Wild Words: Ferociously Nourishing Poetry

Turkeys

11/27/2022

Sometimes we saw shadows of gods
in the trees; silenced, we went on.
Sometimes the dog would bound off
over the snow, into the forest.
Sometimes a tree had twenty
or more black turkeys in it, each
seeming the size of a small black bear.
We remember them for their care
for their kind ever since we watched the big hen
in the very top of the tree shaking
load after load of apples down to the flock.
Sometimes I felt I would never
come out of the woods, I thought
its deeper darkness might absorb me
or feed me to the black turkeys
and I would cry out for the dog
and the dog would not answer.

- Galway Kinnell

How to Cut a Pomegranate

8/7/2022

"Never," said my father,
"Never cut a pomegranate
through the heart. It will weep blood.
Treat it delicately, with respect.

Just slit the upper skin across four quarters.
This is a magic fruit,
so when you split it open, be prepared
for the jewels of the world to tumble out,
more precious than garnets,
more lustrous than rubies,
lit as if from inside.
Each jewel contains a living seed.
Separate one crystal.
Hold it up to catch the light.
Inside is a whole universe.
No common jewel can give you this."

Afterwards, I tried to make necklaces
of pomegranate seeds.
The juice spurted out, bright crimson,
and stained my fingers, then my mouth.
I didn't mind. The juice tasted of gardens
I had never seen, voluptuous
with myrtle, lemon, jasmine
and alive with parrots' wings.

The pomegranate reminded me
that somewhere I had another home.

- Imtiaz Dharker

Personal

6/12/2022

Don’t take it personal, they said;
but I did, I took it all quite personal--

the breeze and the river and the color of the fields;
the price of grapefruit and stamps,

the wet hair of women in the rain--
And I cursed what hurt me

and I praised what gave me joy,
the most simple-minded of possible responses.

The government reminded me of my father,
with its deafness and its laws,

and the weather reminded me of my mom,
with her tropical squalls.

Enjoy it while you can, they said of Happiness
Think first, they said of Talk

Get over it, they said
at the School of Broken Hearts

but I couldn’t and I didn’t and I don’t
believe in the clean break;

I believe in the compound fracture
served with a sauce of dirty regret,

I believe in saying it all
and taking it all back

and saying it again for good measure
while the air fills up with I’m-Sorries

like wheeling birds
and the trees look seasick in the wind.

Oh life! Can you blame me
for making a scene?

You were that yellow caboose, the moon
disappearing over a ridge of cloud.

I was the dog, chained in some fool’s backyard;
barking and barking:

trying to convince everything else
to take it personal too.

- Tony Hoagland

it is so full here in myself

5/29/2022

Maiden, Mother, Crone by Rima Staines

have your eyes ever fallen upon a beast like me
i have the spine of a mulberry tree
the neck of a sunflower
sometimes i am the desert
at times the rain forest
but always the wild
my belly brims over the waistband of my pants
each strand of hair frizzing out like a lifeline
it took a long time to become
such a sweet rebellion
back then i refused to water my roots
till i realized
if i am the only one
who can be the wilderness
then let me be the wilderness
the tree trunk cannot become the branch
the jungle cannot become the garden
so why should i

- Rupi Kaur

Great As You Are

3/6/2022

Great As You Are by Cindy Wood
www.cindywoodart.com

Be like a bear in the forest of yourself.
Even sleeping you are powerful in your breath.
Every hair has life
and standing, as you do, swaying
from one foot to the other
all the forest stands with you.
Each minute sound, one after another,
is distinct in your ear. Here
in the blur of mixed sensations, you can
feel the crisp outline of being, particulate.
Great as you are, huge as you are and
growling like the deepest drum,
the continual vibration that makes music
what it is,
not some light stone skipped on the surface of things,
you travel below
sounding the depths where only the dauntless go.
Be like the bear and
do not forget
how you rounded your
massive shape over the just ripened
berry which burst
in your mouth that moment
how you rolled in
the wet grass, cool and silvery, mingling
with your sensate skin,
how you shut
your eyes and swam far and farther
still, starlight
shaping itself to your body,
starship rocking the grand, slow waves
under the white trees, in the
snowy night.

