National Poetry Month

Poem of the Day (04-06-2018)

April 6, 2018 by The Poetry Box Leave a Comment

To celebrate National Poetry Month, The Poetry Box is sharing a Poem-of-the-Day, selected from various anthologies and individual poet collections that we have published over the years.

Please enjoy today’s selection: “Innkeepers Wife Irate Over Loss” by Carolyn Martin, which appears in The Way a Woman Knows:

Innkeepers Wife Irate Over Loss

I could spit! I shouted in his face.
Turning paying guests away!
He brushed that couple off without
so much as, Maybe we could find … .

When will he learn? The Census earns
five years of room and board,
but lugging wood and curing hay,
learning isn’t on his mind.

Of course I’d carve a plan. I’d hearth
an extra rug to keep her bundle warm.
He and that soft-eyed man would share
a bed. And when it came her time,

we’d march those smelly shepherds far
beyond the barn and hush those wings
and aggravating songs. They drive
a dreamer from his restless sleep.

And, the publicity we’d glean!
A destination site, at least.
Not every day do morning stars
and cameled Kings ruckus through

our town. We’d be well-mapped,
well-known for hospitality,
not the butt of half-lame jokes.
We lost the chance. I’m furious!

Know what’s worse? That dotty neighbor
with the rotting manger molding hay
lets strangers muck across his barn,
dropping coins to say they’ve been.

Now he roams his days across the hills,
singing sounds like tidings, peace,
and human hearts. Who talks like that?
I’d like to know. Who talks like that?

Poem of the Day (04-05-2018)

April 5, 2018 by The Poetry Box 1 Comment

To celebrate National Poetry Month, The Poetry Box is sharing a Poem-of-the-Day, selected from various anthologies and individual poet collections that we have published over the years.

Please enjoy today’s selection: “The Sorrowing of Birds” by Jane Yolen, which appears in Poeming Pigeons – Poems about Birds:

The Sorrowing of Birds

When I think of you,
I hear birds soaring,
sorrowing above the trees,
their songs, perfect phrases of grief,
where once I heard joy.

The tapping of woodpeckers
I decode into elegies,
The peeping of hatchlings
under the bathroom window
are constant spring reminders
of my loss.

How can I let it go entire,
when the birds are my memory,
when every morning they sing
an oratorio to their old friend.
There is finality in obituary,
but not true closure,
even eight years along.

Bird song and its soaring sorrow
sustains me even
while it makes me linger
longer in the past.
I need no recordings of birdsong
to remind me,
just the open window
and the dawn.

Poem of the Day (04-04-2018)

April 4, 2018 by The Poetry Box 1 Comment

To celebrate National Poetry Month, The Poetry Box is sharing a Poem-of-the-Day, selected from various anthologies and individual poet collections that we have published over the years.

Please enjoy today’s selection: “Scars, Philippine Sweet Potatoes and Mango” by Georgette Howington, which appears in The Poeming Pigeon – Poems about Food:

Scars, Philippine Sweet Potatoes and Mango

My five year old fingers pressed coconut oil onto the raised
red edge around the glassy skin, about the size of my palm,
on my Mother’s brown thigh, not unlike a dozen or more other
scars on her legs painting stories like faded tattoos.
She pointed to one, “Bombers overhead, shrapnel pierced
my legs, my basket of sweet potatoes flying, flesh burning,
hot blood flowing but the only pain I felt was constant hunger.”
For two years they ran from village to village; they hid.
During the day dressed as a boy she went to the old farm
fields and hands plunged into the womb of earth pulling
sweet potatoes to light, setting them free; a sacred find.
The assault passing over, she knelt to gather all she could
save, placing them back into the basket and running with the
others into a grove of mango where fruit laid next to rotting
bodies and she picked up as many as the basket would hold.
That night Tita Lola baked sweet potatoes in hot rocks, under
the tropical skies and the children ate the warm soft orange
flesh as if they were chocolate confections; mango juice
dribbling down their chins sucking on the big seeds.
My Mother stroked my hair as I rubbed the oil over her scars.

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Poem of the Day (04-03-2018)

April 3, 2018 by The Poetry Box 1 Comment

To celebrate National Poetry Month, The Poetry Box is sharing a Poem-of-the-Day, selected from various anthologies and individual poet collections that we have published over the years.

