Celebrate “Poem in Your Pocket” Day tomorrow!

To all my lovely readers, friends, and random stumblers-upon,

Have you mostly been sitting behind a screen this month, scrolling through poems in isolation and then moving on with your day? Do your friends not know you actually like poetry? Has one line of verse been haunting, confusing, or delighting you for weeks?

How about you invite others to share in that experience with you for a day? Please join me tomorrow, Thursday April 21, in celebrating one of my favorite not-actual-but-should-be-official holidays, Poem in Your Pocket Day.

The “rules” of celebrating this day are pretty simple. Put a poem in your pocket. You got that part already. Now you can’t just let it fester there all day. Read it to a friend over lunch, startle your coworkers at a meeting, recite one to your partner before bed. Or if you’d rather share quietly, slip some verse into the pocket of a loved one, leave one at a cafe table, or print out dozens of poems, as I did many years ago, and plaster them all over your dorm walls. Disrupt the ritual of people’s days with beautiful words.

And, if you are so inclined, please comment with the poems you decide to share. My pockets are ready to be filled.*

(* This is the same text I’ve used the past few years. Apologies for taking this blogging shortcut, but I figured there was no point reinventing the wheel on this!)

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the most beautiful part of your body is where it’s headed

I cannot let this April pass without a poem from the astonishing Ocean Vuong (1988-). Whenever I ask some of my dear poet friends who I should be reading now, his name inevitably comes up. After you read this poem, I hope you, too, will understand why.

Since poetry is after all meant to be heard, I urge you to take a moment to listen to Ocean read the poem in his own voice . And then I urge you to find your way to a copy of his debut collection Night Sky With Exit Wounds, which was just released, and is full of poems as devastating as this one.



“Someday I’ll Love Ocean Vuong”

After Frank O’Hara / After Roger Reeves

Ocean, don’t be afraid.
The end of the road is so far ahead
it is already behind us.
Don’t worry. Your father is only your father
until one of you forgets. Like how the spine
won’t remember its wings
no matter how many times our knees
kiss the pavement. Ocean,
are you listening? The most beautiful part
of your body is wherever
your mother’s shadow falls.
Here’s the house with childhood
whittled down to a single red tripwire.
Don’t worry. Just call it horizon
& you’ll never reach it.
Here’s today. Jump. I promise it’s not
a lifeboat. Here’s the man
whose arms are wide enough to gather
your leaving. & here the moment,
just after the lights go out, when you can still see
the faint torch between his legs.
How you use it again & again
to find your own hands.
You asked for a second chance
& are given a mouth to empty out of.
Don’t be afraid, the gunfire
is only the sound of people
trying to live a little longer.
& failing. Ocean. Ocean—
get up. The most beautiful part of your body
is where it’s headed. & remember,
loneliness is still time spent
with the world. Here’s
the room with everyone in it.
Your dead friends passing
through you like wind
through a wind chime. Here’s a desk
with the gimp leg & a brick
to make it last. Yes, here’s a room
so warm & blood-close,
I swear, you will wake—
& mistake these walls
for skin.