Jess Finley
This ain’t justice. You can’t throw my son
into that fucking ocean. She meant jail.
As an educator in a juvenile detention center, this poem speaks to the abyss my students and their families must navigate. This poem identifies how young people of color become forgotten numbers in the incarceration system. I am haunted by the intangible process of children entering the justice system as vulnerable humans seeking guidance, opportunity, even forgiveness—only to find themselves in a repeating cycle of court → detention→ home. This poem expresses my desire for the justice system to give kiddos “something more useful than a guilty plea” because they are all “on the brink of life and broken.”
Read Reginald Dwayne Betts’ “For a Bail Denied“
Sharon Dynak
Hope is a strange invention—
A Patent of the Heart—
In unremitting action
Yet never wearing out—
For the past three years, I have drifted in the riptide of “retirement,” a paltry word for the end of more than four decades of employment. I chose to study poetry as one of my life rafts – and Poetry Daily emails have served as a beloved life preserver each morning. Poetry keeps me afloat. From your archive I’ve chosen [Hope is a strange invention—] by Emily Dickinson, which was posted early in the pandemic on May 13, 2020. (The anniversary of Dickinson’s death is May 15.) Many of us have heard about hope being “the thing with feathers” but “strange invention” seems even closer to the bone, for our Covid era and so much more. In gratitude to poets everywhere – Here’s hoping that we never give up on hope – and let “its unique momentum Embellish all we own—”
Read Emily Dickinson’s [Hope is a strange invention—]
Steven Ray Smith
Whether born with it or not, she found her hidden talent.
She sharpened her knives
and became a bitch.
I read Kim Min Jeong’s “Serenade of Excellence” when it was published by Poetry Daily four years ago and have come back to it several times.
This poem has emotion, surprise, and a desire to re-read it. In the first stanza, the main subject engages in an independent and pedestrian activity – sharpening a knife. Her knifework is new, and her partner asks questions about it as if they have a right to understand it and control her. The second stanza surprises us, because the poem departs the dialogue structure for a third person summary of the woman’s newfound independence: “She sharpened her knives/and became a bitch.” It’s not pejorative but a two-line, blunt declarative. The poem happens so quickly and deftly, I want to re-read it (and I have).
I would not be able to read the Korean version of this poem, so I thank the translators Soeun Seo and Jake Levine for their brilliant work in bridging between the original and the English rendering I have enjoyed.
Read Soeun Seo’s and Jake Levine’s translation of Kim Min Jeong’s “Serenade of Excellence”
Millicent Borges Accardi
I’m seventeen & have been
a waitress for one thousand years.
Mamie Morgan’s poem grabbed me by the bare neck. “Everyone I’ve Danced with is Dead,” does that mean everyone I have had sex with is dead? Everyone I have known? Dabbled with? Taken seriously? The line cook who kidnapped the narrator might be dead, and the poet Keats is, of course, dead. The poem mixes a volatile cocktail of trauma and youth, with the restaurant work so many of us landed into by necessity or chance, when we were at our most naïve, thrown into a crew of co-workers, lecherous managers, and ex-cons who FELT like family, but, ultimately, weren’t.
Jana Rose
I love this poem because when I read it, I feel the teenage girl inside me rise up and wave hello. The teenage girl inside me wants to tell the cute boys what to do and she wants them to love her madly. My inner teenage girl sends poems to boys and says, “See, see?” She is testing to see if a boy is a good person, if he will protect her, if men protect women anymore. No matter our age, we want boys and men to honor our sacredness, but so many seem lost in time.
