothing / while their sons / inherit
their fists /
if i tell you / i love you / in the light & dark / what i mean is / there is such a thing as forgiveness / i mean
/ some battles / we are born into / wearing / uniforms of blood / & concrete / that
the children we were / almost never survive / that we must forgive the nightmares / their bloody fingers
/ if i tell you / i love your hands / what i mean is / blessed boy / I am not afraid of you
The Dew and the Bird by Alexander Posey
There is more glory in a drop of dew,
That shineth only for an hour,
Than there is in the pomp of earth’s great Kings
Within the noonday of their power.
There is more sweetness in a single strain
That falleth from a wild bird’s throat,
At random in the lonely forest’s depths,
Than there’s in all the songs that bards e’er wrote.
Yet men, for aye, rememb’ring Caesar’s name,
Forget the glory in the dew,
And, praising Homer’s epic, let the lark’s
Song fall unheeded from the blue.
My Son Asks for the Story About When We Were Birds by Joe Wilkins
When we were birds,
we veered & wheeled, we flapped & looped—
it’s true, we flew. When we were birds,
we dined on tiny silver fish
& the watery hearts
of flowers. When we were birds
we sistered the dragonfly,
brothered the night-wise bat,
& sometimes when we were birds
we rose as high as we could go—
light cold & strange—
& when we opened our beaked mouths
sundown poured like wine
down our throats.
When we were birds
we worshipped trees, rivers, mountains,
sage knots, rain, gizzard rocks, grub-shot dung piles,
& like all good beasts & wise green things
the mothering sun. We had many gods
when we were birds,
& each in her own way
was good to us, even winter fog,
which found us huddling
in salal or silk tassel,
singing low, sweet songs & closing
our blood-rich eyes & sleeping
the troubled sleep of birds. Yes,
even when we were birds
we were sometimes troubled & tired,
sad for no reason,
& so pretended we were not birds
& fell like stones—
the earth hurtling up to meet us,
our trussed bones readying
to be shattered, our unusually large hearts
pounding for nothing—
yet at the last minute we would flap
& lift, & as we flew, shudderingly away,
we told ourselves that this falling—
we would remember. We thought
we would always
be birds. We didn’t know.
We didn’t know
we could love one another
with such ferocity. That we should.
Meditation on Rain by Alessandra Lynch
In a blue collusion of dusk
and rain, the sky’s darkly shaking
like horsetails flicking
off bloodflies. As you’d try
switching off half-truths that fed
on your skin, their little bites
distracting you
from harder pain.
Nothing a hoof could gallop from. Nothing to ride here
but air
coolly passing from stable to woods—
each leaf a perforated heart—
to the front porch of the blue house. As you ascend,
the steps darken behind you, night
has its own quiet stepping—it is not
an abyss, not amorphous
as once you felt—.
How wavery the rain at the threshhold—
So Torn by My Tides by Stefania Heim
So torn by my tides, I do not know I can read them.
Hour book, our book. “H” in Italian is a tool, not a sound. My mother slips the “h” in only where it doesn’t belong. Our book, our book. How events just accumulate in time. Who will we lose in the duration of this writing. The promise of future children named for our beloved dead. Whispered at caskets. An hour dead. How many hours.
In our village the streets empty at appointed times. If life were a time-lapse video, lingering would be more visible than slipping away. Invisible motions the more pronounced. Once I stood akimbo, 8PM mid-street, waiting for everyone to go. I am astonished, in memory, by the boldness of it. Did everyone go?
How many ours.
Winter Trees by William Carlos Williams
All the complicated details
of the attiring and
the disattiring are completed!
A liquid moon
moves gently among
the long branches.
Thus having prepared their buds
against a sure winter
the wise trees
stand sleeping in the cold.
Sonnet 97: How like a winter hath my absence been by William Shakespeare
How like a winter hath my absence been
From thee, the pleasure of the fleeting year!
What freezings have I felt, what dark days seen!
What old December’s bareness everywhere!
And yet this time remov’d was summer’s time,
The teeming autumn, big with rich increase,
Bearing the wanton burthen of the prime,
Like widow’d wombs after their lords’ decease:
Yet this abundant issue seem’d to me
But hope of orphans and unfather’d fruit;
For summer and his pleasures wait on thee,
And thou away, the very birds are mute;
Or if they sing, ’tis with so dull a cheer
That leaves look pale, dreading the winter’s near.
Compassion Camp 