Courage

By Anne Sexton

It is in the small things we see it.
The child's first step,
as awesome as an earthquake.
The first time you rode a bike,
wallowing up the sidewalk.
The first spanking when your heart
went on a journey all alone.
When they called you crybaby
or poor or fatty or crazy,
and made you into an alien.
You drank their acid,
and concealed it.

Later,
if you faced the death of bombs and bullets,
you did not do it with a banner,
you did it with only a hat to
cover your heart.
You did not fondle the weakness inside you,
though it was there.
Your courage was a small coal
that you kept swallowing.
If your buddy saved you
and died himself in so doing,
then his courage was not courage,
it was love; love as simple as shaving soap.

Later,
if you have endured a great despair,
then you did it alone,
getting a transfusion from the fire,
picking the scabs off our heart,
then wringing it out like a sock.
Next, my kinsman, you powdered your sorrow,
you gave it a back rub
and then you covered it with a blanket
and after it had slept a while
it woke to the wings of the roses
and was transformed.

Later,
when you face old age and its natural conclusion
your courage will still be shown in the little ways,
each spring will be a sword you'll sharpen,
those you love will live in a fever of love,
and you'll bargain with the calendar
and at the last moment
when death opens the back door
you'll put on your carpet slippers
and stride out.

Our Son Swears He Has 102 Gallons of Water in His Body

By Naomi Shihab Nye

Somewhere a mistaken word distorts the sum:
divide becomes multiply so he’d wrestle his parents
who defy what he insists. I did the problem
and my teacher said I was right!
Light strokes the dashboard.
We are years away from its source.
Remember that jug of milk?
No way you’re carrying one hundred of those!
But he knows. He always knows. We’re idiots
without worksheets to back us up. His mother never remembers
what a megabyte means and his dad fainted on an airplane once
and smashed his head on the drinks cart. We’re nice but we’re
not always smart. It’s the fact you live with, having parents.
Later in a calmer moment his dad recalculates
the sum and it comes out true.
Instead of carrying giant waterfalls inside,
we’re streams, sweet pools, something to dip into
with an old metal cup, like the one we took camping,
that nobody could break.

A Safe Place

By Nikki Grimes

Dream killers daily stalk the streets of you and I 

travel, trying to trip us up, but we can give them the slip. I have 

learned to protect my heart-songs. I keep them wrapped

in the well wishes of  my  family, the encouragement of my

truest friends. Sometimes, using pen and ink, I anchor my dreams

and let them sink in the margins of a diary. Or, maybe I slide them in

a smooth sandalwood box buried beneath my bed. But a 

dream called impossible?  That I tuck between the silken

folds of my private thought - tough as steel, thing as cloth. 

For a Poet

By Countee Cullen

I have wrapped my dreams in a silken cloth,
And laid them away in a box of gold;
Where long will cling the lips of the moth,
I have wrapped my dreams in a silken cloth;
I hide no hate; I am not even wroth
Who found the earth's breath so keen and cold;
I have wrapped my dreams in a silken cloth,
And laid them away in a box of gold.

Autism Screening Questionnaire — Speech and Language Delay

By Octavio De La Paz

1. Did your child lose acquired speech?

A fount and then silence. A none. An ellipse

between — his breath through

the seams of our windows. Whistle

of days. Impossible bowl of a mouth — 

the open cupboard, vowels

rounded up and swept under the rug.

2. Does your child produce unusual noises or infantile squeals?

He’d coo and we’d coo back. The sound

passed back and forth between us like a ball.

Or later, an astral voice. Some vibrato

under the surface of us. The burst upon — 

burn of strings rubbed

in a flourish. His exhausted face.

3. Is your child’s voice louder than required?

In an enclosure or a cave it is difficult to gauge

one’s volume. The proscenium of the world.

All the rooms we speak of are dark places. Because

he cannot see his mouth, he cannot imagine

4. Does your child speak frequent gibberish or jargon?

To my ears it is a language. Every sound

a system: the sound for dog or boy. The moan

in his throat for water — that of a man with thirst.

The dilapidated ladder that makes a sentence

a sentence. This plosive is a verb. This liquid

a want. We make symbols of his noise.

5. Does your child have difficulty understanding basic things (“just can’t get it”)?

Against the backdrop of the tree he looks so small.

6. Does your child pull you around when he wants something?

By the sleeve. By the shirttail. His light touch

hopscotching against my skin like sparrows.

An insistence muscled and muscled again.

