poem-a-day
Poof
Poof
Here on my lap, in a small plastic bag, my share of your ashes. Let me not squander them. Your family blindsided me with this gift. We want to honor your bond they said at the end of your service, which took place, as you'd arranged, in a restaurant at the harbor, an old two-story boathouse made of dark wood. Some of us sat on the balcony, on black leather bar stools, staring at rows of docked boats. Both your husbands showed up and got along. And of course your impossibly handsome son. After lunch, a slideshow and testimonials, your family left to toss their share of you onto the ocean, along with some flowers. You were the girlfriend I practiced kissing with in sixth grade during zero-sleep sleepovers. You were the pretty one. In middle school I lived on diet Coke and your sexual reconnaissance reports. In this telling of our story your father never hits you or calls you a whore. Always gentle with me, he taught me to ride a bike after everyone said I was too klutzy to learn. In this version we're not afraid of our bodies. In this fiction, birth control is easy to obtain, and never fails. You still dive under a stall divider in a restroom at the beach to free me after I get too drunk to unlock the door. You still reveal the esoteric mysteries of tampons. You still learn Farsi and French from boyfriends as your life ignites. In high school I still guide you safely out of the stadium when you start yelling that the football looks amazing as it shatters into a million shimmering pieces, as you loudly admit that you just dropped acid. We lived to be sixty. Then poof, you vanished. I can't snort you, or dump you out over my head, coating myself in your dust like some hapless cartoon character who's just blown herself up, yet remains unscathed, as is the way in cartoons. In this version, I remain in place for a while. Did you have a good journey? I'm still lagging behind, barking up all the wrong trees, whipping out my scimitar far in advance of what the occasion demands. As I drive home from your memorial, you fizz in my head like a distant radio station. What can I do to bridge this chasm between us? In this fiction, I roll down the window, drive uncharacteristically fast. I tear your baggie open with my teeth and release you at 85 miles an hour, music cranked up full blast.
Copyright © 2019 by Amy Gerstler. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on March 21, 2019, by the Academy of American Poets.
Copyright © 2019 by Amy Gerstler. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on March 21, 2019, by the Academy of American Poets.
Maggie Smith
Classic Books of American Poetry
This collection of books showcases the masterpieces of American poetry that have influenced—or promise to influence—generations of poets. Take a look.
W. S. Merwin
Diving into the Wreck
First having read the book of myths, and loaded the camera, and checked the edge of the knife-blade, I put on the body-armor of black rubber the absurd flippers the grave and awkward mask. I am having to do this not like Cousteau with his assiduous team aboard the sun-flooded schooner but here alone. There is a ladder. The ladder is always there hanging innocently close to the side of the schooner. We know what it is for, we who have used it. Otherwise it is a piece of maritime floss some sundry equipment. I go down. Rung after rung and still the oxygen immerses me the blue light the clear atoms of our human air. I go down. My flippers cripple me, I crawl like an insect down the ladder and there is no one to tell me when the ocean will begin. First the air is blue and then it is bluer and then green and then black I am blacking out and yet my mask is powerful it pumps my blood with power the sea is another story the sea is not a question of power I have to learn alone to turn my body without force in the deep element. And now: it is easy to forget what I came for among so many who have always lived here swaying their crenellated fans between the reefs and besides you breathe differently down here. I came to explore the wreck. The words are purposes. The words are maps. I came to see the damage that was done and the treasures that prevail. I stroke the beam of my lamp slowly along the flank of something more permanent than fish or weed the thing I came for: the wreck and not the story of the wreck the thing itself and not the myth the drowned face always staring toward the sun the evidence of damage worn by salt and sway into this threadbare beauty the ribs of the disaster curving their assertion among the tentative haunters. This is the place. And I am here, the mermaid whose dark hair streams black, the merman in his armored body. We circle silently about the wreck we dive into the hold. I am she: I am he whose drowned face sleeps with open eyes whose breasts still bear the stress whose silver, copper, vermeil cargo lies obscurely inside barrels half-wedged and left to rot we are the half-destroyed instruments that once held to a course the water-eaten log the fouled compass We are, I am, you are by cowardice or courage the one who find our way back to this scene carrying a knife, a camera a book of myths in which our names do not appear.
Thanks
Listen with the night falling we are saying thank you we are stopping on the bridges to bow from the railings we are running out of the glass rooms with our mouths full of food to look at the sky and say thank you we are standing by the water thanking it standing by the windows looking out in our directions back from a series of hospitals back from a mugging after funerals we are saying thank you after the news of the dead whether or not we knew them we are saying thank you over telephones we are saying thank you in doorways and in the backs of cars and in elevators remembering wars and the police at the door and the beatings on stairs we are saying thank you in the banks we are saying thank you in the faces of the officials and the rich and of all who will never change we go on saying thank you thank you with the animals dying around us our lost feelings we are saying thank you with the forests falling faster than the minutes of our lives we are saying thank you with the words going out like cells of a brain with the cities growing over us we are saying thank you faster and faster with nobody listening we are saying thank you we are saying thank you and waving dark though it is
How to Triumph Like a Girl
I like the lady horses best,
how they make it all look easy,
like running 40 miles per hour
is as fun as taking a nap, or grass.
I like their lady horse swagger,
after winning. Ears up, girls, ears up!
But mainly, let's be honest, I like
that they're ladies. As if this big
dangerous animal is also a part of me,
that somewhere inside the delicate
skin of my body, there pumps
an 8-pound female horse heart,
giant with power, heavy with blood.
Don't you want to believe it?
Don't you want to lift my shirt and see
the huge beating genius machine
that thinks, no, it knows,
it's going to come in first.
Poetic Forms
Refresh and expand your poetic vocabulary with this collection of poetic forms, complete with historical contexts, examples, and more. For more on poetic forms, browse our selection of terms from Edward Hirsch’s A Poet’s Glossary or check out our quick teaching guide on essential poetic terms.
Tracy K. Smith
Peony
Why must I tell you this story, O little one
You’re just a bud-of-a-girl, who knows nothing
Now you are full-faced, bright as sun
Now you open your skirts pink, layered, brazen
Suffering is alchemy, change is God
Now you droop your head, heavy with rust
Sit, contemplate, what did Buddha say?
Old age, sickness, death, no one owns eternity
Detach, detach, look away from the sun
Let your petals fall aimlessly
Don’t despair, little one, we are done
Lucille Clifton
Phillis Wheatley
Lesson Plans for Women's History Month
To celebrate Women's History Month in March—and women in poetry year-round—browse this selection of teaching resources featuring poems by Lucille Clifton, Emma Lazarus, and Adrienne Rich, among others.
A Poet's Glossary
Read about poetic terms and forms from Edward Hirsch's A Poet's Glossary (Harcourt, 2014), a book ten years in the making that defines the art form of poetry.
