Poem of the Day

This one is from my poetry pal.

Grief Calls Us to the Things of This World
By Sherman Alexie

The morning air is all awash with angels…
—Richard Wilbur

The eyes open to a blue telephone
In the bathroom of this five-star hotel.

I wonder whom I should call? A plumber,
Proctologist, urologist, or priest?

Who is most among us and most deserves
The first call? I choose my father because

He’s astounded by bathroom telephones.
I dial home. My mother answers. “Hey, Ma,

I say, “Can I talk to Poppa?” She gasps,
And then I remember that my father

Has been dead for nearly a year. “Shit, Mom,”
I say. “I forgot he’s dead. I’m sorry—

How did I forget?” “It’s okay,” she says.
“I made him a cup of instant coffee

This morning and left it on the table—
Like I have for, what, twenty-seven years—

And I didn’t realize my mistake
Until this afternoon.” My mother laughs

At the angels who wait for us to pause
During the most ordinary of days
And sing our praise to forgetfulness

Before they slap our souls with their cold wings.
Those angels burden and unbalance us.

Those fucking angels ride us piggyback.
Those angels, forever falling, snare us

And haul us, prey and praying, into dust.

I swiped a picture from the Library of Congress website so you could visualize the beard while reading this poem.

Defending Walt Whitman
By Sherman Alexie

Basketball is like this for young Indian boys, all arms and legs
and serious stomach muscles. Every body is brown!
These are the twentieth-century warriors who will never kill,
although a few sat quietly in the deserts of Kuwait,
waiting for orders to do something, to do something.

God, there is nothing as beautiful as a jumpshot
on a reservation summer basketball court
where the ball is moist with sweat,
and makes a sound when it swishes through the net
that causes Walt Whitman to weep because it is so perfect.

There are veterans of foreign wars here
although their bodies are still dominated
by collarbones and knees, although their bodies still respond
in the ways that bodies are supposed to respond when we are young.
Every body is brown! Look there, that boy can run
up and down this court forever. He can leap for a rebound
with his back arched like a salmon, all meat and bone
synchronized, magnetic, as if the court were a river,
as if the rim were a dam, as if the air were a ladder
leading the Indian boy toward home.

Some of the Indian boys still wear their military hair cuts
while a few have let their hair grow back.
It will never be the same as it was before!
One Indian boy has never cut his hair, not once, and he braids it
into wild patterns that do not measure anything.
He is just a boy with too much time on his hands.
Look at him. He wants to play this game in bare feet.

God, the sun is so bright! There is no place like this.
Walt Whitman stretches his calf muscles
on the sidelines. He has the next game.
His huge beard is ridiculous on the reservation.
Some body throws a crazy pass and Walt Whitman catches it
with quick hands. He brings the ball close to his nose
and breathes in all of its smells: leather, brown skin, sweat,
black hair, burning oil, twisted ankle, long drink of warm water,
gunpowder, pine tree. Walt Whitman squeezes the ball tightly.
He wants to run. He hardly has the patience to wait for his turn.
“What’s the score?” he asks. He asks, “What’s the score?”

Basketball is like this for Walt Whitman. He watches these Indian boys
as if they were the last bodies on earth. Every body is brown!
Walt Whitman shakes because he believes in God.
Walt Whitman dreams of the Indian boy who will defend him,
trapping him in the corner, all flailing arms and legs
and legendary stomach muscles. Walt Whitman shakes
because he believes in God. Walt Whitman dreams
of the first jumpshot he will take, the ball arcing clumsily
from his fingers, striking the rim so hard that it sparks.
Walt Whitman shakes because he believes in God.
Walt Whitman closes his eyes. He is a small man and his beard
is ludicrous on the reservation, absolutely insane.
His beard makes the Indian boys righteously laugh. His beard
frightens the smallest Indian boys. His beard tickles the skin
of the Indian boys who dribble past him. His beard, his beard!

God, there is beauty in every body. Walt Whitman stands
at center court while the Indian boys run from basket to basket.
Walt Whitman cannot tell the difference between
offense and defense. He does not care if he touches the ball.
Half of the Indian boys wear t-shirts damp with sweat
and the other half are bareback, skin slick and shiny.
There is no place like this. Walt Whitman smiles.
Walt Whitman shakes. This game belongs to him.

I like the variety in this poem. I had to laugh at part 6, because my test for good service in a restaurant is the status of my water glass. I, too, drink a lot of water and I’ve been asked, on more than one occasion, if my glass had a hole in it. If I’m with my father, he will often ask if they will leave the pitcher and sometimes they won’t. Honestly, it would be easier on them if they did…

Water
By Sherman Alexie

1.

I know a woman
who swims naked
in the ocean
no matter the season.

I don’t have a reason
for telling you this (I never
witnessed her early morning
dips into the salt) other than
to let you know that I once found
the thought of her nudity erotic

but now can only imagine
the incredible cold, how I would want
to cover her body with my coat
and tell her how crazy she is
for having so much faith
in two parts hydrogen, one part oxygen.

