​A golden shovel poem after Sinead Morrissey
 
After learning to be lonely for no one, and
letting go of moments in which it seemed impossible to forgive,
we will be reminded of what it felt like to say us,
 
to give and take belonging, ownership of another, our
bodies tangled in the darkness beside our trespasses.
We will have let go of the power of
 
grief, let the softer things flood our minds, those things which
brought us to touched places years ago. At the end of it all, the
anger is the last thing that matters. The first
 
feeling, as it was in the beginning, as if it had never been away, is
joy: inviting and unmistakable, two bodies and the promise of love.

​If you’d looked
out the window,
at the white outcroppings
along the bluff,
 
stone castles rising
from the weeds, you’d have
seen my eyes reflected,
glowing in the glass.
 
In sleep, did you feel
the coast circling
Ireland, our green
tour bus shaking
 
with the tire-rattle
of rubber on gravel,
your cheek bobbing
on my shoulder?
 
I imagine you dreamed then
as I once did, boldly:
as the bus rocked us
up and down,
 
wishes like yellow
wildflowers trapped
between crags of limestone
at the bus’s last stop.

​I was thirteen when I first woke to blood
between my thighs and knees, the thick
drunk liquid of womanhood. I was sixteen
when a raccoon attacked the family dog
in winter, as my mom screeched & pounded
the small black & white body with a broom.
I was five when I realized I was a girl
& my brother’s body didn’t look quite
like mine, seven when I was no longer
allowed to take bubble baths because
the part of me that was smooth & closed
off to the world would open to the foam.
I was nine when Sam lost one of my blue
rainboots in the stream during a rainstorm,
after I’d lent it to her so she could cross
the water, too. I was seventeen when
my first kiss turned into my first more.
I was six when I accidentally killed a frog
& gave it a funeral in the backyard,
& my brother cried, so we dressed in black
& kneeled beside the dirt grave. 

​I don’t know for sure if the West has waves
like these, soft and dark where they meet shore,
stirred and flashed along the edges by New Jersey wind,
where children learn to not be afraid of cold, or the other
things the black salt water hides, the inscrutable
ones that find their home beneath sand and stones.
 
I can’t know if the sun sets and rises there as here, lit
every day against the pastel shutters of white shore houses.
I can’t picture the heads of lighthouses that rise above our trees,
reflected in the clear underwater of California,
or the shore flickering as it does here, the piers pushed up against it,
lights shut off by the storms that hover over coast.
 
There remains a softness still, in the seasonality, in the way our hearts shudder
when we pass through a summer too quickly, handing off our home to winter,
sideways snow mixing with white sand, pounding waves until they open.

​He will text you two days in advance,
tell you not to worry when the shoebox,
unmarked, shows up by the door.
 
He will have packed it tightly,
neatly, the oldest one at the bottom
and the one you wrote him last at the top.
 
He will want you to read them all.
You will. He will want you to hurt,
to trace with cold fingers your own words.
 
He will not know how you scatter them
on your bedroom floor--every letter
you ever wrote on its back like a dying moth.
 
He will wish he’d included your toothbrush, the Polaroids,
your underwear, the button-down you bought him
for Valentine’s dinner, and also everything else.

​The University of Virginia, October 2017
 
I want to go back to that night in Garden II,
to the hour after midnight where we sat
inches apart, on bright white bench slats,
then ran down the Lawn, staring at stars,
laughing at couples stumble-walking home.
 
Later, the worn plastic leather of lounge chairs
of the Kent dorm lounge held me close when you
were too afraid to. I did not know you—I sat
across from you and knew I wanted to. I wanted
to trace lines in the sky to count the stars, touch your hand
 
and trace lines there, too. Take me back
to that night, when I was aching but not undone,
to when paper and pen were not needed,
to when ink meant nothing, words not yet broken in me,
when your words alone were enough.

​A poem,
like a cathedral, holds secrets.
Words hover against stained glass
and slither through pews.
The priest, a poet, chooses each word
carefully, but not everyone listens.
Some hear only the silence,
words flapping like birds
against the insides of heads,
the shadowed corners of a church
long after Sunday. 

