Here's to May, teenage gamers, and the beautiful rowing we all do ~

Gamer Blue 

  For Micah

If I cannot release my 12-year old son

from the small daily deaths of divorce

or take him on a fancy summer vacation

I can offer him the autonomy of night

That yellow labyrinth

Foraging in the fridge for yogurt or salami

the dramatic flop into the helm

of his La-Z Boy recliner

Hands firmly planted on the keyboard

eyes trained on the horizon of his laptop

My blue-light voyager

Maybe there’s a grace

some exalted terrain

offered to a boy bathed in the blue corona

& who am I

to say

that this

is not

rowing

that my son’s small hands

do not summon the gods

& put them mercifully to work.

ECS

Happy Mama's Day and to Jorie Graham!

Prayer

Over a dock railing, I watch the minnows, thousands, swirl   

themselves, each a minuscule muscle, but also, without the   

way to create current, making of their unison (turning, re-

                                                                      infolding,

entering and exiting their own unison in unison) making of themselves a   

visual current, one that cannot freight or sway by   

minutest fractions the water's downdrafts and upswirls, the   

dockside cycles of finally-arriving boat-wakes, there where   

they hit deeper resistance, water that seems to burst into   

itself (it has those layers), a real current though mostly   

invisible sending into the visible (minnows) arrowing

                                    motion that forces change—

this is freedom. This is the force of faith. Nobody gets   

what they want. Never again are you the same. The longing

is to be pure. What you get is to be changed. More and more by

each glistening minute, through which infinity threads itself,   

also oblivion, of course, the aftershocks of something   

at sea. Here, hands full of sand, letting it sift through   

in the wind, I look in and say take this, this is   

what I have saved, take this, hurry. And if I listen   

now? Listen, I was not saying anything. It was only   

something I did. I could not choose words. I am free to go.   

I cannot of course come back. Not to this. Never.   

It is a ghost posed on my lips. Here: never.

Jorie Graham

To April's delights, Nizar Qabbani, and National Poem In Your Pocket Day 2015! Put a poem in your back pocket on Thursday, April 30th ~

I Want To Write Different Words For You

I want to write different words for you
To invent a language for you alone
to fit the size of your body
And the size of my love
I want to travel away from the dictionary
And to leave my lips
I am tired of my mouth
I want a different one
Which can change
Into a cherry tree or a match box
A mouth from which words can emerge
Like nymphs from the sea,
Like white chicks jumping from the magician’s hat.

Nizar Qabbani
(1923-1988)
Translated from the Arabic by K. Frangieh and Clementine R. Brown

Poem In Your Pocket Day 2015

Here's to poetry that surrounds us, and to Richard Blanco!

The Island Within

   for Ruth Behar

I’m still thinking about your porch light

like a full moon casting a foggy halo

in the frigid air last night, the bare oaks

branching into the sky like nerve endings

inches away from the frozen stars,

the pink gables of your Victorian home

protesting yet another winter for you

captive in Ann Arbor as you practice

mambo by the fireplace. I’m following

your red-velvet shoes to conga beats

and bongo taps taking your body, but

not your life, from the snow mantling

your windows outside, 1,600 miles

away from Cuba. I’m tasting the cafecito

you made, the slice of homemade flan

floating in burnt sugar like the stories

you told me you can’t finish writing,

no matter how many times you travel

through time back to Havana to steal

every memory ever stolen from you.

You’re a thief anyone would forgive,

wanting only to imagine faces for names

chiseled on the graves of your family

at Guanabacoa, walk on Calle Aguacate

and pretend to meet the grandfather

you never met at his lace shop for lunch,

or pray the Kaddish like your mother

at the synagogue in El Vedado, stand

on the steps there like you once did

in a photo you can’t remember taking.

I confess I pitied you, still trying to reach

that unreachable island within the island

you still call home. I thought I was done

with Cuba, tired of filling in the blanks,

but now I’m not sure. Maybe if I return

just once more, walk the sugarcane fields

my father once cut, drive down the road

where my mother once peddled guavas

to pay for textbooks, sit on the porch

of my grandmother’s house, imagine her

still in the kitchen making arroz-con-leche—

maybe then I’ll have an answer for you

last night when you asked me: Would you

move to Cuba? Would you die there?

Richard Blanco