ALLISON BOLAH

I woke up this morning and realized
I want to live forever

I started to laugh
hys
terically,

I will die one day I will die

and everything that comes to me in joy
(the sun, my sofa, my sister,
asshole drivers, the rain, air conditioning,
dreams…)
will cease to be mine

I don’t believe it

It’s as though I’m on vacation
with my father and sister in Bequia

and I’ve played with boats and climbed mountains
and seen the harbor and seen the little white houses

and read, a million times!
the report of Princess Grace’s death,
trying to grasp…

and I put down the magazine
‘I’ll come back to it,’ I tell myself

because it will always be there
I will always be here
and I walk away casually

and the next day
I’m on a plane to Toronto

Allison Bolah
from Shadow of a Wave, 2012

the last time i was home
to see my mother we kissed
exchanged pleasantries
and unpleasantries pulled a warm
comforting silence around
us and read separate books

i remember the first time
i consciously saw her
we were living in a three room
apartment on burns avenue

mommy always sat in the dark
i don’t know how i knew that but she did

that night i stumbled into the kitchen
maybe because i’ve always been
a night person or perhaps because i had wet
the bed
she was sitting on a chair
the room was bathed in moonlight diffused through
those thousands of panes landlords who rented
to people with children were prone to put in windows
she may have been smoking but maybe not
her hair was three-quarters her height
which made me a strong believer in the samson myth
and very black

i’m sure i just hung there by the door
i remember thinking: what a beautiful lady

she was very deliberately waiting
perhaps for my father to come home
from his night job or maybe for a dream
that had promised to come by
“come here” she said “i’ll teach you
a poem: i see the moon
        the moon sees me
        god bless the moon
        and god bless me”
i taught it to my son
who recited it for her
just to say we must learn
to bear the pleasures
as we have borne the pains

Nikki Giovanni
from My House, 1972

The time will come
when, with elation
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror
and each will smile at the other’s welcome,

and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.

Derek Walcott
from Sea Grapes, 1976

Happy National Poetry Month.

tonite, thriller was
abt an ol woman, so vain she
surrounded her self w /
many mirrors

it got so bad that finally she
locked herself indoors & her
whole life became the
   mirrors

one day the villagers broke
into her house , but she was too
swift for them . she disappeared
   into a mirror

each tenant who bought the house
after that, lost a loved one to
   the ol woman in the mirror :
   first a little girl
   then a young woman
   then the young woman /s husband

the hunger of this poem is legendary
it has taken in many victims
   back off from this poem
   it has drawn in yr feet
   back off from this poem
   it has drawn in yr legs
   back off from this poem
   it is a greedy mirror
   you are into this poem . from
   the waist down
   nobody can hear you can they ?
   this poem has had you up to here
      belch
   this poem aint got no manners
   you cant call out frm this poem
   relax now & go w/ this poem
   move & roll on to this poem

   do not resist this poem
   this poem has yr eyes
   this poem has his head
   this poem has his arms
   this poem has his fingers
   this poem has his fingertips

   this poem is the reader & the
   reader this poem

statistic: the us bureau of missing persons reports
   that in 1968 over 100,000 people disappeared
   leaving no solid clues
      nor trace   only
   a space   in the lives of their friends

Ishmael Reed
from Conjure: Selected Poems 1963-1970, 1972