I just want to pause for a minute and celebrate six months of Part-Time Poets. This little dream I had is growing up! Thank you for reading and for supporting us with your comments and shares!
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Michelle and the Part-Time Poets
Holding on to August
Around the time summer starts saying she wouldn’t dare depart as early as tomorrow, but in the same breath admits she’s leaving soon, there’s a birthday. She is my second-born. She thawed the loss of one late February. She is the ripple that arrived on the surface of still waters. She turns 17 and I watch her wake. She is so very warm. And the fire that wraps bodies before, through, and after noon is going the way of the maples and will soon offer its absolute best on the ends of forks. And that’s been her beauty ever since she stole my oxygen on Monday, August 21, 2006. A Leo, a lover of life, a daughter. Mine. Here. Wow. And here and now, just when my heart starts to mourn a line of lasts that stretches past these foundations found, I see her new, only just beginning, and always burning. She is my ember. She is the weight I waited for. And how do I hold onto August after such a long, cold winter? Really, truly, I ask: How does a mother hold the elements of a storm?
Poetry is a jar
I coax spiky, sharp thoughts out with a needle from underneath ribs. They make a satisfying plink in my jar. I press hands to my soft stomach, a diviner pressing sun-scorched clay, searching for water. I listen for gulps and clenches, dribble droplets of raw emotion in my jar. I look to creation: the rising and setting, waxing and waning, consuming and diminishing, season my jar with salt, smoke and bone. I sheaf through the Word, pour in symbol, metaphor, and truth everlasting. I muddle and shake, like a good alchemist, hold out the jar and say, “Do you see it?” “Do you feel it too?”
proof of life
the gray hairs sprout like wildflowers across my head. a part of my mind whispers but you aren’t even 30 yet. i push it away— grateful for every wry, shiny hair that glitters in the sun.
Ache and Awe
Why can’t you go with me? he asks the night before the first day of school and I think about when we were always together for nine months, completely and then after strapped to my chest or in my arms still connected by an invisible cord but then the space between our bodies started to grow wider like a river carving a valley in the desert and he started exploring the other side of the water climbing up the bank, further away from me but this is how the story goes how it’s supposed to read so tomorrow he will go and I will stay on my side of the shore, waiting in the valley of ache and awe
The Guarantees
In the slog of sick days, every morning sores and more sores, every afternoon fevers climbing, every evening bodies limp and heavy with sleep, I go out to catalog common miracles—a sea of grass, a low-hanging sun, a child singing in the swing. This, this is all I need to be happy. Someone is always suffering somewhere, but there are other guarantees, too— A child chirping on despite everything, the sun coming down to sit awhile, the grass stretching out its arms to hold me if I let it.
Mud
I glance up from the book of poetry I am reading to giggles and splashes Mud flying everywhere Rain boots becoming water pitchers Flecks of brown speckling their faces Puddle-logged pants indistinguishable from the earth below Our laughs ride on the wind like spring personified Sun streaming from behind unassuming clouds Kissing us hello I marvel at these moments that stretch time like fresh honey Poetry In the form of play At my fingertips
Dear Influencer
Goddess of algorithms, Hestia of the pixelated screen, cast your golden net of perfection over me. Illuminate your ways—the fingerprint-free refrigerator door, the gleaming toilet bowl. Show me how you conjure steaming nourishment for your families, plated and served on a pristine hearth. Style my family in bamboo cotton, filter my blemishes, smooth my cellulite. Brew me the elixir that makes your husband smile like that. Grant me a grid of perfection, color-matched and set to music. Soundtrack my life, craft me a narrative. Don’t crack the glass—just let me through the portal, into the magic of the world you’re showing me.
I want to remember you like this
Bright-eyed and knobby-kneed. Sweaty and dirty and utterly delightful. You are a Jackson Pollock painting, bright and bold and breathtaking. You are a choose-your-own-adventure book, a blank page begging for ink. Your hands flutter like birds, and they always reach for mine. You are a rainbow. You are confetti. You are goodness incarnate. Like you swallowed the sun and became the light yourself. You have a horse’s heart: wild and pure and begging to break free. Eyes on the horizon. Soul at the ready. You don’t look back.
Jillian Stacia
Fire Safety
These days our life is highly flammable In the way that small children are always combustible Their needs the flames that lick at my consciousness Their troubles the smoke that clouds my sight Exhaustion poured over all of it like gasoline You and I two fire chiefs with hoses at the ready At night we fall into bed bone-tired Our scorched hands finding each other And there among the ashes we whisper “Don’t you think the inferno is actually kind of beautiful?” Tomorrow the alarm will sound And we’ll once again don our turnout gear But tonight our dreams are populated By the arresting charm of dancing flames
The Last Days of Summer
White crepe myrtle petals delicate as lace fall from trees and swirl into sidewalks, soon to be replaced with sturdier leaves painted red, orange, and yellow. The only towels at the pool are ones forgotten, collecting mildew and languishing in Lost & Found with dive rings and goggles. The playground once swarming with children hanging, sliding, and pumping legs is bare, save the toddlers (and their mothers). Pumpkins replace watermelons and swimsuits are swapped for sweatshirts and the woody, cedar scent of pencils supplants coconut sunscreen’s perfume. Sun plays peek-a-boo -- hiding her intensity, sinking earlier, and waiting longer to reveal her daily glory.
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Love all of these! "Dear Influencer" solidified my decision to stay off instagram a bit longer ;)
Love! Always look forward to this.