Daily Poetry episodes:

• August 15, 2020🍇 August by Mary Oliver

  When the blackberries hang

  swollen in the woods, in the brambles

  nobody owns, I spend

  all day among the high

  branches, reaching

  my ripped arms, thinking

  of nothing, cramming

  the black honey of summer

  into my mouth; all day my body

  accepts what it is. In the dark

  creeks that run by there is

  this thick paw of my life darting among

  the black bells, the leaves; there is

  this happy tongue.

  ...more

  

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• August 11, 2020☕️ june 8, the smiley barista remembers my name by Wo Chan

  Beauty on earth so blue, even the cheese flowers

  a culture with no democracy... Yesterday (for example),

  I ate the same sandwich I eat every week: eggplant

  roasted in red pepper aioli, a focaccia jammed full

  by arugula, capers sweaty in browned butter. How

  have I come to love routine? I’m thirsty and abashed.

  The fabric of my childhood underwear triple axels in the wind—wow.

  The whole neighborhood watches me do emails, go to therapy: she shed

  revenge for forgiveness. I said it, “i forgive you” slipping

  like a key beneath a door, where never was a house attached.

  Is it beauty on earth, so blue? Each side stalled, you are touched,

  forstanding the sun. Its fat macula borne down grips

  (i wish! i saw! i fear! i heard! i dream) like an emotion.

  This is not a feeling. This can be, I think, a conversation.

  ...more

  

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• August 10, 2020🧬 A Litany For Survival by Audre Lorde

  For those of us who live at the shoreline

  standing upon the constant edges of decision

  crucial and alone

  for those of us who cannot indulge

  the passing dreams of choice

  who love in doorways coming and going

  in the hours between dawns

  looking inward and outward

  at once before and after

  seeking a now that can breed

  futures

  like bread in our children’s mouths

  so their dreams will not reflect

  the death of ours;

  For those of us

  who were imprinted with fear

  like a faint line in the center of our foreheads

  learning to be afraid with our mother’s milk

  for by this weapon

  this illusion of some safety to be found

  the heavy-footed hoped to silence us

  For all of us

  this instant and this triumph

  We were never meant to survive.

  And when the sun rises we are afraid

  it might not remain

  when the sun sets we are afraid

  it might not rise in the morning

  when our stomachs are full we are afraid

  of indigestion

  when our stomachs are empty we are afraid

  we may never eat again

  when we are loved we are afraid

  love will vanish

  when we are alone we are afraid

  love will never return

  and when we speak we are afraid

  our words will not be heard

  nor welcomed

  but when we are silent

  we are still afraid

  So it is better to speak

  remembering

  we were never meant to survive.

  ...more

  

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• August 09, 2020🐥 “Hope” is the thing with feathers (314) by Emily Dickinson

  “Hope” is the thing with feathers -

  That perches in the soul -

  And sings the tune without the words -

  And never stops - at all -

  And sweetest - in the Gale - is heard -

  And sore must be the storm -

  That could abash the little Bird

  That kept so many warm -

  I’ve heard it in the chillest land -

  And on the strangest Sea -

  Yet - never - in Extremity,

  It asked a crumb - of me.

  ...more

  

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• August 07, 2020📚 Beginning My Studies by Walt Whitman

  Beginning my studies the first step pleas’d me so much,

  The mere fact consciousness, these forms, the power of motion,

  The least insect or animal, the senses, eyesight, love,

  The first step I say awed me and pleas’d me so much,

  I have hardly gone and hardly wish’d to go any farther,

  But stop and loiter all the time to sing it in ecstatic songs.

  ...more

  

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• August 04, 2020🚗 A Parking Lot in West Houston by Monica Youn

  Angels are unthinkable

  in hot weather

  except in some tropical locales, where

  from time to time, the women catch one in their nets,

  hang it dry, and fashion it into a lantern

  that will burn forever on its own inexhaustible oils.

  But here—shins smocked with heat rash,

  the supersaturated air. We no longer believe

  in energies pure enough not to carry heat,

  nor in connections—the thought of someone

  somewhere warming the air we breathe

  that one degree more . . . .

  In a packed pub during the World Cup final,

  a bony redhead woman gripped my arm

  too hard. I could see how a bloke might fancy you.

  Like a child’s perfect outline in fast-melting snow,

  her wet handprint on my skin, disappearing.

  The crowd boiling over, a steam jet: Brrra-zil!

  And Paris—a heroin addict

  who put her hypodermic

  to my throat: Je suis malade.

  J’ai besoin de medicaments.

  Grabbing her wrist, I saw

  her forearm’s tight net sleeve of drying blood.

  I don’t like to be touched.

  I stand in this mammoth parking lot,

  car doors open, letting the air conditioner

  run for a while before getting in.

  The heat presses down equally

  everywhere. It wants to focus itself,

  to vaporize something instantaneously,

  efficiently—that shopping cart, maybe,

  or that half-crushed brown-glass bottle—

  but can’t quite. Asphalt softens in the sun.

  Nothing’s detachable.

  The silvery zigzag line

  stitching the tarmac to the sky around the edges

  is no breeze, just a trick of heat.

  My splayed-out compact car half-sunk

  in the tar pit of its own shadow—

  strong-shouldered, straining

  to lift its vestigial wings.

  ...more

  

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• August 01, 2020🥀 Nature’s Minor Chords by H. Cordelia Ray

  Nature's Minor Chords

  The stirring of a feathery cloud

  May wake a thought of richest worth,

  The dew upon the lily's rim

  To deepest reverie give birth.

  Half glimpses caught in idle hours

  Of shifting lights upon a stream,

  Some sudden glory in the skies

  May give the soul a magic dream.

  The scent of wood-glades when glad Spring

  Is penciling the dainty leaves,

  Like subtlest music, round the heart

  A web of strange enchantment weaves.

  The robin's carol to the dawn

  Soothes like the answer to a prayer;

  The cushat's melancholy plaint

  May change our mood quite to despair.

  In Nature's wondrous orchestra,

  The quiver of a single strain

  Will poise a thought, and give the soul

  Most exquisite repose or pain.

  ...more

  

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• July 30, 2020🏚 Foreclosure by Lorine Niedecker

  Tell em to take my bare walls down

  my cement abutments

  their parties thereof

  and clause of claws

  Leave me the land

  Scratch out: the land

  May prose and property both die out

  and leave me peace

  ...more

  

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• July 28, 2020👥 Making It by Audre Lorde

  My body arcing across your white place

  we mingle color and substance

  wanting to mantle your cold

  I share my face with you

  but love becomes a lie

  as we suffer through split masks

  seeking the other half-self.

  We are hung up

  in giving

  what we wish to be given

  ourselves.

  ...more

  

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• July 27, 2020📈 Risk by Anaïs Nin

  And then the day came,

  when the risk

  to remain tight

  in a bud

  was more painful

  than the risk

  it took

  to Blossom.

  ...more

  

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