"The Rules" by Leila Chatti

View this email on a browser Forward to a friend May 29, 2019   The Rules   Leila Chatti

There will be no stars—the poem has had enough of them. I think we        can agree we no longer believe there is anyone in any poem who is just now        realizing   they are dead, so let's stop talking about it. The skies of this poem are teeming with winged things, and not a single innominate bird.   You're welcome. Here, no monarchs, no moths, no cicadas doing        whatever they do in the trees. If this poem is in summer, punctuating the blue—        forgive me,   I forgot, there is no blue in this poem—you'll find the occasional pelecinid wasp, proposals vaporized and exorbitant, angels looking   as they should. If winter, unsentimental sleet. This poem does not take        place at dawn or dusk or noon or the witching hour or the crescendoing        moment   of our own remarkable birth, it is 2:53 in this poem, a Tuesday, and        everyone in it is still at work. This poem has no children; it is trying   to be taken seriously. This poem has no shards, no kittens, no myths or        fairy tales, no pomegranates or rainbows, no ex-boyfriends or manifest lovers,        no mothers—God,   no mothers—no God, about which the poem must admit it's relieved, there is no heart in this poem, no bodily secretions, no        body   referred to as the body, no one dies or is dead in this poem, everyone in this poem is alive and pretty   okay with it. This poem will not use the word beautiful for it resists calling a thing what it is. So what   if I'd like to tell you how I walked last night, glad, truly glad, for the        first time in a year, to be breathing, in the cold dark, to see them. The stars, I        mean. Oh hell, before   something stops me—I nearly wept on the sidewalk at the sight of them        all.            Copyright © 2019 Leila Chatti. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on May 29, 2019, by the Academy of American Poets. About This Poem   "I spent much of the last year unable to write. When I tried to listen to my interior, what I heard was a cacophony of accumulated voices telling me what a poem should be, what a poem should do—and, more disturbingly, what it shouldn't. I began this poem as a genuine attempt to follow the rules I had internalized, but as I wrote the poem, I was interrupted by a strong urge to instead write about something that broke them—I wanted to write about the walk I took the night prior, in Madison, Wisconsin, and the brief, vital moment of joy that indicated my year-long depression might finally lift. I knew this risked sentimentality, earnestness, and vulnerability, things I had been told to guard against, but I was tired of the rules—I wanted to write the real thing, even if it wasn't the 'right' thing. So I did." —Leila Chatti   Leila Chatti is the author of Deluge, forthcoming from Copper Canyon Press in 2020, Tunsiya/Amrikiya (Bull City Press, 2018), and Ebb (Akashic Books, 2018). She is the inaugural Anisfield-Wolf Fellow in Writing and Publishing at Cleveland State University and lives in Cleveland, Ohio. Poetry by Chatti   Tunsiya/Amrikiya (Bull City Press, 2018) "The Words Under the Words" by Naomi Shihab Nye" "Jackhammering Limestone" by Erika Meitner "The Tree of Knowledge" by Shane McCrae May Guest Editor: Victoria Chang   Thanks to Victoria Chang, author of Barbie Chang (Copper Canyon Press, 2017), who curated Poem-a-Day for this month's weekdays. Read a Q&A with Chang about her curatorial approach this month and find out more about our guest editors for the year. 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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