moves in contemporary poetry – Page 4

SATURDAY POETRY SERIES PRESENTS: ELISE PASCHEN

Posted on March 4, 2017 by asitoughttobemagazine

elisepaschen_blackwhite_300px-2016

AFTER THE SQUALL
By Elise Paschen

In need of air, she unhinged every
window, revolving ones downstairs,
upstairs skylights, mid-floor French doors,
swept into the house the salt-brine,
the cricket chirp, the osprey whistle,
the sea-current, sound of the Sound,
but had not noticed the basement
bedroom window shielded by blinds,
screen-less. Later that night when they
returned home, lights illuminating
the downstairs hall, insects inhabited
the ground floor rooms. She carried handfuls
of creatures across a River Styx—
the katydids perched on lampshades,
beach tiger beetles shuttling across
floorboards, nursery web spiders splotching
the ceiling—trying to put back
the wild fury she had released.

“After the Squall” originally appeared via the Academy of American Poets’ Poem-a-Day series and appears here today with permission from the poet.

Elise Paschen is the author of Bestiary, Infidelities (winner of the Nicholas Roerich Poetry Prize), and Houses: Coasts. Her poems have been published in numerous anthologies and magazines, including The New Yorker and Poetry Magazine. Co-editor of Poetry Speaks and Poetry in Motion, she teaches in the MFA Writing Program at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Her forthcoming book of poetry, The Nightlife, will be published in spring 2017.

Editor’s Note: “After the Squall” is a masterpiece of sound and image. A modern retelling of Pandora’s Box, this rich, vivid poem reaches a perfect crescendo with it’s killer end-line: “trying to put back / the wild fury she had released.” Careful, concise, and expertly wrought, this poem is a stellar example of fine poetic craft.

Want more from Elise Paschen?
VQR Journal
Harvard Magazine
The Scream Online
The Poetry Foundation
Elise Paschen’s Official Website

SATURDAY POETRY SERIES PRESENTS: LEAH UMANSKY

Posted on February 18, 2017 by asitoughttobemagazine

img_20170114_214625_974

By Leah Umansky:

HARD

It is hard to quiet the blackberrying pain.
The little chronicles, the streaks, and the intimate workings.

I will face this by red-winging my truths.
I will push my blues into orchids.

BALLAD

I decided to claim more space
         But I chose the opposite
What are the words I would go to: hunger// longing// love
         When you feel drawn to something you should.
Whatever your terrible is is up to you.
         The question is how you lead.
I lead myself to distress; I lead myself to happiness.
         This is the history of our times.
I claw my way to the surface.
         I get a hold of this world with my teeth
& wolf down what I thirst for.
         How do I take the I out of here?
(why should I take the I out?)

I am always hungry
I am always thinking of my next meal
Is it the preemie in me?
Is it just the want?

We all have our oddities.
         I am always trying to be practical, logical, rational,
but it doesn’t always add up.
         There is so much of my life that I am forever holding under the light.
What falls below the seam?
         What falls outside of this poem?

I want to put the happy in.
         I want to put the hard world in.
I want to say this is a ballad, and so it is.
         Let’s enter it differently.
Any mammal feeds a hunger
         Any heart needs oxygen.

CARNAGE

Everyone is saying no to me
Just as they do now
Just as they will
A kind of civil riot
A staged parade
It makes every kind of sense
That carnage that comes with falling hard,
That carnage that hassles and times,
That carnage that language picks up;
I am wanting to be picked up.
It is rarely an accident.
Elements are employed
Pounds are ranged
The number of possible routes are lost
All to force my foot door to door
To match the heart of my drive to
Coffee after coffee after coffee.
Take me as a whole,
Take these birds outside my window
Alive with the world’s chirp
Alive with the everyday thrill of
Worm or bug or crumb. Take them,
Then remember my thrills.
Everyone is saying no to me,
And I am flummoxed each time
I ask for more; or try for more.
I strive and I strive.
That’s the 21st century calling.
It’s doable. I travel great lengths
So I can match the heart
With the focus of each and every obstacle.
Can there be a rallying point?
This is not an accident.

