30 Poets/Day 26 - Joan Bransfield Graham and Jacqueline Woodson

Once again, with these works by Joan Bransfield Graham and Jacqueline Woodson, here are two totally different types of poems, both of which will knock your socks off.

I AM THE POEM
by
Joan Bransfield Graham

I am the poem
out
of reach
I make you
spin
and leap and
stretch
and when you're
just
about to
catch
me
off I twirl
in clever
choreography
but we are
never
far apart
I pirouette
around
your heart
and head and
tease
with all the
mysteries
I can employ:

it is the dance
that is the joy.

© 2009 Joan Bransfield Graham. All rights reserved.
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---

One of the Many Stories
by
Jacqueline Woodson

When the puppy in the road was
mine, life didn't stop
for the driver. That evening perhaps
he read his son one of many stories
grownups write for children
about dogs. Perhaps
this one found its way
Home. The End. Then kissed his child
center crown as always, the meat
his wife was roasting, nearly done
by the time the vet pronounced
Bella dead at four months, one half
hour before my daughter, at six, discovered
a new way tomorrow could get here
tears to whimpering then finally sleep
a plastic bone beneath her pillow from this moment on,
safe still from towers burning, a car moving fast
against traffic as the children inside squeal
themselves to death. A pan of oil too close
to an open flame     She Is, I think
safe still from other stories.

Night and the driver
couldn't see a black puppy bolting
Didn't know
that deep in her German Shepherd blood
was a desire for the only story she knew
Let's call it "Home"

so when the door was cracked
she saw the promise of black night
caught scent of her recent journey
thought she knew the way
back to us
One half mile away from where I stood
packing, now pondering black linen shorts
now folding a Mama For Obama t-shirt into my bag
now smiling over our daughter's first
pink bikini as our dogsitters searched and found
our number. Already, our trip
to the Caribbean was becoming another story
of another almost-thing, puppy-blood warm
freezing fast for us into
On the corner of Pacific and Bond that February

©2010 Jacqueline Woodson. All rights reserved.
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Yesterday, we had poetry from Julie Larios and George Ella Lyon. Tomorrow... Kenn Nesbitt and Graham Denton.

 Please click here for more information about this year's edition of 30 Poets/30 Days, including how to follow along.