Tag: poetry

Poetry: Every Day is Good Friday by Michael Hanson

I watch as your body is pierced over and over.
You watch as I pierce your body over and over,
And over.
You manage your pain,
As best you can,
So others won’t know it,
But sometimes it’s overwhelming.
My son, my son,
why have I forsaken you?

Every day is Good Friday,
With its darkness and pain,
And every day we anticipate
The promised Sunday
When your body will be whole
Again.

This, my son,
I promise,
Your sacrifice, your blood,
Your pain,
Will have purpose.
Forty days, or years,
Or decades,
We do not know the hour,
but soon…

For now we wait,
And learn.
Because of your suffering we question,
We doubt.
Through your suffering we know
Struggle, we grow empathy.
Through your suffering we know
Truth.

———-

Michael profile picMichael Hanson is the parent of a 5-year-old son with Type 1 Diabetes who was diagnosed at 17 months and a 2-year-old daughter. He has Master’s degrees in both English and Library Science and currently works at a public library in the Pacific Northwest. Follow Michael on Twitter: @michaelhanson22

Poetry: Low Tide by Rachel Swirsky

1 Comment

Fear binds
knees to stomach
forehead to feet.
Smothered, dissonant,
familiar paralysis.

Infinitesimal miscalculations
replicating X, should be Y,
should be Z, R, Q, N, should
be the person who
avoids my gaze
in mirrors.

A broken equation,
solution dissolving
into equal parts:
crumpled afternoons,
thirsty riverbeds,
severed strings.

———————–

Rachel Swirsky Rachel Swirsky graduated from the Clarion West Writers Workshop in 2005 and the Iowa Writers Workshop in 2008. She has published more than fifty short stories in magazines and anthologies, and her short fiction has been nominated for the Hugo Award, the Locus Award, the World Fantasy Award, and others. Her work has twice won the Nebula Award. Her second short story collection, HOW THE WORLD BECAME QUIET: MYTHS OF THE PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE, came out from Subterranean Press in 2013. She only writes poetry occasionally, and is pleased to have a few lines out after taking a break for a few years.

Grand Jeté (the Great Leap) – Nebula Nominee 2015

If You Were a Dinosaur, My Love – Nebula Winner 2014, Hugo and World Fantasy Award nominee

The Lady Who Plucked Red Flowers beneath the Queen’s Window – Nebula winner 2011, Hugo and World Fantasy Award nominee

Eros, Philia, Agape – Hugo nominee

A Memory of Wind – Nebula nominee