a poem for graduates

Dreams

Langston Hughes

1901 – 

1967

Hold fast to dreams 
For if dreams die
Life is a broken-winged bird
That cannot fly.

Hold fast to dreams
For when dreams go
Life is a barren field
Frozen with snow.

From The Collected Poems of Langston Hughes published by Alfred A. Knopf/Vintage. Copyright © 1994 by the Estate of Langston Hughes.

a poem to start the week

 

Tablecloth

Victoria Guerrero-Peirano Translated from the Spanish by Anastatia Spicer and Honora Spicer

My mother made a tablecloth She crocheted At the time I didn't know anything She took it everywhere I wondered at how she crocheted in the darkness of a theatre But she did And the next day there wasn't a single stitch added or dropped That was my mother in those days A strange woman She worked during the day and on the weekends stitched She took me to the theatre I didn't understand her then My friends' mothers stayed home They cooked   They picked them up from school   They packed lunch boxes When the tablecloth was finished She put it on the table It was magnificent But back then I didn't understand It was complicated I was tangled in her delicate web I saw my mother through that pane of thread She kept being different from the others: She worked during the day Embroidered on the weekends And couldn't really stand being at home I never understood her Maybe I didn't know enough She also never taught me Thought it was too much for me—or too little Now my mother says she can't do anything with her hands The tablecloth stays tucked away in the kitchen cabinet I got myself knee-deep in diplomas And I don't know how to embroider

Andrea's prose poem

Alone

Sitting at the party I notice how thin all the women are in their shift dresses and sandals. Their arms and legs as fat free and emaciated as wounded birds. The breeze blows the mosquitos west away from lawn tables and the barbecue. The man manning the grill wears pants printed with the American flag. He taps my fingers as tries to sell me on ribs, grizzled and glistening with fat and sauce, the smell tempting, but I stick to chicken. That feels predatory enough. No one drinks much, and the desserts are buzzed by bees and wilting in the warm sun. No surprise. I find a couple I know and love. I sit close so I can feel safe. I’m drinking a cocktail from a can and debate what desserts I should choose. I don’t belong here. I’m a Democrat that talks to the dead and does my own gardening. I don’t spray dandelions or other imperfections. Rather I relish how they lay across the lawn like rows and rows of sun emojis. I have no grandchildren, children, pedigreed dogs, horses or even a husband. I don’t want to be an arrogant poet `~type, but I’m certain no one here will mouth the word death. I feel as if I’ve woken up in another world, climbed over a wall, and everyone is pretending to be real. Raised right, I know you can’t just cut to the chase in a conversation, ask about the best sex they ever had or what’s their biggest secret, what makes them feel alive. They all feel they’ve earned what they’ve got and they’re not going to let go. I’m afraid too. Afraid of dying before I’m dead. Yet this thinking keeps me destined to die alone. I’m looking around for the one other person at this party who would like to take their clothes off and swim in the coolness of the creek. We could float on our backs, hold hands, and stare at the sky, white with billowy clouds of possibility—dog, airplane, bird.

~ Andrea Pierceall

(she read this last week at the writers' party at Suzy's. I might subtitle it "why I moved back to the Bay Area" but hey, it's her poem. And haunting, don't you agree?)

and one more from Andrea

 TADPOLES

A tadpole doesn't know 

ir's gonna grow bigger

It just swims

and figures limbs 

are for frogs.

 

People don't know

the power they hold.

They just sing hymns,

and figure saving

is for god.

~ Andrea Gibson

a poem for President's Day

 (no reason for this long poem, it just speaks to me. So there. Here.)

Woof, This Heat

Kate Partridge

The dentist is now the same age as me, which is troubling, mostly because of what I have and have not done with my life, emphasized overhead by the pop star our age whose music keeps time as the dentist shakes his head and laments the incredible heat. “Woof,” he says, “this heat,” and I remember that while I hate dentists generally, as a profession (I’m sorry), I love this one, and want to keep him close for observation, the way it’s possible to love and hate at once birds or old country songs—like the one my daughter and I listened to one morning on the drive to school, five minutes, which affected her so deeply that her teacher asked the trouble before she even crossed the threshold, and the child, pointing at me, revealed: “I didn’t like her music.” What a wonder that among the worst things that has ever happened in her life is Loretta Lynn. The other day a boy down the street carried over for an introduction one of the ducks he keeps (I like that phrase, like they have somewhere else they need to go). He ferried the duck through the air on his forearms and presented her, announcing, as the duck entered, her given name: Bikini. (Sometimes, he added, called Keen.) Keen indeed was this bird, who held so perfectly still to receive the little child’s rough pets. Not like me, in the corner at a party, all flapping and fluttering hands—this bird so calm, unbothered by the indignity of taking bodily form at all. These three, a portrait of grace: one with a beak, thinking nothing of it; another, grants his finest treasure for display. The third, in stripes and patterns both, reaches open-palmed toward the strange being directly before her, a vision of how, without worry, one can be.

for Sister Jane

 

Debt Ritual: Oysters

buy the oysters anywayeach night you spendin the city and not homein an apartment alonecosts upwards of fifty dollarsand for what it’s worthoysters are mostly labora man at a countercrushed ice this skillnot out of place in a Whitmanpoem what you wantin an oyster is immediacybrine of a small oceanand the time to occupythe texture and materialof this one moment of yourlife the brightness in the darkred leather banquettes ginand lemon silk suedeand weather the refractionsin the water it isn’t right exactlyto want what money has
~ Katie Naughton

a thousand year old poem

‘Tis a fearful thing

to love what death can touch.

A fearful thing

to love, to hope, to dream, to be –

to be,

And oh, to lose.

A thing for fools, this,

And a holy thing,

a holy thing

to love.

For your life has lived in me,

your laugh once lifted me,

your word was gift to me.

To remember this brings painful joy.

‘Tis a human thing, love,

a holy thing, to love

what death has touched.

— Yehuda Halevi
(With thanks to Ginger's sister, Amy, for sending this beautiful poem. So true. )