(Is that what I should be learning here?)

Well, isn’t that magnificent.

“Hard” originally appeared in Thrush, “Ballad” originally appeared in The Inquisitive Eater, and “Carnage” originally appeared in Queen Mob’s. These poems appear here today with permission from the poet.

Leah Umansky is the author of the poetry collection, The Barbarous Century, forthcoming from London’s Eyewear Publishing in 2018, the dystopian-themed chapbook Straight Away the Emptied World (Kattywompus Press, 2016), the Mad Men–inspired chapbook Don Dreams and I Dream (Kattywompus Press, 2014), and the full length Domestic Uncertainties (BlazeVOX, 2012). She is a graduate of the MFA Program in Poetry at Sarah Lawrence College and teaches middle and high school English in New York City. More at www.LeahUmansky.com.

Editor’s Note: It seems I can’t read (or write) anything these days without seeing it through the lens of politics. Least of all poetry. Today’s poems — at once political and private — may or may not have been crafted to address the current moment. And yet they can be read as a direct address and used, accordingly, as a salve. What can we do, we ask? “I will face this by red-winging my truths,” says the poet; “I will push my blues into orchids.” Even in an ars poetica the poet’s words can function as a mirror: “The question is how you lead. / I lead myself to distress; I lead myself to happiness. / This is the history of our times.” No matter their intent, today’s poems are in the world now, speaking to us as they will. They might incite action or nurse wounds or take stalk of our humanity. “Take me as a whole,” they say, “Take these birds outside my window / Alive with the world’s chirp / Alive with the everyday thrill of / Worm or bug or crumb.”

Want more from Leah Umansky?
Border Crossing
Poetry Magazine
Jet Fuel
Minola Review
Quotidian Bee

SATURDAY POETRY SERIES PRESENTS: “LET THEM NOT SAY” BY JANE HIRSHFIELD – A POEM OF SOLIDARITY & PROTEST

Posted on January 21, 2017 by asitoughttobemagazine

4764673605_4e929c953f_b

from LET THEM NOT SAY
By Jane Hirschfield:

Let them not say: we did not see it.
We saw.

Let them not say: we did not hear it.
We heard.

…

Let them not say: it was not spoken, not written.
We spoke,
we witnessed with voices and hands.

READ THE FULL POEM HERE and LISTEN HERE:

Today’s poem originally appeared via The Academy of American Poets Poem-a-Day series.

Poet’s Note: “This poem was written well before [the 2017] Presidential Inauguration and without this event in mind. But it seems a day worth remembering the fate of our shared planet and all its beings, human and beyond.” —Jane Hirshfield, via The Academy of American Poets

Editor’s Note: Today I defer to Jane Hirshfield and The Academy of American Poets. Listen to the poet read this important work of protest. Read the poem in its entirety.

Today’s poem is dedicated to those who are marching with the Million Woman March and those who stand with us in solidarity.

Think. Feel. Rise up. Resist.

SATURDAY POETRY SERIES PRESENTS: ALEX BEN-ARI

Posted on January 14, 2017 by asitoughttobemagazine

alex-ben-ari

I ASK FORGIVENESS
By Alex Ben-Ari
Translated by Vivan Eden

I ask forgiveness of all the poems
Born misshapen because of my desire to write them
I ask forgiveness of all the people
Whose lives were disrupted by my desire to influence
And of the world
For the superfluous things added to it
And those unnecessarily severed
Because of my lust for symmetry
And happy endings.

I ask forgiveness of my mother
For not knowing how to love her in her misery
Of my children
For the moments when I don’t want them
Of my wife for every time I was too small
To contain her love.

I am lighter than a falling leaf
I am softer than grass
Now a small bird could
Build its nest in me.

