Tag: Robbie Gamble

Aubade to Self by Robbie Gamble

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Aubade to Self

morning’s gray filaments
pry the curtains
as I lie still
floating a prayer
for a scant of endurance,
compassion, generosity—
selfishly, of course
but for all of us

because despair is
a husk of resistance
it means we are all still
counting the casualties
it means the pain
remains tender

*

Robbie Gamble (he/him) is the author of A Can of Pinto Beans (Lily Poetry Review Press, 2022). His poems have appeared in Post Road, Sheila-Na-Gig, Whale Road Review, Salamander, and The Sun. He is the poetry editor for Solstice: A Magazine of Diverse Voices, and he divides his time between Boston and Vermont.

Etymology by Robbie Gamble

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Etymology

I have come to believe that the colorful
modifiers lugubrious and fecund
were swapped out at birth, because
tonight the spring peepers are joyous
in their chorus, and their exuberant
lovemaking sounds both polyphonic
and slippery, which could only be
described as lugubrious, while fecund

is a word I would want to utter
when the calendar flips to November
and the water heater conks out
and my favorite aunt dies unexpectedly
and the prospects for an impending
election seem abysmal.

*

Robbie Gamble (he/him) is the author of A Can of Pinto Beans (Lily Poetry Review Press, 2022). His poems have appeared in Cagibi, Post Road, Whale Road Review, Salamander, and The Sun. He divides his time between Boston and Vermont.

ONE ART’s Top 10 Most-Read Poets of September 2023

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~ ONE ART’s Top 10 Most-Read Poets of September 2023 ~

  1. Jane Edna Mohler – Feast
  2. Valerie Bacharach – Betrayal
  3. Julie Weiss – Dream in Which I Stop to Say Goodbye
  4. Jessica Goodfellow – Milk
  5. Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer – Three Poems
  6. Dan Butler – Four Poems
  7. Matthew Murrey – Kindergarten
  8. Tammy Greenwood – Evacuation
  9. Robbie Gamble – To Anna, On Her Retirement
  10. Zeina Azzam – Losing a Homeland

To Anna, On Her Retirement by Robbie Gamble

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To Anna, On Her Retirement

Is this what you’ve been
imagining you could discard:
the petty supervisors clucking
about their neurotic fiefdoms;
rubrics, memos, misogyny,
emails, emails, more emails?
A friend described her passage
as “rewirement,” and it’s amazing
the difference a letter makes,
all your beleaguered neurons
shedding buckets of cortisol—
see how they unclench from
“doing, doing, doing” into simply
being. The mountain across
the valley isn’t doing anything,
it just is, a gorgeous astonishment
every sunrise when I open
my eyes. As are you. The trees
in the orchard, sure, they bear
fruit, but mostly they radiate
gratitude for having found
a home here, on this hillside
as you have too, reveling
in healthful elements: air,
water, rich soil, good friends
the churn of seasons, a circle
of community. You have always
been loveable, but now you have
time to savor this hard-won truth.
Taste it, Beloved, let it wash
over you like a sunset’s tender
afterglow. And welcome!

*

Robbie Gamble (he/him) is the author of A Can of Pinto Beans (Lily Poetry Review Press, 2022). His poems have appeared in Lunch Ticket, Poet Lore, RHINO, Salamander, and The Sun. He divides his time between Boston and Vermont.

Abstinent by Robbie Gamble

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Abstinent

How the body was so coy
about naming what it really wanted.

How the return of the peepers’ wild song
proclaims this visceral season thawed.

How we’d been waiting, stuck
for what we didn’t realize we missed.

An aroma, an agenda,
a stirring under a quilt of leaf rot.

In this bed, skin warms against skin,
the mucky waft of ripening earth.

*

Robbie Gamble (he/him) is the author of A Can of Pinto Beans (Lily Poetry Review Press, 2022). His poems have appeared in Cutthroat, Lunch Ticket, RHINO, Salamander, and The Sun. He divides his time between Boston and Vermont.