Maggie Millner
There was some connection to be made—
your death, the election, the absurd snow—
and I charged myself with making it, walking
down Court Street after therapy, passing under
mantled elms, watching the skaters' ankles
brace against the weight of their careening.

In the rink's center, a girl spun herself into a small
torpedo, red coat flaring conical, dark hat poking out
like a singed wick. She was likely half my age
though it was clear she possessed something already
I had no hope of ever developing. My lot was to watch—
to lift the velvet rope and lead her image through

the darkly papered corridor of thought and record
the way it changed what preexisted it. As I started
south, the fat flakes hardened into white gravel. Poison
wafted off the newsstands in vaporous wings.
With every step, I felt the girl complete another turn
inside me, flung on by her own centrifugal will.

Because I couldn't stand to face the other figures
in my mind, I studied her the whole walk home—
her thrown head, cinched laces, her skate etching
language into me with its bright blade. When I fit
my house key in the lock, her spinning slowed. When
I passed your photo on the wall, it started up again.
from the journal PLOUGHSHARES
READ ABOUT TODAY'S POEM
Share Share
Tweet Tweet
Forward Forward
In the months after a close friend died, everything I saw seemed like a message from him. Decoding these messages became its own obsessive enterprise—seeking patterns among the images and runes—which is not so different, in the end, from the enterprise of writing or reading poetry.

Maggie Millner on "Magical Thinking"
"How a Parisian Sex Worker Stole the Heart of Poet EE Cummings"

"Previously unseen letters show that the wartime romance was much more than a casual fling, and may even have inspired the American’s later works....The letters, dated 1917, which are held in the Houghton Library, Harvard, reveal that many decades before i carry your heart with me, Cummings was writing privately with the same passion that he went on to become famous for."
 
via THE GUARDIAN
READ ALL TODAY'S HEADLINES
Resources for Supporting and Uplifting the Black Community

My Block, My Hood, My City: "My Block, My Hood, My City provides underprivileged youth with an awareness of the world and opportunities beyond their neighborhood.  We take students on explorations focused on STEM, Arts & Culture, Citizenry & Volunteerism, Health, Community Development, Culinary Arts, and Entrepreneurism."

The Loveland Foundation: "With the barriers affecting access to treatment by members of diverse ethnic and racial groups, Loveland Therapy Fund provides financial assistance to Black women and girls nationally seeking therapy."

National Black Disability Coalition : "NBDC is dedicated to examining and improving; community leadership, family inclusion, entrepreneurship, civil rights, service delivery systems, education and information and Black disabled identity and culture through the lenses of ableism and racism."
Image of dark blue-black sky spattered with stars from which a figure outlined in stars is emerging
Poetry Daily stands with the Black community. 
We oppose racism, oppression, and police brutality.
We will continue to amplify diverse voices in the poetry world.
Black Lives Matter.
What Sparks Poetry:
Jennifer Chang on "The World"

"For days I could go nowhere. The temperature dwelled stubbornly below freezing. The roads were too slick to walk on. My car was encased in ice, a solid blue cube, and, quite comically, a red bicycle, leaning against a nearby shed, seemed to be waiting for me. I sat at the window, wearing two sweaters, looking at it."
READ THIS WEEK'S ISSUE
You have received this email because you submitted your email address at www.poems.com. 
If you would like to unsubscribe please click here.

© 2020 Poetry Daily, Poetry Daily, MS 3E4, 4400 University Dr., Fairfax, VA 22030

Design by the Binding Agency