I clasped my hands below my dark veil… “My child, what’s made you so pale?” – That I poured him bitter grief Until he was drunk with it.
How can I forget? He left, stumbling, His mouth curved in pain. I ran downstairs, not touching the rail – I chased him to the gate.
Panting, I shouted, “A joke! That’s all! If you leave – I’ll die.” His smile was dreadfully calm – “Don’t stand out in this wind.”
This poem is a translation of a poem by the great Russian poet Anna Akhmatova. This is one of my favorite poems of hers – what an ending! Thanks to Sasha Dorofeev, who helped explain the literal translation of the original Russian, and also to my father Detmar Finke, who had a mind and an ear for poetry and helped with the final English version. You can find many translations of it online if you want to compare – just searching for “Akhmatova dark veil” will pull up a lot.
I’d let you in, lifting up the corner of my blanket fort, scooting over to make room.
We’ll share a flashlight, casting shadows like warpaint over our faces, turning our grins terrible and fierce.
And we will be fearless, young and fearless, and laugh at the dark surrounding us.
Another poem from the generative poetry workshop I attend via Zoom. One of the things that happens when you’re restricted in the amount of time you can write (12 minutes in this group) is that I often end up being unsure as to whether I’m actually done or not. Even looking at it now the next day, I’m not sure I’m happy with the ending or if it needs to go further.
Outside, the sun slowly rises out of the lake, like yesterday— on cue, flowers open, birds are singing, the world wakes and stretches. Inside, my room is quiet. I lie back down with empty arms.
I wrote this, my first sijo, for a competition by the Sejong Cultural Society. You can find the winners (not me!), as well as a lot more information on this Korean form of poetry, right here! Although it wasn’t chosen, I’m still fond of what I wrote. Quite melancholy.
This morning, everything is still— the birds wrap their wings about them, the alligators lie and dream in their frozen swamps.
Their minds are full of sunshine and the taste of blood, which is only another way of saying hope—
hope you can sink your teeth into, hope that is salty and sweet on the tongue, hope with wings and feathers
and sinew and bone— the memory carrying them through the long space between heartbeats
I’m part of a generative poetry workshop that meets on Zoom, and this poem came out of that. Everyone sends around a poem they like beforehand, and reads it at the start of the meeting; that’s the inspiration for the writing time. It finishes with everyone sharing what they wrote. This one, however, actually came from an NPR article that someone was describing during the meeting (and which I’d seen a photograph from): alligators were “hibernating” because their ponds had frozen during the cold snap, with just the top of their snouts above the ice so they could breathe. Apparently their hearts beat only a few times a minute during this time; once it warms up and the ice melts, they wake up and are completely fine!
You say you left one foot on the bus this morning when you were rushing to work?
Yes, hold on a second— let me check our lost and found. Can you please describe this foot?
In a black sandal, got it. And— are there any distinguishing marks? No, I’m sorry to pry— it’s just
we do get a lot of lost items here. You really wouldn’t believe the ears, fingers, even whole legs—
the people who leave their heart behind and never notice that it’s gone—
Oh yes, I’m glad you called! I think I have it here. The sandal— Clarks, yes? This must be it.
If you could just stop by within the next two weeks, we can get that back to you.
I’m sorry, that’s as long as we can hold it. Our space, you see— there’s only so much room
for all the pieces people leave behind.
This was written in response to one of Rattle‘s Poetry Prompts. Unfortunately, I didn’t realize that they reset each month, and I didn’t write down what the actual prompt was… but you can find the latest ones here if you want to check them out. And also unfortunately, it wasn’t chosen to be published, but so it goes. Wait, hold on… I found the page with previous prompts… it was “write a poem that begins with an idiomatic expression that you take literally or incorrectly, and see where it goes.” Well, there you go – I took the expression “pull yourself together.”
Does it happen all at once?
You wake up one day
to no alarm, no birds
outside the window—
Purse your lips. Hum.
Speak. Shout. Scream.
Nothing.
Or do you find it slowly,
a little more of a little
less each day,
like a difficult friend
you can learn to live with
because the memories are sweet.
In January, a new Generative Writing Workshop is going to be coming to Mead Library! So of course, to be able to do one, I had to learn how to do one. Many thanks to Robin Brox for inviting me to the one she’s a part of to see how it worked – I loved it! We shared poems we loved, used those to create ideas and prompts for ourselves, and then wrote. Here’s mine, which is mainly based on both the phrase “Facing the Music” and the idea of trying to contain opposites.
what is the purpose of the sun
or of death? that black bird, why
is it an omen of ill things
and not simply two sharp eyes, scanning
the grass below, looking
for some delicious meal
to drive its sharp beak into?
I don’t have much to say about this one except that I really appreciate the way the Wisconsin Fellowship of Poets allows us time to think about these things. I have been to some of their conferences, and the next one is in Sheboygan, which is very exciting (as a local) to me. This poem is one that I wrote at the 2023 conference in Oshkosh.
