Tag: praise

In Praise of Moving On by Anya Kirshbaum

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In Praise of Moving On
Go ahead, sit in the field and weep, then
be done. Stop wearing your grief like a thorny garland
in your hair. Pinecones? Make a crown of something else.
Starlings in mid-flight, say, or rippled drip-drop
of honey-comb. Or, for God’s sake, seaweed—even the briny
sea-rose would be more palatable than this. I know
there was something unforgettable in their kiss.
But honey, all the color has drained from your lips. Remember
mouthfuls of spicy nasturtiums? Or borage nestled like sleeping
stars in your palm? Remember playing harmonica
in your marigold-orange dress? Or the serpentine slither
of garden snakes thrilling your toes? How when one pissed
you wore that stench like a badge-of-untamable-things?
Remember grandmother, standing in a doorway bellowing
her accordion, moonshine in her stone-grey hair?
Or how about the wild onions? In particular, the black earth
where they grew? You need the black earth. Throw
your spiny crown to the ghost of misbegotten lovers. Bury it—
garland of tiresome brackish moans. Let pinecones
be pinecones. I know the apple tree is long gone. I know the wild
onions have all but vanished & the animal graveyard
has lost its markers. Go anyway, kneel down. Find the buried
sea-glass & the salamanders, find the earthworms winnowing
their love song. Find the impatiens you planted in secret
& the squirrel’s soul you buried in a coke bottle. You: archeologist
of small intricate bones—leaf-swung; heart-shorn. You: music
maker of twine & sorrow & backyard stones. Valiant, tender
girl—there is another kingdom. Sometimes the best answer is No.
*
Anya Kirshbaum (she/her) is a queer poet and therapist living in Seattle, Washington. Her work has appeared in Whale Road Review, Sweet Lit, Crannóg, Solstice Literary Magazine, and elsewhere. She was a finalist for the New Millennium Writing Awards and the Patricia Dobler Poetry Award, was nominated for a 2024 Forward Prize and was the recipient of the 2023 Banyan Poetry Prize.

In Praise of Gravity by Robert Okaji

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In Praise of Gravity

Which bestows weight
or slings me around
some other heavenly

body, a version of you
wondering whether
I’ll rise from my next

plummet, victim
of curvature and infinite
range held in place,

attractive in nature,
bent, perhaps, and
scarred, proud to have

survived but never wiser.
Cleansed, we continue
our orbit, our mirrored fall.

*

Robert Okaji holds a BA in history, served without distinction in the U.S. Navy, toiled as a university administrator, and no longer owns a bookstore. He was recently diagnosed with late stage metastatic lung cancer, and lives, for the time being, in Indiana with his wife—poet Stephanie L. Harper— stepson, and cat. His first full-length collection, Our Loveliest Bruises, will be published by 3: A Taos Press in the fall of 2024 (not posthumously, he hopes). His poems may be found in Book of Matches, Threepenny Review, Only Poems, Vox Populi, Shō Poetry Journal, The Big Windows Review, Verse Daily, Indianapolis Review, and other venues.