Please enjoy today’s selection: “Migrant Heart” by Lynn M. Knapp, which appears in her book, Giving Ground:

Migrant Heart

Parched, earth-brown skin,
an unexplored continent,
watered with sweat,
a bronze photo holds him fast.
Sleek black hair,
sleepy dark eyes,
slow, full-lipped smile,
a young man
in a schoolroom full of children,
a twelve-year-old Tejano boy
who arrived every spring to work
in onion and asparagus fields.

On rare rainy days
Alfredo sat one row over
in a two-room school,
his blue flannel shirt still dusty
from the farm.

I moved from grade school
to middle school,
waiting each day
for him to climb aboard the bus,
but he could not follow,
he could not cross
from his world to mine.

Instead he followed the sun,
the seasons, crop to crop,
field to field.

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Poem of the Day (04-02-2018)

April 2, 2018 by The Poetry Box 1 Comment

To celebrate National Poetry Month, The Poetry Box is sharing a Poem-of-the-Day, selected from various anthologies and individual poet collections that we have published over the years.

Please enjoy today’s selection: “Still Life with Bride” by Laura LeHew, which appears in The Poeming Pigeon—Love Poems:

Still Life with Bride

the bride in her slip, the stylist with her brushes, bridesmaids
in long royal blue dresses finding the right mirror space, flower
girls playing games on phones or iPads, a table set with cheddar,
jack and brie, crackers, white grape juice, champagne, wine
glasses individually designed for all the women in the party, the
mother of the bride helps her daughter into her dress, laces up
the back, hooks the clasp on the delicate pearl necklace, places
the bride’s grandmother’s white gold wedding ring on her little
finger — something old, the snap-snap-snap of photographers,
the collective intake of breath held for six heartbeats when all the
women sigh as one

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Poem of the Day (04-01-2018)

April 1, 2018 by The Poetry Box 3 Comments

To celebrate National Poetry Month, The Poetry Box is sharing a Poem-of-the-Day, selected from various anthologies and individual poet collections that we have published over the years.

Please enjoy today’s selection: “Sacrifice” by Jeff Knorr (Sacramento Poet Laureate Emeritus), which appears in Verse on the Vine Anthology:

Sacrifice

~ for my son

It’s the jungle and the hot
sun is being cooled
by large palmated leaves.
You and I stand in front of the pyramid
steps and we imagine life then,
what might have happened,
flaying someone open at the top
like field dressing a deer, the leader
lifting out the heart as an offering.
No, it probably didn’t happen like that,
these Mayans were peaceful people.

Later that evening at a restaurant table
in a little fishing village you sat
with your mother and I drawing the whole scene.
Sacrifice. You’ll understand it someday—
but you’re not supposed to just yet.
It’s not like standing in the drifting snow
splitting wood because we need more fire.
It’s not even like wanting to buy you
that new fishing rod for Christmas
in the window down at Sullivan’s Sporting Goods.

No, it’s because today the sun is out,
there’s a little breeze off the water
and we stand here drifting little midge
patterns to trout. And when I look at you
I think the day couldn’t be any better.
It’s because, if I do it, everything
might just be a little more beautiful.

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National Poetry Month: Poem of the Day

March 30, 2018 by The Poetry Box Leave a Comment

As a boutique publishing house that focuses on print media, we obviously have a love for holding beautiful poetry books in our hands and the pleasure of discovering a new poem as we turn each page. However, we also realize the importance of being able to share this poetry with a larger, global audience via social media and the internet.

Therefore, to celebrate National Poetry Month, The Poetry Box will be sharing a Poem-of-the-Day, selected from various anthologies and individual poet collections that we have published over the years.

Check back every day in April to see which poem was selected and if a poem moves you, please leave a comment and/or feel free to share on Facebook, Twitter, or your preferred social media channel. There just may be a special surprise for the poet whose poem received the most feedback, shares, etc.

Poems-of-the-Day for April, 2018

Poem of the Day (04-01-2018)

Please enjoy today's selection: "Sacrifice" by Jeff Knorr (Sacramento Poet Laureate Emeritus), which appears in Verse on the Vine Anthology:

National Poetry Month

Innkeepers Wife Irate Over Loss

The Sorrowing of Birds

Scars, Philippine Sweet Potatoes and Mango

Migrant Heart

Still Life with Bride

Sacrifice

Poems-of-the-Day for April, 2018

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Shawn@ThePoetryBox.com

Talk/Text:
(530)409-0721