2.

While reading a mystery novel (I
don’t remember the title), I

dropped a cup of hot tea
into my lap. Third degree burns

on my thighs, penis, and scrotum. I
still have the scars and once told

a white woman they were the result
of a highly sacred Spokane Indian adulthood ceremony.

3.

I knew a man
who drowned in three inches of water.

Rain collected
in a tire track.

His family and friends accuse me
of making light

of his death, but I insist
on my innocence. Lord, I think

his death is tragic, possibly epic
the first and last act

of a reservation opera, and I wish
I could use his name here, make him

remembered, but I am forbidden
from doing so by tribal laws

that are more important than any poem.
But I want to give him a name

that means what I say, and I so I name him
Hamlet, King Lear, Othello, Noah, Adam.

4.

Boo tells me, “Whenever I feel depressed or lonely
I drink a glass of water and immediately feel better.”

5.

In the unlikely event of a water landing
you can use your seat cushion as a floatation device.

I worry about this.

I wonder if the puny cushion can possibly support
my weight. I am a large man. In the unlikely event

of a water landing, you can use your seat cushion
as a floatation device. Of course, we don’t crash.
We land safely. We always land safely. And Ha! Ha!
the flight attendant tells the disembarking passengers
to drive safely away from the airport because driving is
so much more dangerous, statistically speaking, than flying.

I want to slap her across the mouth, statistically speaking.

In the unlikely event of a water landing, you can use
your seat cushion as a floatation device. I am suddenly afraid
of gravity so I take my seat cushion off the plane. I steal
the damn thing and run through the airport, chased
by an ever increasing number of security people,
men and women, so I’m glad this airport has progressed
beyond an antiquated notion of gender roles. But wait,

I have no time to be liberal, I have to run fast, so I do run fast
with that seat cushion pressed tightly against my chest.
I cannot run fast enough in such an awkward position
as I am a large man with large hands. I cannot easily hide.
I cannot blend into the crowd. I cannot duck behind
the counter of the Burger King and ask for your order, your order, your order.

Oh, in the event of a water landing, you can use your seat cushion
as a floatation device, and here I am, running, and praying as I run,
every step shouting Lord, Lord, Lord, every other step whispering

amen, amen, amen.

6.

At the restaurant, I ask the waiter to leave the pitcher of water
because I drink lots of water.

I can’t do that, he says.

Why not? I ask.

Because we never leave the pitcher, he says.

Not once? I ask.

Never, he says, have we ever left a whole pitcher of water, not once
in the entire history of this restaurant. It is impossible for us to do so.
It is inconceivable for us to even consider such a thing. Who knows
what would happen if we set such a precedent?

7.

When I was seven, I took swim lessons at the YMCA
from three beautiful teenagers who all seemed like women to me.

They hugged me when they saw me waiting in line
to see JAWS at the Fox Theater in downtown Spokane.

Where are those girls now? Somewhere, they are being women.

Do they remember teaching me how to swim? Do they
recognize my face when they pick up the local newspaper
or see my photograph on the back of my latest book?

Oh, strange, strange ego.

Here, I’ve decided I want them to love me from afar. I want them
to regret their whole lives because they were once sixteen year old
swimmers who never stopped to passionately kiss
the seven year old me, as I floated
from the deep end of the pool back to the shallow.

8.

My brother, the big one, says, “It ain’t water
unless it’s got some Kool-aid in it.”

9.

My wife, the Hidatsa Indian, grew up in Southern California
with a swimming pool. Wow!

Her father, the trickster, called relatives back home
in North Dakota. Called them in late December
when trees were exploding in the high plains cold.
Called them and said, He held the phone up to the air, toward
the empty pool, because it was too cold to swim in December, even
in Southern California, but the North Dakota Indians didn’t know
any better, so they were jealous and happy at the same time.

My wife, just a child then of five or ten or eighteen years old,
heard the slurred laughter of her father, the drunk, and
maybe he would laugh and get off the phone and be charming
or maybe he would be the cruel bastard, but there was no way
of knowing until he got off the phone, so she’d sit in her room
with a glass of water on the windowsill, oh, she’d be praying
to that glass of water, oh, she’d be praying
like everything was two parts broken heart and one part hope.

Current Tea: ginseng chai (a zesty blend of American ginseng, ginger, cardamom, pepper, and green tea)

This is the last of the poems I discovered when I visited the Palace of the Governors in Santa Fe.

Grandmother
By Sherman Alexie

old crow of a woman in bonnet, sifting through the dump
salvaging those parts of the world
neither useless nor useful

she would be hours in the sweatlodge
come out naked and brilliant in the sun
steam rising off her body in winter
like slow explosion of horses

she braided my sister’s hair with hands that smelled of deep
roots buried in the earth
she told me old stories

how time never mattered
when she died
they gave me her clock