Welcome to the New Year, Tigers! Lots of you are probably working hard at the gym fulfilling that New Year Resolution, or cutting back on eating your usual 3 ice cream cones a day. I traditionally don’t do New Year Resolutions (because I can never follow through for long enough and then I just feel bad about myself). But this year, I have decided to try and share love more.
For those of you who don’t know me, I absolutely love poetry. One of my biggest aspirations in life is to publish a poetry book. Poetry often gets a bad rap as being too mushy, too cliché, or too hard to understand. But fear not, non-poetry lovers! If you have a little bit of patience and do some digging, there are some truly incredible pieces out there. Poetry is one of the few things in my life that makes me feel understood, and helps me better understand myself in the process. This is a big first step in loving other people, and learning to love things about yourself, too.
So for poetry lovers and non-poetry lovers alike, here is my way of sharing the love to you; 7 poems I love to begin your 2017.
I hope you love them, too.
1. Rupi Kaur
Rupi Kaur’s first book, Milk and Honey, can be found here.
2. Christopher Poindexter
i truly believe if we love
enough
the earth will love us back.
you are made of wind
and fire
and rain
and dust
and as long as you spread kindness
consistently and abundantly,
the flowers and trees
will grant you freedom.
your body will be so warm,
the sun will ask you to dance,
and you will feel so wonderful,
there is no way you
wouldn’t say
yes.
This excerpt was taken from Poindexter’s book Naked Human
3. Tyler Knott Gregson
Tyler Knott Gregson has two books out: Chaser of the Light and All The Words Are Yours
4. Anna Journey
Upon Asking the Cashier at Kroger to Scan That Old Tattoo of a Barcode on My Forearm
Turns out my body’s a dollar sweet potato her register’s screen said, as she lifted
her scanner, and I laughed. I can finally call myself Garnet, Georgia Jet, Carolina Red. Those names
of tubers—my accidental totems. So many varieties. I might slather
my arm in marshmallows, burrow deep into the Southern earth. I’d gotten
the tattoo at nineteen, drunk, after Alicia and I sneaked into the Jefferson—the fanciest
hotel in Richmond with its old Deco fountain in the lobby
where pet alligators swam circles through the Jazz Age. We sat on velveteen
love seats wearing ripped jeans among the suits of Virginia politicians and Baptist preachers,
daring each other: I’ll get a tattoo if you do. We discussed passion
vines on biceps or matching dragonflies winging our asses. I swirled my plastic
flask’s bourbon, decided we’d make a statement about consumerism—blue
barcode stamped on each of our forearms. After the hotel manager kicked us out
for vagrancy I tore a page from a book of grocery-store coupons so the tattoo artist
would have an image to copy: a barcode’s exact marks. I didn’t think to stop
and choose which vegetable, which object, didn’t know my body
would soften beneath the lines. Ten years later I’d finally ask a woman
to scan the ink, wondering why I’d waited this long to find out
I’ve always been sweet but slightly twisted, I’ve always been
waiting to disappear like this, bite by bite, into someone’s mouth.
This poem is from Anna Journey’s newest book, The Atheist Wore Goat Silk, available February 2, 2017.
5. “Mowing” by Ada Limón
The man across the street is mowing 40 acres on a small lawn mower. It’s so small, it must take him days, so I imagine that he likes it. He must. He goes around each tree carefully. He has 10,000 trees; it’s a tree farm, so there are so many trees. One circle here. One circle there. My dog and I’ve been watching. The light’s escaping the sky, and there’s this place I like to stand, it’s before the rise, so I’m invis- ible. I’m standing there, and I’ve got the dog, and the man is mow- ing in his circles. So many circles. There are no birds or anything, or none that I can see. I imagine what it must be like to stay hidden, disappear in the dusky nothing and stay still in the night. It’s not sadness, though it may sound like it. I’m thinking about people and trees and how I wish I could be silent more, be more tree than anything else, less clumsy and loud, less crow, more cool white pine, and how it’s hard not to always want something else, not just to let the savage grass grow.
This poetry book was one of my absolute favorites this year. Buy Bright Dead Things here.
6. Pablo Neruda
Learn more about Pablo Neruda here.
7. Kaylin Woods
A little shameless plug here, but I wanted to share one of my poems with you all! Hope you guys enjoy (:
A Comprehensive List of Facts Discovered While Sitting in General Biology
Kaylin Woods
1. Rice has 42,000 genes. Humans, 22,000. My father feels like a lesser man.
2. It has been 7 months and 12 days. I cannot remember the way your voice fills the white cabinet kitchen.
3. When trees are being attacked by insects, their leaves have the decency to release pheromones as a warning of the shrubs slow slip toward death.
4. I still set the dinner table for 6 spots on Sunday nights. Yours yawns like the hole they dug in your side when your lungs tried to ship you to sea.
5. Oysters filter up to 50 gallons of water a day.
6. The girl sitting next to me asks for a highlighter. I want to tell her I crack open my arms on my spear-tipped hips every night to water your garden, as if my blood could be traded to see your bones grow out of the dirt.
7. Lactic acid is poisonous to your cell health.
8. My Mother asks me why I don’t eat anymore, but how does she expect me to when the dust on the cracked green plate looks like ashes? I can’t bear to swallow you whole.
9. “Hippopotamus” means “water horse,” but has no relation to the species.
10. I have watched the video of you singing happy birthday exactly 14 times this week (you know the one, where the cancer scribbled over your smile and shoved its way down your throat).
11. As my best friend lifts a cigarette to her lips and the smoke whistles between her teeth, I swear I can hear you singing in church.
12. A blue whale weighs 800,000 pounds.
13. I can feel my heart panting, writhing, like the candle flame they’ll stick in the stupid birthday cake they know won’t touch my tongue this Saturday.
14. If you strap an ice pack to a Siamese cat, you can control the color of its coat. How nice it would be to swap out a body you do not want anymore.
15. The professor asks for last thoughts.
16. I want to tell you about the blonde boy who might want to hold my hand and how I wore your favorite ring with the black stone to my graduation.
17. I found a home video of us when I was 4. We were watching Rudolph. I was burrowed in a blanket cradled in your lap.
“If I’m dead already, know that I love you very much!”
You looked into the camera and laughed.
Even if it is only for a second; I can finally remember the sound of your voice.
18. When a volcano erupts and liquefies the land, only the ashes preserve what is left.