Abby E. Murray: “As the next administration unveiled its picks for senior leadership and cabinet positions this week, I was especially struck by the terrible choice for a defense secretary: a man who has a history of demonizing any life that doesn’t closely mirror his own. Most of my daily work involves examining and bridging the canyons that divide military & civilian populations, and I am imagining how much harder it’s going to be next year. I wrote this poem as a way to connect my pacifist life to the lives of service members in danger. Happy veterans day indeed.” (web)
“The Dark Miracle of Insomnia” by Jim DanielsPosted by Rattle
Jim Daniels
THE DARK MIRACLE OF INSOMNIA
Chimayó is home of the Santuario de Nuestro Señor de Esquipulas. Local residents walk miles, often barefoot, to visit the sanctuary… Many take away “tierra bendita” (holy dirt) from a hole in the floor, claiming miraculous healings. Sometimes referred to as “Lourdes of America,” the golden adobe church with its twin bell towers attracts close to 300,000 visitors a year.
for Demetria Martinez
She handed me a baggie of holy dirt—
a gift from a new friend. Back at the motel,
it reminded me of various drugs I’d ingested
in various ways. I wondered if airport security
would sniff it out the next day. That night
in a curtain-less room, I watched darkness
swallow the random lights of Albuquerque
while the freeway whisper faded to a nearly
inaudible hiss. I could not sleep because
an alarm was set or I had eaten too much
or not enough or I hadn’t stretched or I was almost
cold and faintly overheated, over-hearted
with longing for my family back in Pittsburgh,
back in Detroit, back in Oshkosh, Wisconsin
and Paw Paw, Michigan, and in the deep dark
ground or drifting forever away from me.
The tremble of panic strummed taut strings
till all was rigid and brittle, the hair-
line crack of sanity spreading with each blink,
each heart thud, each dry swallow. Finally.
I grabbed the baggie and spread the red dirt
in an arc around my bed.
I did not have pills of any kind. Cold turkeys
gobbled at my sliding door, steaming the glass.
I felt like I was spreading salt across
the icy sidewalk back in Pittsburgh
where my children slept, their soft breath holy
as all get out. This is the part of the song
where the gospel choir sways into action,
kicks it into the high gear many of us die trying
to find, burning out the clutch of the heart,
the soul, the faint smell of burning rubber,
and we’re stranded forever.
I woke up to the alarm
of a truck beeping in reverse
and morning’s definite light. When I rose,
I wept at the faint red half-circle in the faded green
Jim Daniels: “I don’t get many poems out of being on the road giving poetry readings, but this is one of them. I think a lot of writers suffer from insomnia, but it’s not something we talk about a lot. I’ve always felt vaguely ashamed of having sleep problems. But, when you can’t sleep, what else can do you but write?” (web)
Bob Lucky: “I love sound. I love languages, which may not be evident from the way I mangle them. For most of my adult life, I lived throughout Asia, from Japan to Saudi Arabia. And for a time in Ethiopia. Now I’m settled in northern Portugal. I’ve learned to get by. At my age, fluency is a rabbit I’ll never catch. This poem deals with that, obliquely. I suppose I write poetry to work on my English, and I’m pretty sure every word I use has been in someone else’s mouth before.”
Eric Kocher: “A little over ten years ago, my friend Mark made a joke. He said that I should try to be the first person to publish a poem in Sky Mall Magazine. There was something about shopping for the most inane, kitschy stuff on the planet while flying 30,000 feet above it, just to avoid a moment of boredom, that seemed to be the antithesis of poetry. The words “Sky Mall” got stuck in my head—lodged there. This is almost always how poems happen for me. Language itself seems to be in the way just long enough to build tension before it can open into a space that pulls me forward. These poems finally arrived while I was traveling, first alone, and then the following year with my wife, as a new parent in that hazy dream of the post-pandemic. Writing them felt like going on a shopping spree, of sorts, so I tried to let myself say yes to everything.”
Susan Johnson: “I spent my childhood being outside as much as possible and trying to solve the many puzzles that made up my life. I do the same as an adult, only now it’s language that I use to work through and understand what I encounter. I’m also more accepting when it doesn’t quite add up.”
Christine Rhein: “This poem, written in alphabetical order, is an attempt to confront the chaos that’s been promised, to hope that America’s voyage isn’t doomed, to hope that the planet isn’t doomed.” (web)
