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Jason Shinder’s Followers (6)
Jason Shinder
Born
January 01, 1955
Died
April 24, 2008
Genre
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Stupid Hope: Poems
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published
2009
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5 editions
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The Poem That Changed America: "Howl" Fifty Years Later
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published
2006
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3 editions
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Among Women: Poems
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published
2001
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4 editions
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The Poem I Turn To: Actors & Directors Present Poetry That Inspires Them
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published
2008
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3 editions
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Tales from the Couch : Writers on Therapy
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published
2000
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2 editions
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Every Room We Ever Slept In: Poems
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published
1993
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Birthday Poems: A Celebration
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published
2001
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Lights, Camera, Poetry! American Movie Poems, the First Hundred Years
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published
1996
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First Light: Mother And Son Poems: Mother & Son Poems: A Twentieth-Century American Selection
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published
1992
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Divided Light: Father and Son Poems--A Twentieth-Century American Anthology
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published
1983
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“When I talk to my friends I pretend I am standing on the wings
of a flying plane. I cannot be trusted to tell them how I am.
Or if I am falling to earth weighing less
than a dozen roses. Sometimes I dream they have broken up
with their lovers and are carrying food to my house.
When I open the mailbox I hear their voices
like the long upward-winding curve of a train whistle
passing through the tall grasses and ferns
after the train has passed. I never get ahead of their shadows.
I embrace them in front of moving cars. I keep them away
from my miseries because to say I am miserable is to say I am like them.”
―
of a flying plane. I cannot be trusted to tell them how I am.
Or if I am falling to earth weighing less
than a dozen roses. Sometimes I dream they have broken up
with their lovers and are carrying food to my house.
When I open the mailbox I hear their voices
like the long upward-winding curve of a train whistle
passing through the tall grasses and ferns
after the train has passed. I never get ahead of their shadows.
I embrace them in front of moving cars. I keep them away
from my miseries because to say I am miserable is to say I am like them.”
―
“Just when it seemed my mother couldn’t bear
one more needle, one more insane orange pill,
my sister, in silence, stood at the end
of the bed and slowly rubbed her feet,
which were scratchy with hard, yellow skin,
and dirt cramped beneath the broken nails,
which changed nothing in time except
the way my mother was lost in it for a while
as if with a kind of relief that doesn’t relieve.
And then, with her eyes closed, my mother said
the one or two words the living have for gratefulness,
which is a kind of forgetting, with a sense
of what it means to be alive long enough
to love someone. Thank you, she said. As for me,
I didn’t care how her voice suddenly seemed low
and kind, or what failures and triumphs
of the body and spirit brought her to that point�
just that it sounded like hope, stupid hope.”
―
one more needle, one more insane orange pill,
my sister, in silence, stood at the end
of the bed and slowly rubbed her feet,
which were scratchy with hard, yellow skin,
and dirt cramped beneath the broken nails,
which changed nothing in time except
the way my mother was lost in it for a while
as if with a kind of relief that doesn’t relieve.
And then, with her eyes closed, my mother said
the one or two words the living have for gratefulness,
which is a kind of forgetting, with a sense
of what it means to be alive long enough
to love someone. Thank you, she said. As for me,
I didn’t care how her voice suddenly seemed low
and kind, or what failures and triumphs
of the body and spirit brought her to that point�
just that it sounded like hope, stupid hope.”
―