- Susan Griffin

The Scripture of Circle

1/30/2022

Female Strength by Helena Arturaleza Schotman

There is no refuge
No destination
No resolution
Only This

Blessed are the fruit of my womb
Blessed are the cycles that have no end
Blessed is the Wound
Blessed is the Hole

Blessed is the space that holds you always
Blessed is this unfinished life
Blessed is the eternal and unchanging
Blessed are we who bear the unbearable
who carry our cross from first to last breath

Blessed are we who know the relentless mercy of the
Mysterious Other
known only when we sacrifice our reaching

There is no refuge
No destination
No resolution
Only This

To you who are the Birther of Samsara
and the doorway to Nirvana
To you whose Love
is the bridge that flows between them
To you who holds the mirror of perfection
inside the crack of imperfection
whose Road leads nowhere and is everywhere

To you whose breast is the refuge of no refuge
To you whose passion dissolves all ignorance
and whose innocence reveals unstained beauty

Enveloped by your Grace
With nowhere to go
Around and around
Heart to the Ground

Here
I
am

-Maya Luna

Instructions on Not Giving Up

5/2/2021

Photo by Rezaul Islam. Used with permission.

More than the fuchsia funnels breaking out
of the crabapple tree, more than the neighbor's
almost obscene display of cherry limbs shoving
their cotton candy-colored blossoms to the slate
sky of Spring rains, it's the greening of the trees
that really gets to me. When all the shock of white
and taffy, the world's baubles and trinkets, leave
the pavement strewn with the confetti of aftermath,
the leaves come. Patient, plodding, a green skin
growing over whatever winter did to us, a return
to the strange idea of continuous living despite
the mess of us, the hurt, the empty. Fine then,
I'll take it, the tree seems to say, a new slick leaf
unfurling like a fist to an open palm, I'll take it all.

- Ada Limon

Book of Hours, II 1

1/24/2021

Photograph by Dave Hoefler.

You are not surprised at the force of the storm--
you have seen it growing.
The trees flee. Their flight
sets the boulevards streaming. And you know:
he whom they flee is the one
you move toward. All your senses
sing him, as you stand at the window.

The weeks stood still in summer.
The trees' blood rose. Now you feel
it wants to sink back
into the source of everything. You thought
you could trust that power
when you plucked the fruit:
now it becomes a riddle again
and you again a stranger.

Summer was like your house: you know
where each thing stood.
Now you must go out into your heart
as onto a vast plain. Now
the immense loneliness begins.

The days go numb, the wind
sucks the world from your senses like withered leaves.

Through the empty branches the sky remains.
It is what you have.
Be earth now, and evensong.
Be the ground lying under that sky.
Be modest now, like a thing
ripened until it is real,
so that he who began it all
can feel you when he reaches for you.

-Rainer Maria Rilke, translation by Joanna Macy

The World Began with Yes

1/3/2021

Trinity Seay, "First Breath"

One molecule said yes to another molecule and life was born.
- Clarice Lispector

It was always yes, si, da, ja
the sibilant sound of assent,
the slippery tongue in the mouth
of the lover, the da dawning,
the ya yelling,
the si, si, si, sugary & sweet
between jagged teeth.

It was always yes,
come in, welcome, eat me,
merge with me, love,
let’s join to make another
little bubble of us
who will seem like us combined
but turn out to be another.

It was always lust
not to be lonely,
lust for the apple, the pomegranate,
fruit of desire,
dense on the tongue,
making another you,
another me.

Oh love, eat me, I am yours,
fill my emptiness with joy,
with yes, da, si, si, si
let us begin that way
to make a new universe,
soulful, sad, silly,
& full of seas,
seas that are salty
& full of the stuff of life,
me, you, every wriggling creature
we can & can’t name
with alphabets as of yet unknown,
with letters that twist & turn
& try to escape the page, the scroll, the rock,
life beginning again
with only a word
of affirmation--yes!
Let it begin
& Be.

-Erica Jong

The Dream in the Garden

12/6/2020

Huge thanks to Wild Words' first
guest poet, reader and artist!
Francesca Preston
www.francescapreston.com

clothespins in elderberry ink
print by Francesca Preston

if music is the sound of fingertips
hitting a jug
in which someone once
carried water

mother
what purpose
in my growing beyond
your dream of my birth?

many times i’ve watched you
have it, the dream in the garden
where i emerge:

an old wooden clothespin
with cornsilk hair

you clip me to your breast then,
as if to jumpstart it

and after throw me away
for a reason i have not yet figured out

mother i was born with a body
thickly settled, dense
as a pomegranate

not a fruit steeped in the syrup
it will taste of

i was already hard
with the things
i had selected for myself

inside you i was
choosing and discarding
without lifting
a finger, i was

like the girl
in the department
store, deciding what
to steal

- Francesca Preston

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