Today’s poem originally appeared in Haaretz and appears here today with permission from both the poet and translator.

Alex Ben-Ari is 43 years old. His debut volume of poetry, Concealed Seas (Yamim Samuiim), was awarded honorable mention at the 2008 Metulla Poetry Festival and the 2015 Helicon/Ramy Ditzanny Poetry Prize. His second book, The Gatepost (Korat Hasha’ar), published in 2015, is composed of his original Hebrew haiku. His third book, planned to be published during 2017, is a volume of conceptual poetry.
Alex is one of the six members of the “Waning Moon” blog and publishing house dedicated to Haiku in Hebrew. He is also co-editor (with poets Gilad Meiri and Noa Shkargy) of Nanopoetica, a literary journal of short form literature.

Editor’s Note: Part personal, part pastoral, part ars poetica, today’s poem is emotive, honest, and raw. The poem’s I approaches the reader — and the page — seeking forgiveness. Free from false modesty, free from pride, the poem’s I is humble, admitting failings as poet and father, husband and son. The confessional, narrative nature of the poem is carefully constructed within the framework of the lyric, while the elegant, gentle translation midwives the essence of the poem as it crosses the borders of language. As the reader, we cannot help but be moved — to compassion, to transcendence, to forgiveness and beyond.

SATURDAY POETRY SERIES PRESENTS: SUFGANIYOT BY RABBI RACHEL BARENBLAT

Posted on December 31, 2016 by asitoughttobemagazine

A version of this post was previously featured on the Saturday Poetry Series.

Sufganiyot homemade by your favorite Saturday Poetry Series editor — Homemade sufganiyot from the kitchen of your favorite Saturday Poetry Series editor

SUFGANIYOT
By Rabbi Rachel Barenblat

In oil, pale circles roll and flip,
doughy moons inflating.

The fun part: poking a finger
inside, giving a wiggle and twist,
pushing a dollop of jam
knuckle-deep, then two, ’til
the cavity gleams raspberry.

Latkes are pedestrian.
These puff like a breath held.

There, and here,
a million women finger
these cupped curves,
probe the soft center,
push the sticky treat inside.

We glance at each other, faces hot.
We lick the sweet from our hands.

(Today’s poem originally appeared in Zeek and was reprinted on the Saturday Poetry Series with permission from the poet.)

Rabbi Rachel Barenblat, named in 2016 by the Forward as one of America’s Most Inspiring Rabbis, was ordained by ALEPH: Alliance for Jewish Renewal as a rabbi in 2011 and as a mashpi’ah ruchanit (spiritual director) in 2012, and now serves as co-chair, with Rabbi David Evan Markus, of ALEPH. She holds a BA in religion from Williams College and an MFA in Writing and Literature from the Bennington Writing Seminars. She is author of four book-length collections of poetry: 70 faces: Torah poems (Phoenicia Publishing, 2011), Waiting to Unfold (Phoenicia, 2013),Toward Sinai: Omer poems (Velveteen Rabbi, 2016) and Open My Lips (Ben Yehuda Press, 2016), as well as several poetry chapbooks.

Editor’s Note: Each year for Hanukkah I make sufganiyot. Measuring out the ingredients from my mother’s recipe, I will myself to have the patience necessary to wait for yeast to rise. I knead the dough with equal parts pressure and love then apply more patience, more waiting, before rolling and cutting “pale circles,” transforming them in oil into “doughy moons inflating.” Each year I make sufganiyot, and each year when I do, I think of this poem. It has been four years since I first featured this poem on the Saturday Poetry Series, and it has been with me each year since, an indelible part of my Hanukkah tradition.

As sensual as this poem is — as hot — it is very much a poem about tradition, about ritual, and about the coming together of women. For it is women who have traditionally ruled the domain of the Jewish kitchen, and women who, year in and year out since time immemorial, have applied their pressure and patience, their love and their care, to wright the delicious sustenance that is Jewish holiday food. And what, really, brings us together in our rituals and traditions more than food?

