Doha Thing Long Thought and Kind by Alice Fulton

View this email on a browser Forward to a friend April 22, 2015   Doha Thing Long Thought and Kind   Alice Fulton

A gift is a risk. Let roses be the prodrome. It’s like it dropped a gold and a silver   ring with its name on it in my brain. That was the gift   before the storm. It sent you a stumbling block. Just scribble yes or no   on the form. Now every time the doorbell rings I think someone’s sent me one.   A gift is a guess. Did it come close? It’s what you need most   that turns you nerve side out. Right now I think I’m growing something   long thought and kind of clumsy. Just wrap it in drafts with awk   in the margins. Stuff it in a wooden pillow with a drawer.   A gift is a task. It could be oxblood or puce. You have to decide   whether to send those flowers that drop whole from the stem or   the ones whose petals fall one by one. You know how rain will   turn the roses nerve side out? A gift is a test. They need to know that.   When she wrote their thorns are the best part of them I can’t begin   to tell you how many kinds of right she was. Now I think I’m growing   something long thought to be the prerogative of certain   entitled individuals. Wings or thorns. When all I wanted was   a more subtle pulse at the throat bone. Well what size   do you wear? I am smelting you a surprise. Not another luminous lyre   cum lint remover. Take it from me. If you depend on gifts   for what you need you’ll end up with a gold and a silver shoe both   for the same lame foot.            Copyright © 2015 by Alice Fulton. Used with permission of the author. About This Poem   “Doha, a traditional Indian form, features aphoristic couplets offering spiritual wisdom—sometimes in a dialogic, call and response pattern. While my poem strays far from classical examples, it does contain a counterpoint akin to a teacher/disciple dialogue. Of course, both voices can exist within the same person when the mind argues with itself. Generally, this doha poem is interested in the mysterious provenance and power of gifts as well as the ‘noise’ or humor of friendly attempts to advise.” — Alice Fulton   Alice Fulton is the author of Barely Composed (W. W. Norton, 2015). She teaches at Cornell University and lives in Ithaca, New York.   Photo credit: Hank De Leo Most Recent Book by Fulton   Barely Composed (W. W. Norton, 2015) "Kindness" by Naomi Shihab Nye "Our Daily Becoming" by Adam Clay "Experiment in Divination: Voice and Character" by Rebecca Wolff Read This Poem   For National Poetry Month, we’ve teamed up with 826 National to produce Read This Poem, a celebration of poets in cities with 826 chapters. Read this week’s featured poems by poets from Boston, Chicago, Detroit, Los Angeles, New York City, San Francisco, and Washington D.C. 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