Poems after National Poetry Month

I started writing this one at the end of April. I wanted to comment on National Poetry Month and actually, was trying to write this in the middle of the month, but Dr. Schneider’s memorial was coming up, so that took precedence. I wrote Doc- Our Favorite Rambling Man instead. But now we’re already in May, and April, National Poetry Month, is over.

Last week I went back to poetry.com, the website where I used to post my poems about a decade ago. But I couldn’t remember my password, nor the password of the hotmail address I used to use in order to log in, and that was frustrating. What also seems frustrating for me is to write about writing, or poetry, in the first place. Paisley Rekdal wrote a good piece about what’s not so great about designating a month for poetry. Still, I’d like to try to gather some of my thoughts, memories, and feelings concerning poetry so, here it goes..

Titles and summaries of my poems

1. Our Encounter : about visiting my boyfriend at the time when he was in Rikers. It wasn’t a romantic poem, I was trying to convey my feelings of dread
2. Why I Can't See Fiona: what Fiona Apple’s music meant to me, especially after seeing her Elvis Costello rendition of “I Want You”
3. To Have Fallen In Sync:, when I met and fell in love with my son’s father, claiming that we both fell in love with each other at the same time. This one rhymed.
4. So: when he left me, or when I truly knew that he wouldn’t be coming back to me, that there was no more hope of that ever happening. This one also rhymed and was way shorter.
5. These Waves: about how I felt when I read an old journal entry of me writing about an argument I had with my mother. How emotionally out of control I felt because of her death and how I can never go back and try to make amends anymore.
6. Each Week in His Way: about a teacher I admired
7. Just Tryin’: about my feelings, and trying to cope

Maybe one day I’ll round up all those poems together in one place and post them here. But I think this will do for now...  

Here are 2 poems I found on YouTube a couple years ago that I like, and also like the way the poets visually enhanced their work

In my freshman year in high school, my English teacher talked to us about Robert Frost’s The Road Not Taken. 

That stuck to me, the idea that we’re on paths in life and why he’d value a road that no one else has embarked on.

What also stuck to me was what this Nuyorican Poet’s Cafe book said somewhere in the preface: that poetry is best as a “contact sport”

My (ex) Boyfriend

Early on when Flaco and I were dating, I found a greyish paperback in his room. One of his old teachers had given it to him. It had various Federico Garcia Lorca poems in its original Spanish and then translated into English on the following page (unless he also wrote some in English?). Flaco’s teacher inscribed on one of the first pages telling him, “I hope you find your mountain”. I’d read it every now and then, looking back and forth at the English and Spanish pages, comparing the two languages, like I often do in my head. The two poems that I remember most are, 'The King of Harlem' and 'The Old Lizard'.

My Family

So much of my family puts out amazing poems. 

My cousin wrote this for his beloved Heather; even the ones he wrote before meeting her or not necessarily written about her, he attributes them to her anyway. My sister creates such fantastic poems on the regular, so does my father, and my cousin Yvonne shares poems with me quietly, like she's confiding and revealing her innermost thoughts and feelings; something she can’t just do by simply talking with me. well, she can, she does; but with her poems she’s telling me, here’s a better way to express it, a more fun, or more profound way.

My mom

I often wonder about my mom. Towards the end of her life she told me that she was working on a poem, or thinking about working on a poem, still an abstract idea in her mind. It had something to do with how we’re all like plants, needing love and to be taken care of, and even after we die we decompose, fertilize, and allow more life to carry on; the beautiful cycle of life and death, and Life again. I wonder if she ever finished that poem, or if she ever even started it.

Her mom

This is when I visited my grandmother’s mausoleum in the Dominican Republic for the first time. In a little envelope, I placed Julia Alvarez’s poem, “A Woman’s Work” and with the help of my friend Rodrigo, translated it into Spanish. Not that she's able to read it at this point but… hey, you never know. Maybe on some level, she is...