Each year as my best friend and I make our sufganiyot together, my mother makes the same recipe 2,500 miles away. Meanwhile, women all over the world are doing the same: “There, and here, / a million women finger / these cupped curves.” Each year, today’s poem reminds me of that disparate togetherness of women. This year I reprint this poem in honor of the women all over the world who do the work necessary to make the holiday season what it is.

May this season of light be a beacon in the darkness, and may the new year be better than the last.

Want to read more by and about Rabbi Rachel Barenblat?
The Velveteen Rabbi – Rabbi Rachel Barenblat’s Official Website

SATURDAY POETRY SERIES PRESENTS: KELLY CRESSIO-MOELLER

Posted on December 10, 2016 by asitoughttobemagazine

Profile b/w scarf – aroho – Version 3

ON WHY I NO LONGER SIT AT THE WINDOW SEAT ON A TRAIN
By Kelly Cressio-Moeller

Germany was like a step-mother: utterly familiar, utterly despised. ~ Erica Jong

It’s a good day for a lie-down, overcast and
wet-wooled – even the rain wants to be horizontal.
I am day-dreaming of goose down when I
enter the train, scoot into an open seat,
press my cheek against the streaked window.
The station’s soothing voice announces,
Zurückbleiben bitte, someone runs in just before
the doors close, slams me against the side
of the compartment, takes a lungful of my air.
In an accent foreign as my own, he asks
my name, if I “want some fun” back
at his room. I buy time before the next stop,
tell him I’m “Whitney from America”
(anything but my real name in his mouth).
Now he locks his arm through mine and thick
fingers jab my ribs. His leg, an anchor –
his pocked face smirks like he’s already
notched his belt.

I imagine the defence move my brother
taught me where I smash my palm heel into
some asshole’s nose, shifting bone into brain.
(Where is my Siegfried in this country of the
“Nibelungenlied”. What would Kriemhild do?)
My eyes ransack the forest of businessmen,
cutpurses, hausfraus, the heroin chic: rows of
enameled faces, cow-dumb, indifferent as teeth.
Let the Ausländer fight it out!

Thigh-grab, elbow-jab, hand-slap – his broken
English splinters the air. Whitney Houston
in my head singing “I Will Always Love You” on
some godforsaken loop as I mentally run through
my list of German imperatives: Hilfe! Polizei!
Vergewaltigung! (a word that takes longer to say
than the act it defines). I backhand him across
the mouth, escape before the doors slam.
He’s waving (waving!) through the glass,
a blurry fat-lipped sneer retreating – the air
staccatoed with rasps of my breath. It begins
to hail marbles (even the gods are throwing stones),
feathers or lightening bolts would feel just the same.

Only later with candlelight und Butterkuchen,
do I re-surface to Vivaldi’s soaring strings on the radio.
I mention my morning combat-commute.
My host shrugs his shoulders before loading
the Meissen with another helping of Schadenfreude.
He says, Da muβ man durch : ‘one must go through it’ –
as if it were a tunnel, something to be run through.

** The line What shall I wish for myself? is a reworking Mary Oliver’s line What shall I wish for, for myself?

Today’s poem originally appeared online in Tinderbox Poetry Journal, Issue 1 and appears here today with permission from the poet.

Kelly Cressio-Moeller has new work forthcoming in Radar Poetry and has been previously published at Boxcar Poetry Review, burntdistrict, Crab Orchard Review, Gargoyle, Poet Lore, Southern Humanities Review, THRUSH Poetry Journal, Tinderbox Poetry Journal, Valparaiso Poetry Review, and ZYZZYVA among others. Her poems have been nominated for three Pushcart Prizes, Best New Poets, and Best of the Net. She is an Associate Editor at Glass Lyre Press. Visit her website at www.kellycressiomoeller.com.

