The beginning of 2025 is fast approaching. To celebrate, I’m offering an end-of-year discount on all new paid subscriptions. This promo will run through January 7th, and if you subscribe during that time, your entire first year will be 25% off.
Now is also a great time to gift a subscription. Everyone needs more poetry in their lives, if you ask me. Be the poetry-gifting friend you wish to see in the world.
I try not to ask for your money too often, mostly because it feels icky and annoying, but I’m asking you now. It’s easier than ever to make a living as a writer, and yet it still feels impossible. If you appreciate my writing, I humbly ask you to shell out a bit of your hard-earned cash in exchange for a bit more of my writing. Monthly Considerations and The Sad Poets Society are a little different than the regular letters that go out, and I think you’ll enjoy reading them as much as I enjoy writing them.
As for today’s letter, sometimes poetry comes from within, and sometimes it comes from without. Here are a couple of poems inspired by things I’ve seen lately.
Afterimages It’s been two months since the storms ravaged this place. The creek is still high, obscuring the banks as it reaches above the mangrove roots, thirsty for leaves it hasn’t tasted in ages. Meanwhile, so many trees are still doubled over, clutching themselves around the waist like someone who’s had the wind knocked out of them. But the wind did this. The wind imposed its will, and the trees don’t know how to right themselves. They bow their crowns toward the earth, even as the creek reaches for the sky. Support straps staked into the ground hold the little ones aloft, encouraging them to grow upward. But who will right the old ones, the ones who have seen the world and can no longer bear to lift their heads? * Flickering There is a light beneath the overpass of US-19 and Belleair Rd. I notice it each time I turn through the intersection because it flickers. I notice it even in the daylight, although the flickering is less pronounced. When a red light keeps me waiting, I wonder if the light beneath the overpass notices that I am flickering too.
WEEKEND POTPOURRI:
Currently on repeat:
Rebecca Hooper of Between Two Seas and Jill of Life Litter both wrote beautiful essays about walking in the wild.
Michele Hornish of Small Deeds Done writes about the communal nature of trees below the earth.
A(nother) poem:
AUTUMN LEAVES
By Marilyn Chin
The dead piled up, thick, fragrant, on the fire escape. My mother ordered me again, and again, to sweep it clean. All that blooms must fall. I learned this not from the Dao, but from high school biology. Oh, the contradictions of having a broom and not a dustpan! I swept the leaves down, down through the iron grille and let the dead rain over the Wong family’s patio. And it was Achilles Wong who completed the task. We called her: The one-who-cleared-away-another-family’s-autumn. She blossomed, tall, benevolent, notwithstanding.