Shift #5 by Ali Liebegott

View this email on a browser Forward to a friend May 6, 2014   Shift #5   Ali Liebegott

for Seamus Heaney a box of coconut water two cans of coconut milk so many looking for help some people care when a poet dies a poem is a conscience a report card, a confession: today my lies were a motor that spun the Earth how can you get truth from a hill when I am the continent that drifts? how can I taste what I’m mourning when soon everything will be salt from the sea?                                                        —8/30/13, Register 6                                                                    1 PM—5:15 p.m.            Copyright @ 2014 by Ali Liebegott. Used with permission of the author. About This Poem   “I wanted to do a project where I wrote a poem every day for three months until I qualified for health insurance at my cashier job. The only rule was the first line of the poem had to be the first thing I rang up at the grocery co-op that day. Over the course of the project, I became incredibly invested in what the customer would put down on the conveyor belt first, because its randomness often influenced the poems on a musical and sonic level. I never feel more alive than when I’m engaged in a daily writing project.” —Ali Liebegott   Ali Liebegott’s most recent book is The Beautifully Worthless (City Lights Publishers, 2013). She lives in Los Angeles and is a staff writer for the television show Transparent. Most Recent Book by Liebegott   The Beautifully Worthless (City Lights Publishers, 2013) "A Supermarket in California" by Allen Ginsberg "Nothing Stays Put" by Amy Clampitt "The Uses of Distortion" by Caroline Crumpacker Poem-a-Day   Launched during National Poetry Month in 2006, Poem-a-Day features new and previously unpublished poems by contemporary poets on weekdays and classic poems on weekends. Thanks for being a part of the Academy of American Poets community. To learn about other programs, including National Poetry Month, Poem in Your Pocket Day, the annual Poets Forum, and more, visit poets.org   You are receiving this e-mail because you elected to subscribe to our mailing list. If you would like to unsubscribe, please click here.   © Academy of American Poets 75 Maiden Lane, Suite 901, New York, NY 10038