Welcome to another installment of our weekly Pick-a-Poem post! Each and every Wednesday, we feature a new poem here on the blog. Hopefully this introduces you to some new reading material. Every poem we choose comes from Poetry Daily, which is a really helpful site that features a new poem every single day. Check them out! This week’s poem comes from a poet whose work I actually read in class, Kim Addonizio. This week we feature her poem, Last Lights.
According to her bio on her own website, Kim Addonizio has written several books, the most recent of which are Lucifer at the Starlite (a finalist for the Poets Prize) and Ordinary Genius: A Guide for the Poet Within, a nonfiction book. She has also written novels, including Jimmy & Rita, Little Beauties, and My Dreams Out in the Street. She also has a new collection out right now entitled My Black Angel: Blues Poems and Portraits. She has two NEA fellowships and Pushcart Prizes for both poetry and essay.
Last Lights by Kim Addonizio
People are still having children it’s unbelievable
tucking them into strollers and car seats still
washing their mouths out with soap maybe the way
ours were washed but never got clean because we’re still
filthy with grief and longing and the knowledge
that the earth is a great spheroid head
with an oblate headache that hurricane swirl that
skull crack running through it still meeting for drinks
to talk about movies and exes still having sex
for the first time like horses on the Discovery channel a nuzzle
for foreplay then he mounts her then gallops off
still galloping still coming to the fence for an apple
engineered for redness for texture still bleeding
in the street for a whistle a word a sweetness rises
from the earth anyway still writing poems without
the grandeur of anything just a girl on the comer
with a rescued pigeon on her shoulder and two
little dogs one with its tongue permanently flagging out
the other turning mad circles but the pigeon
gently pecking at her lower lip in gratitude and love.
I hope you enjoyed this week’s featured poem! For more of these, click here. See you here next Wednesday!
— Jet Fuel Blog Editor, Mary Egan