After “All Good Conductors” by Christian Wiman

Who waits inside the station for
him to tuck the dark in?
 
The quiet ones, eyes soft with hopes of sleep
against the dimmed lights,
 
the heat from the stilled engine soaking out into night sky,
warming those asleep inside, caught there til dawn,
 
those businessmen, rocked and lulled by the commute home,
woken each morning by cold cheeks on glass windows,
 
the screech of metal on metal, a station waking
against the blue mountains a few miles east,
 
the tracks lit by sunrise, a first train
churning down its aisle, shattering quiet.
 
This morning: whose beginning is made of steel veins
running through the peaks, hugging Virginia together

​how long
can you
draw out
a weary love
like the cat
dragging
yarn
in circles
around
my living
room
pulling
until
she’s too
tired
or it
runs out

At first I am so cold even the comforter is not enough,
the thick cotton settling like a gust of air across my bare stomach.
I can feel the fullness of your quiet body
 
on the other side of the bed,
the space between us drawing goosebumps,
so that when the heat returns, yes, with your hands,
 
those points of warmth on my breasts and sides,
I imagine the chilly wind pinned like lights to the ceiling,
rushing, flashing, stirring something else now.
​

The way you drew your body on mine
and looked at me like I was made of night.
 
I was reflected there,
in the stars of your eyes.
 
The way you still find
your way into every poem I write.
 
Your mouth always held my name.
You, who awakened the birds inside me.
 
If I could trace a path
back to you now,
 
I would find you in the clearing
where you first told me you loved me.
 
The night sky bright and unclouded,
the band playing music to a crowd,
 
captivating everyone but you and I.
The trees hugging us
 
from all sides, the ground,
pushing me higher.
 
I would say, Open your hand.
I would write a poem there. 

​Something about these roads,
crossing like threads pulled taut
across New Jersey—the way
they never end until you hit gold:
sand, and suddenly the roads are gone,
lost to the sea and the shells and crabs;
where one beach stretches into another beach,
and another, and so on, until you’re so far away
you can shut your eyes and imagine
that sand is what keeps the trees and roads and sea
from falling apart:
a state sewn together by more than a turnpike.

​I am not afraid that Seaside will burn again,
but that its wreckage will go unnoticed,
like the pieces of a ship that sink
to be found years and years later,
the wives of the men are also dead,
the fallen ship long forgotten.
 
When Kohr Brothers burned for the first time
in 1955, fire embracing the wooden shops
on either side, two glowing arms
rose high above the restless sea.
It was the hottest summer.
 
Two years ago the store burned again,
flames spreading from the heart of the place,
licking the shops on either side.
Timber blackened like burnt chocolate.
By the third day,
beachgoers had stopped
stopping to look.
 
Today, a piece of wood,
wet and charred,
washes ashore.
I wonder, to which wreck does it belong?

Twelve middle-aged women meet monthly in Belmar,
in pale blue kitchens that hold old memories
of long gone children in glass jars on the windowsill.

They untangle with pens an unvented anger
towards the men they married
who have become careless in loving them,
who have hidden the other women -- but not well.
 
Outside, the breeze catches in an overturned umbrella;
the beach storm has already blown over,
and seagulls peck at the window
because the feeders have been left empty.
 
The women sit on worn couches watching
the colors of the sky light up the walls inside,
pastels soft and pink like the poems they want to write,
 
In Belmar, they leave out the real details:
small hands in the kitchen or a man to wake up to,
scribbled on a page in August.

​Many nights, the red lights,
my knees against the glove box
and your foot flat down on the pedal,
the heart of the engine humming,
my heart driving in you.
Or my bare feet in your lap,
arms in the stars like wires,
reaching, bridges opening to the sky,
reminders of unwanted invitations
sent from home. Each morning,
the steering wheel is a compass
pointing us away. My voice pressed
into the worn leather, and caught
in the pedal beneath your foot, even now.

