Weekly Edition #25
Art by Claudia Tremblay
Where Babies Come From by Jeffrey McDaniel
For my eighth birthday
I got a toy train set
my father helped assemble.
My job was to hand him
pieces of track and re-light
the cigarettes that went out
in his mouth. Halfway
through, I asked him
where babies come from.
He told me that eight years
ago today I showed up
on the front stoop
in a cardboard box, how
he spent the whole afternoon
putting me together,
just like this train set,
that I was probably lucky
the box arrived on a Saturday.
Other poems I read this week: (full poem in links)
"It isn’t easy giving up limbs,
trying to manage with that much
less to eat each week, that much more
money we know we’ll never make,
things we not only can’t buy, but
can’t afford to look at in the stores;
this hurts us, and yet we manage, we survive"
-Song Against Natural Selection by Edward Hirsch
"Even as I fry these fish I think of
their heads against the sky
while the birds worked on a patch of sea
on the lee side of a sand bar that split the water
like the broken spine of a ship,
and as I turn these fish in the pan
I think of the day when I knew I had you,
and then the next, and then the day after that." -It Took All My Energy by Tony Wallace
"If I was a love poet
I’d write about how I melt in front of you like an ice sculpture
Every time I hear the vibration in your voice so whenever I see your name on the caller ID my heart
It plays hop scotch inside of my chest.
Yo it climbs on to my ribs like monkey bars and I feel like a child all over again.
I know this sounds strange but every now and then I pray that God somehow turns you back into one of my ribs…
Just so that I would never have to spend an entire day without you." -Love Poem Medley by Rudy Francisco
Day ends, and before sleep
when the sky dies down, consider
your altered state: has this day
changed you? Are the corners
sharper or rounded off? Did you
live with death? Make decisions
that quieted? Find one clear word
that fit? At the sun’s midpoint
did you notice a pitch of absence,
bewilderment that invites
the possible? What did you learn
from things you dropped and picked up
and dropped again? Did you set a straw
parallel to the river, let the flow
carry you downstream? -Questions Before Dark by Jeanne Lohmann
Recommended Listening:
The Official Kottke.org Music Playlist
This Will Be Our Year - The Zombies
Wu-Tang Clan: NPR Music Tiny Desk Concert Fuckin ‘n’ Rollin - Phantastic Ferniture
Links of the Week:
Lost & Found: An Endearing Animated Film About the Selflessness of True Love
27 Years Ago, One Woman Managed To Contact The Tribe That Killed John Chau
Serene images of unborn animals in the womb