POETRY MONTH FEATURED POET: MARY MACKEY

Mary Mackey first swam into my ken during 1980 when one of her prose comedic books was read aloud on KPFA during the Morning Reading, a show I was addicted to as I ran my delivery route all over San Fran. I discovered she also wrote kick-ass poetry; in fact, she writes just about every genre. Here are two of my favorites from an early volume:

HOW DID YOU GET THROUGH

how did you get through your childhood?

I rode the subways
for hours
not going anywhere
not watching the people
not looking out the window
just riding

how?

I hid in closets
and opened my eyes
I could make the dark
turn colors
blue, red, violet
I hid behind the coats
they looked like the skins
of giants
I hid behind the couch
and put my hand
between my legs
I hid under the bed
and blew at balls of dust

how did you get through?

I climbed a sugar maple
up top
where the limbs were rotten
I hung onto the bark
like a locust shell

how did you survive?

by not being found

who were you?

they never told me.

how did you get through?

I haven't yet.


© Mary Mackey


GRANDMOTHER POEM

Sometimes in my dreams
I still see
my Kentucky grandmother
thin, strong, and hungry
holding her egg money
out to me
saying:
buy land, Mary
buy land
buy land while it lasts
they stopped making it

© Mary Mackey, both poems from "Split Ends" by Mama's Press, Oakland CA, 1974

Read More...

Summary only...

HUBBLE THURSDAY 24 FEBRUARY 2011

Every Thursday, I post a very large photograph of some corner of space captured by the Hubble Space Telescope and available online from the picture album at HubbleSite, followed by poetry after the jump.


The Kama Sutra of Kindness: Position Number 3

by Mary Mackey

It's easy to love
through a cold spring
when the poles
of the willows
turn green
pollen falls like
a yellow curtain
and the scent of
Paper Whites
clots
the air

but to love for a lifetime
takes talent

you have to mix yourself
with the strange
beauty of someone
else
wake each morning
for 72,000
mornings in
a row so
breathed and
bound and
tangled
that you can hardly
sort out
your arms
and
legs

you have to
find forgiveness
in everything
even ink stains
and broken
cups

you have to be willing to move through
life
together
the way the long
grasses move
in a field
when you careen
blindly toward
the other
side

there's never going to be anything
straight or predictable
about your path
except the
flattening
and the springing
back

you just go on walking for years
hand in hand
waist deep in the weeds
bent slightly forward
like two question
marks
and all the while it

burns
my dear
it burns beautifully above
you
and goes on
burning
like a relentless
sun

Read More...

Summary only...