Nourishment
poems for the warmer weather.
Sonnet 18: Shall I compare thee to a summer's day by William Shakespeare
Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer’s lease hath all too short a date;
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimm'd;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance or nature’s changing course untrimm'd;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st;
Nor shall death brag thou wander’st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou grow’st:
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.
Why Shouldn’t She? by Grace Nichols
My mother loved cooking
but hated washing up
Why shouldn’t she?
cooking was an art
she could move her lips to
then the pleasure
feeding the proverbial
multitude (us)
on less than a loaf
and two fishes
I am Very Bothered by Simon Armitage
I am very bothered when I think
of the bad things I have done in my life.
Not least that time in the chemistry lab
when I held a pair of scissors by the blades
and played the handles
in the naked lilac flame of the Bunsen burner;
then called your name, and handed them over.
O the unrivalled stench of branded skin
as you slipped your thumb and middle finger in,
then couldn't shake off the two burning rings. Marked,
the doctor said, for eternity.
Don't believe me, please, if I say
that was just my butterfingered way, at thirteen,
of asking you if you would marry me.
l'heritage by Rhiannon McGavin
my mother says, bloom where you are planted
and french canals kept her watered
she colors my eyes as parisian rain
she tells me of the southern sands with beach umbrellas like the candies she’d bring back in pink tins
she would tuck me in at night with borrowed maps, whispering that we were here, in the barges and bakeries
she did not say that we are also in the soil and air
she feeds me quiche l’oignon but i grew most on the longing for my grandmother’s grandmother’s village, le village de la mere de sa mere de sa mere encore
i have never seen my mother’s france, of mossy sidewalks and blessed memory
or the town she thinks was ours, before the first brick was laid for auschwitz
she has to show me postcards instead of family pictures
i am always too young to hear of the murders
but mom swears my bones are strong as rock
and i know that every step i take is in mourning
etre juive/to be jewish is to be born during a funeral
flowers do not garnish the graves, they are for the living, they don’t grow fast enough
but there will always be more stones to stack in the cemetery, by a school, a bleeding kosher market
i am always nine hours behind translating headlines
i am so tired of counting, un dead, trois dead, quatre dead
i am tired of conjugating, courir to run, tuer to kill
but everything sounds beautiful en francaise, non?
even the slurs have a crystal echo
although i do not care for the dagger that follows
je veux fleurir comme la rose de l’ete
maman i want to bloom like a summer rose
ima save me from being cut like toulouse and marseilles and paris and paris and paris
because i know that we too belong here, in our friday dinners and perfume
but the catacombs are seething
maman tell me again about my grandmother’s grandfather, le grand rabbi du paris
do not think of how he would fall, learning that in january, his synagogue closed on shabbat for the first time since the german occupation
ima tell me about the painted ceilings, in so many more colors than red
i say that we are still going home
no ash could ever keep us
but this is our life now, watching the white roses my nana planted pull scarlet from the earth
it comes in drops and streaks, how deep their roots must reach
when i was younger, i would lick rainwater off the petals and think, this is what love tastes like
now i know that it is the salt on your lips, with a lullaby so soft, the metal can’t find you
quand il me prend dans ses bras
il me parle tout bas
je vois la vie en rose
cover image by https://unsplash.com/@dearseymour