Good Bones 
MAGGIE SMITH
 
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.
 
SOURCE: poetryfoundation.org

On Ceremony
WENDY VIDELOCK                                                      
                    Rituals, anthropologists will tell us, are about transformation.
                                                                                                          —Abraham Verghese
In winter the house
of grief deepens.
Down
 
in the dark earth,
small mouths sipping.
Someone
 
reading, someone
seeking some
kind
 
of feeling. Some kind
of healing.
A child has eyed
 
a star
 
spangled banner,
the grey dove’s
feather,
 
another bleak
scandal. There,
 
in the window, someone
burns
a solitary candle.
 
Source: Rattle

​Source of poem and "About This Poem": poets.org Academy of American Poets

Five Directions to My House
JUAN FELIPE HERRERA                                                  

1. Go back to the grain yellow hills where the broken speak of elegance
2. Walk up to the canvas door, the short bed stretched against the clouds
3. Beneath the earth, an ant writes with the grace of a governor
4. Blow, blow Red Tail Hawk, your hidden sleeve—your desert secrets
5. You are there, almost, without a name, without a body, go now
6. I said five, said five like a guitar says six. 

Almost Livin' Almost Dyin' 
JUAN FELIPE HERRERA
 
for all the dead
                                                                                         & hear my streets
with ragged beats & the beats
are too beat to live so the graves push out with
hands that cannot touch the makers of light & the
sun flames down through the roofs & the roots that slide
to one side & the whistlin' fires of the cops & the cops
in the shops do what they gotta do & your body's
on the fence & your ID's in the air & the shots
get fired & the gas in the face & the tanks
on your blood & the innocence all around & the
spillin' & the grillin' & the grinnin' & the game of Race
no one wanted & the same every day so U fire &
eat the smoke thru your long bones & the short mace
& the day? This last sweet Swisher day that turns to love
& no one knows how it came or what it is or what it says
or what it was or what for or from what gate
is it open is it locked can U pull it back to your life
filled with bitter juice & demon angel eyes even though
you pray & pray mama says you gotta sing she says
you got wings but from what skies from where could
they rise what are the things the no-things called love
how can its power be fixed or grasped so the beats
keep on blowin' keep on flyin' & the moon tracks your bed
where you are alone or maybe dead & the truth
carves you carves you & calls you back still alive
cry cry the candles by the last four trees still soaked
in Michael Brown red and Officer Liu red and
Officer Ramos red and Eric Garner whose
last words were not words they were just breath
askin' for breath they were just burnin’ like me like
we are all still burnin' can you hear me
can you can you feel me swaggin' tall & driving low &
talkin' fine & hollerin' from my corner crime & fryin’
                                                                            against the wall
 
almost livin' almost dyin'
almost livin' almost dyin'
 
     SOURCE: poetryfoundation.org

The Necessity
ALICE B. FOGEL

It isn't true about the lambs.
They are not meek.
They are curious and wild,
full of the passion of spring.
They are lovable,
and they are not silent when hungry.
 
Tonight the last of the triplet lambs
is piercing the quiet with its need.
Its siblings are stronger
and will not let it eat.
 
I am its keeper, the farmer, its mother,
I will go down to it in the dark,
in the cold barn,
and hold it in my arms.
 
But it will not lie still—it is not meek.
 
I will stand in the open doorway
under the weight of watching trees and moon,
and care for it as one of my own.
 
But it will not love me—it is not meek.
 
Drink, little one. Take what I can give you.
Tonight the whole world prowls
the perimeters of your life.
 
Your anger keeps you alive--
it's your only chance.
So I know what I must do
after I have fed you.
 
I will shape my mouth to the shape
of the sharpest words,
even those bred in silence.
 
I will impale with words every ear
pressed upon open air.
I will not be meek.
 
You remind me of the necessity
of having more hope than fear,
and of sounding out terrible names.
 
I am to cry out loud
like a hungry lamb, cry loud
enough to waken wolves in the night.
​
No one can be allowed to sleep.

SOURCE: poetryfoundation.org  

Epiphany
JOANIE MACKOWSKI
 
A momentary rupture to the vision:
the wavering limbs of a birch fashion
 
the fluttering hem of the deity’s garment,
the cooling cup of coffee the ocean the deity
 
waltzes across. This is enough—but sometimes
the deity’s heady ta-da coaxes the cherries
 
in our mental slot machine to line up, and
our brains summon flickering silver like
 
salmon spawning a river; the jury decides
in our favor, and we’re free to see, for now.
 
A flaw swells from the facets of a day, increasing
the day’s value; a freakish postage stamp mails
 
our envelope outside time; hairy, claw-like
magnolia buds bloom from bare branches;
 
and the deity pops up again like a girl from
a giant cake. O deity: you transfixing transgressor,
 
translating back and forth on the border
without a passport. Fleeing revolutions
 
of same-old simultaneous boredom and
boredom, we hoard epiphanies under the bed,
 
stuff them in jars and bury them in the backyard;
we cram our closet with sunrise; prop up our feet
 
and drink gallons of wow!; we visit the doctor
because all this is raising the blood’s levels of
 
c6h3(oh)2chohch2nhch3, the heart caught
in the deity’s hem and haw, the oh unfurling
 
from our chest like a bee from our cup of coffee,
an autochthonous greeting: there. Who saw it?

SOURCE: poetryfoundation.org

Sedition — a letter to the writer from Meri Mangakāhia 
ANAHERA GILDEA                                                                                                   

​Here’s what I had in mind, kōtiro, this
clipping at words like overgrown maikuku — 
return the blankets of domestic life; don’t fold
washing or wear shoes, polish these rerenga kē.
 
Eh. But this world.
I s’pose neither of us planned to be in politics,
never did do what others told us to — 
wahanui though, go on, get
 
your sedition on girl,
your agitator, your defiant speak
to each other eye to eye — 
Māori been jailed for nouns, phrases;
 
butcher up a clause, get buried
in Pākehā kupu, then dig that
out like the old people. No one approved
of their language either.
 
Source: poetryfoundation.org

​

Check out this Poetry Podcast about Gildea's poem.  Editors of Poetry Magazine, discuss the poem and the use of native language in a poem that references imprisonment for speaking one's native language.  

What to Discuss?

1. Why words matter
2. Another view of sedition 
3. Use of native language in a poem about the outlawing of a native language
4. Political writing
5. Word choices (survival and protest): clipping, polishing, get your sedition on, butcher up