national poetry month, day 30

Postscript And some time make the time to drive out west Into County Clare, along the Flaggy Shore, In September or October, when the wind And the light are working off each other So that the ocean on one side is wild With foam and glitter, and inland among stones The surface of a slate-grey lake is lit By the earthed lightning of a flock of swans, Their feathers roughed and ruffling, white on white, Their fully grown headstrong-looking heads Tucked or cresting or busy underwater. Useless to think you’ll park and capture it More thoroughly. You are neither here nor there, A hurry through which known and strange things pass As big soft buffetings come at the car sideways And catch the heart off guard and blow it open. — Seamus Heaney

Thank you to the warm and hospitable folks at NDG’s @librairie.saga.bookstore for the photo and shout-out to Ghost Face on their social media. Saga is a cozy and friendly bilingual Montreal bookstore with specialized selections ranging from sci-fi, fantasy, speculative, horror, and much more! Swipe for some pics of my books, along with other talented local authors’ works on display at Saga Bookstore! . . . #gregsantos #ghostfacepoetry #sagabookstore #ndg #supportlocalbusiness #supportindependentbookstores #montrealbookstore #nationalpoetrymonth #poetrymonth #npm2022 (at Librairie Saga Bookstore) https://www.instagram.com/p/CcyGoFXJfgFQ9YXH1JuEzRWTzif23Gv2-Tmr6w0/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

Happy World Book Day! 📚 Thank you for all the love and support I’ve received for my poetry book, GHOST FACE, throughout this strange pandemic time. I’m so grateful! 🙏🏽☺️📖 Photo credits with thanks to @argobookshop, @phoenixbooksndg, @alllitupcanada, @gilliansze, @sawpoet, and @pankmagazine. Order Ghost Face from DC Books: (dcbooks.ca/ghostface.html) . . . #gregsantos #ghostfacepoetry #WorldBookDay #montrealpoet #NationalPoetryMonth #NPM2022 #adopteevoices #poetry #poetrycommunity #writingcommunity (at Montreal, Quebec) https://www.instagram.com/p/CctJ5nopUEFolYowbaPGlQCKOvizi2qYCYCiuc0/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

national poetry month, day 1

postcard from cape cod just now I saw one yellow butterfly migrating across buzzard’s bay how brave I thought or foolish like sending a poem across months of silence and on such delicate wings —Linda Pastan

national poetry month, day 8

Places I Have Heard the Ocean In a cat’s throat, in a shell I hold to my ear — though I’m told this is the sound of my own blood. I have heard the ocean in the city: cars against the beach of our street. Or in the subway, waiting for a train that carries me like a current. In my bed: place of high and low tide or in my daughter’s skates, rolling over the sidewalk. Ocean in the trees when they fill their heads with wind. Ocean in the rise and fall: lungs of everyone I love. —Faith Shearin

national poetry month, day 4

Hangul Abecedarian Genghis Khan, my father says, using a soft G, Never saw our peninsula with his own eyes. Don’t quote me on that— Recall isn’t my strong suit. I’ve convinced myself Memorizing dates, for example, is outmoded. Better to learn the overall movements, Social conventions rising and falling, Empires and their changing mascots. Genghis sired so many, they say, his children’s Children’s children’s genes sowed an entire Continent of grasslands. If  you press your ear To my blood’s topography, you’ll hear hooves Pounding, though I can’t remember when it started, or Whose king it is coming in the distance. —Franny Choi

national poetry month, day 2

The Gate I had no idea that the gate I would step through to finally enter this world would be the space my brother’s body made. He was a little taller than me: a young man but grown, himself by then, done at twenty-eight, having folded every sheet, rinsed every glass he would ever rinse under the cold and running water. This is what you have been waiting for, he used to say to me. And I’d say, What? And he’d say, This—holding up my cheese and mustard sandwich. And I’d say, What? And he’d say, This, sort of looking around. —Marie Howe

national poetry month, day 21

Spiderweb From other angles the fibers look fragile, but not from the spider’s, always hauling coarse ropes, hitching lines to the best posts possible. It’s heavy work everyplace, fighting sag, winching up give. It isn’t ever delicate to live. —Kay Ryan

