Wednesday, December 30, 2020

Year-End Sonnet

Image: Detail from Dali's Alice in Wonderland Who Stole the Tarts

It’s the end of 2020 & my sloth knows no bounds 
& I am fortunate to work at home & have a home 
to work in. It’s the end of the plague year, not the end
of the plague, & I’ve seen America balls-out naked,
can’t unsee it now: the greed & self-centeredness. 
It’s where we found ourselves, my daughter said 
on the phone today. And to our great good fortune, 
I replied. It’s the end of 2020, & both can be true 
at once. We can love what is great about the place 
while despising its brutality. My sloth will soon 
be getting a kick in the ass once work resumes. 
My sloth will slither out like the year we didn’t want; 
together they can binge-watch a brighter time 
from their spot below the bleachers, like in Heathers.

Monday, December 21, 2020

A Kind of Poem


 

 

It’s kind of a big day, the winter solstice, kind of important

that two planets will converge 

for the first time in 800 years.

 

 

800 years ago there were all kinds of meanings for “kind”

that now are said to be obsolete,

though they’re kind of not, if you think about it. 

“Kind” could stand in for genitalia back then,

which kind of makes sense, since it also meant both “generation” 

and inherited features that marked one

as member of a clan or tribe or family. Kin.

 

*

 

“Kin” still means related by blood,

though it’s said more in the South

than in the North. It’s been enlarged

to allow for connections beyond DNA,

when family’s not enough.

 

 

Anne Sexton’s refrain, “I have been her kind,”

is a vow of empathy and solidarity 

among women, even the most abject

in our world’s long history. I return this gift in kind

when I tell her, Anne, I have been your kind,

and pretzel my legs the way she did

and leave behind wreckage I try to repair

with a compulsive convergence of words. 

  

 

We aren’t kind to one another anymore. Some

reserve their kindness for the ones 

whose skin is kin. The pundits lament

our tribalism to explain sedition.

 

 *

 


Saturn and Jupiter converged when the Magi 

sought the newborn Christ, which is why 

it’s being called the Christmas star. 

 

What kind of consolation can we find in that 

amid plague and graft, we who were taught 

that this is a different kind of civilization

than the brutal empires of the past? 

Is it still possible for us to unite 

in the name of a warm and fuzzy babykind? 

 

*

 

Always be kind, the saying goes, because 

you never know what someone else is going 

through. It’s become a kind of cliché, 

but that doesn’t mean it isn’t true.

In a world of heartless rulers, kind people 

go unrecorded, undiscovered planets 

that sometimes converge to change things 

big and small. It’s kind of a big day, 

every day, to seek that kind of convergence. 




Photo by Mishal Ibrahim on Unsplash.com