April is National Poetry Month—and we could all use a little extra poetry lately. Five University of Wisconsin Press poets share a poem from their recently published collections.
Ganbatte by Sarah Kortemeier
Kortemeier: Most of my work means something different to me now than it did when I wrote it; this poem definitely does. Hold on. We need each other, all our collective strength, all our love.
春 [haru] Japanese. Spring.
The sun hides under
the days. Lift them away, like wet planks
from a storm-wrecked house.
One removed, two—a breath,
a cry, a light
strikes a smudged, thin face—
and there is the spring, broken, starving,
still alive. Hoist her out.
If the house by Molly Spencer
Spencer: In these days of sheltering, I’ve been thinking a lot about Linda Gregg’s poem, “We Manage Most When We Manage Small.” It strikes me today—years after writing it—that “Love at These Coordinates” is about managing small in a particular place and in a time of bewilderment, much as we all are now. It’s about focusing on what’s concrete and at hand, and it’s about keeping at it, hanging in there, trying again in hope—with no guarantee of results, and despite the impermanence of everything.
Love at These Coordinates
Put the window here. No
put it here. Where
the leaves are about to burn
and blow away. Keep sweeping
over the bare place
where
you thought you left
your body—breezeway
strike plate
tread of the stair.
Here is the sill
where at the end of
every winter I have tried
to force the paperwhites
to bloom.
Fruit by Bruce Snider
Snider: In this time of social distancing, it’s easy for us to feel disconnected from one another. I wrote “The Average Human” thinking about the imperceptible ways we’re always connected, even across place and time.
The Average Human
breath contains approximately 1044 molecules, which, once exhaled,
in time spread evenly through the atmosphere
so today I took
in the last breaths of James
Baldwin Marie Curie Genghis
Kahn my great great grandmother’s
breath entering me beside the breath
of a Viking slave boy immolated
on the flames of his master’s
burning corpse. I inhaled
African queens Chinese
emperors the homeless
man with the bright blue
coat down the street. If oxygen
is the third most plentiful
element in the universe, moving
through us like Virgil through
the underworld, how long
have I tasted the girl
drowned among cattails near
the murky shore? In ancient Egypt
a priestess packed a corpse with
salt but not before a breath
escaped that two thousand years
later entered me or at least
atoms of it, a molecule. Plato
theorized atoms in 400 BC
and this morning outside
Athens I took in his last breath,
my lungs damp crypts
where Charon’s oars dipped
into the black waters of the River
Styx, not knowing who would
pay the ferryman and
with what coin on what tongue.
No Day at the Beach by John Brehm
Brehm: I chose this poem because it speaks to the sense of shared vulnerability, as individuals and as a species, that we’re all feeling right now.
Field of Vision
Our survival cost us our happiness,
always scanning for lions
stalking us on the open
savannahs—is that
a panther or just wind
in the tall grass moving?
The carefree became
a big cat’s satisfied sleep.
The rest of us are here,
five million years of fear
hard-wiring our brains
to be on guard, to look
for trouble, for the one
thing wrong with this picture,
whatever the picture might be.
Now we do it out of habit,
even when there’s no reason,
when we’re perfectly safe,
walking out each morning,
naked, under the baobab trees,
into the lion’s field of vision.
Queen in Blue by Ambalila Hemsell
Hemsell: Almost every poem in my collection is in some way about the deeply intertwined nature of death and birth, violence and creation. This poem imagines the return to a vital and animalistic existence amidst the breakdown of capitalistic society. The poem posits that there is joy to be found somewhere in the alchemy of gratitude, love, and survival.
joy
joy spreads like blood on the sheets, love, and we are black
blooded thieves, turnip takers in our lucky rabbit skins.
whiskey makes the good heart powerful and we thump thump
our drums until sunup. chant ourselves hoarse through the smoking
wet cedar. the system of currency and want has lost its sway. I have now
only the natural sorts of hunger. with that in mind, let us feast.
with that in mind, let us cleave the river from the bank with the cosmic axe.
feed the deer from our pockets, the oatmeal we ourselves were raised on
and will raise our children on again. with that in mind, ravage me.
have you seen the quiet way in fog the dawn barely breaks? it is treason
for the day to enter with so little ceremony. I want fireworks. I want
the slaughter of lambs for our holy days, but each day is holier than the last.
as we plummet from our high banyan seat the short switch beats the rug,
the golden beets are slow to come and you, love, accept my hurricane
to your stout trunk, accept the natural uprooting. the bevel meeting of me to you,
god, speak on the smoothing of stone by water, and the fitting of stone to stone.
we are meek walkers on the once lush globe. now, among the perishing, we count
our blessings and shed our shoes.