for the words that can't be said out loud

I knew a simple soldier boy Who grinned at life in empty joy, Slept soundly through the lonesome dark, And whistled early with the lark. In winter trenches, cowed and glum, With crumps and lice and lack of rum, He put a bullet through his brain. No one spoke of him again. You smug-faced crowds with kindling eye Who cheer when soldier lads march by, Sneak home and pray you’ll never know The hell where youth and laughter go.

Naomi Shihab Nye

richard siken’s new poem in the new yorker—at the link, you can hear him read it in full

Because we love bare hills and stunted trees we head north when we can, past taiga, tundra, rocky shoreline, ice. Where does it come from, this sparse taste of ours? How long did we roam this hardscape, learning by heart all that we used to know: turn skin fur side in, partner with wolves, eat fat, hate waste, carve spirit, respect the snow, build and guard flame? Everything once had a soul, even this clam, this pebble. Each had a secret name. Everything listened. Everything was real, but didn’t always love you. You needed to take care. We long to go back there, or so we like to feel when it’s not too cold. We long to pay that much attention. But we’ve lost the knack; also there’s other music. All we hear in the wind’s plainsong is the wind.

night walk by Franz Wright

between autumn equinox and winter solstice, today by Emily Jungmin Yoon

/end ID]

And not expecting pardon, Hardened in heart anew, But glad to have sat under Thunder and rain with you, And grateful too For sunlight on the garden.

Don’t go far off, not even for a day, because– because–I don’t know how to say it: a day is long and I will be waiting for you, as in an empty station when the trains are parked off somewhere else, asleep. Don’t leave me, even for an hour, because then the little drops of anguish will all run together, the smoke that roams looking for a home will drift into me, choking my lost heart. Oh, may your silhouette never dissolve on the beach; may your eyelids never flutter into the empty distance. Don’t leave me for a second, my dearest, because in that moment you’ll have gone so far I’ll wander mazily over all the earth, asking, Will you come back? Will you leave me here, dying? 

when you tried to lay your body into that ground.

jabaliya by Suheir Hammad, from the Gaza Suite

who kills

Naomi Shihab Nye, "No Explosions", The Tiny Journalist: Poems [ID'd]

Chemo      Tarceva     prayer meditation    affirmation      Xanax Avastin     Nebulizer     Zofran Zoloft     Vicodin     notebooks nurses     oxygen tank     pastina magical thinking     PET scans     movies therapy     phone calls     candles acceptance     denial     meatloaf doctors     rosary beads     sleep Irish soda bread     internet     incantations visitors     sesame oil     pain patches CAT scans     massage     shopping thin sliced Italian bread with melted mozzarella St. Anthony oil     Lourdes water     St. Peregrine tea     spring water     get well cards relaxation tapes     recliner     cooking shows cotton T-shirts     lawn furniture     a new baby giving up Paris     giving up Miami     charts bargaining     not bargaining     connections counting with her     breathing for her     will Pride and Prejudice     Downton Abbey     prayer watching TV     not watching TV     prayer prayer     prayer     prayer lists   

This poem has been pinned to his twitter profile since November 1st, 2023.

Get Rudy's book here: https://bit.ly/rudyfranciscoshop Rudy Francisco, performing at Queen Bee's Art and Cultural Center in San Diego, CA.

Which country do you love more? The question asked of each one of us young travelers of the diaspora, children with shiny shoes and English textbooks. At this checkpoint no travel documents will do, only testimonials of praise in perfect syllables gutturals and glottal stops recited with conviction to the cheering crowds. On summer pilgrimages we are delivered to the embrace of relatives, the scent of their skin a heavy musk in the heat, indistinguishable from the cumin and clay of the garden where our fingers loosen glimmering shards beneath green shade of geranium leaves. No time for deep breathing or personal space—here the senses are overwhelmed, here the air overflows with the sorrow and story of love fattening on the vine, and the longing, always the longing for what is no longer here nor possible. In this land of a thousand mirrors reflections of everyone we must and could be, mirage of our selves fragments on the horizon. Let us in they beckon Let our stories slip under your fingernails Let our language collect in brushstrokes across your furrowed brow. Stay. Stay longer. More tea? With mint or sage? Consider carefully, every herb a cure for one ailment and companion to another. Here our portraits find their frames, the bells in our laughter find echoes. With enough time and tea between us the bridge of my nose becomes an heirloom from ancestral villages, your curls a heritage of defiance, the shape of our fingers a flag. Stay a while longer there is so much more they will tell you. Linger with us in the infinite hours their invitation echoes. Let the day lift its veils from the sky, let the embers of sunset burn slowly, let night drape its stars over the hills.

Listen, kids who die— Maybe, now, there will be no monument for you Except in our hearts Maybe your bodies’ll be lost in a swamp Or a prison grave, or the potter’s field, Or the rivers where you’re drowned like Leibknecht But the day will come— You are sure yourselves that it is coming— When the marching feet of the masses Will raise for you a living monument of love, And joy, and laughter, And black hands and white hands clasped as one, And a song that reaches the sky— The song of the life triumphant Through the kids who die.