Save Me
On that treacherous rocky path,
one side a sheer cliff
falling to beautiful deep water—
The truth is, I don’t want
to save myself. I want you
to reach out and grab me
when I lean out too far,
mesmerized by that endless blue—
when the pebbles start to slip—
I don’t want to step back.
I want your arms around my waist,
pulling me away, down to the ground—
the solid ground meeting us,
our solid bodies bruised and safe,
you an anchor
against the endless
blue
of the sky
This one is only a few months old, but I feel like putting something recent out there today. I do write love poems sometimes – this is something I would put under that umbrella. It was actually inspired by walking in Door County in Peninsula State Park (as someone who likes to get away into nature with few people around, highly recommended). And as usual, it’s not anything related to reality (I didn’t fall, or even almost fall, and need someone to grab me); instead, it’s something that I thought about later when I looked back on our hike together.
At The Casino For My Boyfriend’s Gig
Tonight, a star
fell out of the sky—
I thought about the millions
and millions of paintings
I’ll never see.
What makes a life poor?
So much wanting
and not having?
Free, the memory
of hot dogs on the grill,
outsides burnt black—
or learning to smoke brisket,
the soft layer of fat,
the hard crust of spices.
Is the memory of meat enough,
baking bread from salt and flour?
It was free, the warmth of the sun
sinking into your bones;
free the brittle cold of Michigan winter.
It was free to hear him practice,
pulling each chord into its proper shape—
the concert, of course, required tickets.
So I stare out at the sky.
Every day, joy and suffering
fall down like rain.
Night comes— the sky clears.
The stars wink at us,
and are free.
Borders
“Their art proves that borders are meaningless, transporting us to a future where the world communicates across continents and cultures through sound and story.”
Oh, beautiful man—
within a week, there was no border
between us.
How could I want what he didn’t?
How dare I not want
what he did?
It was beautiful— together,
we were an angel,
a tangle of feathers and wings—
And the sharp cry of a bird!
But whose throat
dared make that sound?
I am probably a contrarian by nature. I’m not sure whether to leave the epigraph at the beginning of this or not; it is what inspired the poem, and that mainly by the fact that, whenever I read something, I feel this innate urge to argue with it! So this poem, I suppose, is my argument about borders and my response to a too-simple reading of the world that simply dismisses them as an idea. Does the relationship in the poem seem a bit creepy? What does it actually mean to dissolve the border between two people?
For Peace
There is the peace of the moment
before the pull of the trigger,
and the peace after.
There is the blank white peace
of the silent snowfield,
motionless and cold,
the small red peace
of the rabbit not crawling
away from the fox.
There is the peace of the tree
lying shattered after the storm,
damp wood slowly rotting,
the peace before the footsteps
and the opening
of the door.
There is no peace for the winner—
the victorious wolf, licking
its red paws—
Peace belongs to us, lying
frozen in the snow, hands
still bound behind our backs—
The peace of the small hole,
the ragged-edged cut—
the peace of silence
settling upon us,
flake
by flake.
I can’t help it – I’m a contrarian by nature. I think I inherited it from my parents, perhaps especially my dad. I remember, over a decade ago, being told that it was impossible to write about someone you didn’t at least somewhat sympathize with; I went home and tried to write a poem about a stalker obsessed with a woman (which I posted here). I don’t think it’s that I disagree with people or want to be difficult or “prove them wrong” – it’s more that I want to test out people’s theories or views and see how they work for me.
So this one was written after reading quite a few poems about the value and importance of peace. Don’t get me wrong – I certainly think peace is preferable to war and violence. But I wanted to explore the idea a little more deeply because, after all, every single one of those notions is complicated. This is what resulted.
North 7 Night Bus
Living rooms glow like beacons
as we pass through the dark outside,
the barest glimpses of lives, lives, lives.
And suddenly, I’m filled with warmth—
I want to go, I want to enter each one
like a lonely ghost, filled with fondness
for these strangers and their places,
televisions tuned to who-knows-what,
walls with shelves, pictures, photos,
souvenirs or Goodwill knick-knacks,
couches chosen for comfort or for looks,
all passing too quickly to truly see.
Love is easy at this distance—
for ghosts, for the dead
who gather outside our windows,
where even, on the coldest night,
their breath leaves no trace.
Names
Why— why do I want it
so badly, my name
next to my words?
A thousand, tens of thousands,
a hundred thousand years
of nameless singers—
something remembers us.
And those who danced.
And those who sat by the fire,
swaying, clapping their hands.
Or grinning, eyes closed—
or looking shyly, across
at that other, beautiful—
then looking down, and then again
across the fire’s sparks
My notes: I don’t know how I feel about the end of this one. Is it done? But I also feel like this is the constant question. I mean, should I come back next week and try to add on to this? Or is it better to begin something new?
