April 4: Becoming a Poet

[Martha]

Becoming a Poet
Susan Browne

I was five,
lying facedown on my bed
when someone stabbed me in the back,
all the way through to my heart.
I screamed & my parents came running,
my father carrying me into the living room.
We sat in the chair with the high sides
like wings. I kneeled on his lap,
my arms around his neck.
My mother sat across from us,
saying, honey, it was just a bad dream.
I looked over my father’s shoulder
at the dark ocean of air,
at the colorful, iridescent fish.
I tried to explain what I saw.
It’s your imagination, said my father.
The fish swam like brilliant magicians
toward the window. Then they were gone.
My parents didn’t know death like I did.
Or the fish, their strange beauty
my secret.

==

Also: 
+ from Seven Skins, Adrienne Rich
+ On Wanting to Tell [ ] about a Girl Eating Fish Eyes, Mary Szybist 
+ Talk, Noelle Kocot

Today in:

2024: Coyotes by the Eliot House, Glyn Maxwell
2023: I Know Someone, Mary Oliver
2022: I’m Going Back to Minnesota Where Sadness Makes Sense, Danez Smith
2021: In the Morning, Before Anything Bad Happens, Molly Brodak
2020: Interesting Times, Mark Jarman
2019: The accident has occurred, Margaret Atwood
2018: Little snail, Anonymous
2017: Poem for My Son in the Car, Jennifer K. Sweeney
2016: Postcard to Baudelaire, Thomas Lux
2015: What The Dead Tell Us About Charon, Ferryman Of The Dead, Brett Ortler
2014: The Trees, Philip Larkin
2013: A Small, Soul-Colored Thing, Paisley Rekdal
2012: Last Supper, Charles Wright
2011: I Said to Poetry, Alice Walker
2010: Disgraceland, Mary Karr
2009: What To Say To A Bear, Ionna Warwick
2008: In The City of Light, Larry Levis
2007: the mockingbird, Charles Bukowski
2006: Part of Eve’s Discussion, Marie Howe
2005: I thank You God for most this amazing, e.e. cummings

+ Link to today's poem.