Don't Look Back

Don't Look Back
by Kay Ryan


This is not
a problem
for the neckless.
Fish cannot
recklessly
swivel their heads
to check
on their fry;
no one expects
this. They are
torpedoes of 
disinterest,
compact capsules
that rely 
on the odds
for survival,

unfollowed by
the exact and modest
number or goslings
the S-necked
goose is—
who if she
looks back
acknowledges losses
and if she does not
also loses.


"Don't Look Back" by Kay Ryan, from Say Uncle. © Grove Press, 2000. 


From the Writer's Almanac

Furiously saying goodbye

I had thought the tumors...


by Grace Paley
from Fidelity. © Etruscan Press, 2008.
Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2008.


I had thought the tumors
on my spine would kill me but
the tumors on my head seem to be
extraordinary competitive this week.


For the past twenty or thirty years
I have eaten the freshest most
organic and colorful fruits and
vegetables I did not drink I
did drink one small glass of red
wine with dinner nearly every day
as suggested by The New York Times
I should have taken longer walks but
obviously I have done something wrong

I don't mean morally or ethically or
geographically I did not live near
a nuclear graveyard or under a coal
stack nor did I allow my children
to do so I lived in a city no worse
than any other great and famous city I
lived one story above a street that led
cabs and ambulances to the local hospital
that didn't seem so bad and was
often convenient


In any event I am
already old and therefore a little ashamed
to have written this poem full
of complaints against mortality which
biological fact I have been constructed for
to hand on to my children and grand—
children as I received it from my
dear mother and father and beloved
grandmother who all
ah if I remember it
were in great pain at leaving
and were furiously saying goodbye


From the Writer's Almanac

Pettifog

pettifog - argue over petty things; 
bicker, brabble, squabble, niggle, quibble

Origin: 1605–15;  back formation from pettifogger,  equivalent to petty  + fogger  < Middle Low German voger  or Middle Dutch voeger  one who arranges things; akin to Old English gefōg  a joining


Supply and demand are, alas, two things I find no uses for, Econometric processes to me are just an awful bore; I use my mathematics skill to pettifog my treatises, And use my flair for jargon-speak to obfuscate my sophistries.

There is nothing else to say

Javier Sicilia is a novelist and a poet. In 2009, he was awarded Mexico's prestigious Aguascalientes National Poetry Prize. This September, he read a poem dedicated to his son, Juan Francisco, at a rally:


There is nothing else to say
The world is not worthy of the word
They drowned it, deep inside of us
As they asphyxiated you
As they ripped your lungs apart
And the pain does not leave me
All we have is a world
For the silence of the just
Only for your silence and my silence, Juanelo.

This was the last poem Sicilia wrote. His son was murdered in the central state of Morelos in March, along with six other people, by members of a drug cartel.


Javier Sicilia renounced poetry and became the leader of a national protest against the drug war. Yet he says poetry has been an integral part of the "Peace with Justice and Dignity" movement.


"Poetry has been present, the poets have been part of it," Sicilia says. "The problem is that the mass media don't like to cover it and don't understand that this movement was born out of poetry, and the reason why it's important is because it's filled with a poetic content that has transformed the language. And behind all of this is a profound ethics, as with all poetry."


Sicilia says the poet has a moral responsibility to tell these stories.


From Weekend Edition Saturday