Editor’s Note: During the dark days this November I delved into poetry as a kind of antidote, and in this way I arrived at today’s poem. Incredibly timely, it speaks to an experience that is all too common and far too marginalized. “I moved on her like a bitch,” America’s President-elect said, “I did try and fuck her,” he said, “Grab them by the pussy,” he said; “You can do anything.” And I thought, “anything but my real name in his mouth.” I thought, “even the gods are throwing stones.” I thought this poem. And those who have no idea what this poem is about, those who do not have to regularly question their safety, those who are unsympathetic to this experience– “one must go through it,” those people say. “[A]s if it were a tunnel, something to be run through.”

SATURDAY POETRY SERIES PRESENTS: THE NEEDS OF THE MANY BY BRENDAN CONSTANTINE

Posted on November 19, 2016 by asitoughttobemagazine

THE NEEDS OF THE MANY
by Brendan Constantine

On the days when we wept—
and they were many—we did it
over the sound of a television
or radio, or the many engines
of the sky. It was rarely so quiet
we could hear just our sadness,
the smallness of it
that is merely the sound of wind
and water between the many pages
of the lungs. Many afternoons
we left the house still crying
and drove to a café or the movies,
or back to the hospital where we sat
dumb under the many eyes
of Paul Klee. There were many
umbrellas, days when it refused
to rain, cups of tea ignored. We
washed them all in the sink,
dry eyed. It’s been a while,
we’re cried out. We collect pauses
and have taken to reading actual
books again. We go through them
like yellow lights, like tunnels
or reunions, we forget which;
the older you are the more similes,
the more pangs per hour. Indeed,
this is how we break one hour into
many, how healing wounds time
in return. And though we know
there will always be crying to do,
just as there’s always that song,
always a leaf somewhere in the car,
this may be the only sweetness left,
to have a few griefs we cherish
against the others, which are many.

Today’s poem first appeared via The Academy of American Poets’ ‘Poem A Day’ series, was then published in the collection Dementia, My Darling (2016 Red Hen Press), and appears here today with permission from the poet.

Brendan Constantine‘s work has appeared in Prairie Schooner, FIELD, Ploughshares, Virginia Quarterly, and Hotel Amerika, among other journals. His most recent collection is Dementia, My Darling (2016 Red Hen Press). He has received grants and commissions from the Getty Museum, James Irvine Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts. He currently teaches poetry at the Windward School and regularly offers classes to hospitals, foster homes, veterans, and the elderly.

Editor’s Note: I’m just going to come out and say it: You need this poem. Right now. At this moment. In the wake of tragedies too hard to hold and too heavy to bear. You have watched the sky fall. You have been broken by the debris of what you thought to be true, of what has and has not been shattered. All that you know in your heart about what is right and what is wrong, about human kindness and decency, about the kind of country you want to live and raise your children and grow old in, the kind of world you want this to be. It’s all fallen apart. And that sadness you feel? That resistance to getting out of bed in the morning? Those spontaneous tears you find yourself bursting into? You are not alone. You. Are. Not. Alone.

But this poem. This poem! This poem knows our suffering. This poem knows our shared grief. This poem knows that “On the days when we wept— / and they were many—we did it / over the sound of a television.” This poem knows that “Many afternoons / we left the house still crying.” And this poem knows, too, that there is a time beyond this time — for better or worse — that the day will come when we are cried out, when we will read books again and reach milestones, and yet. And yet this poem knows that some griefs we will carry with us. Held fast by markers like where you were when Kennedy was shot or when 9/11 happened. This poem knows that there are “a few griefs we cherish / against the others, which are many.” And we know that this moment in American history is one of those griefs we will cherish against the others, which will be many.

Want to see more from Brendan Constantine?
The LA Review of Books on Dementia, My Darling
Muzzle Magazine
The BlueShift Journal
Betty Sargent for Publisher’s Weekly
Video by Sarah Jensen, winner of Write Bloody’s Best Poetry Video award, 2013

SATURDAY POETRY SERIES PRESENTS: MANISHA SHARMA

Posted on November 5, 2016 by asitoughttobemagazine

sharma-image

Millions of girls continue to vanish pre-birth in India simply because they are girls. The following poems imagine these vanished girls.

