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Tag Archives: everyday poems

Poetry Archives: Marie Howe

11 Wednesday Mar 2015

Posted by marie in Uncategorized

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everyday poems

Magdalene-The Seven Devils

Mary, called Magdalene, from whom seven devils had been cast out
-Luke 8:2

The first was that I was very busy.
The second – I was different from you: whatever happened to you could
not happen to me, not like that.

The third – I worried.
The fourth – envy, disguised as compassion.
The fifth was that I refused to consider the quality of life of the aphid,
The aphid disgusted me. But I couldn’t stop thinking about it.
The mosquito too – its face. And the ant – its bifurcated body.

Ok the first was that I was so busy.
The second that I might make the wrong choice,
because I had decided to take that plane that day,
that flight, before noon, so as to arrive early
and, I shouldn’t have wanted that.
The third was that if I walked past the certain place on the street
the house would blow up.
The fourth was that I was made of guts and blood with a thin layer
of skin lightly thrown over the whole thing.

The fifth was that the dead seemed more alive to me than the living

The sixth – if I touched my right arm I had to touch my left arm, and if I
touched the left arm a little harder than I’d first touched the right then I had
to retouch the left and then touch the right again so it would be even.

The seventh – I knew I was breathing the expelled breath of everything that
was alive and I couldn’t stand it,

I wanted a sieve, a mask, a, I hate this word – cheesecloth –
to breathe through that would trap it – whatever was inside everyone else that
entered me when I breathed in

No. That was the first one.

The second was that I was so busy. I had no time. How had this happened?
How had our lives gotten like this?

The third was that I couldn’t eat food if I really saw it – distinct, separate
from me in a bowl or on a plate.

Ok. The first was that. I could never get to the end of the list.

The second was that the laundry was never finally done.

The third was that no one knew me, although they thought they did.
And that if people thought of me as little as I thought of them then what was love?
Someone using you as a co-ordinate to situate himself on earth.

The fourth was I didn’t belong to anyone. I wouldn’t allow myself to belong
to anyone.

Historians would assume my sin was sexual.

The fifth was that I knew none of us could ever know what we didn’t know.

The sixth was that I projected onto others what I myself was feeling.

The seventh was the way my mother looked when she was dying.
The sound she made – the gurgling sound – so loud we had to speak louder
to hear each other over it.

And that I couldn’t stop hearing it – years later –
grocery shopping, crossing the street –

Not the sound – it was her body’s hunger, finally evident.
What our mother had hidden all her life.

For months I dreamt of knucklebones and roots,
the slabs of sidewalk pushed up like crooked teeth by what grew underneath.

The underneath – That was the first devil. It was always with me.
And that I didn’t think you – if I told you – would understand any of this –

24 Wednesday Sep 2014

Posted by marie in dear apples, illustrations, journal, New York City, Uncategorized

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everyday poems, just because, New York City

Dear Apples,

Life is quite topsy turvy these days and the future holds a bit too many question marks for my liking.  I know that life in general will always be full of question marks, and that’s not so much the problem I suppose.  I think the crux of the matter is that I am being plagued with these aggressive little impulses to do something, start something, point this unique composition of me towards a place where it can do good, and yet! the direction and concrete vision are nowhere to be found.  It’s been said that necessity is the mother of invention, and while I wait for this poignant neediness to give birth to innovation, I retreat to the small things.

morning rituals

It’s more important these days to tend to the plants and go for walks in the evening, to enjoy breakfasts, to look out the window and hear the music and see the people, to put myself into my work, to think of the whole instead of zeroing in on pieces that are broken.  Most of all to try to remember that the world is a great big orb holding billions of lives, and mine is small and the whole picture is not about me, so my best option is to make the best of what I have and do what I can in the space I occupy and love the ones around me.  There’s a certain comfort in insignificance.  Today I ran off to Central Park in my lunch hour and meditated for awhile, because although urgent tasks press in for my immediate attention, what can I give from a dried up place?  Although today is confusing, tomorrow is on it’s way and then the next day, and as I walked up the stairs to my room today I realized again as I have before that hope is a living thing, always always sitting there, never denying itself to those who choose it.

reading tree

Homesick

19 Friday Sep 2014

Posted by marie in everyday poems, journal, travel

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everyday poems, Grandma, home, just because, travel

grandma

Out the door, across the circle parking lot
past the man who wipes down car windows for pesos
Walking quickly quickly
away from green taxis
with Guadalupe holy cards taped
to the dashboards for good luck
almost running now,
parting thick hot air
Into the cool dark chapel
where I breathe in and smell my Grandma’s house
and converse with her until the sun has
fallen down.

(from summer 2006, Mexico)

Beirut

17 Wednesday Sep 2014

Posted by marie in everyday poems, Lebanon, travel

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everyday poems, home, Lebanon, travel

DSC00363

Strange how my nostalgia will soon be to
Watch as your old men sit
Steeped in the argileh-smoke of their own reminiscing
They pull up their chairs and set their coffee on the ground
Dreaming of the days before pervasive car-exhaust air
Oh Beirut
Yesterday will always be the sunlight of your today
How else could your bread-cart bikes and fruit-sellers
Find their way from then to now?
How else could the ritz of your Downtowm
Rise from bullet holes?
And if a golden past has given way to an unfamiliar present,
Tell me why does Charles Aznavour return, wrinkled,
To sing for a new generation
While expats come home to seek a future?

DSC00504

(Written before I left Beirut in 2012, before knowing my life would be permanently tied to Lebanon)

Manhattan Memories

11 Thursday Sep 2014

Posted by marie in everyday poems, New York City

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everyday poems, New York City

IMG_2844

It’s homecoming today and
the normalcy of a morning walk
down Lexington Avenue, you in
your suit and I in my thick amber
sweater, holding your hand between
sips of coffee and looking about
distractedly, because you’re alongside
me and my mind can safely wander.
Then returning to a bowl of oatmeal
with strawberries and savoring it as I
savor you, watching last night as
you dressed, just as you have all
your life before I had access to
your ordinary as I do
now.

Fish

11 Thursday Sep 2014

Posted by marie in Uncategorized

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everyday poems

She now matches the orange
burst of the small blooms perched near
the bowl.

Her body is a paler shade; it seems all the bolder tones
have leaked outward to the red flitting fins
They must be strong, those
billowing liquid-silk paddles, to hold the weight of
morning joys
mid-day chaos
evening fatigue
and worries that creep up after sunset.

Not all is spoken aloud,
but still,
she must feel the vibrations of all the messages sent
to her through the water
enclosed by the glass alongside
the orange flower.

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