Tag: daily poems

Poem for the Day: August 29th, 2021

Good Bones by Maggie Smith

This place could be beautiful, right? You could make this place beautiful. 

Life is short, though I keep this from my children.
Life is short, and I’ve shortened mine 
in a thousand delicious, ill-advised ways,
a thousand deliciously ill-advised ways 
I’ll keep from my children. The world is at least 
fifty percent terrible, and that’s a conservative 
estimate, though I keep this from my children. 
For every bird there is a stone thrown at a bird. 
For every loved child, a child broken, bagged, 
sunk in a lake. Life is short and the world 
is at least half terrible, and for every kind 
stranger, there is one who would break you, 
though I keep this from my children. I am trying 
to sell them the world. Any decent realtor, 
walking you through a real shithole, chirps on 
about good bones: This place could be beautiful,
right? You could make this place beautiful.

Poem for the Day: August 28th, 2021

Wild Geese by Mary Oliver

You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves. 

You do not have to be good. 
You do not have to walk on your knees 
For a hundred miles through the desert repenting. 
You only have to let the soft animal of your body 
love what it loves. 
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine. 
Meanwhile the world goes on. 
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain 
are moving across the landscapes, 
over the prairies and the deep trees, 
the mountains and the rivers. 
Meanwhile, the wild geese, high in the clean blue air, 
are heading home again. 
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely, 
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting—
over and over announcing your place 
in the family of things.

Poem for the Day: August 27th, 2021

Prayer by Ellen Bass

I want to stop wanting to be wanted like that. 

Once I wore a dress liquid as vodka. 
My lover watched me ascend 
from the subway 
like I was an underground spring 
breaking through. 
I want to stop wanting to be wanted like that. 
I’m tired of the song the rain sings in June, 
the chorus of hope, the ravenous green, 
the earth, her ornate crown of trees 
spiking up from her loamy head. 
There are things I wanted, like everyone. 
But to this angel of wishes I’ve worshiped 
so long, I ask now to admit 
the world as it is.

Poem for the Day: August 25th, 2021

Dorothy Wordsworth by Jennifer Chang 

The daffodils can go fuck themselves. 
I’m tired of their crowds, yellow rantings 
about the spastic sun that shines and shines
and shines. How are they any different 

from me? I, too, have a big messy head 
on a fragile stalk. I spin with the wind. 
I flower and don’t apologize. There’s nothing 
funny about good weather. Oh, spring again, 

the critics nod. They know the old joy,
that wakeful quotidian, the dark plot 
of future growing things, each one 
labeled Narcissus nobilis or Jennifer Chang. 

If I died falling from a helicopter, then 
this would be an important poem. Then 
the ex-boyfriends would swim to shore 
declaiming their knowledge of my bulbous 

youth. O, Flower, one said, why aren’t you 
meat? But I won’t be another bashful shank. 
The tulips have their nervous joie-de-vivre,
the lilacs their taunt. Fractious petals, stop 

interrupting me with your boring beauty. 
All the boys are in the field gnawing raw 
bones of ambition and calling it ardor. Who 
the hell are they? This is a poem about war.

© 2012 Jennifer Chang. All rights reserved.

Poem for the Day: August 24th, 2021

Make Out Sonnet by F. Douglas Brown 

The first time I saw two men kissing, I was six,
Living in 1970s L.A. My mom took care 
Of an elderly woman who found herself in a fix 
And moved into a complex of all men, bare
Chested men, with cutoff jeans and tinted glasses. 
My mother’s friend gave me chocolates that matched 
Her skin—this must be heaven. These sons’ asses 
Peeked out beneath their shorts, but watched 
Over her better than mom. Took donations for heat, 
A sofa and a new wig—all changed her mood. 
They even did her laundry. They did sweet 
Better than honey. Did family better than blood. 
And between duties, two men always off alone 
So desire, like the dishes, could also get done.

Poem for the Day: August 21st, 2021

Portland, 1968 by Louise Glück 

You stand as rocks stand 
to which the sea reaches 
in transparent waves of longing; 
they are marred, finally; 
everything fixed is marred. 
And the sea triumphs, 
like all that is false, 
all that is fluent and womanly. 
From behind, a lens 
opens for your body. Why 
should you turn? It doesn’t matter 
who the witness is, 
for whom you are suffering, 
for whom you are standing still.
Louise Glück. Unknown Author. Public Domain.

Note: Louise Glück was the recipient of the 2020 Nobel Prize in Literature. Her collection of poetry, The Wild Iris (1993), won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry.

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Poem for the Day: August 19th, 2021

It Goes Away by Linda Gregg 

I give everything away and it goes away, 
into the dusty air, 
onto the face of the water 
that goes away beyond our seeing. 
I give everything away 
that has been given to me: 
the voices of children under clouds, 
the men in the parks at the chess tables, 
the women entering and leaving bakeries. 
God who came here by rock, by tree, by bird. 
All things silent in my seeing. 
All things believable in their leaving. 
Everything I have I give away 
and it goes away.

Poem for the Day: August 18th, 2021

Poem Beginning With a Retweet by Maggie Smith 

If you drive past horses and don’t say horses
you’re a psychopath. If you see an airplane 
but don’t point it out. A rainbow,
a cardinal, a butterfly. If you don’t 
whisper-shout albino squirrel! Deer! 
Red fox! If you hear a woodpecker 
and don’t shush everyone around you 
into silence. If you find an unbroken 
sand dollar in a tide pool. If you see 
a dorsal fun breaking the water. 
If you see the moon and don’t say 
oh my god look at the moon. If you smell 
smoke and don’t search for fire. 
If you feel yourself receding, receding,
and don’t tell anyone until you’re gone.