Tag: hope

Three Poems by Justin Karcher

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When Hope Cries Out, It’s Usually Contained in Something It Shouldn’t Be

like how today at work someone calls
and asks me if the hospital accepts
old wedding dresses, because her mom
recently passed and she found hers
in the attic. The dresses can be used
for stillborn babies. After my shift is over
I take a walk and find a crock pot
in the street. When I look inside
there are scratch-offs. I imagine a witch
trying to brew a potion that would make
the economy fall in love with my city.
I guess she gave up before it was finished.

*

On My Way to AA, a Pickup Truck Raced by Me With an Iranian Flag Waving Out the Window

During the meeting, I couldn’t pay attention.
I was thinking about what my friend said
at the bar this past weekend, that she makes
her son carry his passport at all times.
I shouldn’t even have been at a bar
but everywhere feels heavy these days.
The other night, I dreamt that our dictator
died from eating an entire nursing home.

*

The Melting Snow Revealed a Massive Pile of CDs Someone Had Dumped Near the Psychiatric Asylum

I stared at a Mighty Mighty Bosstones album
isolated from the rest. Cigarette butts had formed
a ring around it and I thought about rituals to summon
the dead. It’s tough when your remaining friends
stop including you. Later that night, right before
they closed, I was at Tim Hortons getting coffee
when the employee gave me a free donut. I was
on the verge of tears, but I knew he just didn’t want
the baked goods to go to waste.

*

Justin Karcher (Twitter: @justin_karcher, Bluesky: @justinkarcher.bsky.social) is a Best of the Net- and Pushcart-nominated poet and playwright from Buffalo, NY. He is the author of several books, including Tailgating at the Gates of Hell (Ghost City Press, 2015). Recent playwriting credits include The Birth of Santa (American Repertory Theater of WNY) and “The Buffalo Bills Need Our Help” (Alleyway Theatre). justinkarcherauthor.com

Bending Toward Hope by Ann E. Wallace

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Bending Toward Hope

A woman I’ve never met before—
a stranger, but also, soon,

a confidante—starts by telling
me she has good luck.

Before sharing her story, of cancer
and its recurrence, she needs

to establish this baseline truth
to remind herself,

and so I know to listen
with an ear bent toward hope.

*

Ann E. Wallace is Poet Laureate Emeritus of Jersey City, New Jersey and host of The WildStory: A Podcast of Poetry and Plants. She is the author of Keeping Room (forthcoming from Nixes Mate), Days of Grace and Silence: A Chronicle of COVID’s Long Haul (Kelsay Books) and Counting by Sevens (Main Street Rag). She is online at AnnWallacePhD.com and on Instagram @annwallace409.

Three Poems by Lailah Shima

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The root of free,
as in not in bondage
may mean love, but hurtling
down I-94, my mind spins in freefall.
All day, no time passes. Sky stays white
as smoke and I remember black ice,
shattered ribs. I almost don’t believe
humans continue
hurling our soft bodies forward.
Still, on these Wisconsin hills
the gravest hazards lurk in my head:
if I alone edge past a ledge
who would notice? My daughter
glances up from her phone,
says, this world of winter looks fake.
White crystals feather every line
every needle of pine, what’s real
too wondrous to fathom. Fiery eyes
gleam through silvered lids, pink hair
as her head tips onto my shoulder.
A sedge of cranes trumpets
over the freeway, hundreds upon hundreds,
still north, so late. Soaring, unworried.
I roll down my window to listen.
*
Intima
All year I hear in my vessels
susurrations like summer dusk.
But now as dawn seeps into day
I can’t parse threads of song—
breath upon breath, moth wings
against wings, shushing edges
of leaves— or sound the depth
of silence holding us, or fathom
how close we are to everything
dying.
*
Hope Is a Discipline
      Hope is a discipline, an ongoing commitment to action.
      On a daily basis, I decide to begin anew. —Mariame Kaba
While crows perch on sunflowers.
      As we slide seeded loaves onto hearth bricks.
When my midwife proclaims me complete.
      Before my neonate son’s lungs stop.
As we plant his placenta under a cedar sapling.
      While my daughter anchors me in her world.
Until biopsy results blare from my phone.
      When we see another phone-video of another killing.
Before wildfire reaches my friend’s mountain town.
      Beyond space my excised organs open.
After a third scan, a fourth infusion.
      When a neighbor brings jasmine tea and honey.
Meanwhile, the woodcock’s sky dance.
      Beyond the twilit sky, dark moon.
Between our hands, heat.
      While we reach. While we hold.
While we face forward.
*
Lailah Shima is a death doula who writes and walks among the lakes of Madison, Wisconsin. Her work has appeared in CALYX, Terrain, and Anti-Heroin Chic, as well as in The Path to Kindness: Poems of Connection and Joy (ed. Jam es Crews). She is an MFA candidate at Pacific University.