​One: she turns, lights blooming
in her periphery, in the whites of my eyes,
 
two: the impact of red,
a pickup truck we had not seen,
bone-rattling, smashing
through front end and windshield
like an angry fist,
 
three: finally still, turned
upside down toward black
night sky, pressed between seat
and air bag like hands, praying
to be anything but human.

Flying over frozen water in winter,
the sky, the sea, the land all gray,
and the waves at the shore,
not yet hard, still churning.
White birds with necks like thin vases
swoop down along the spray,
dipping in and out like rain,
shuddering, bodies breaking
surf. There is something about
water just before the freeze,
about elegant birds bearing lightly
along clouded peaks of sea;
something about feeling everything,
the moment of touching,
white heat rising in a body,
breaking without melt.

​Let me stay just one more moment
on the bright pier of my childhood,
the night beyond lit like a thousand candles
held in a thousand tiny hands.
 
Let me hold onto the feeling of that place:
the wet wood of the boardwalk
beneath sandy feet,
the silence of the beach, finally
stilling as night falls,
 
the rising ferris wheel glowing,
colors washing over the pier,
the children’s cheeks, and the sea itself--
green, then pink, then blue.
The clinging light.
 
These are the moments
where it is not bad to have a body
and know it well.
The ones where arcade prizes
and tickets are kept like flowers
pressed in a book, memories to return to.
 
Listen: hear the cries of children
as a rollercoaster peaks.
These voices we cannot keep.

 How alive you are tonight:
your voice, a verdigris vase of clear
water, soaking roses.
A sound aware of itself,
blooming into stuffy air
made of our adolescence.
 
You sing to a full crowd
downtown at the concert hall.
Inside, our bodies
press together, closer,
as if to say, here we are:
novel, nameless,
offering open hearts
as rosebuds.

July 9, 1962
The phone swings on its cord like a ticking clock,
the voice on the other end deepening--she knows it’s me.
Ted’s in the living room. The faulty piano dings
like the oven timer, going off.
 
August 15, 1962
What is this, my love?
You used to hold me like it was always winter,
greedy arms wrapped around this small body.
Trying to keep the poems in me.
 
October 20, 1962
I haven’t brought oven mitts for the new flat.
Towels work well enough. The slight burn
is a nice pain.
 
January 10, 1963
New year and the new words come out of me
like love on a summer day. The cold is historic.
I haven’t revised in weeks.
 
January 17, 1963
I am     having
the most wonderful dream.
It’s like being seasick, but without the sick,
            floating on water,
my body many pieces.
Writing, writing,
I cannot
stop.
 
January 18, 1963
The drugs have worn off, but the fever has not.
Anyone: kiss me. Listen:
don’t you see how important I am?
 
February 11, 1963. 2:00 AM
I have baked bread for the children
to eat before school tomorrow.
The oven timer ringing in my head
unpleasantly: I must end it,
hear clouds instead,
feel the heat and drown in it,
my own silence
in the space between poems.

​When you realize your body is a sunk cost,
            you will be in a muggy field
or a cool swimming pool
            or sitting at the dinner table,
your mother’s homemade meatloaf
           steaming on the plate before you.
 
Or you will be driving home, radio
           throbbing at max, trees blurring
the highway irrelevant.
          You will be in bed sweating,
the hot fluster of a bad dream stuck to the sheets
           and maybe you’ll wake up yelling--
with nobody there to hold you.

I've always been very visually oriented. I became a photographer at 15, and I like to think that since then, I've seen the world differently. One of my favorite things to photograph is nature. It's so easy to go for a walk and stumble upon something extraordinary; to look at something in an untraditional way when you peek through a lens. 

Here are some of the nature pictures I've taken:

But before finding art, I was a reader. As a child I could read for hours, days, in complete silence. Eyes trained to a page, the words were almost like a form of art in the way they looked, the way the visual made me feel. 

I could describe to you a million other ways in which I am a visual person - from how I keep my room, or arrange my food on a plate, or create graphic designs and websites. But I won't, because you get the picture. And because I've realized that actually, I'm not as visually-oriented as I once thought.