DEAR DAUGHTER

In my mind I cradled you in my arms
            I didn’t cage you
you latched onto my breasts
             I didn’t siphon life into you
you mumbled bilabial sounds, m…p
yet my ears did not hear you speak
I know you exist
              waiting to be reborn as my son
then, I will cradle you in my arms
              let you latch onto my breasts
              siphon life into you
              hear you mumble Ma, Pa
              welcome you as the heir
              who will carry your father’s name

WOULD YOU STILL BLAME ME?

You were like circles of incense
It wasn’t that we couldn’t feed another mouth
It was the kind of feeding we would do
For every roti soaked in ghee for your brother
You would get only one not soaked
Every glass of milk that went down his throat
You would drink chai with a hint of milk
Every pair of new clothes he would get each month
You would only get one pair a year
He would utter complex phrases in English
You would say soft words in Hindi and the local tongue
He would earn fancy degrees to do something great
You would master fine skills to please others
He would walk with his head held high
You would walk with your head bent
For you are leased property
Returned to its rightful owner in two decades

Today’s poems appear here today with permission from the poet.

Manisha Sharma: Born and raised in India, Manisha Sharma earned an MFA in Creative Writing from Virginia Tech. A graduate of the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, she was a Spring 2016 poetry mentee in AWP’s mentorship program, where Shikha Malaviya mentored her. Her recent poetry and writing has appeared in or is forthcoming from TAB, a journal of poetry and poetics, New Asian Writing, The Bombay Review and The Huffington Post. More of her work can be seen at www.genderedarrangements.com.

Editor’s Note: Between 2000 and 2011 seven-to-ten million girls in India were prevented from being born simply because they were girls. With her important poetry and collaborations, Manisha Sharma tells research-based stories of these girls-who-never-were. Her work goes a step beyond giving voice to the voiceless. Sharma literally gives life — through her art — to those who never came into being because of their sex.

In today’s poems Sharma imagines these “vanished girls” from the perspective of the mothers who carried, but never birthed them. “I know you exist,” one such mother reflects, “waiting to be reborn as my son.” Another considers the gender inequity she wanted to spare her would-be-daughter: “It wasn’t that we couldn’t feed another mouth / It was the kind of feeding we would do/ For every roti soaked in ghee for your brother / You would get only one not soaked / Every glass of milk that went down his throat / You would drink chai with a hint of milk.”

It is heartbreaking to think of the lost souls whose sex alone prevented them from having a chance at life. But it is perhaps more challenging to consider the mothers who conceived, who carried the seeds of life inside them, and who made the choice — if they were given a choice at all — to terminate their pregnancies when they discovered they were carrying girls. One mother harbors no illusions as to the kind of life a girl child in India would have had to lead, while the other acknowledges that, despite the choice made, she suffered a great loss: “In my mind I cradled you in my arms.”

Want to see more from Manisha Sharma?
Gendered Arrangements
“Indian Girl Crumbling” in New Asian Writing
“#17”, “#18”, “#22”, “#23”, and “#25” in The Bombay Review

SATURDAY POETRY SERIES PRESENTS: SARAH SARAI

Posted on October 15, 2016 by asitoughttobemagazine

sarah-sarai-2016-for-sivan

REMORSE
By Sarah Sarai

When he lumbered in the way of men
who use their hands to till earth,
he knocked rough doorway
to sob at unfairness and
the slaying. Dull, trembling,
he threw down three pelts against
a desert night, and feared heaven’s
white stars. We’ve all killed our brother.
The dead roam through us.
We toss beneath old gods’ blazing navigation.
Cain? It’s morning. He bites a sweet seedy fig.