national poetry month, day 5

What You Missed That Day You Were Absent from Fourth Grade Mrs. Nelson explained how to stand still and listen to the wind, how to find meaning in pumping gas, how peeling potatoes can be a form of prayer. She took questions on how not to feel lost in the dark After lunch she distributed worksheets that covered ways to remember your grandfather’s voice. Then the class discussed falling asleep without feeling you had forgotten to do something else— something important—and how to believe the house you wake in is your home. This prompted Mrs. Nelson to draw a chalkboard diagram detailing how to chant the Psalms during cigarette breaks, and how not to squirm for sound when your own thoughts are all you hear; also, that you have enough. The English lesson was that I am is a complete sentence. And just before the afternoon bell, she made the math equation look easy. The one that proves that hundreds of questions, and feeling cold, and all those nights spent looking for whatever it was you lost, and one person add up to something. —Brad Aaron Modlin

national poetry month, day 9

Vespers In your extended absence, you permit me use of earth, anticipating some return on investment. I must report failure in my assignment, principally regarding the tomato plants. I think I should not be encouraged to grow tomatoes. Or, if I am, you should withhold the heavy rains, the cold nights that come so often here, while other regions get twelve weeks of summer. All this belongs to you: on the other hand, I planted the seeds, I watched the first shoots like wings tearing the soil, and it was my heart broken by the blight, the black spot so quickly multiplying in the rows. I doubt you have a heart, in our understanding of that term. You who do not discriminate between the dead and the living, who are, in consequence, immune to foreshadowing, you may not know how much terror we bear, the spotted leaf, the red leaves of the maple falling even in August, in early darkness: I am responsible for these vines. —Louise Glück

national poetry month, day 27

How to See Deer Forget roadside crossings. Go nowhere with guns. Go elsewhere your own way, lonely and wanting. Or stay and be early: next to deep woods inhabit old orchards. All clearings promise. Sunrise is good, and fog before sun. Expect nothing always; find your luck slowly. Wait out the windfall. Take your good time to learn to read ferns; make like a turtle: downhill toward slow water. Instructed by heron, drink the pure silence. Be compassed by wind. If you quiver like aspen trust your quick nature: let your ear teach you which way to listen. You've come to assume protective color; now colors reform to new shapes in your eye. You've learned by now to wait without waiting; as if it were dusk look into light falling: in deep relief things even out. Be careless of nothing. See what you see. —Philip Booth

national poetry month, day 19

North Wind Cannot say I as yet but am beginning to get the idea by putting the tip of my tongue to the roof of my mouth. Am exasperated when do not succeed. So much is missing from the middle of the day! Despite my best efforts at individual enjoyment know the north wind doth blow— one day as yet the roof will come off and perishable below. —Mary Ruefle

national poetry month, day 17

Pilgrim Bell Dark on both sides. Makes a window. Into a mirror. A man. Holds his palms out. To gather dew. Through the night. Uses it. To wash before. Dawn prayer. Only a god. Can turn himself into. A god. The earth buckles. Almond trees bow. To their own roots. Fear. Comes only. At our invitation but. It comes. It came. —Kaveh Akbar

national poetry month, day 16

April I wanted to speak at length about the happiness of my body and the delight of my mind for it was April, night, a full moon and— but something in myself or maybe from somewhere other said: not too many words, please, in the muddy shallows the frogs are singing. —Mary Oliver

national poetry month, day 15

Poem in Thanks Lord Whoever, thank you for this air I’m about to in- and exhale, this hutch in the woods, the wood for fire, the light—both lamp and the natural stuff of leaf-back, fern, and wing. For the piano, the shovel for ashes, the moth-gnawed blankets, the stone-cold water stone-cold: thank you. Thank you, Lord, coming for to carry me here—where I’ll gnash it out, Lord, where I’ll calm and work, Lord, thank you for the goddamn birds singing! —Thomas Lux

national poetry month, day 13

my bitch! o bitch. my good bitch. bitch my heart. dream bitch. bitch my salve. bitch my order. bitch my willowed stream. bitch my legend. bitch like a door. your name means open in the language of my getting by. bitch sesame. lets get together & paint our faces the color of our mothers if our mothers were sad men only soft in bad lights. let’s swirl the deep grape & coffee pencils until we look like odd planets on our way to looking like the daughters we secretly were. caked & cakes hairy just short of grace. we look terrible when we’re the most beautiful girls in the world. bitch my world. bitch my brother. bitch my rich trust. i’ll miss you most when they kill us. —Danez Smith