Poem of the Day

For some reason I can’t keep my eyes open tonight. I’m calling on a suggestion from my poetry pal to avoid tanking on the PotD. This is from the collection Lucifer at the Starlight.

You with the Crack Running Through You
By Kim Addonizio

I can seep in, I can dry clear.

And yes it would still be there.
And no I couldn’t hold you forever.

But isn’t it drafty at night,

alone in that canyon
with the wind of the mind

dragging its debris—

I wanted to put
my mouth on you

and draw out whatever toxin …

—but I understand. There are limits
to love. Here is a flower

that needs no water.
It can grow anywhere,

nourished on nothing.
And yes.

You know, if I actually made statements in my blog about how low my poetry file was in order to elicit suggestions from readers, my behavior might be considered shameless. (HA!) Thank you again to my poetry buddy for never failing to come to my rescue, especially when he sends something by Kim Addonizio!

For You
By Kim Addonizio

For you I undress down to the sheaths of my nerves.
I remove my jewelry and set it on the nightstand,
I unhook my ribs, spread my lungs flat on a chair.
I dissolve like a remedy in water, in wine.
I spill without staining, and leave without stirring the air.
I do it for love. For love, I disappear.

My poetry buddy was inspired by yesterday’s poem to share today’s with me.

Prayer
By Kim Addonizio

Sometimes, when we’re lying after love,
I look at you and see your body’s future
of lying beneath the earth; putting the heel
of my hand against your rib I feel how faint
and far away the heartbeat is. I rest
my cheek against your left nipple and listen
to the surge of blood, seeing your life splashed out,
filmy water hurled from a pot
onto dry grass. And I want to be pressed
deep into the bed and covered over,
the way a seed is pressed into a hole,
the dirt tramped down with a trowel.
I want to be a failed seed, the kind
that doesn’t grow, that doesn’t know it’s meant to.
I want to lie here without moving, lifeless
as an animal that’s slaughtered, its blood smeared
on a doorpost, I want death to take me if it
has to, to spare you, I want it to pass over.

Here’s another one sent by a friend. I think it’s a great poem, and I’m especially impressed with the use of the word sidereal (spoken like a true word nerd, I know).

Dance
By Kim Addonizio

When you are finally, magically, able to clone
yourself into several identical women,

so that each one can move toward a man
who’s been waiting for his turn

to come around for the first time, or maybe again,
won’t you be happy then,

all of you together in a lustrous ballroom,
each woman wearing her distinguishing number,

the judges scoring everyone the same, music spilling
from the bandstand, the men thrilled

to be near you, each one whispering
a different pet name, each one polishing

with his black shoes a perfect circle of floor
while he raises you up, holding your

hips in his hands, gazing at you with his brown
or mottled green eyes, looking down

with his startling blue ones, taking you into a corner
then spinning you out toward the center

where the light from the mirrorball
splinters over your skin, sidereal

as your sequined dress, and you feel
as complete as you’ll ever feel,

moving through all your true and beautiful lives
while the real one pales.

I discovered a poem by Kim Addonizio in Santa Fe a couple years ago, but I’d never sought out more until now. I love the imagery in this one.

The Sound
By Kim Addonizio

Marc says the suffering that we don’t see
still makes a sort of sound—a subtle, soft
noise, nothing like the cries of screams that we
might think of—more the slight scrape of a hat doffed
by a quiet man, ignored as he stands back
to let a lovely woman pass, her dress
just brushing his coat. Or else it’s like a crack
in an old foundation, slowly widening, the stress
and slippage going on unnoticed by
the family upstairs, the daughter leaving
for a date, her mother’s resigned sigh
when she sees her. It’s like the heaving
of a stone into a lake, before it drops.
It’s shy, it’s barely there. It never stops.

This was my favorite poem at the Palace of the Governors. I love the lines Even the tourists are hushed / by so much evidence of faith. I haven’t been to the Santuario at Chimayo, but I’m sad to say that I didn’t see any evidence of these lines at the Loretto Chapel in Santa Fe, the Cathedral Church of St. Francis of Assisi in Santa Fe, or the San Francisco de Asis church in Taos.

Santuario at Chimayo
By Kim Addonizio

It’s so quiet among the carved saints,
the votives giving out, one by one, the old
Indian woman scraping wax and spent wicks.

Grief lights them again. Photographs
of the dead are tucked into the corners
of framed Christs, dogtags slung

from a punched-tin cross—Jaime Escalero,
his number and blood type.
And Catholic. Even the tourists are hushed

by so much evidence of faith.
In the room behind the altar
a small hole holds the dirt

said to heal. The blind
come here, and the broken-hearted.
They squat down

to take the earth
in their hands and let it run through.
Every afternoon

the old woman slips new candles
into their sheaths
and the random light from cameras

is like souls entering
or abandoning the world,
each with that same brightness.