Fireflies

And these are my vices:
impatience, bad temper, wine,
the more than occasional cigarette,
an almost unquenchable thirst to be kissed,
a hunger that isn’t hunger
but something like fear, a staunching of dread
and a taste for bitter gossip
of those who’ve wronged me—for bitterness—
and flirting with strangers and saying sweetheart
to children whose names I don’t even know
and driving too fast and not being Buddhist
enough to let insects live in my house
or those cute little toylike mice
whose soft grey bodies in sticky traps
I carry, lifeless, out to the trash
and that I sometimes prefer the company of a book
to a human being, and humming
and living inside my head
and how as a girl I trailed a slow-hipped aunt
at twilight across the lawn
and learned to catch fireflies in my hands,
to smear their sticky, still-pulsing flickering
onto my fingers and earlobes like jewels.

– Cecilia Woloch

Postscript:

I love the conversational tone of this poem, the way it starts off on this confessional note, managing to sustain your interest through the wryness and the fact that you can relate to it, building to the final image of fireflies still-pulsing flickering.

I first came across this poem on The Writer’s Almanac, an NPR show. You can hear it being read out on the show here.

Here’s a link to her blog, with her real bio and her anti-bio – personally, I like the second better.

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Published:
March 23, 2011 – 08:00
Author:
By Madhu
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Anyways

Anyone born anywhere near
my home town says it this way,
with an s on the end:
“The lake is cold but I swim in it anyways,”
“Kielbasa gives me heartburn but I eat it anyways,”
“(She/he) treats me bad, but I love (her/him) anyways.”
Even after we have left that place
and long settled elsewhere, this
is how we say it, plural.
I never once, not once, thought twice about it
until my husband, a man from far away,
leaned toward me, one day during our courtship,
his grey-green eyes, which always sparkle,
doubly sparkling over our candle-lit meal.
“Anyway,” he said. And when he saw
that I didn’t understand, he repeated the word:
“Anyway. Way, not ways.”
Corner of napkin to corner of lip, he waited.
I kept him waiting. I knew he was right,
but I kept him waiting anyways,
in league, still, with me and mine:
Slovaks homesick for the Old Country their whole lives
who dug gardens anyways,
and deep, hard-water wells.
I looked into his eyes, their smoky constellations,
and then I told him. It is anyways, plural,
because the word must be large enough
to hold all of our reasons. Anyways is our way
of saying there is more than one reason,
and there is that which is beyond reason,
that which cannot be said.
A man dies and his widow keeps his shirts.
They are big but she wears them anyways.
The shoemaker loses his life savings in the Great Depression
but gets out of bed, every day, anyways.
We are shy, my people, not given to storytelling.
We end our stories too soon, trailing off “Anyways….”
The carpenter sighs, “I didn’t need that finger anyways.”
The beauty school student sighs, “It’ll grow back anyways.”
Our faith is weak, but we go to church anyways.
The priest at St. Cyril’s says God loves us. We hear what isn’t said.
This is what he must know about me, this man, my love.
My people live in the third rainiest city in the country,
but we pack our picnic baskets as the sky darkens.
We fall in love knowing it may not last, but we fall.
This is how we know home:
someone who will look into our eyes
and say what could ruin everything, but say it,
regardless.

– Suzanne Cleary

Postscript:

A poem about identity and home, as much as it is language. I love the conversational tone, the way these significant things are mentioned without dramatic inflections, the repetition of ‘anyways’ throughout the poem. It gives you this sense of a people that are stolid, hard working, salt of the earth, with real feelings that are no less real for not being expressed.
Listen to it being read here.

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Published:
March 22, 2011 – 08:00
Author:
By Madhu
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When I Hear Your Name

When I hear your name
I feel a little robbed of it;
it seems unbelievable
that half a dozen letters could say so much

My compulsion is to blast down every wall with your name
I’d paint it on all the houses
there wouldn’t be a well
I hadn’t leaned into
to shout your name there,
nor a stone mountain
where I hadn’t uttered
those six separate letters
that are echoed back.

My compulsion is
to teach the birds to sing it,
to teach the fish to drink it,
to teach men that there is nothing
like the madness of repeating your name.

My compulsion is to forget altogether
the other 22 letters, all the numbers,
the books I’ve read, the poems I’ve written.
To say hello with your name.
To beg bread with your name.
‘She always says the same thing,’ they’d say when they saw me,
and I’d be so proud, so happy, so self-contained.

And I’ll go to the other world with your name on my tongue,
and all their questions I’ll answer with your name
– the judges and saints will understand nothing –
God will sentence me to repeating it endlessly and forever.

– Gloria Fuertes

Postscript:

What’s to say? Here’s more about Fuertes. Also, this poem reminded me of this poem by Meerabai.
Is there something about Spanish that lends itself to this imagery? Just a thought.

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Published:
March 21, 2011 – 08:00
Author:
By Madhu
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