Resurrection
We are the only ones
who would be surprised.
Days, months, years— no matter—
your dog would run to the door,
barking, tail wagging—
your cat would trot forward,
winding between your ankles.
Like every time you came home
from the store, juggling
bags of groceries,
or came back from work
at that same familiar time.
One day, you leave
and don’t come back—
but what is forever?
Why shouldn’t I go on as always,
stealing glances at the door?
The Song of Dismemberment
Now, the time comes
for me to take myself apart,
bone by bone.
How tiny they are, the toes,
the bones of the feet
that held up such weight!
But the great lengths
of the leg bones, the wide hips—
how was any part of me so strong?
I will be gentle with the gently curving
ribs, the spine— I set each piece down
as softly as a mother.
Lift off the skull, set it aside,
and separate the jaw,
and the bones of the neck.
The last step is this— each hand
taking apart the arm
that leads to the other,
reaching the wrists, and then—
I join my hands together tenderly,
each holding the other, and pause—
I realize how much
I love them,
every piece of them.
Then— twist, pull, clatter.
Each small bone falls to the ground,
scattering like pebbles.
When the wind
whistles through this cave,
listen closely.
This is the song of the body:
lovely, beloved thing—
abandoned, broken thing—
and which is the secret?
That it can’t
be sung back together again,
or that it can?
I don’t have an answer.
all I have is this song—
the endless love
of the music
whistling through my bones.
My notes: The original image for this came from a book I read a long time ago (so long that I’ve probably mashed the actual details up with all sorts of other things), Mircea Eliade’s book Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy (quite a title, right? it’s an anthropological or sociological book). There was, I think, a report in there of some culture’s initiation for a shaman involving them taking themselves apart, learning the secret names of all the bones in their body, and then putting themselves back together again. I tried to take this as literally as possible, so although this poem may be a bit surreal, my biggest hope is that you will picture this impossible thing as really happening, just as I sat twisting my hands around each other while writing it.
Suddenly, one morning,
you start
to see again.
You look out and say—
the clouds are racing
across the sky.A little snow has piled up
on the corners of the roofs,
in the gutters.
Things are becoming real— or,
you are remembering how
to make them real.
You are remembering
how
to be real.
Wind whips down the alley,
the weather is changing.
Everything is grey.
Everything is moving. Even
the buildings, today,
might fly away.
You don’t know what’s coming
any more
than the trees—
the wind’s simple language
is not
yours.
Maybe nothing?— No,
there’s no such thing
as nothing anymore.
Be ready to speak.
Hold your eyes open
as long as you can.
Second Story
Sit every day by the window,
repeat your mantra— he’ll come back,he’ll come back.
A bird is building its nest outside.
You don’t know its name, what to call it—
give it his name.
Watch as he lands in the branches,
a twig in his beak. Tilting his head,
considering, before placing it just so.
Soon, you’re rooting for him—
against the wind, the rain,
the neighborhood cats.
His song is so precise, his home
so sturdy, his hopping dance
so proud and joyful.
A few days later, you see him,
leaning against his dun-colored mate,
who leans into him.
And finally, inside your chest,
you feel the beating of wings
once again.
My notes: I’ve gone back and forth on the title for this one. The original title was “Second Story,” and it was shorter and the ending didn’t really go anywhere. When I rewrote it, I changed the title to “The Breakup” to make it more clear what the first stanza is talking about, but I’m going back and forth on the title; “Second Story” is also literal (looking out the second story window, where you would see into the top of the tree), but probably is stronger with other associations? Titles are hard. I’m much happier with the ending, though.
Rejection
Tell me— I thought I wanted—
but your hands are so cold,
the opposite of sunshine.
I imagined myself into
a thousand people
capable of being loved.
Avoided mirrors, photographs,
recordings
of the sound of my voice.
Then I stood too close—
and there, in your eyes,
was my reflection.
That’s all. Truth
is where everything
ends.
Although this poem isn’t new, I did just get a couple of rejections, so I figured it was time to post it! And, as you can see, it’s not exactly about having your work rejected. I don’t know what else to say than that – this is what rejection feels like.
Loneliness / Reflection
Was it for the moon
that I dressed up,
combed out my hair?
Tonight, he is dancing
with the lake
instead.
By the window,
swaying gently,
I put on the blues.
Close my eyes, feel
the absence of hands
on my hips.
As is often the case, I couldn’t decide on a title. For now, I’ve just gone ahead and used both of them. Why not?
Freedom
If freedom means
not being tied down
by the things of this world,
go and be that woman
bent nearly double, sleeping
on the bus stop bench.
Yesterday, her face
was one great bruise.
Tomorrow?
Maybe freedom
will have edged
a little bit closer.
Maybe
it will have gathered her up
completely.