I discovered poetry a year or two after I became a photographer, and many, many years after I fell in love with reading. Something about poetry was different for me - I didn't like reading it as much as I liked listening to it. At first that startled me. Since when was I more hearing-oriented than visual? But I've since learned some cool things about it.

First, hearing and seeing are quite similar in the purpose they serve. I'm taking a class called Poetry & Theology with Kevin Hart, and today in class we grouped the five senses into two distinct groups. The first group, called "The Theoretical Senses", consists of 'seeing' and 'hearing'. The Theoretical Senses help us gain knowledge. The second group, called "The Non-Theoretical Senses," consists of the remaining three: 'smelling', 'tasting', 'touching'. These senses help us gain experience. Thus, in technical terms, seeing and hearing are both ways of gaining knowledge, not experience. 

But poetry gives me both knowledge and an eye-opening experience. For every Poem-A-Day, I listen before I read (or as I read), and if no audio is provided, I search for it - or read it out loud myself. In the case of Jamaal May's "I Have This Way of Being", there most certainly was an audio link! I think I prefer to listen to poetry because it helps me to get at the root of a poem better. Like you said in class today, Rita, you love to listen to each of us read our poems out loud because it clears up lingering confusion and allows new ideas to pop into your head.

This specific poem goes well with everything I've said so far. It's a very visual poem, but one that sounds better (to me) in the author's voice. Further, it is an experiential poem. It touches on all five senses (smell, because flowers always evoke the idea of smelling them; taste, when the author swallows "a lung full of air" you can nearly taste the soil-scented air; touch, in his gloves filling with "sweat", the "trowel in his hand" that "pushes against", and more; sight, in the colors of weeds, "yellow then white then windswept"; and finally, sound, in the way his mouth isn't "full of the names of odd flowers" but how you can hear those names anyway). And although I obviously didn't smell or taste the poem, I was able to both understand and experience; allowing me to use both Theoretical and Non-Theoretical Senses. 

I was excited to read this poem because the title is lovely. When I shut my eyes and listen to him read "I Have This Way of Being," I imagine myself in the place where I spend most of my time - HackCville, an artsy place on the Corner. Or I think of what constitutes "being". Perhaps it's that I'm primarily a visual person. I have this way of being visual. I have this way of not always being visual. I have this way of being ____. Anyone can fill in their own blank.

Another effective, thought-provoking technique is the way in which the poet breaks up lines. One such line goes "full of the names of odd flowers/I’ve grown in secret." By putting 'I've grown in secret' on its own line, and at the start of a new stanza even, the poet makes me think about the line on its own: "I've grown in secret". 

This poem allowed me to experience all five senses in reading it and in listening to it. It opened my mind, allowing me to put myself in the context of "being", to think what significance that could carry.

Like I said in the beginning, I'm drawn to the visuals of nature. But I'm drawn to the sound of it too - in the poems I write and the poems I read. Jamaal May's "I Have This Way Of Being" gave me a taste (or a sound, or a sight) of that.

"Unconcerned but not indifferent”: the sole phrase carved into the gravestone of photographer Man Ray at the Mont Parnasse cemetery in Paris, France
 
I sit here on a bench today to eat my lunch,
breathing life into the cobblestoned paths.
I’m told the greenery draws the living,
luring them in for just an hour or two
to walk among the tombs.
 
Red and yellow flowers pop against gray stones,
some touched with green moss. I’ve been here
three times already. I can’t keep the words
of the artist out of my head: unconcerned but not indifferent,
a phrase to capture the feeling of dying.
 
No ivy snakes across his grave. Smooth as slate,
the only marks are the words, begging
me to erase twenty years worth of worrying.
Twenty years of wondering
when my breath will grow ragged.
 
And now I’ve traveled the Atlantic,
added hours to a day
without fearing losing them,
walked the rows of tombstones alone with no end
in mind, no plan for a day’s worth of walking
but for moving forward, going on; living.
 
How can I cling to fear
—now that I have seen Paris?
Lived and breathed and lost six hours
and not been afraid of
losing them