An Appetite for Distraction

Who are you and whom do you love?

What do you remember about the earth

How will you begin?

Describe a morning you woke without fear?

Tell me what you know about dismemberment

Where did you come from/How did you arrive

Who was responsible for the suffering of your mother?

What is the shape of your body?

How will you live now?

What are the consequences of silence?

How will you/have you prepared for your death?

What would you say if you could?

12 Questions: Bhanu Kapil

Like the small hole by the path-side something lives in,

in me are lives I do not know the names of,

nor the fates of,

nor the hungers of or what they eat.

..

And in my streets-the narrow ones,

unlabeled on the self-map-

they follow stairs down music ears can’t follow,

and in my tongue borrowed by darkness,

in hours uncounted by the self-clock,

they speak in restless syllables of other losses, other

loves.

..

They leave behind

small holes that something unweighed by the self-scale

lives in.

Jane Hirshfield: Like the Small Hole by the Path-Side Something Lives In

You were never any good at astronomy,

but you know everything about darkness.

How much shame a fist can hold.

How every morning a summoning: gather all aches in the right order, fasten all bruises, leave

before the night dries on your body.

What are rooftops anyway but wounds for the sky to heal.

INSTRUCTIONS FOR WAKING UP: Adriana Cloud

I wake up & it breaks my heart. I draw the blinds & the thrill of rain breaks my heart. I go outside. I ride the train, walk among the buildings, men in Monday suits. The flight of doves, the city of tents beneath the underpass, the huddled mass, old women hawking roses, & children all of them, break my heart. There’s a dream I have in which I love the world. I run from end to end like fingers through her hair. There are no borders, only wind. Like you, I was born. Like you, I was raised in the institution of dreaming. Hand on my heart. Hand on my stupid heart.

Meditations in an Emergency: Cameron Awkward-Rich

Suddenly this defeat.

This rain.

The blues gone gray

and yellow

a terrible amber.

In the cold streets

your warm body.

In whatever room

your warm body.

Among all the people

your absence.

The people who are always

not you.

I have been easy with trees

too long.

Too familiar with mountains.

Joy has been a habit.

Now

suddenly

this rain.

Jack Gilbert: Rain

Patient, plodding, a green skin

growing over whatever winter did to us, a return

to the strange idea of continuous living despite

the mess of us, the hurt, the empty. Fine then,

I’ll take it, the tree seems to say, a new slick leaf

unfurling like a fist to an open palm, I’ll take it all.

Ada Limon: Instructions on not giving up

To speak to the core

that creates and swallows, to speak not always to what’s

shouting, but to what’s underneath asking for nothing.

I am at the mouth of the cave. I am willing to crawl.

Ada Limon: Notes on the below

I read the poem of a student and in the poem God wandered through a room picking up random objects - a pear, a vase, a shoe - and in bewilderment said, “I made this?”. Apparently God had forgotten making anything at all. I awarded this poem a prize, because I was a judge of such matters. I was not really awarding the student, I was awarding God; I knew someday the student would pick up his old poem and say in bewilderment, “I made this?”, and at that moment his whole world would be lost in the twilight, and when you are finally lost in the twilight, you cannot judge anything.

On Twilight: Mary Ruefle

Whatever handcuffs the soul,

I have brought here.

Whatever distances the heart,

I have brought here.

Ledger: Jane Hirshfield

Me, you/us, them—

What

molecule cell creature

came first to feel it?

Was it painful?

How came separation to chisel,

to cherish, to chafe?

Ledger: Jane Hirshfield