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Tresha Faye Haefner's avatar

I've wanted to be a writer for a long time, but I always feel like I need to go out and make money or hustle for money. Lately I've fallen into some financial security which allows me to just write all day every day. I've been trying to say yes to this lifestyle. One way I do this is by turning off the news and taking time to read poetry instead.

Turning off the News to Read Poetry

Out there, cities full of birds go quiet during a bombing.

But inside the poets stand, between two stacks of books.

Everyone I know warns against Facists of the future

But the poets turn towards history of the human heart

Campaigning in the streets. Everyone I know is worried they will lose

Their freedom. The poets want time enough to write about all the hands

They have held. The windows they have looked through

into the faces they have loved. Outside the sun burns.

Inside every brain is a room full of stars

That may burn out before we have time to see them.

This is the reason we keep on scribbling even amidst the terror.

Like the photographer this morning who posted a single video,

We are trying to convey what it means to live

in this moment, which is every moment,

The sound of the cicadas chirping

next to a puddle of black water. Our lives like ponds

under a sky that has never once stopped spilling its narrative.

Yet here we are, making our recordings, refusing

To be still.

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T R Poulson's avatar

I have a rule at work to never make friends with anyone in management. Treat with respect, but don't think of them as friends. There are plenty of other drivers I can be work-friends with. Four years ago, I broke my own rule. Here is a sonnet I wrote earlier this year about the fallout of saying 'yes' to that friendship. I know it still suffers from i-know-what-im-talking-about-but-my-reader-does-not-ism, and I'm dithering about whether to keep working with it or not.

Sacrifice

—from a UPS driver to her dispatch guy

after breaking her own rule to never

make friends with anyone in management

Bear Gulch bends, an asphalt snake through mist

to gated blends of green. I find her ends

and she knows me. Redwood branches twist

her fog, wet as blood to my hands. She mends

me, holds my empty. I animal my trust

alone among her world, her words, her wild

branches and needles blurred in sunset rust.

She names me beautiful, untouched, beguiled.

You dangle Bear Gulch close as breath, but never

make her mine. I falter faith. Your numbers

burn me, bare and black with want. You give her

to drivers who don’t love her. Encumber

me with sleepy streets—your godship uproots

as friendship, bruised as fallen fruit.

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