The Burrowing Poems

I successfully defended my undergraduate honors thesis, a chapbook of poetry largely about depression, on Tuesday. It was painful to have to acknowledge the events of the past four months. Much to my embarrassment, I broke down halfway through the reading, on a fairly simple line:  ”Where did you go?”  

Where did I go?  And will I ever come back?

Or will part of me always be leaning over the edge?

Say tomorrow doesn’t come.

Say the moon becomes an icy pit.

Say the sweet-gum tree is petrified.

Say the sun’s a foul black tire fire.

Say the owl’s eyes are pinpricks.

Say the raccoon’s a hot tar stain.

Say the shirt’s plastic ditch-litter.

Say the kitchen’s a cow’s corpse.

Say we never get to see it: bright

future, stuck like a bum star, never

coming close, never dazzling.

Say we never meet her. Never him.

Say we spend our last moments staring

at each other, hands knotted together,

clutching the dog, watching the sky burn.

Say, It doesn’t matter. Say, That would be

enough. Say you’d still want this: us alive,

right here, feeling lucky.

- ADA LIMÓN

Anonymous asked: YOU ROCK MY SOCKS! K, BYE.

Thanks, Victoria. 

Anonymous asked: I have a special chance to air, from where I am I better see/ how living life while in your care was such a sunny day for me./ Burrowing through your clean clothes & trampling on your note pad,/ waking you with my cold nose, times like this could make you mad./ But U took me in & held me near,cleaned my coat & wiped my paws,/ scratched my chin & rubbed my ears, kissed me sweet and forgave all flaws./ What must be said before I go, as I look back & reminisce/ over years of love & all I know...

This is sadly relevant, as my dog died a few weeks ago. 

I woke to a voice within the room. perhaps.

The room itself: “You’re wasting this life

expecting disappointment.”

I packed my bag in the night

and peered in its leather belly

to count the essentials.

To the east, the flood has begun.

Men call to each other on the water

for the comfort of voices.

Love surprises us.

It ends.

- ELIZA GRISWOLD

bradcrenshaw replied to your post: ~ RETURNING ~

Congratulations—and welcome back. Celebrations and tributes are worthy enterprises, I think.

Thank you! I think they are, too. We shall see…

I say I want to save the world but really / I want to write poems all day…

   -  Dorothea Lasky, from “Ars Poetica”

So here we are again, friends. Many bad things have happened to me over the last year. Many good things have happened, too. Why is it so easy to give yourself over to melancholy? Why does sadness seize you even if you resist? So much of my dark has devoured my light. So often I am emptied of my goodness. 

Despite all the bad, my own writing has found a new beginning. I will be starting my MFA in Poetry at Arizona State this Fall. I have been gifted with three fully funded years to teach and write and read and grow and travel under the mentorship of an incredible array of poets. I’m not sure whether I’ll ever feel like I deserve this opportunity, but here it is, all the same. I’m more grateful than words can tell. I came so close to missing this.

With that in mind, I want to make this a space to celebrate the good and pay tribute to the bad. Neither could exist without the other. I want to document it all. 

As much as it pains me to say so (and as my four month absence from this project has probably indicated), I am too tired to post a poem every day. Life has spent me up, and most days I’m just searching for the energy to get out of bed. So I will try to share what I can here, and I will do my best not to slip away again. But it happens. Sometimes, it just happens.

Thank you, friends, for your patience. Stay tuned.

- Alexandra 

Update this. Eventually. 

That day the starlings didn’t eat.

That day was a sudden return

to winter. In the fields,

snow on a base of ice. 

The birds couldn’t bear

to set down except

on the clear face

of the road they remembered.

My husband leaned on the horn

the way you lean on a railing

until they lifted

before the unstoppable metal.

I pushed into the floorboard

as if I were doing the driving,

as if I could halt

the laws of physics,

while somewhere, my brother’s chest

rose and sunk and rose.

So much you take for granted,

like going to sleep in spring

that you will wake in spring.

that the blossoms were right

to push out, there was

no contradiction.

But when we hit the slick

and our slammed hard against

our own forward motion,

the roadbank spun

and the orchard of stunted trees

that had just begun to soften.

- ELAINE TERRANOVA

What I’m looking for

is an unmarked door

we’ll walk through

and there: whatever

we’d wished for

beyond the door.

What I’m looking for

is a golden bowl

carefully repaired

a complete world sealed

along cracked lines.

What I’m looking for

may not be there.

What you’re looking for

may or may not

be me. I’m listening for

the return of that sound

I heard in the woods

just now, that silvery sound

that seemed to call

not only to me. 

- MAUREEN N. MCLANE

Red cloth

I lie on the ground

otherwise nothing could hold

I put my hand on the ground

the membrane is gone

and nothing does hold

your place in the ground

is all of it

and it is breathing

- JEAN VALENTINE

There are a few things I will miss,

a girl with no shirt on

lighting a cigarette

and brushing her hair in the mirror;

the sound of a mailbox

opening, somewhere,

and closing at two in the morning

of the first snow,

and the words for them.

- FRANZ WRIGHT

I would liken you

To a night without stars

Were it not for your eyes.

I would like you

To a sleep without dreams

Were it not for your songs.

- LANGSTON HUGHES

somewhere i have never travelled,gladly beyond

any experience,your eyes have their silence:

in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,

or which i cannot touch because they are too near

your slightest look easily will unclose me

though i have closed myself as fingers,

you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens

(touching skillfully,mysteriously) her first rose

or if your wish be to close me, i and

my life will shut very beautifully, suddenly,

as when the heart of this flower imagines

the snow carefully everywhere descending;

nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals

the power of your intense fragility:whose texture

compels me with the color of its countries,

rendering death and forever with each breathing

(i do not know what it is about you that closes

and opens;only something in me understands

the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)

nobody,not even the rain,has such small hands

- E.E. CUMMINGS