"No Ruined Stone" by Shara McCallum

View this email on a browser Forward to a friend August 31, 2018   No Ruined Stone   Shara McCallum

When the dead return they will come to you in dream and in waking, will be the bird knocking, knocking against glass, seeking a way in, will masquerade as the wind, its voice made audible by the tongues of leaves, greedily lapping, as the waves' self-made fugue is a turning and returning, the dead will not then nor ever again desert you, their unrest will be the coat cloaking you, the farther you journey from them the more that distance will maw in you, time and place gulching when the dead return to demand accounting, wanting and wanting and wanting everything you have to give and nothing will quench or unhunger them as they take all you make as offering. Then tell you to begin again.                Copyright © 2018 Shara McCallum Used with permission of the author. About This Poem   "This poem is part of a manuscript that bears the same title, No Ruined Stone, and is an alternate account of history, based on the life of eighteenth-century Scottish poet Robert Burns. The real Burns very nearly migrated to Jamaica to work as a bookkeeper on a slave plantation. In the poems, I follow what happens to the fictional Burns I create, who does go to Jamaica, and to one of his imagined descendants, a mixed-race woman born into slavery and who comes of age as emancipation is happening in the British West Indies." —Shara McCallum   Shara McCallum is the author of five poetry collections, including her most recent, Madwoman (Alice James Books, 2017), winner of the 2018 OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature. McCallum is a liberal arts professor of English at Pennsylvania State University and lives in Pennsylvania. Poetry by McCallum   Madwoman (Alice James Books, 2017) "Portrait of Dido Elizabeth Belle Lindsay, Great-Niece of Lord Mansfield, and Her Cousin, Lady Elizabeth Murray, c. 1779 (by unknown artist)" by Honorée Fanonne Jeffers "mulberry fields" by Lucille Clifton "Two Byrds" by Casey Rocheteau August Guest Editor: Evie Shockley   Thanks to Evie Shockley, author of semiautomatic (Wesleyan University Press, 2017), who curated Poem-a-Day this month. Read more about Shockley and our guest editors for the year. Help Support Poem-a-Day   If you value Poem-a-Day, please consider a monthly donation or one-time gift to help make it possible. Poem-a-Day is the only digital series publishing new, previously unpublished work by today's poets each weekday morning. The free series, which also features a curated selection of classic poems on weekends, reaches 450,000+ readers daily. Thank you! 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

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