Today’s poem originally appeared in the Terrain.org and appears here today with permission from the poet.

Sarah Sarai’s second collection, Geographies of Soul and Taffeta, was published this year by Indolent Books. Poet Melissa Studdard called Sarai’s first collection, The Future Is Happy, “a poetry of luminous, brave transparency” (American Book Review). Journals include Painted Bride Quarterly, Barrow Street, The Collagist, Boston Review, Threepenny Review, Ascent. After teaching English at a Catholic girls’ school in Los Angeles, Sarai received an NEH fellowship and used extra monies to move to Seattle where she began writing poetry. She has been Lecturer in comp and lit, editor-in-chief, file clerk for warrant officers, and, currently, freelance editor in poetry, fiction, and pharmaceutical advertising. Sarai has an MFA in fiction from Sarah Lawrence College. A native of Long Island, she lives in Manhattan.

Editor’s Note: Today’s poem is a vivid and moving reflection upon the slaying of Cain by his brother Able. The Bible’s first brothers, and already one slays the other. But then, as the poet points out, “We’ve all killed our brother.” And while “The dead roam through us,” life–and the poem–insists that we go on. For although in the night Cain “threw down three pelts against / a desert night, and feared heaven’s // white stars,” in the morning light life looks sweeter, even for the damned.

Want to see more from Sarah Sarai?
Geographies of Soul and Taffeta
Poems in Posit
Poem in The Collagist
Poem in Ascent
Poems in Yew

SATURDAY POETRY SERIES PRESENTS: A ROSH HASHANAH POEM BY SARAH MARCUS

Posted on October 1, 2016 by asitoughttobemagazine

12027738_10102555892782248_2229857784916307758_n

By Sarah Marcus:

ROSH HASHANAH, 5774

The moon was a sliver of itself
the first night I thought of you
combing a new year’s honey
through our hair.

We are taught to repent, but
it’s a poor translation,
for Teshuvah is to return
to ourselves,
to come back to who we really are,
to return
to an original state

where we have nothing
but possibility laid before us.

And it is written
as everything will be:

someone’s grandmother’s hands
smelling of cinnamon and clove,
a testament to a world
created as an expression
of limitless love,
of refinement.

The Rabbi says that when you share your words
you are sharing a part of your soul. Each moment
has the potential to be deeply spiritual, my children,
stand in the hugeness of it all.

Autumn has lingered years
for your arrival,
each leaf turned
in anticipation,
even the branches
held their breath

waiting for us to ask the right questions,
for us to stop looking to the sky.

Today’s poem originally appeared in the Green Briar Review and appears here today with permission from the poet.

Sarah Marcus is the author of Nothing Good Ever Happens After Midnight (2016, GTK Press) and the chapbooks BACKCOUNTRY (2013) and Every Bird, To You (2013). Her next book, They Were Bears, is forthcoming from Sundress Publications in 2017. She is an editor at Gazing Grain Press, a spirited VIDA: Women in Literary Arts volunteer, and the Series Editor for As Is Ought To Be’s High School Poetry Series: Gender, Identity, & Race. Find her at sarahannmarcus.com.

Editor’s Note: But this is so much more than a Rosh Hashanah poem. This is a poem of the sacred and the secular. Of belief and being. Of awareness and action. This is the moment when memory becomes contemplation, when contemplation becomes questioning, when questioning demands more from us. Yes, this poem is stunning in its imagery and lyric. Yes, it is evocative and moving. Yes it is visceral and philosophical and spiritual. But it is so much more than that. For while “we have nothing / but possibility laid before us,” the very leaves hold their breath “waiting for us to ask the right questions, // for us to stop looking to the sky.”

Shanah Tovah u’Metukah to you, the faithful readers of this series. May the new year be sweet, and may you be the change you want to see in the world.

Want to see more from Sarah Marcus?
Spork Press
Booth
Nashville Review
The EstablishmentHuffington Post

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this: