We have no choice in the bodies that hold us • National Poetry Month

We have no choice in the bodies that hold us

Thing of dirt and water and oxygen marked by thinking
and reacting and a couch
one may or may not be permitted
to sleep on. He may not permit me
to touch him or to take the bone
from his mouth, but he does, and that’s a choice
based on many factors, not the least of which
is his own desire to let me
do these things. How I could ever
think or feel myself more
deserving of a single thing than
this being, whom I call by a name the same way
my parents chose a name for me. The same way my genes
went expressing themselves to make my face exactly
my face. This isn’t special. Or this is special. But it’s one
answer, the same, for us both.

by Holly Amos
courtesy poets.org

Now What • National Poetry Month

Now What


And so I sat at a tall table
in an Ohio hotel,
eating delivery:
cheese bread



with garlic butter, only it was
not butter, but partially
hydrogenated soy
bean oil



and regular soybean oil and it
came in a little tub like
creamer that’s also not
dairy.



America in 2019
means a poem will have to
contain dairy that is,
in fact,



not dairy. On Instagram: a man
has bought a ten foot by four
foot photo of a bridge
he lives



beside, bridge he can see just outside
his window, window which serves
as a ten foot by four
foot frame.



My materialist mind, I can’t
shake it. Within a perfect
little tub of garlic
butter,



a relief of workers, of sickles,
fields of soy. We were tanners
pushed to the edge of the
city



once, by the stench, the bubble of vats
of flesh and loosening skin,
back when the city pulled,
leather



bucket by leather bucket, its own
water from wells. Then we worked
the cafeterias
at the



petroleum offices of the
British. Then, revolution—



Simple.

by Solmaz Sharif
courtesy poets.org

The Body Remembers • National Poetry Month

The Body Remembers


I stood on one foot for three minutes & didn’t tilt
the scales. Do you remember how quickly

we scrambled up an oak leaning out over the creek,
how easy to trust the water to break

our glorious leaps? The body remembers
every wish one lives for or doesn’t, or even horror.

Our dance was a rally in sunny leaves, then quick
as anything, Johnny Dickson was up opening

his arms wide in the tallest oak, waving
to the sky, & in the flick of an eye

he was a buffalo fish gigged, pleading
for help, voiceless. Bigger & stronger,

he knew every turn in the creek past his back door,
but now he was cooing like a brown dove

in a trap of twigs. A water-honed spear
of kindling jutted up, as if it were the point

of our folly & humbug on a Sunday afternoon, right?
Five of us carried him home through the thicket,

our feet cutting a new path, running in sleep
years later. We were young as condom-balloons

flowering crabapple trees in double bloom
& had a world of baleful hope & breath.

Does Johnny run fingers over the thick welt
on his belly, days we were still invincible?

Sometimes I spend half a day feeling for bones
in my body, humming a half-forgotten

ballad on a park bench a long ways from home.
The body remembers the berry bushes

heavy with sweetness shivering in a lonely woods,
but I doubt it knows words live longer

than clay & spit of flesh, as rock-bottom love.
Is it easier to remember pleasure

or does hurt ease truest hunger?
That summer, rocking back & forth, uprooting

what’s to come, the shadow of the tree
weighed as much as a man.


by Yusef Komunyakaa
courtesy poet.org

XIII (Dedications) • National Poetry Month

It's National Poetry Month, and that means a new poem on Hedgehog Lover every day in April. Let me know if there's a poem you'd like to see on the site, or feel free to share one of your own for publication.

Today, I share with you one of my favorites. 


XIII (Dedications)

I know you are reading this poem
late, before leaving your office
of the one intense yellow lamp-spot and the darkening window
in the lassitude of a building faded to quiet
long after rush-hour. I know you are reading this poem
standing up in a bookstore far from the ocean
on a gray day of early spring, faint flakes driven
across the plains' enormous spaces around you.
I know you are reading this poem
in a room where too much has happened for you to bear
where the bedclothes lie in stagnant coils on the bed
and the open valise speaks of flight
but you cannot leave yet. I know you are reading this poem
as the underground train loses momentum and before running
up the stairs
toward a new kind of love
your life has never allowed.
I know you are reading this poem by the light
of the television screen where soundless images jerk and slide
while you wait for the newscast from the intifada.
I know you are reading this poem in a waiting-room
of eyes met and unmeeting, of identity with strangers.
I know you are reading this poem by fluorescent light
in the boredom and fatigue of the young who are counted out,
count themselves out, at too early an age. I know
you are reading this poem through your failing sight, the thick
lens enlarging these letters beyond all meaning yet you read on
because even the alphabet is precious.
I know you are reading this poem as you pace beside the stove
warming milk, a crying child on your shoulder, a book in your
hand
because life is short and you too are thirsty.
I know you are reading this poem which is not in your language
guessing at some words while others keep you reading
and I want to know which words they are.
I know you are reading this poem listening for something, torn
between bitterness and hope
turning back once again to the task you cannot refuse.
I know you are reading this poem because there is nothing else
left to read
there where you have landed, stripped as you are. (1990-91)

by Adrienne Rich
from Atlas of a Difficult World

Library Loot: Language, Literal Drama, and Ants

Going to My Library is like a gleeful shopping spree. I always pick up an unexpected variety of books snatched impulsively from the stacks, and I always have books on reserve, especially after consulting my trusted book sources. I never come home empty-handed.

The last two stops at My Library were no exception.

One of my husband's favorite musical soundtracks is Oklahoma!, and a quick dive into the Internet unearthed some very interesting facts. Oklahoma! is based on the 1931 stage play Green Grow the Lilacs, which of course I had to read. Green was good — and it led me to Harvey, an even better play in the anthology I borrowed. If you haven't seen Harvey, go find it right away: the story about the delightful Elwood P. Dowd and his invisible friend is a madcap comedy that is sweet and surprisingly suspenseful.

A friend at work mentioned in passing a book he read years ago about ants, originally written in French but translated into his native Korean. Did my library have such a book? Indeed, and in my native English. Empire of the Ants may be a slow read thanks to its thorough examination of ants, but an interesting one, if the first few chapters are any indication.

If I had a superpower, I would want it to be the power to understand and speak every language in the multiverse. Until I am altered in some way, or until earplugs and a translation app are perfected, I'll have to work on it the old-fashioned way: study. Fluent Forever is written by someone who taught himself multiple languages — and if he can, perhaps I can, too. We shall see.

I have begun listening to the podcast Lore, which examines the real, fascinating stories behind legends. Aaron Mahnke has written a series of books — and when I saw his tome about real-life monsters on My Library's shelf, I had to pick it up.

After reading Laura Vanderkam's time-use book 168 Hours, I decided she would be one of my non-fiction go-to authors. Her latest book is Off the Clock: Feel Less Busy While Getting More Done — and I trust she will share something interesting. 

After listening to the book Educated (which I strongly recommend), I decided to read a little more about family dynamics. Every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way — and I'd go a little farther than Leo Tolstoy and suggest that all families harbor unique unhappinesses.  It Didn't Start With You examines family trauma that has carried on down the generations, which should be an interesting study in psychology.

These are added to the 2019 Polar Reading Club selection, The Lemoncholy Life of Annie Aster, and the new Jasper Fforde book, Early Riser. 

What have you picked up from your library lately? Let me know!

Thanks to Linda (Silly Little Mischief), Clare (The Captive Reader), and Mary (The Adventures of An Intrepid Reader) for originating the Library Loot column. Check out what they're reading, too!

Polar Book Club: The Lemoncholy Life of Annie Aster

We are mere days away from the discussion of the Polar Book Club. Are you ready?

Join us in reading and discussing the novel The Lemoncholy Life of Annie Aster by Scott Wilbanks. It has two of my favorite plot devices: time travel and mystery.

Wilbanks offers a delightfully concise and tantalizing description of his novel:

Annabelle Aster has discovered a curious thing behind her home in San Francisco: a letter box perched atop a picket fence. The note inside is blunt—“Trespass is dealt with at the business end of a shotgun in these parts!”— spurring some lively correspondence between the Bay Area orphan and her new neighbor, a feisty widow living in a nineteenth century Kansas wheat field. 

The source of mischief is an antique door Annie installed at the rear of her house. The man who made the door—a famed Victorian illusionist—died under mysterious circumstances. Annie and her new neighbor, with the help of friends and strangers alike, must solve the mystery of what connects them across time before one of them is convicted of a murder that is yet to happen... and somehow already did.

I know: fascinating, right?

Don't wait for anyone else: you can start the conversation! Leave a comment on the blog, below, or email me your impressions and observations and I'll publish the thread of our conversation on the blog. You can decide how you want to be identified, if at all, in the conversation.

Questions? Comments? Ideas for the Spring Reading Club? Comment below or contact me!

Join the 2019 Polar Book Club — And Read With Friends

What else should an Intrepid Reader do during the winter but — well, read?


Join the Polar Book Club in reading The Lemoncholy Life of Annie Aster by Scott Wilbanks. 


It's a novel loaded with time travel, mystery, and — you know what? I'll let the author describe the book himself:


Annabelle Aster has discovered a curious thing behind her home in San Francisco: a letter box perched atop a picket fence. 

The note inside is blunt—“Trespass is dealt with at the business end of a shotgun in these parts!”— spurring some lively correspondence between the Bay Area orphan and her new neighbor, a feisty widow living in a nineteenth century Kansas wheat field. 


The source of mischief is an antique door Annie installed at the rear of her house. The man who made the door—a famed Victorian illusionist—died under mysterious circumstances. Annie and her new neighbor, with the help of friends and strangers alike, must solve the mystery of what connects them across time before one of them is convicted of a murder that is yet to happen... and somehow already did.



Now that you're hooked... join the club!

Let's begin the discussion on Monday, March 4. 

You can leave a comment on the blog, below, or email me your impressions and I'll publish the thread of our conversation on the blog. You can decide how you want to be identified, if at all, in the conversation.

Thanks to Intrepid Reader Karen for giving me this book last summer, and for suggesting it for the Polar Book Club.

Questions? Comments? Ideas for the Spring Reading Club? Comment below or contact me!