Category Archives: poem

Lemon

Lemon in my hand has such soft waxen rind,
the smell is citrus, light, acidic, clean.

I am now 8 years old in a world of sand, sucking lemon juice
through a peppermint stick, a grandparent’s treat.

Then, I am Positano, a lemon of such giant size, and my family
together watches rain wash candied terra cotta roofs clean.

Once more, I’m at lunch in a blue room with my great aunt
squeezing a distracted, thin slice into a diet coke.

Always, a small bit of juice finds a crack in the skin and stings.
Tomorrow, we’ll roll the pulp in sugar and have a sweet lick.

Planting Peas from American Life in Poetry

Lovely, lovely poem featured in American Life in Poetry today. I could read this over and over again. I hope you enjoy it as much as I do. 

BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE

The ancient Chinese poets used to say that at some point in each poem the poet ought to lift his (or her) eyes, ought to look beyond the surface of the present into something deeper and more meaningful. Here is just such a poem by Linda M. Hasselstrom, who lives in South Dakota.

Planting Peas

It’s not spring yet, but I can’t
wait anymore. I get the hoe,
pull back the snow from the old
furrows, expose the rich dark earth.
I bare my hand and dole out shriveled peas,
one by one.

I see my grandmother’s hand,
doing just this, dropping peas
into gray gumbo that clings like clay.
This moist earth is rich and dark
as chocolate cake.

Her hands cradle
baby chicks; she finds kittens in the loft
and hands them down to me, safe beside
the ladder leading up to darkness.

I miss
her smile, her blue eyes, her biscuits and gravy,
but mostly her hands.
I push a pea into the earth,
feel her hands pushing me back. She’ll come in May,
she says, in long straight rows,
dancing in light green dresses.

American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation (www.poetryfoundation.org), publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright ©1984 by Linda M. Hasselstrom; http://www.windbreakhouse.com. Her most recent book of poems, written with Twyla Hansen, is Dirt Songs, The Backwaters Press, 2011. Poem reprinted by permission of Linda M. Hasselstrom and the publisher. Introduction copyright © 2014 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction’s author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.

Moving

Boxes, open at the top, spring up like a new development
of cookie cutter homes waiting to be bought.
You discover pieces of Ikea chairs never assembled
languishing in a closet you opened twice in four years
and M&M earrings (a gift?) never removed from their backing.

There is dust, and dirt, ticket stubs and cat toys shoved far
beneath the couch. You find yourself sitting on the hard floor for hours
listening to music and thumbing through photo albums. Your face was fuller then.

Beneath you the people at the bar pound their fists as the Orioles
hit a run. Across the street, cars wait for steamed crabs at Chris’ Seafood.

Heat rises. Night falls. Tomorrow, this is nothing but a dream.

single in the summer

You, girl, are preoccupied
with the way heat from an afternoon sidewalk
steams your bare thighs. You let
thunder bang around in the empty
cavity of your day-dreamin mind.

Forget what they sold you.

Love is not a hot dress, a polished spoon,
a bleak expectation, 

It is a moment you’ll never own;
a long-awaited rain slipping into dirt,
or how you can silently lean
into a Miles Davis’ horn 
sounding a single humid and final note.

Content with the Rustling

Man in boat, alone with book,
Sighs mightily. Looks skyward.

Mallards, in pairs, sail close,
Circling for bread, expectant.

Clouds above, seek resolve, then
Resoundingly, give their load a rest.

Humble water leaps, so tickled, and
Time, meanwhile, whispers advice to

Cattails: souls who look, circle, seek
Should rest, content with the rustling.

First Morel by Amy Fleury #AmericanLifeinPoetry

I love the immediacy of this poem. The raw feel of it~ Enjoy!

American Life in Poetry: Column 474
BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE

Let’s celebrate the first warm days of spring with a poem for mushroom hunters, this one by Amy Fleury, who lives in Louisiana.

First Morel
Up from wood rot,
wrinkling up from duff
and homely damps,
spore-born and cauled
like a meager seer,
it pushes aside earth
to make a small place
from decay. Bashful,
it brings honeycombed
news from below
of the coming plenty
and everything rising.

American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation (www.poetryfoundation.org), publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Copyright © 2013 by Amy Fleury from her most recent book of poems, Sympathetic Magic, Southern Illinois University Press, 2013. Poem reprinted by permission of Amy Fleury and the publisher. Introduction copyright © 2014 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction’s author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.

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American Life in Poetry provides newspapers and online publications with a free weekly column featuring contemporary American poems. The sole mission of this project is to promote poetry: American Life in Poetry seeks to create a vigorous presence for poetry in our culture. There are no costs for reprinting the columns; we do require that you register your publication here and that the text of the column be reproduced without alteration.