Hi! This year (2023), I’m continuing my quest to share a poem on my blog and podcast and read it aloud. It’s all a part of my quest to be brave and apparently the things that I’m scared about still include:
My spoken voice
My raw poems.
Thanks for being here with me and cheering me on, and I hope that you can become braver this year, too!
The Lettuce
Again this summer
I’ve forgotten to harvest
the lettuce that we planted
when the ground was barely workable,
warm enough to support the tenderness
of seedlings, brown, pale, and white, barely
opening to the world, the air, the sun.
We are still human, he tells me, even though I think
that we may be losing whatever it is that makes humans human?
Humanity seems a fickle word now that pundits use it
to talk about the unfurling of threats, bombs, lies. The lettuce,
when you forget to harvest, shoots up
like it’s trying to reach the sky, but it rots
from the outside and in towards the core,
slowly taking over the joy of green, crisp leaves.
We are like this. Everything greens and grows and rots
when we aren’t looking. Democracies,
romaine, bibb, souls, humanities.
How can I forget to harvest the lettuce?
Why do we plant it at all?
Hi! This year (2023), I’m continuing my quest to share a poem on my blog and podcast and read it aloud. It’s all a part of my quest to be brave and apparently the things that I’m scared about still include:
My spoken voice
My raw poems.
Thanks for being here with me and cheering me on, and I hope that you can become braver this year, too!
Carrie Does Poems
“You Aren’t Allowed To Write About Me”
If by aren’t allowed, you mean you forbid it, then who are you to forbid?
If by write, you mean think, tell stories, try to understand, to recreate you in a way that isn’t such a jackass,
I’m sorry, but you can only be improved,
and you’re missing out.
The you on the page is so much better than the you in life.
If by me you mean just you, I’m sorry,
but stories (even characters, even real-life
characters) are bigger than just one me,
just one you, just one.
None of us are just one.
Why don’t you try to imagine what it’s like
to not have a Lexus and enough money
to have your back shaved? Why don’t you try
to imagine what it’s like to listen to you asking someone
if they are ‘really an American,’ or telling them they look
like a pumpkin because they’re wearing an orange dress.
What it’s like to hold a given-to-you bouquet
and know that it will wilt because you don’t have
the water to let it survive, to go
in the shower and pray for warmth?
Why don’t you imagine what it’s like
to live bigger than who you are,
trying to push into who you are meant to be?
Imagine that’s more than a Lexus.
Why don’t you imagine?
I am not allowed to write about you.
I write about you constantly
even when you don’t realize.
You are the grit between my teeth.
Hey, thanks for listening to Carrie Does Poems. These podcasts and more writing tips are at Carrie’s website, carriejonesbooks.blog. There’s also a donation button there. Even a dollar inspires a happy dance in Carrie, so thank you for your support. The music you hear is made available through the creative commons and it’s a bit of a shortened track from the fantastic Eric Van der Westen and the track is called A Feather and off the album The Crown Lobster Trilogy.
While Carrie only posts poems weekly here, she has them (in written form) almost every weekday over on Medium. You should check it out!
Hey! Welcome to a bonus interview episode of Dogs are Smarter Than People, the usually quirky podcast that gives writing tips and life tips. I’m Carrie Jones and with me today is
Fiona Cameron Mackintosh is a poet from Toronto and manages Elderwood Coaching who doesn’t believe in tame language for wild things, which is possibly the best thing I’ve ever heard.
What do we talk about? You’ll want to listen but here’s a heads-up:
Poetry. Why do you think people are so scared of it?
What was the first poem that you remember that rocked your world?
Is it okay to misquote poetry?
How do you become a poet?
Fiona is absolutely amazing. You’ll definitely want to listen.