7. Does your child have difficulty expressing his needs or desires using gestures?

Red-faced in the kitchen and in the bedroom

and the yellow light touches his eyes

which are open but not there. His eyes

rest in their narrow boat dream and the canals

are wide dividing this side from this side.

8. Is there no spontaneous initiation of speech or 
communication from your child?

When called he eases out of his body.

His god is not our words nor is it

the words from his lips. It is entirely body.

So when he comes to us and looks we know

there are beyond us impossible cylinders

where meaning lives.

9. Does your child repeat heard words, parts of words, or tv commercials?

The mind circles the mind in the arena, far in — far in

where the consonants touch and where the round

chorus flaunts its iambs in a metronomic trot. Humming

to himself in warm and jugular songs.

10. Does your child use repetitive language (same word or phrase over and over)?

A pocket in his brain worries its ball of lint.

A word clicks into its groove and stammers

along its track, Dopplering like a car with its windows

rolled down and the one top hit of the summer

angles its way into his brain.

11. Does your child have difficulty sustaining a 
conversation?

We could be anywhere, then the navel of the red moon

drops its fruit. His world. This stained world drips its honey

into our mouths. Our words stolen from his malingering afternoon.

12. Does your child use monotonous speech or wrong pausing?

When the air is true and simple, we can watch him tremble

for an hour, plucking his meaning from a handful of utterances

and then ascend into the terrible partition of speech.

13. Does your child speak the same to kids, adults, or objects (can’t differentiate)?

Because a reference needs a frame: we are mother and father

and child with a world of time to be understood. The car radio

plays its one song. The song, therefore, is important.

It must be intoned at a rigorous time. Because rigor

is important and because the self insists on constant vigils.

14. Does your child use language inappropriately (wrong words or phrases)?

Always, and he insists on the incorrect forms.

The wrong word takes every form for love — 

the good tree leans into the pond,

the gray dog’s ribs show, the memory

bound to the window, and the promise of the radio

playing its song on the hour. Every wrong form

is a form which represents us in our losses,

if it takes us another world to understand.

This poem was previously published in Poetry Magazine in July/August 2017.

I Hear America Singing

By Walt Whitman

I hear America singing, the varied carols I hear, 

Those of mechanics, each one singing his as it should be blithe and strong, 

The carpenter singing his as he measures his plank or beam, 

The mason singing his as he makes ready for work, or leaves off work, 

The boatman singing what belongs to him in his boat, the deckhand singing on the steamboat deck, 

The shoemaker singing as he sits on his bench, the hatter singing as he stands, 

The wood-cutter’s song, the ploughboy’s on his way in the morning, or at noon intermission or at sundown, 

The delicious singing of the mother, or of the young wife at work, or of the girl sewing or washing, 

Each singing what belongs to him or her and to none else, 

The day what belongs to the day—at night the party of young fellows, robust, friendly, 

Singing with open mouths their strong melodious songs

Climate Change Theories After Another Surprise Snowstorm

By Adam Stone

I’m not really a summer guy

I like winter

I like winter because I like snow

I like snow like I like my men:

Deep

Untouched in photographs

Shoveled off my porch before I go to work

I like my snow like I like my men

Accumulating softly while I sleep.

I like my men like I like my snow,

Which is to say
At the beginning of the season

I remember them fondly

But the minute they require me

 to do the least amount of work
I hope to never see one of those flakes again

I like my men like I like my snow
Light and fluffy at first

But heavier and more full of grit

the deeper you dig

I like my men like I like my snow

In theory

I like men

I like snow

I’m often judged harshly by those who don’t understand

My appreciation of either

And why do I like snow?
Is it in my genes?

Or do I like it because I was raised

in a climate where winter was tolerated

if not full accepted.

I like my men like I like my snow -

Oh god.  Temporary?

Just for a few months out of the year?

It’s been a long time since I lived anywhere temperate

So do I maybe like snow

Because I’ve spent over half my life identifying

As someone who likes snow?

No. I could never live in a climate lacking winter.

I tried that once in college

And again in my mid-twenties when I was

Chasing the mechanical rabbit of heteronormative success

That I was told would make me happy

But I like snow

I don’t always want to like snow

But I do always like snow

Even when it is inconvenient

Even when it keeps me from achieving something

That I believe I have the right to achieve

Even when it means the world is too cold to bear

Without protection.

Adam Stone is an amazing slam poet who lives in the Boston area.  You should hear his work any time you can.