And salt will find the faithless soul
and endless waters welcome cold
and safe and sound
and safe and sound
worn and weary of your home
Play On: Kathryn Joseph – The Weary (The Quay Sessions)
Poem: “More Than You Gave” by Philip Levine
We have the town we call home wakening for dawn
which isn’t yet here but is promised, we have
our tired neighbors rising in ones and twos, we have
the sky slowly separating itself from the houses
to become the sky while the stars blink a last time
and vanish to make way for us to enter the great stage
of an ordinary Tuesday in ordinary time. We have
our curses, our gripes, our lies all on the stale breath
of 6:37 a.m. in the city no one dreams
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Saturday Song: Max Brodie – “The Summer Song”
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Poem: “5PM in Bloomington” by Alex Dang
And we’re driving again. We live out of these
suitcases and I’m feeling like that glamour
shines through the car fatigue that we wear
tight on our skin. I’m still convinced I’m
dreaming. We’ve been through a dozen states
and not one of them has been regret. Wasn’t
I destined to a textbook shaped coffin today?
There was a test, right? But now, now
these days are cup runneth over
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Poem: “Love Don’t Live Here Anymore” by Nathan McClain
She thought she was alone.
My father had left her.
She’d hum in the kitchen—
she thought she was alone—
her song the sound
a needle makes lapping
the innermost groove of an LP,
almost a screech—
she thought she was alone
since dad had left her, leaving behind
some burnt down trees.
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Poetry: “Blood” by Naomi Shihab Nye
“A true Arab knows how to catch a fly in his hands,”
my father would say. And he’d prove it,
cupping the buzzer instantly
while the host with the swatter stared.
In the spring our palms peeled like snakes.
True Arabs believed watermelon could heal fifty ways.
I changed these to fit the occasion.
Years before, a girl knocked,
wanted to see the Arab.
I said we didn’t have one.
After that, my father told me who he was,
“Shihab”—“shooting star”—
a good name, borrowed from the sky.
Once I said, “When we die, we give it back?”
He said that’s what a true Arab would say.
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Poetry: “The Colour of Pomegranates,” Sujit Prasad
It cuts through suddenly, expertly, this want to talk to you — like the way you used to open pomegranates. Nothing was wasted, not time, not an extra ruby-seed on the inside. You always said that one does not cut a fruit — you ask them to open, gently, and they would let you in. They knew you would be fair while splitting them. I try to talk to you, cutting through time. It does not open. It says, learn from your mother.
-Sujit Prasad
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“A sparrow in a storm, fragile as the wealth that you hide in your heart” – Berlin, Brett
Recently stumbled across this gorgeous song by indie band Brett off their second album Mode. They’re on Spotify, but that wouldn’t embed, so here the song off their Soundcloud page.
Lyrics:
A sparrow in a storm, fragile as the wealth that you hide in your heart
just wait a little more, stay until you run and the words tumble out
save your ransom, leave your hand with the mother’s touch, take my chances
pay your sum but it’s far too much
are you aware, well, someone should tell you, are you aware, well,
someone should tell you
who
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Poetry: Is It Better Where You Are? by Christopher Salerno
The bakery’s graffiti either spells HOPE
or NOPE. But hope and results
are different, said Fanny Brawne to her Keats
voiding his unreasonable lung.
Getting off the medicine
completely means light again
blinking to light. Device returned
to its factory settings. The complete black
of before the meteor shower
above the bakery. If you lose the smell
of leather, lemon, or rose,
studies show you will fail at being
Poets.org, Christopher Salerno
Coffee and Irony 