100 Poems is still brand new, with all its connotations of wobble and shine, but the comments thread on these posts is quickly becoming one of my favorite online spaces. Thank you to all of you who are sharing your poems and holding one another up! Thank you, too, to the quiet readers among us, gifting attention. I’m so glad that all of you are here.
The Prompt
I have another (optional, as always) prompt for you to play with! Pick a place. It can be a literal, physical place like your office chair or you kitchen, aisle 7 of your favorite supermarket or the bare patch of ground beneath a giant oak in your yard. Or it can be a virtual space—Zoom, the front page of The New York Times, or the quiet recesses of your Tetris app. Once you’ve picked a place, play around with writing more than one poem set in or inspired by this location. To me, the exercise of trying to find more than one sort of poetry, more than one possible perspective, more than one moment of poignancy connected to a single place sounds interesting, challenging, fun, mildly intimidating, and possibly fruitful.
Photo by GeoJango Maps on Unsplash
I’m picking my local YMCA. I might even go so far as to narrow further to the sauna. Here’s my first poem inspired by that place. I’ll aim to write and send you another later this week!
My Poem
The Oven It is 170 degrees, hot enough to cook a chicken, albeit slowly. We are squeezed together thigh to thigh, strangers in silence and sweat. Eyes should be glazed, it’s in the recipe, but one man blinks, and I blink back, and it all comes out like so much stuffing— the words that sit on the tip of his tongue, the words that pulse in the empty ache of a chest cavity that once housed a heart. Words he can’t stop saying. Words he never wants to say again. Wife. Dead. Three months. Maybe it’s easier to sweat than it is to cry, more efficient, too, if the point is to purge yourself of salt, to burn through the pain and the burden of thought, to rid yourself of anything that tastes like what you’ve lost. 57 years of her, he says. And now, he’s donated all her clothes. Packed the pictures in brown boxes and carried them to the attic. Her bones are buried an ocean away. He has time, so much time. And space, so much space. “It’s a whole new life,” he says, and “I’m learning to cook.” He smiles brightly, but to me, the light feels fluorescent, and if there was a way to check a person for doneness, my guess is that his insides are still quite pink. But what chicken wouldn’t, if given the chance, push the oven open and insist it’s ready for refrigeration, or better yet, the freezer? He stands up to go, and I’m relieved— I’ve heard talk of him around the gym. “His wife died, and now he stays too long in the sauna,” is what they say. Once an ambulance came, but today he is steady on his feet. He tells me his name before he pushes the door open, and I tell him mine before the door swings shut, and then I sit alone with the other birds, their eyes still glazed, and I think of the words I wish I’d said, but there are no words to match my insides, and all I can find is thank you. Thank you for letting me cook beside you. I look forward to connecting with you all in the comments again! Please remember that all poems are welcome there; they don't need to be connected to the prompt.
This is such a beautiful braid of metaphor and complexity - regret and bypass and the difficulty of fully inhabiting our emotions in real time. I'm once again struck by the way in which poetry can be such a beautiful way for us to make sense of our complicated experiences. Thanks so much for sharing this, LIsa...and for the prompt. I'm going to share two poems about the Mill River, aka "Millie," who I have come to have my own complicated relationship with after moving to an apartment near her banks last spring. The first poem is one that I just wrote. The second is one I wrote last spring, when Millie and I were in our honeymoon period. Thanks for reading:
You captivated me
under spell of
spring’s blush,
my own pulse leaping
at your swell and rush.
A refugee of love lost,
I was newly settled
on the landscape you rendered
with aqueous brush.
My senses, dulled by a winter
relentless with rupture and grief
too sharp
too coarse
too bittersweet
too pungent
too loud
surrendered, defenseless.
You sparkled with sunlight,
clear and pure.
Bubbled with grace,
simple and sure.
Willingly doubled as muse and
safe space.
Then July drew nigh,
thick, grey and ruddied
Wringing wrath from sky.
And you,
you turned mean and muddied.
Cruelly churning,
callously spurning
with nothing between.
So, I turned from you,
loath to come near,
flooded with fear and
heavy with silt,
the flotsam of loss
strewn across our shores,
yours and mine.
Now winter has returned, and
you rush swift and clean, and
I sense you longing to be seen.
Again.
Crystalline, pristine,
you call and pull and
I am stirred, willingly enchanted.
Again.
Poem #2:
Chant for Millie (the Mill River)
The river she wanders
the river she ponders
she ponders me
as she wanders
The river she glistens
the river she listens
she listens to me
as she glistens
The river she flows
the river she knows
she knows me
as she flows
The river she travels
the river she unravels
she unravels me
as she travels
The river she rushes
the river she hushes
she hushes me
as she rushes
I need her this river
I need her to deliver
I need her to deliver me this river
I love her this river
this modest midwife I love her
deliverance from the vagaries of life
This one came through completely by surprise, not anywhere near what had been in my mind as I sat down to write. The beauty and power of your poems today, Lisa, Rebekah and A., inspires me and helps me draw from a place I am usually not able to find. Thank you.
Home
“Dad, I want to come home.
College is not for me.”
Noah spoke into the phone
his truth at that moment.
As did I.
“Give it a semester; the
transition can be tough.”
Later that year, he spoke of a class,
focused on the sense and value of place.
He noted, “I think it is hard to be comfortable here.
I miss home. I miss coming out of the woods
after a long hike, and seeing our house, our home.”
Our oldest child, seeing the fine lines between the edges,
The comfort of roots and land, people and place,
that truly know you.
In the years to follow
he wandered the world teaching, guiding and leading,
his sense of place formed even in the places he was passing through.
His loving heart shaped in homes far from here.
As the snow falls tonight, wintry blanket, post card scene,
I am grateful for this home, this place.
And I ponder all those who have been displaced over the centuries,
driven from homes and lands their ancestors had known
for thousands of years.
Empire, war, power, conquest, oppression and occupation,
the devastating inflation of perverse destiny,
from a toxic spirit that is anything but divine.
Communities ripped apart
by those unable or unwilling to honor or understand
a sense of place.
I wonder how many will be forced from their homes this night,
Violently torn from their homelands
by these viscous dancers of death.
Closer to home,
kindred beings gather by a local church,
makeshift tent city their only shelter,
forcing us to face the painful reality of displacement
on the steps where all should be welcome.
Outside the warmth of these walls,
millions of tears collect in a well of grief,
searching for the path that may lead them home.